Politics: October 2003 Archives

Attention, everyone who thinks the United Nations can be a force for peace, at least as it's presently constituted: your heroes are running away after a few bomb attacks.

I do not bring this up to taunt anyone. (Well, at least that's not the primary reason.) How can an organization that pretends to be the ultimate arbiter of international law, and which has higher pretensions to be a world government and police force, possibly be taken seriously if they're such cowards in the face of relatively minor resistance?

The French, their sidekicks the Germans, and the rest of the hollow men in the Western world generally agree that the U.N. is the proper instrument for rebuilding and governing Iraq. They say they are altruistic, but really it's a cynical ploy because they know a U.N.-administered Iraq will be much more pliant than a U.S.-sponsored rebuilding effort. It would help their case greatly if the U.N. would show some backbone in standing up to thugs and terrorists.

I do think a reconstituted U.N. could be a force for good in the world, but they need to begin by kicking out the rogue countries like Cuba, North Korea, and Zimbabwe. Full membership ought to be reserved for countries which meet minimal standards of human rights and non-aggression towards its neighbors. You say that Cuba won't get kicked out, because it enjoys the support of so many left-leaning governments around the world? You are right, and that is the problem.

Number of people willing to die for their country or religion: millions.

Number of people willing to die for the U.N.: several hundred, but few of them work for the actual organization.

Cost of one U.N. retreat: 2-3 car bombs, sporadic gunfire, scary politico-religious talk.

Cost of one U.S. retreat, as long as G.W. Bush is presiding: not determined.

From Reuters:

"Yes, I'll sign the ban on partial birth abortion," Bush said at a White House news conference. "And no, I don't think the culture has changed to the extent that the American people or the Congress would totally ban abortions."

Note that he's not saying they shouldn't be banned, just that it isn't the right time -- not that our supreme judicial masters would permit that.

And I love this passage:

Under the bill that has gone to Bush, a doctor could face up to two years in prison as well as civil lawsuits for performing a "partial birth" abortion, defined as intentionally killing a fetus as it is being delivered. The bill's sponsors say it entails sticking a sharp object into the base of the fetal skull.

No, Reuters newswire, the abortionists say that's what they do. Inserting "the bill's sponsors say" before the statement is a clever way to cast doubt on a fact without explicitly denying it. Nevertheless, the truth is that pro-lifers didn't invent partial-birth abortion.

From the "you can't make this up" basket is this:

Democratic lawmakers in Washington are asking a North Dakota radio personality to take on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other conservative talk show hosts.

Ed Schultz, who earlier considered running for governor, has been tapped by national Democratic leaders for a talk show to start in January.

Democratic lawmakers in Washington are raising money for the show, and Democrats have pledged about $1.8 million over two years to get it off the ground, Schultz said Monday. He said a half-dozen stations are looking at whether to carry it.

"The Democrats are getting the tar beat out of them constantly by Limbaugh and Hannity, and they feel they don't have a platform," Schultz said. "There's this conservative mantra that's being jammed down the throats of the American people, and the other side of the story is not being told."

So much to say about this article, so short a lunch break. This story should make any conservative's chest swell with pride, assuming it's accurate. They've got to go to Fargo to come up with a liberal talk-show host? Recall that Rush Limbaugh was wildly popular in New York City (pop. 7,348,000), not North Dakota (pop 635,000) before he went national.

And a "half-dozen" stations are interested in this guy? Wow. Limbaugh is carried on over 600 stations -- none of which has dropped his program after he announced his drug troubles -- and Hannity is on almost 400.

Maybe, just maybe, the thing that makes conservative talk shows popular isn't the personalities, but the...conservatism? When people say that conservatism is "jammed down people's throats," and that's why it's popular, it's a lot like news stories about the pope that say, "This pope is popular with young people, despite his ingrained conservative theological stances." Ever think that he's popular because he offers the perennial things, not the new and the transient?

Robert Novak reports:

The Senate chamber was filled with audible gasps last Tuesday when Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the pro-choice champion, clearly voted "yes" on final passage of the bill to ban partial-birth abortion.

I wasn't expecting Italy's "Northern League" party to emerge as a defender of Christian values, but that seems to be happening:

The European Union's elite are determined to destroy Europe's Christian heritage, Italy's reform minister, Umberto Bossi said yesterday.

He described the elite as "filthy pigs" who wanted to "make paedophilia as easy as possible".

Mr Bossi, leader of the Northern League, said Brussels was "transforming vices into virtues" and "advancing the cause of atheism every day".

Everybody knows that Jeb Bush is Catholic, right?

Barbara Bush Calls Democrat Line-Up a 'Sorry Group'

Iran says it will stop enriching uranium, and will allow unlimited inspections of its nuclear program. (Let's wait to see whether it follows through.) The U.S. has been pressuring Iran to do these things for months, and according to this AP story, the winner here is...France.

Do you think Iran changed its mind because of the 130,000+ Coalition troops on their border? Or the tens of thousands of courageous Iranians demonstrating against the repressive thugs who run their country? Nope -- it's all because of France, not to mention good, soothing, multilateral dialogue.

If you believe that words alone are enough to ensure peace in the world, you'd probably believe anything.

Hey, Pete, what does this mean for moral conservatives? Here are the headlines, and commentary from NRO and the NaPo.

I don't always agree with her, she is manifestly a bomb-thrower, and her language and reasoning sometimes go off the rails. But damn do I love Ann Coulter's columns sometimes. She's in fine form as she rails against Rush Limbaugh's detractors:

"In liberals' worldview, any conservative who is not Jesus Christ is ipso facto a 'hypocrite' for not publicly embracing dissolute behavior the way liberals do."

Judging from their reaction to Rush's predicament, many liberals' souls are black with hatred, spite, and envy. That's a far worse problem than a chemical addiction or buying medication without a prescription.

Good. Thanks, John. Let me be the first to say that I'm glad Gray Davis is going down hard. True, his replacement will be a pro-abortion nominal Catholic, like him. However, his replacement has never had a spokesman publicly rebuke a bishop for daring to teach the faith.

Other people have lost, too, including

• The Los Angeles Times. They just happened to finish its dirty story on Arnold a few days before the election, which didn't exactly lend credibility to their tales.

• Feminists. Even Maureen Dowd says that feminism died in 1998 when Gloria Steinem defended Bill Clinton's dalliance with a subordinate. They tried to make a stink about Arnold's boorishness...but who listens to them now? And speaking of Clinton...

• Former president Bill and his lovely wife Bruno. Showing the political acumen that lost the House and Senate to the Republicans for at least a decade, the Clintons campaigned hard for Gray Davis and he still took a dive. As opposed to 2000, when Algore lost, and 2002, when most of the Senate candidates they supported lost. Yet people still praise their "political skills," which demonstrably don't extend past their own self-promotion.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-Camelot) has found something about which to disagree with Governor Howard Dean (D-Berkeley). The issue, oddly, is guns. Dean doesn't mention it much, but in order to win statewide office in Vermont you have to be pro-gun, and he's received top NRA ratings throughout his tenure as governor.

To a Democratic primary voter, this is almost as bad as running as a pro-lifer. Recall that the 100%-pure pro-abortion Algore attacked the 100%-pure pro-abortion Bill Bradley in 2000 for being insufficiently zealous about the abortion license. Dean doesn't mention his pro-gun past, but expect that to come up more often if it looks like the establishment Dems are going to lose.

Kennedy -- one of the dimmest members of an overhyped family -- comes up with this tasteless attack on Dean:

"This is a personal issue with me, and I'm very disturbed at the fact that people are not paying attention to Dr. Dean's record" on guns, said Kennedy, nephew of President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, both of whom were assassinated by guns.

I wonder if he considers statutory rape to be a "personal issue" with him, since his late campaign manager/brother admitted to sex with a babysitter over five years, beginning when she was 14 (though to be fair, after five years she was no longer underage.) This is the Kennedy equivalent of "waving the bloody shirt" -- trotting out the corpses of John and Robert Kennedy to remind the public of the Kennedys' "sacrifices" for their lowly subjects (that's us).

The extended Kennedy family has homes scattered around North America, all guarded to keep the cruel world at bay. What kind of weapons do the guards carry? Sharp sticks, perhaps?

Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post's best columnist since Michael Kelly died (man, do I miss that guy!), chides commentators for imagining they could run the Iraqi occupation better than the Bush administration.

Since I returned from the Middle East, I've run into a lot of people who are similar experts. Our company's chief accountant told me things were "pretty bad over there." Actually, I replied, things are only bad in a small portion of a very big area. He laughed condescendingly and said, "Well, I don't think so." I wanted to yell, "Really? How much time have you spent in Iraq recently?" but I refrained.

I've had similar conversations with other people who are shocked to hear that the vast majority of Iraq is relatively safe, and public services are operating mostly at pre-war standards (which, granted, were not that high). Let me say again that I'm not an expert on Iraq either, but I do keep up with events over there, and I pay attention to sources I trust. Or rather, I learned that most news organizations are untrustworthy, so they can be safely ignored.

Krauthammer alludes to the most persistent criticism of the Bush administration: they are not clairvoyant. The most likely problems never materialized, and other problems occured. Now, the most likely problems (population displacement, mass starvation, mass murders) were worse than what's happening right now, but don't expect the Democrat presidential candidates to point that out.

And if by some calamity one of them gets elected next year, they'll find that they'll have to rebuild Iraq just as much as a second Bush administration would.

How can you spend a year and a half in the late '90s saying that it's okay if a governor and president...

1. Uses public employees to procure sex;
2. Cheats on his wife countless times;
3. Gropes and fondles a job-seeker;
4. Carries out a sexual affair with a very junior subordinate;
5. Lies under oath about the affair;
6. Encourages others to perjure themselves ("We were never alone, right?")

...and then pretend it's a big deal when a movie star, who holds no position of public trust, is accused of being an obnoxious boor?

I hold no brief for Arnold, and I would vote for McClintock if I were in the land of my California ancestors. That being said, nobody's accused him of rape, perjury, or abuse of government power. He didn't do anything extraordinary, by Hollywood's alleycat moral standards -- and I thought if "everyone does it," as Clinton-lovers were so fond of telling us, then it's tolerable?

I'm not trying to square Catholic morality with Arnold's alleged behavior, just pointing out the blatant hypocrisy on the part of Democrats and the media. I can't resist referring you to something I wrote six weeks ago:

"The media love 'moderate' Republicans. All you have to do is favor abortion under just about any circumstance, and you get to be a moderate....Then when election time comes, the 'moderate' Republican finds that his buddies in the press, along with previously friendly Democrats, have turned against him. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the latest to find out that just because you favor abortion, gun control, and scads of money for 'the children,' you're not immune from being lumped in with the snake handlers."