Politics: October 2004 Archives

Giant turd Michael Moore must be so happy — not only is "Fahrenheit 9/11" the favorite movie of Hezbollah and little Jimmy Carter, he's given Osama bin Laden new ideas, too! Moore was the first person to popularize the clever "My Pet Goat" critique, which criticizes President Bush for continuing to read to kids after he was informed of the World Trade Center attacks. Apparently, he was supposed to leap up, rip off his clothes, and fly through the air to stop the other hijacked planes, instead of waiting for the Secret Service to arrange an emergency trip to the airport.

Senator Kerry (D-Fallujah), running on behalf of angry liberals and jihadists everywhere, must be even happier. For most of the last year, he and the Democrats have been saying that President Bush has made America less safe because we've made the international terrorists angry at us, whereas if we hadn't invaded Iraq (and, many said, Afghanistan), the terrorists would have started making rugs or driving a cab or whatever it is that terrorists do when they switch careers.

Well, it turns out that Osama believes the same thing, and as a bona fide international terrorist, he ought to know. "Your security is in your own hands and each state which does not harm our security will remain safe," he says to the American people. In other words: act like Spain, back away from the war on terror, and we won't hurt you again.

We didn't find difficulty dealing with Bush [the elder] and his administration due to the similarity of his regime and the regims in our countries....Here he is being influenced by these regimes, Royal and military. And was feeling jealous they were staying for decades in power stealing the nations finances without anybody overseeing them. So he transferred the oppression of freedom and tyranny to his son and they call it the Patriot Law to fight terrorism. He was bright in putting his sons as governors in states and he didn't forget to transfer his experience from the rulers of our region to Florida to falsify elections to benefit from it in critical times.

Chris Core, a host on our local station WMAL (and a Catholic convert), said he was shocked that Osama seemed to be cribbing from the giant turd's movie. (If you doubt that he could get a hold of "F9/11," know that in the Mideast you can get any movie on a pirated DVD for about $5). I'll give Moore some credit: he isn't smart, but he is crafty. He's fooled a lot of people into thinking that his cheap shots are arguments, and now even a megalomaniacal mass murderer has endorsed his views. Now that's something to put on a résumé!

I'm sure this will be widely debated in the next few days, but I think Osama, even though he doesn't say it explicitly, has endorsed Kerry for president. He agrees with Kerry's approach to national security, which boils down to playing nice with people who want to slit our throats. There is nothing al Qaeda wants more than for us to "leave them alone," free to destabilize and then subvert Middle Eastern governments until they can set up gangster states fueled by oil money, and then realize their fondest dream: completing the Final Solution.

Maybe this is one endorsement that Kerry should refuse.

Showing the spunky can-do spirit that got him out of Vietnam eight months before he was supposed to leave, Senator Kerry (D-Fallujah) imagines that military wives are whiny and hopeless:

Conjuring up the image of a woman walking into a voting booth thinking about her husband fighting in Iraq, [Kerry] said: "On Tuesday, you have the choice to give her hope. You have the choice to give America a fresh start."

I've got a great idea, Senator: why don't you try selling that line at Fort Bragg or Camp Lejeune, in front of a group of military wives? Why don't you ask them what they think about a candidate who undermines their husbands' mission, thus encouraging the murderous thugs they're fighting? Maybe you could finish the trip with a visit to a military hospital, where you can explain to the Purple Heart recipients -- and I'm talking about men with real injuries, not the little boo-boos you got -- that their sacrifice was meaningless and wrong.

Gosh, she isn't even First Lady, and already she's tiresome.

In all likelihood, she's living in sin with her "husband," who refuses to document his supposed annulment, even though he says he's "in good standing" with the Church. (He does think annulments are funny, however.) Lord, deliver us from these proud, ridiculous people.

Slate magazine thinks you do. Read my fisking of their novelists' forum on the election over on CommentaryPage.com.

Two entries on the Drudge Report, as of 10:09pm:

Administration will seek additional billions early next year to fund Iraq, Afghan wars, WASH POST reporting in Page One lead story on Tuesday, insiders tell DRUDGE... Developing...

New legal opinion by Bush admin concluded for first time some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by US forces in Iraq not entitled to protections of Geneva Conventions, NYT set to lead in Tuesday editions, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE... Developing...

Can anyone make the case that the media are not biased? Those items are not news. Of course the administration wants more money for overseas operations -- do you think the military can get along without money?

All I have to say about the second item is: it's about freakin' time. Men who deliberately attack the innocent, who do not fight in uniform or obey the laws of war are not legal combatants. They are the "pirates and brigands" singled out in moral theology as those who wage private wars, and legitimate authorities have the God-given duty — yep, I said God-given, just like St. Paul said — to deter and punish them. Morally, they have no excuse. Legally, they are not entitled to Geneva protections and can be executed when they are caught.

Today, the NY Times published a story on some nasty explosives that disappeared because George Bush is an incompetent fool. (I'm paraphrasing.) Turns out they have no idea when the materials disappeared, and it's likely they were removed before the war started last year, because the site would be bombed at the beginning of hostilities.

This wasn't "news" in the sense of being new -- plenty of people have known about this matter since last year. Besides, the explosives were gone by the time American forces reached the storage bunkers, as NBC News reports.

Why are so many formerly prestigious news organizations willing to sacrifice themselves on the pyre of Senator Kerry's presidential ambitions? I can hear a voice in the back muttering, "Legal abortion...stigma-free extramarital sex...child-free consumerism...freedom from God's laws...."

Al Qaeda's favored presidential candidate speaks up against the little guys:

I know there are some Bishops who have suggested that as a public official I must cast votes or take public positions - on issues like a woman's right to choose and stem cell research - that carry out the tenets of the Catholic Church. I love my Church; I respect the Bishops; but I respectfully disagree.

My task, as I see it, is not to write every doctrine into law. That is not possible or right in a pluralistic society. But my faith does give me values to live by and apply to the decisions I make.

That's straw-man argument: the Church does not, has not, and will never teach that secular legislators are supposed to "write every doctrine into law." Either he's 1) misinformed; 2) stupid; or 3) setting up this straw man to mislead Catholics into voting for him.

Senator Kerry can't possibly be misinformed — he keeps telling us he was an altar boy, which means he knows every jot and tittle of Catholic doctrine, and has never forgotten any of it. We know he isn't stupid, because he's managed to become a senator and marry not one, but two mega-rich heiresses.

That leaves misleading. I have little doubt that Kerry knows what the Church teaches; I am less certain that he knows why she teaches it. His forays into Biblical exegesis, Catholic catechetics, and recent Church history (remember "Pope Pius XXIII in the Vatican II"?) leave one with the impression that he sees the doctrines of Holy Mother Church as obstacles to be avoided.

Kerry's public words and deeds indicate that his morality is guided by his own personal political advancement. In contrast to President Bush, who has shown that he can apply extra-political reasoning to moral issues (read his August 2001 stem cell speech), I defy anyone to show an example where he took a potentially unpopular view and stuck with it for any length of time.

Defending the unborn against direct assaults on their lives, is not (for the millionth time) a "Catholic" issue. It has nothing to do with the faith revealed by Jesus Christ and passed down through the apostles and their successors. Neither is embryonic stem cell research. Both involve the willful eradication of innocent human beings, and these truths are fully knowable to anyone with an adult. No divine revelation required.

When the Catholics of Massachusetts were busy betraying their faith by voting out pro-life Democrats in favor of pro-abortion Democrats, if John Kerry had stood up for the unborn, I'd respect the heck out of him. Instead, today not only will he ignore the Church and natural law, he promises to nominate only judges who are committed to allowing abortion under every circumstance. The hollow man lurches on, seemingly untroubled in his imitation of Judas (using Christ when it's convenient, then selling him out when it looks like fidelity might endanger your own fortune.)

Maybe someday in my lifetime, one of the major parties will nominate a good Catholic presidential candidate. Until then, I'm sticking with the good Protestant over the bad Catholic.

One of my pet theses is that journalists generally treat non-white people as forces of nature, not as morally accountable human beings. Thus, the Associated Press can repeat an outrageous statement like this:

"Last election, 27,000 of us voted, most of us for brother Al Gore," said Rev. Tom Diamond, of the Abyssinia Missionary Baptist Church. "The Republican Party threw out 27,000 African-American votes. By all rights brother Al Gore is the president-elect."

The Rev. Diamond is, of course, one of the Darker People, so reporter Mike Glover doesn't even bother to explore this "fact." Under normal circumstances, a journalist would start asking questions such as: Where does he get the number 27,000? Does he have 27,000 parishioners? When did the Republican Party "throw out" those votes, and when did they do it? Who did it? Et cetera, et cetera.

White politicians (and the good reverend is nothing if not a politician, at least part-time) get those kinds of questions because they're, y'know, normal people. Republican minority-group members get treated like normal people too, because they forfeit their privileges. But the Darker People aren't normal. They have emotions (they are often "angry" or "outraged"), but asking them to back up their statements with facts is nonsensical. To most journalists, that's like like asking the wind why it's blowing northeast, or the clouds why they are raining today.

No time for Kerry's Europhile delusions - read the whole thing! But if you can't read the whole thing, read these excerpts.

The war against the Islamists and the flu-shot business are really opposite sides of the same coin. I want Bush to win on Election Day because he's committed to this war and, as the novelist and Internet maestro Roger L. Simon says, "the more committed we are to it, the shorter it will be.'' The longer it gets, the harder it will be, because it's a race against time, against lengthening demographic, economic and geopolitical odds. By "demographic," I mean the Muslim world's high birth rate, which by mid-century will give tiny Yemen a higher population than vast empty Russia. By "economic," I mean the perfect storm the Europeans will face within this decade, because their lavish welfare states are unsustainable on their shriveled post-Christian birth rates. By "geopolitical," I mean that, if you think the United Nations and other international organizations are antipathetic to America now, wait a few years and see what kind of support you get from a semi-Islamified Europe.

So this is no time to vote for Europhile delusions. The Continental health and welfare systems John Kerry so admires are, in fact, part of the reason those societies are dying. As for Canada, yes, under socialized health care, prescription drugs are cheaper, medical treatment's cheaper, life is cheaper. After much stonewalling, the Province of Quebec's Health Department announced this week that in the last year some 600 Quebecers had died from C. difficile, a bacterium acquired in hospital. In other words, if, say, Bill Clinton had gone for his heart bypass to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, he would have had the surgery, woken up the next day swimming in diarrhea and then died. It's a bacterium caused by inattention to hygiene -- by unionized, unsackable cleaners who don't clean properly; by harassed overstretched hospital staff who don't bother washing their hands as often as they should. So 600 people have been killed by the filthy squalor of disease-ridden government hospitals. That's the official number. Unofficially, if you're over 65, the hospitals will save face and attribute your death at their hands to "old age" or some such and then "lose" the relevant medical records. Quebec's health system is a lot less healthy than, for example, Iraq's.

I was going to make the whole quote bold and write "(EMPHASIS MINE!!!!!!!!)" at the end, but you get the picture.

NRO has an essay attacking Senator Kerry (D-Fallujah) for his ham-handed use of the Book of James. The Protestant writer, Quin Hillyer, assails the Cafeteria Catholic senator for equating "good works" with spending Federal money. In this, I agree with Hillyer (although I am uncomfortable with his view that almsgiving is per se an individual and not a corporate endeavor. The Old Testament prophets, to name one example, collectively excoriated the Chosen People for not taking care of widows and orphans.)

However, I think he misunderstands James, for the formulation "faith without works is dead" isn't a comment on a person's quality of faith — rather, it says that a faith which produces nothing is no faith at all, that it does not exist.

Mr. Hillyer says, "St. Paul's repeated assertion that men are 'justified,' or saved, through faith alone." Show me once in the Bible where it says that. It's true that a famous Christian said that we are saved "by grace, through faith, apart from works of man," but that Christian was Martin Luther, as I learned in my Lutheran confirmation class. Nobody thought that before he did.

Now, Hillyer is certainly free to accept Luther's formulation, but he also wants to drag the Catholic view of salvation into his argument. He's better off sticking to the meat of his critique, which is that wealth-transfer programs are a secular project that are unlikely to produce any spiritual benefits for the recipients.

This from the McPaper but none the less telling:

A question asked of Therese Heinz Kerry:

Q: You'd be different from Laura Bush?

A: Well, you know, I don't know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her eye, which is good. But I don't know that she's ever had a real job — I mean, since she's been grown up.

Between this and the "Cheney's daughter a lesbian, pass it on!" comments, I am just left with one thought:

The democrat ticket and their spouses have no class.

I was on my way to a client this morning and pulled up to the corner of Route 50 and Annadale Road in northern VA to see a ragtag gaggle of Kerry supporters wearing stupid hats, swinging "Unidos Con Kerry" signs in the air and waving passionately at the passers-by.

I was perturbed. Where are the Bush supporters?

And then I thought: they going to work.

A few weeks ago, I bought a Bush/Cheney t-shirt from a street vendor in downtown D.C. As I was riding my bike home that day, wearing the shirt, I got several dirty looks. One young woman stuck her tongue out at me as she rode by. A scrawny, butchy-looking female biker made a big show of shaking her head in disgust as she passed.

This is the kind of immature resentment I expect from Democrats these days. I've attempted to engage Bush-haters in conversation, and they always start with the hyperbole: "He's a fanatic, he lies, he is the WORST PRESIDENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY" -- you know the tiresome song. Then when I ask them for evidence to back up these statements, one of two things happens:

1) They back off, and admit that they have policy disagreements with the Bush administration, but maybe the president isn't quite the Antichrist; or

2) They get freaked out and continue the diatribe, which often includes a rant against me personally for being a brainwashed right-wing snakehandling freak. (In reply, I point out that I have never handled snakes.) If they do have any "facts," they almost invariably include references to Halliburton and dodging the draft. They also make wild, demonstrably untrue claims, such as that the country is in a recession.

Now, let me say that not all Democrats are Bush-haters, and not all of them have gone off their rockers. Joe Lieberman, for example. Or...um...my two Democrat friends named Brian. And...let's see...Zell Miller! The list gets a little thin after that.

Many Democrats are suffering from Moore's Disease, a new viral infection that spreads from intimate contact with an infected person, from reading The Nation, or from watching that giant turd's movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11." People whose political immune system has been compromised by attending a liberal university are especially susceptible to Moore's Disease.

The malady makes you do strange things that cause non-infected people to avert their eyes. Take Algore, for example. He used to be an intelligent man without an original thought in his wooden head. Now he reads weirdo Web sites and repeats their "ideas" without attribution:

I'm convinced that most of the president's frequent departures from fact-based analysis have much more to do with right-wing political and economic ideology than with the Bible....

It is love of power for its own sake that is the original sin of this presidency....

Truly, President Bush has stolen the symbolism and body language of religion and used it to disguise the most radical effort in American history to take what rightfully belongs to the American people and give as much of it as possible to the already wealthy and privileged.

So the president is stupid ("departures from fact-based analysis") and evil ("love of power"). Haven't heard those critiques before, have we? If anyone can explain what "body language of religion" means, please tell us in the comment box. Does President Bush genuflect before boarding Air Force One?

Algore is entering the advanced stages of MD, where your body begins to bloat like the giant turd himself. When you see him wearing a baseball cap in public and he grows that weenie beard again, you will know he has succumbed to the disease.

MD sufferers even infest my suburban neighborhood. For three weeks or so, we've had a Bush/Cheney sign in our yard. On Sunday, I discovered it was stolen. Coincidently, that morning the Washington Post ran a story called "The Great Divide," with a photo of a Kensington, Maryland woman whose Kerry/Edwards yard sign was stolen.

Nor is it a shock to Carolyn Roth and her husband Ira Chaleff, a management consultant, that their prosperous Kensington neighborhood just outside the Capital Beltway in Montgomery County votes Democratic.

"We're open-minded and thoughtful people," says Roth, a 54-year-old special education tutor and artist. She drives a Volvo station wagon with a "Peace" bumper sticker in three languages. "It's probably easier to believe what you hear in church and to believe what your leaders are telling you. But I don't understand how anyone who is thinking can support this administration."

In place of the stolen sign, she put another sign reading, "IN 2000 THEY STOLE THE ELECTION. NOW THEY STOLE MY KERRY SIGN." Note the paranoid use of the word "they." Also, look at the lettering and keep in mind she calls herself an "artist."

I'm not saying she deserved to have her yard sign stolen because she is a pretentious, arrogant elitist. What irks me about the article, aside from her haughty dismissal of religious believers and Republican voters, is that the sign-stealing and intimidation is coming mostly from Democrats, as David Frum alludes here.

Republican campaign headquarters have been shot at, and union thugs have broken into the offices and harassed the staff. Remember the photo of the chubby union thug tearing up that little girl's Bush sign? That guy was a Kerry supporter.

If I met the Bush supporter (assuming that it was a Bush supporter) who tore up Carolyn Roth's sign, and he was boasting about it, I'd tell him he was wrong and he ought to return them. I don't get the impression that the MD sufferers would say the same thing to the bum who stole my yard sign, because they've bought into the idea that President Bush is uniquely evil, and therefore extraordinary means are justified.

More ominously, the subtext of these actions -- trespassing, petty theft, physical intimidation, verbal abuse -- is that you have no right to express your opinion at all. This has been a standard tactic of the Left for decades.

Someday, I'll write about my college experiences with the friendly left-wing champions of tolerance who smeared my name in print, insulted my girlfriend (now wife) for dating me until she was on the verge of tears, and threw away stacks of the conservative student magazine I edited. However, right now I am going to put up a sign that says "A DEMOCRAT THIEF STOLE MY OTHER BUSH/CHENEY SIGN."

When Denver's Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap., was interviewed by the NYT, his staff recorded the conversation for the sake of accuracy. It's a good thing they did, since the published Times story left nearly all of it on the cutting-room floor. A transcript of his remarks is online.

(A PDF copy is also available.)

Just posted over at Drudge, John Edwards reportedly said, "When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk. Get up out of that wheelchair and walk again..."

No link to the source as yet. As loathe as I am to jump the gun, it sounds like something he would say. This is beyond the pale. Truly.

My blood pressure is rising in anticipation of the second presidential debate tonight. I expect the same post-debate spin we've seen all week. I am positively dismayed at the bias in the media. Forget the pasting Cheney gave Edwards - according to the media Cheney was just an angry, old, tired-looking white man. The Duelfer report is published and the reports on it skewer this administration, yet what has been called the scoop of the year on Saddam's WMD programs and connections to terrorists at CNSnews has been largely ignored. I know some of our readers are irked by the number of posts on this blog of late that seem to be only political, but there is a lot at stake in this election. In recent weeks the media has kept at the fore many of the issues that are not of the greatest importance to the cause of life. We as Catholic voters need to be informed on the issues and vote on them considering them in the proper moral proportion. Mark Shea posts a link to info about a book, The Five Issues That Matter Most: Catholics and the Upcoming Election. It looks like a great resource for us Catholics.

I also offer these links to give a balanced perspective on some of the other news issues of tha day.

Misreporting the Duelfer report - washtimes

Debating the moving target - R. Emmett Tyrell in the washtimes

An Op-ed piece by George J. Marlin. It seems that Catholic voters might decide this election. Definitely worth reading the whole thing.

Let's talk about what Kerry actually said during the debate instead of botox, cheat sheets, etc.

I've observed many presidential debates over the years, and I understand that more than substance is considered by commentators, analysts, and voters. But I've never witnessed a post-debate situation in which substance has been so minimized. (The fact that the president did not confront Kerry on these statements during the debate is no explanation.) This isn't the swimsuit portion of the Miss America contest. We're deciding on the next commander-in-chief in the midst of a war. You'd think substance would be more important than ever.

Kathy Shaidle has a link to liberals sitting in at Christian services to hear if a minister endorses Bush.

Is it McCain-Feingold that is the reason for this? Or is it the tax-exempt status of non-profits? Regardless, no one is questioning non-profits on the other end of the political spectrum. Is it too much to ask the USCCB to demand that the freedoms of religion and speech is protected equally in this country? It seems the freedom of speech is held with a kind of fervor that the freedom of religion is not.

Kathy also has a link to a story on the Deal Hudson issue by Jeremy Lott at The American Spectator.