Sharp Knife

Le Great Denis Boyles:

"Let the European taxpayers pay for the obese bureaucracy of the EU and a military establishment to go with it. Let's charge them double for DVDs and make them wear native costumes. We can go take pictures of them in their quaint poorhouses. Demographically, economically, intellectually, scientifically, and politically, the EU is a dead-end, a goner before two more cicada cycles in Pennsylvania. The persistent cynicism, corruption, and economic stagnation of the eurozone is only the tip of that particular iceberg. The real crunch will come in a decade or two when pension systems begin to collapse and European nations have to save themselves by importing millions of Islamic immigrants. That process cannot be stopped, unless every European is seized with a sudden and urgent need to reproduce like bunnies." ...

"Since the only plausible economic strategy in place for the flat-lining EU is cashing in on a reviving American economy, here's hoping that if Bush wins he repays their kindness by letting the Europeans go to hell, which on European highway signs is called "Brussels". Tell them all adios or adieu or whatever, W. It's just nuts for the U.S. to make policy based on the accommodation of the irrational sentiments of a political community in such serious and irreversible decline. ..."

Le Lire Tout!

OUR PLEDGE TO YOU: "WE'LL NEVER OUT-SOURCE OUR FORGERIES LIKE THOSE OTHER NETWORKS!"

Sen. John McCain filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission today, seeking to cancel the Nov. 2 elections and accusing ordinary citizens of trying to influence the outcome.

"Who do these voters think they are, anyway?" asked McCain, "and how are we ever going to have Good Government with people voting all the time? This dangerous "voting" fad must be stopped!"

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier welcomed Yasser "L'il Nancy"Arafat home to France, saying "France, as I told you in Ramallah on June 30, will be always on your side...".

"In fact, we've been on Your Excellency's side since July 10, 1940," said Barnier, speaking from his office at the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs.

The New York Times-Democrat is reporting that U.S. troops failed to secure an especially sharp stick that was left lying on the ground beside Saddam Hussein's spider-hole.

"Some Iraqi kid could pick that stick up and run with it, possibly even putting his eye out," said John Kerry. "This president doesn't care about the eyes of Iraqi children. But I have a plan. First, as president, I'd have a summit. A Stick Summit. And if France, Germany and the mighty Central-African powerhouse of Cameroon give me permission, we'll have the IAEA put a seal around every sharp stick in the whole wide world. And we'll install video cameras in the forests of the world, so that every time a branch hits the ground, we'll have a record of it. If the trees do not cease & desist, then we'll impose sanctions. Stick sanctions that stick. And if for some unimaginable, inconceivable reason these sanctions should fail to stop these evil stick-proliferators, then--and only then--we will, as a last resort, use the harshest possible option left to our great nation; a strongly-worded letter of condemnation. Delivered without a stamp, postage due," said Kerry. "That's just the kind of global leadership I'm offering."

NO HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER SURPRISE. SURPRISED?

Brace yourselves; it seems that George W. Bush received a Dishonorable Discharge from the service.

Boy, the media is going to have a field day with this story. Screaming headlines, overwrought editorials, non-stop badgering by reporters...oh; wait a minute...my mistake:

It was John Kerry who got a Dishonorable Discharge.

nevermind.

Ya know, we don't even know what a real press corps would look like anymore. These clowns pored over Bush's dental records, filed Freedom of Information lawsuits to see if he missed a flight physical and pimped forgeries to smear him.

But not one of them has the guts to question Kerry's record.

In the highly unlikely event that one of you bleating sheep in the Main-Stream Media suddenly grow a spine, I'll even write the question for you:

"Senator; did you ever receive a less-than-honorable discharge--yes or no?"

Waiting.

Still waiting.

baaa. baaa-baaaa.

(via Blogs For Bush)

GOOD. AND NOW WE'RE GOING TO KILL IT.

Here's the transcript.

After castrating Spain, bin Laden now seeks to influence our election.

Sorry, Binny, but we're already chock-full o' journalists, poolside diplomats, UN officials, rogue CIA agents, hack filmmakers, partisan bureaucrats and 60 Minutes reporters; if you want to influence the election, you'll have to take a number and get in line, bitch.

On the videotape, bin Laden & al Qaeda make claims so outrageous, so maliciously false, that I'm sure you've never heard them anywhere else before.

They claim:

1.) Terrorists are Minute-men!
2.) America...be more like Europe!
3.) Bush Lied/ People Died!
4.) The Joooooooooooooooos!
5.) Regime Change in D.C.!
6.) Down With Ashcroft's Evil Patriot Act !
7.) Selected, Not Elected!
8.) Bush froze while reading to school-kids on 9/11!
9.) Allawi is a Puppet!
10.) It's All About The Oillllllll...and Halliburtonnnnnn!
11.) The Worst Economy in 70 Years!
12.) Oh, the Deficit! (nice touch, pretending you care about our financial well-being.)

And finally, bin Laden claimed that Uday & Qusay would be walking today if only Bush had funded embryonic stem-cell research.

I gotta ask you Lefties; how does it feel to hear bin Laden parrot your talking points? Or is it vice versa? Aw, nevermind...just keep the hell out of our way.

We could prolly find this rat-bastard by checking with the Blockbuster in Wajiristan to see whose copy of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is nine months overdue. And who has a Kerry/Edwards sticker on their donkey's bumper. But that would be profiling. And profiling is wrong.

Now here's MY message to you, Osama:

You psychopathic, murdering coward; we're coming for you. We're going to get you, too, if we have to turn over every rock from here to Turdistan. You're already dead. But we're going to make it official. Who do you think we are; a nation of French whores?

You picked the wrong country to mess with this time, loser.

Hell's on the line; it's for you.

Pick up the phone, goat-boy.

WE'RE A-GOIN' TO TOWN!

Christopher Hitchens and I haven't been on speaking terms since he referred to Ronald Reagan as a "lizard" during that great man's funeral.

But given Hitch's bizarre personal jihad against Mother Teresa, this may be forgivable; he was obviously beaten as a child within an inch of his life by wrinkled, ruler-weilding nuns. And that Kissinger obsession...maybe those nuns had German accents.

But, almost alone on the Left, he's grasped the fact that this war is the true Civil Rights moment of our age.

Slate asked its employees who they were supporting in this election. They listed Hitch as a Kerry voter, but its not clear he agreed to that label.

"I am assuming for now that this is a single-issue election. There is one's subjective vote, one's objective vote, and one's ironic vote."

Why can't lefties just vote once like everyone else? Anyway, he says that, subjectively, Bush has earned re-election and Kerry is an unprincipled weathervane. Objectively, Bush should be fired for improper planning and that a Kerry victory would make Democrats grow up (a dubious, dubious assertion).

He goes on to note the irony of Kerry's support from both the Paleocon Right and from the MoveOn crowd, even though Kerry has promised to win the war.

He closes thusly: "...I do think that Bush deserves praise for his implacability, and that Kerry should get his worst private nightmare and have to report for duty."

I'm not at all sure that amounts to a Kerry endorsement, especially after just writing "Why I'm (Slightly) for Bush" at The Nation:

"One of the editors of this magazine asked me if I would also say something about my personal evolution. I took him to mean: How do you like your new right-wing friends? In the space I have, I can only return the question. I prefer them to Pat Buchanan and Vladimir Putin and the cretinized British Conservative Party, or to the degraded, mendacious populism of Michael Moore, who compares the psychopathic murderers of Iraqis to the Minutemen. I am glad to have seen the day when a British Tory leader is repudiated by the White House. An irony of history, in the positive sense, is when Republicans are willing to risk a dangerous confrontation with an untenable and indefensible status quo. I am proud of what little I have done to forward this revolutionary cause. In Kabul recently, I interviewed Dr. Masuda Jalal, a brave Afghan physician who was now able to run for the presidency. I asked her about her support for the intervention in Iraq. "For us," she said, "the battle against terrorism and against dictatorship are the same thing." I dare you to snicker at simple-mindedness like that."

That's our Hitch...drunk or sober.

From "What Would C.S. Lewis Say to Osama Bin Laden?" by Joseph Loconte:

"Lewis drives this same theme home in his fiction, especially in book three of his space trilogy, That Hideous Strength. Mark Studdock is the university professor drawn into the prestige and power of the N.I.C.E. (National Institute of Coordinated Experiments). They want him to fabricate a story so they can consolidate their dark stranglehold over the town of Edgetow."

""This was the first thing Mark had been asked to do which he himself, before he did it, clearly knew to be criminal. But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly, there was no struggle, no sense of turning a corner....For him, it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men.""

NEITHER 'DEMOCRATIC' NOR 'UNDERGROUND'; DISCUSS.

Elizabeth Edwards has reportedly been lurking at the Democrat Underground. Which is a lie; she's obviously been lurking at Krispy Kreme.

No, it's a lie because there is no Democrat Underground.

First, any party that regularly practices "One Man--Two Votes!" is a lot of things...but "democratic" isn't one of them. Secondly, any party that puts a Michael Moore in the presidential box at its national convention no longer has fringes; it is a fringe.

An in-your-face Democrat Aboveground freak-show of the finest fringe-iest fringe-ery to be found. A Kerry with the Fringe On Top. The Fringe Connection. A Fringe of the Devil is a Fringe of Mine.

Or was...actually, they lost me at Mogadishu, when Clinton placed our troops under a split UN command. He then ordered them to capture a warlord while denying them the armor needed to accomplish the mission safely. After the bloodshed, he ordered them to act as bodyguards...to that same warlord! Then, he cut and ran.

Even as a Democrat, even back then, I knew something was terribly wrong, that we couldn't allow ourselves to be punked like that.

We later found out that those Somalis had been trained by Osama bin Laden.

You might say that President Bill, Osama and the UN did what not even Ronald Reagan could do; they made me a Republican. Well, that...and growing-up.

And they're all back this election season, lurking and rooting for Jean Kerry, the Fringe-looking candidate.

The party's over, people; step away from the doughnuts, Liz.

ATTENTION STUDENTS:

1.) Presidents cannot draft anyone. It would take a majority vote of the House and probably a super-majority vote of the Senate (to break any filibuster) and a president's signature to re-institute any draft.

2.) That could only happen in the severest kind of national emergency. If you were unwilling to defend your families and neighbors in that circumstance, you are a petulant child who can only be made free and kept free by the exertions of better men than yourself.

3.) We could enlist a half-million recruits voluntarily right now--and we'd still have less troops than we did before force levels were slashed during the Clinton years.

4.) Guess what? The military doesn't want a bunch of slackers who don't have the guts to defend their own country. The last time we had a draft, it gave us John Kerry hunting purple hearts in the M*A*S*H* units of Vietnam.

5.) Today's battlefield is less dependent on raw manpower anyway.

6.) Kerry knows all of this. But he's hoping years of public education have left you stupid, gullible and easily manipulated. You might consider voting for a candidate who's not insulting your intelligence.

Or is the only draft the one between your ears? That's what they're counting on.

Rock the Vote? Puh-lease.

Vote the Rock instead.

Bush in '04!

"SPRAIN-TIME IN HAVANA"

(Beverly Hills, Cuba) After giving one of his patented 152-hr. speeches, Fidel Castro slipped and fell, injuring himself.

Mr. Castro has retained the services of attorneys Greg Craig and John Edwards to represent him in his "slip and fall" case against the Cuban government, i.e., himself.

Legal experts expect Castro to prevail.

While the Murdering-Pig Tyrant is expected to recover fully from his injuries, several guilty bystanders were also injured when the dictator fell. Noted Hollywood director Oliver Stone was hospitalized with a severely sprained tongue due to following too closely.

Writing on a chalkboard from his hospital bed before his scheduled appeaseotomy, Stone blamed the fall on LBJ, adding "But, hey; it could have been worse; at least Belafonte and Glover were underneath me to break my fall."

His doctors insisted Stone would be back to his lying self in no time at all.

(Babalu Blog has the photos.)

OR "GET RIGHT"?

Matt Bai quotes Kerry:

''I think we can do a better job of cutting-off financing, of exposing groups, of working cooperatively across the globe, of improving our intelligence capabilities nationally and internationally, of training our military and deploying them differently, of specializing in special forces and special ops, of working with allies, and most importantly -- and I mean most importantly -- of restoring America's reputation as a country that listens, is sensitive, brings people to our side, is the seeker of peace, not war, and that uses our high moral ground and high-level values to augment us in the war on terror, not to diminish us.''

1.) President Bush is already doing all those things on Kerry's laundry list--and more. Kerry merely promises to do them "better", whatever that means.

2.) For years, Kerry opposed many of those same actions that he now demands. And opposes other actions he once supported.

3.) Having allies is great; but take a look at that sentence: 'working cooperatively across the globe', improving intelligence "internationally", 'deploying troops differently' (i.e., with UN permission), 'working with allies', "and most importantly -- and I mean most importantly--restoring America's reputation" & 'bringing people to our side'.

That's six or seven "global tests"...in one sentence! That goes way beyond seeking allies--it's global fetishism.

President Bush chose "victory" as the goal, knowing alliances would follow. To Kerry, having allies IS the goal.

Early in WWII, before America joined the battle, Churchill vowed that England would fight for years, alone, if necessary, to defeat the Nazis. He chose victory. Alliances followed.

According to Kerry, that was an illegitimate choice.

4.) While he tries to pawn it off on the rest of the world, when Kerry says we need to 'restore America's reputation', he really means we need to restore America's reputation...with John Kerry.

Kerry: ''We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance. As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.''

1.) As Orrin Judd noted : "Bad enough that the Senator so misapprehends the problems of the Islamic world that he thinks extremism can be defeated without addressing its root causes, even worse is that he says he wouldn't have applied his own law enforcement model where it most clearly obtained: Iraq.
After all, the case the President made for removing Saddam was almost entirely legalistic...
If Mr. Kerry's vision is to be elected law enforcer in chief, rather than commander in chief, it's unfortunate that he can't meet even that lower standard."

2.) A president must focus on the threat if he wishes citizens to be free of it. And Kerry sounds like he doesn't want to focus there.

3.) The key part of this statement is not the highly-Fiskable "nusiance" comparison; it is this:

''We have to get back to the place we were...".

Conservatives are constantly mocked for living in the past. We remember an America in which, for all its faults, kids could run free, doors were not locked and men could walk downtown with their dates after midnight without feeling the need to be armed.

But Kerry doesn't mean a return to that place. He means a return to a place where a man could manufacture a war-hero record for himself, come home and denounce his fellow warriors and his own country--and be awarded a Senate seat for his trouble. He wants to run against Nixon so badly, he's ginned-up a totally phony draft meme.

He wants to return to a place where he can run against Reagan's "illegal Central-American war" and Ronnie's reckless, unilateral "mystical" war against Communism--the one that freed millions in Europe & elsewhere. You remember--it was in all the papers.

Kerry waxes nostalgic for those halcyon days of yore, that Golden Era of Liberalism, when unlimited entitlements forever poured from the halls of Congress like mother's milk at a La Leche convention. Where judges passed all the Democrats' favorite legislation for them, because Democrats either couldn't convince their fellow citizens or lacked the guts to stand up and try.

Kerry wishes a return to the Clinton years, where terrorism was treated as a nuisance, a mere distraction from the Nanny-State project. You don't think so? Take this test:

15 of the 19 WTC hijackers were...yes; that's right: they were Saudis.

Now tell me the nationalities of the first World Trade Center bombers in '93: ...tick...tick...tick...What, you don't know?

You don't know because it was treated as a law-enforcement matter, not war; a 'nuisance', if you will. Hint: several were Iraqis.

But the point is that they murdered six people and meant to murder another 60 thousand--yet there was a mad rush to declare "no state-sponsorship!". Hell, nobody even got the death penalty. It was regarded, in short...a nuisance.

But "We have to get back to the place we were"?

I'm not going back to your Sept. 10th fantasyland, Mr. Kerry.

The path President Bush has chosen is the path of the future, not the past. It's sometimes rough work, expensive work, it's even ragged at times...but it's right.

Victor Hugo said "An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."

Your time has come, Senator...and gone. You, sir, are a dinosaur, a Tranzi-saurus Wreck. A mere reactionary, standing athwart history, bleating "Nuance!" in the dulcet dialects of defeatism.

But our idea--today's idea--is victory. And it's freedom. And its time has come.

And it will not be stopped.

And certainly not by any Cardboard Man.

WE'VE GOT...EVEN MORE QUESTIONS!

How come Australia, Poland & Italy are libeled as "bribed & coerced"--yet the counties that actually took bribes (France & Germany) and were coerced (Spain) are called "historic allies"?

Motor Voter forced the states to offer voter registration with every driver's license...yet asking someone to show that license when they vote is a human rights violation?

How come John Kerry can get a medal-per-week in 'Nam...but only a couple of bridge-re-naming bills per-decade in the Senate?

If a national group conspired to create riots at otherwise peaceful campaign offices, what would we call that group? Well, in Iraq, we'd call them "insurgents"--but in America, we call them "the AFL-CIO". And has anybody heard Gore denounce these old-fashioned analog brown-shirts?

"Father Knows Best" is a hopelessley-outdated, patriarchal sit-com...but "France Knows Best" is the feel-good hit of the season?

Je ne pense pas si.

TODAY'S HISTORY LESSON:

Kaiser (German for "Caesar") Wilhelm II:

"Even now I rule supreme in the United States, where almost one half of the population is either of German birth or German descent, and where 3,000,000 do my bidding…No American Administration could remain in power against the will of the German voters…"

US Ambassador to Germany (1914-17), James W. Gerard:

"I know that it is hard for Americans to realize the magnitude of the war in which we are involved. We have problems in this war no other nations have. Fortunately, the great majority of American citizens of German descent have, in this great crisis of our history, shown themselves splendidly loyal to our flag. Everyone had a right to sympathize with any warring nation. But now that we are in the war there are only two sides, and the time has come when every citizen must declare himself American -- or traitor!"

"We must disappoint the Germans who have always believed that the German-Americans here would risk their property, their children's future, and their own neck, and take up arms for the Kaiser. The Foreign Minister of Germany [Zimmerman] once said to me "your country does not dare do anything against Germany, because we have in your country 500,000 German reservists who will rise in arms against your government if you dare to make a move against Germany." Well, I told him that that might be so, but that we had 500,000 & 1 lampposts in this country, and that that was where the reservists would be hanging the day after they tried to rise. And if there are any German-Americans here who are so ungrateful for all the benefits they have received that they are still for the Kaiser, there is only one thing to do with them. And that is to hog-tie them, give them back the wooden shoes and the rags they landed in, and ship them back to the Fatherland."

"I have travelled this year over all the United States. Through the Alleghenies, the White Mountains, and the Catskills, the Rockies and the Bitterroot Mountains, the Cascades, the Coast Range, and the Sierras. And in all these mountains, there is no animal that bites and kicks and squeals and scratches, that would bite and squeal and scratch equal to a fat German-American, if you commenced to tie him up and told him that he was on his way back to the Kaiser."

P.J. O'Rourke has questions he wanted asked at the debate:

Sample:

"(7) You say that we won the war, but we're losing the peace because Iraq is so unstable. When Iraq was stable, it attacked Israel in the 1967 and 1973 wars. It attacked Iran. It attacked Kuwait. It gassed the Kurds. It butchered the Shiites. It fostered terrorism in the Middle East. Who wants a stable Iraq?"

Hear, here!

...VOTE KERRY/EDWARDS in '04!

Bill Garvin:

"My opponent's uncle was a flagrant heterosexual.
His sister, who has always been obsessed by sects, once worked as a proselyte outside a church.
His father was secretly chagrined at least a dozen times by matters of a pecuniary nature.
His youngest brother wrote an essay extolling the virtues of being a homo sapien.
His great-aunt expired from a degenerative disease.
His nephew subscribes to a phonographic magazine.
His wife was a thespian before their marriage and even performed the act in front of paying customers.
And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as."

Oops...that last sentence was John Kerry's. But the intent was the same.

Her name is Mary, John.

Mary Cheney.

She's a person, Senator. An individual. Not just an un-named member of a minority group. Not just "Dick Cheney's daughter". Say her name, Senator. You put words in her mouth; say her name.

If you're going stoop to using your opponents' family members as political props in a crude, yet semi-subtle way (made even cruder by its faux-subtlety) in order to gay-bait, at least pretend to have some class & guts by having the decency to speak her name.

Just as I speak yours:

Asshole.

FOR STONEY...AND YOU:

"I wish that our people as a whole, and especially those among us who occupy high legislative or administrative positions, would study the history of our nation, not merely for the purpose of national self gratification, but with the desire to learn the lessons that history teaches. Let the men who talk lightly about its being unnecessary for us now to have an army and navy adequate for the work of this nation in the world remember that such utterances are not merely foolish, for in their effects they may at any time be fraught with disaster and disgrace to the nation's honor as well as disadvantage to its interest. Let them take to heart some of the lessons which should be learned by the study of the War of I8I2."

"As a people we are too apt to remember only that some of our ships did well in that war. We had a few ships -- a very few ships -- and they did so well as to show the utter folly of not having enough of them. Thanks to our folly as a nation, thanks to the folly that found expression in the views of those at the seat of government, not a ship of any importance had been built within a dozen years before the war began, and the Navy was so small that, when once the war was on, our opponents were able to establish a close blockade throughout the length of our coast, so that not a ship could go from one port to another, and all traffic had to go by land. Our parsimony in not preparing an adequate navy (which would have prevented the war) cost in the end literally thousands of dollars for every one dollar we thus foolishly saved. After two years of that war an utterly inconsiderable British force of about four thousand men was landed here in the bay, defeated with ease a larger body of raw troops put against it, and took Washington."

"I am sorry to say that those of our countrymen who now speak of the deed usually confine themselves to denouncing the British for having burned certain buildings in Washington. They had better spare their breath. The sin of the invaders in burning the buildings is trivial compared with the sin of our own people in failing to make ready an adequate force to defeat the attempt. This nation was guilty of such shortsightedness, of such folly, of such lack of preparation that it was forced supinely to submit to the insult and was impotent to avenge it; and it was only the good fortune of having in Andrew Jackson a great natural soldier that prevented a repetition of the disaster at New Orleans. Let us remember our own shortcomings, and see to it that the men in public life to-day are not permitted to bring about a state of things by which we should in effect invite a repetition of such a humiliation."

"We can afford as a people to differ on the ordinary party questions; but if we are both farsighted and patriotic we can not afford to differ on the all-important question of keeping the national defenses as they should be kept; of not alone keeping up, but of going on with building up of the United States Navy, and of keeping our small Army at least at its present size and making it the most efficient for its size that there is on the globe. Remember, you here who are listening to me, that to applaud patriotic sentiments and to turn out to do honor to the dead heroes who by land or by sea won honor for our flag is only worth while if we are prepared to show that our energies do not exhaust themselves in words; if we are prepared to show that we intend to take to heart the lessons of the past and make things ready so that if ever, which heaven forbid, the need should arise, our fighting men on sea and ashore shall be able to rise to the standard established by their predecessors in our services of the past."

"Those of you who are in public life have a moral right to be here at this celebration to-day only if you are prepared to do your part in building up the Navy of the present; for otherwise you have no right to claim lot or part in the glory and honor and renown of the Navy's past."--Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, Remarks at the Re-Internment of John Paul Jones, Annapolis, April 24, 1906

(Entire speech here. More here.)

The first commercials for the 2004 election were filmed in Vietnam nearly 40 years ago by the Kerry campaign (i.e., John Kerry).

But the first Bush endorsement was offered nearly a century ago by Teddy Roosevelt, speaking at, ironically enough, the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

"Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder."

THE PRESIDENT vs. sen. kerryissius rex (POTUS v. skrotus)

JACOBS: "Iran sponsors terrorism and has missiles capable of hitting Israel and southern Europe. Iran will have nuclear weapons in two to three years time.
In the event that U.N. sanctions don't stop this threat, what will you do as president?"

KERRY: I don't think you can just rely on U.N. sanctions, Randee.
"You also need a lucky CIA hat. and good karma."

But you're absolutely correct, it is a threat, it's a huge threat...that has grown while the president has been preoccupied with Iraq, where there wasn't a threat. '
"Or at least not the threat I also insisted was there."

If he'd let the inspectors do their job and go on [for another decade], we wouldn't have 10 times the numbers of forces in Iraq that we have in Afghanistan chasing Osama bin Laden.

Meanwhile, while Iran is moving toward nuclear weapons, some 37 tons of what they called yellow cake, the stuff they use to make enriched uranium [and Saddam had 500 tons of yellow cake because...?] , while they're doing that, North Korea has moved from one bomb maybe, maybe, to four to seven bombs.

For two years, the president didn't even engage with North Korea, did nothing at all, while it was growing more dangerous, despite the warnings of former Secretary of Defense William Perry, who negotiated getting television cameras and inspectors into that reactor.
Always The Big Lie. Always.

I know about your life-long love affair with television cameras, Sen. Live-Shot, but this isn't about catching shoplifters at the mall. And even that requires a security guard to actually grab the perps.

If the Clinton Administration didn't set out purposefully to provide N. Korea with nukes--and that's a big "if" with the Clinton crowd--then they got completely rolled in bi-lateral talks, the kind of talks you wish to resume.

North Korea got a light-water nuke plant, oil supplies and food for their troops in exchange for a promise to be nice. Well, guess what, Senator? Communists lie! Yes...it's true!

All we got out of the deal was a photo-op of Madeline Albright clinking champagne glasses with Stalinist murderers. And a nuclear North Korea. It's the President's fault, alright;

President Bill Jung Gurl.

...And the president is moving to the creation of our own bunker- busting nuclear weapon. It's very hard to get other countries to give up their weapons when you're busy developing a new one.
So rogue nations will give up their programs if we give up the one weapon that, in an emergency, could really stop them?

I'm going to lead the world in the greatest counterproliferation effort.
They proliferate, we proliferate; who are we to judge, eh, Senator? You would disarm America first...and just hope for the best.

And if we have to get tough with Iran, believe me, we will get tough.
"If"?..."If"???... It's still an open question with you if we should get tough with them?

BUSH:...He keeps talking about, "Let the inspectors do their job." It's naive and dangerous to say that. That's what the Duelfer report showed. He was deceiving the inspectors.

Secondly, of course we've been involved with Iran.

I fully understand the threat. And that's why we're doing what he suggested we do: Get the Brits, the Germans and the French to go make it very clear to the Iranians that if they expect to be a party to the world to give up their nuclear ambitions. We've been doing that.

Let me talk about North Korea.

It is naive and dangerous to take a policy that he suggested the other day, which is to have bilateral relations with North Korea. Remember, he's the person who's accusing me of not acting multilaterally. He now wants to take the six-party talks we have — China, North Korea, South Korea, Russia, Japan and the United States — and undermine them by having bilateral talks.

That's what President Clinton did. He had bilateral talks with the North Koreans. And guess what happened?
uhh...a disastrous failure? Yep.

He [Kim Jung Il] didn't honor the agreement. He was enriching uranium. That is a bad policy.
Which explains why Kerry wants to try it again on Iran.

FARLEY: Mr. President, since we continue to police the world, how do you intend to maintain our military presence without reinstituting a draft?

BUSH: Yes, that's a great question. Thanks.
I hear there's rumors on the Internet that we're going to have a draft. We're not going to have a draft, period. The all-volunteer army works. It works particularly when we pay our troops well. It works when we make sure they've got housing, like we have done in the last military budgets.
An all-volunteer army is best suited to fight the new wars of the 21st century, which is to be specialized and to find these people as they hide around the world....
Now, forget all this talk about a draft. We're not going to have a draft so long as I am the president.

KERRY: Daniel, I don't support a draft. But let me tell you...
No. No, I won't.

...I'm going to add 40,000 active duty forces to the military,
Yet you wouldn't send them where you say they are most-needed.

and I'm going to make people feel good about being safe in our military,
Our military exists to keep US safe--and our enemies unsafe. The only way to keep a military completely safe is to never use it...oh; I get your point.

and not overextended
Overextended? Sen. Gut n' Cut, you slashed the military for two decades.

because I'm going to run a foreign policy that actually does what President Reagan did,

Okay; that's it, bitch.

Ronald Reagan WON. That's something you don't have in you, Sandanista-boy. In fact, you bit at his ankles at every opportunistic opportunity. Had we listened to you, the Soviets would still be in power today. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Grenada and all of Eastern Europe would still be in Communist hands. You called Reagan a reckless, unilateral, war-mongering cowboy then, just as you call President Bush now.

Yes, Reagan had allies--and YOU weren't one of them.

Maybe--maybe--you weren't on the other team--but your voting record wouldn't have looked much different if you had been. You went over to the other side in "Nam. You relentlessly appeased the Soviet Union. And now you parrot the Euro-socialist line on Iraq. Can you tell us why that doesn't make you a three-time loser? And maybe you could explain to the folks the difference between the Soviets funding the Nuclear Freeze movement and Saddam funding the War-on-Terror Freeze movement.

It's bad enough that you cite Desert Storm as your model, despite opposing it at the time. But now you want to leech off the legacy of a truly great man, a man whom you opposed, despised and tried to thwart at every turn? A man who freed millions in spite of your best efforts to stop him?

I don't think so. You're unfit to speak that great man's name.

Slag off, weasel-boy.

(Thank you, ladies & gentlemen; we'll be here all week...)

MONSIEUR GLOBAL TEST vs. MR. GLOBAL TESTES

NIKKI WASHINGTON: "Mr. President, my mother and sister traveled abroad this summer, and when they got back they talked to us about how shocked they were at the intensity of aggravation that other countries had with how we handled the Iraq situation...What is your plan to repair relations with other countries given the current situation?"

BUSH: ..."I remember when Ronald Reagan was the president; he stood on principle. Somebody [at the other podium] called that 'stubborn'. He stood on principle, standing up to the Soviet Union, and we won that conflict.

Yet...we were very unpopular in Europe [and Massachusetts] because of the decisions he made.

I recognize that taking Saddam Hussein out was unpopular [in Europe... & Massachusetts]. But I made the decision because I thought it was in the right interests of our security.

...I've made some decisions on Israel that [were] unpopular. In Europe ...& Massachusetts.

I wouldn't deal with Arafat...And people in Europe [and Massachusetts] didn't like that decision...but it was the right thing to do.

...I made a decision not to join the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which is where our troops could be... brought in front of a judge...That was unpopular. Again, in Europe...& Massachusetts.

...sometimes in this world you make unpopular decisions because you think they're right.

We'll continue to reach out.

Listen, there [are] 30 nations involved in Iraq, some 40 nations involved in Afghanistan. People love America. Sometimes they don't like the decisions made by America, but I don't think you want a president who tries to become popular and does the wrong thing.

You don't want to join the International Criminal Court just because it's popular in certain capitals in Europe."
Unless you're from...Massachusetts!

KERRY: "Nikki, that's a question that's been raised by a lot of people around the country.
Let me address it ["I have a plan to address your question!"] but also talk about the weapons the president just talked about...

The president...was asked a question..."Under what circumstances would you send people to war?"

And his answer was, "With a viable exit strategy and only with enough forces to get the job done."
We have an exit strategy; it's called "Victory", followed closely by "Liberty". And the job is getting done... despite your best efforts to sabotage it.

He didn't do that. He broke that promise. We didn't have enough forces.
So you propose sending in more troops, right?...no?... I didn't think so. There's a word for bitching about someone else while remaining unwilling to do anything yourself: "adolescence".

General Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, told him he was going to need several hundred thousand. And guess what? They retired General Shinseki for telling him that.
Gen. Shisneki wasn't canned because he spoke out; he spoke out because he was canned.

This president hasn't listened.
Q: If one general told Kerry one thing, and another general told Kerry something different, who would Kerry listen to?
A: France.

to wit:

I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted.... I talked to all of them to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable.

I came away convinced that, if we worked at it, if we were ready to work and letting Hans Blix do his job and thoroughly go through the inspections, that if push came to shove, they'd be there with us.

In other words, John Kerry was convinced, absolutely convinced, that if we stayed up all night for another decade or so, cramming for our Global Test, that China, Russia, France and Germany would cease selling weapons to Saddam, stop taking his Oil-for-UN votes-bribes, and begin the process that could lead to thinking about possibly considering giving us the keys to a beat-up old Citroen as a graduation present.

Gee, thanks, Dad.

But the president just arbitrarily brought the hammer down and said, "Nope. Sorry, time for diplomacy is over. We're going." Given the shameless whores with whom he had to deal, that the President got the resolution he did was a masterpiece of diplomacy.

He rushed to war without a plan to win the peace."...

If, by an 'arbitrary' 'rush to war', you mean a full decade of Saddam's sponsoring terrorists and violating the cease-fire, followed by a year-and-a-half-long diplo-bonus round.

By Kerry's ahistorical standard, George Washington failed to win the peace because the British came back in 1812.

Lincoln failed to win the peace because civil rights took another hundred years.

Wilson failed to win the peace because 20 years later, the Germs were at it again.

FDR & Truman failed to win the peace because the Marshall Plan took 2 years to even begin, Stalin stole the Bomb and half of Europe was still under a brutal dictatorship.

Reagan failed to win the peace after the Cold War because...well, just because.

Yet in his own mind, Kerry sits atop the pantheon of American leaders for "winning the peace". For this:

His sister fondly recalls "a State Dinner in Hanoi at which I joined John some years ago--one of only three women present. The affection and regard that the Vietnamese held for him in his work to restore diplomatic relations was very moving."

Yes; I'm sure it was.

"Vote for John Kerry...He Holds the Affection and Regard of Dictators!"

(cont.)

THE VISIONARY COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF vs. THE BLIND MASSACHUSETTS MASTERDEBATOR

OTIS: "Senator [Ah; the name-calling begins!] Kerry, after talking with several co-workers and family and friends, I asked the ones who said they were not voting for you, "Why?" They said that you were too wishy-washy. Do you have a reply for them?"

KERRY: ..."Cheryl, the president didn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq..." Stop right there. You're going to answer a question about being wishy-washy...with a waffle? Okay; have it your way.Which is usually both ways.

"...you've been bombarded with advertisements suggesting that I've changed a position on this or that or the other." Make up your mind. Is it 'this'? Is it 'that'? Or is it 'the other'?

..."they try to say I've changed position on...the Patriot Act... I support it. I just don't like the way John Ashcroft has applied it, and we're going to change..." Wishy-washy? "That's Palmolive, Sen. Madge...and you're soaking in it!"

"No Child Left Behind Act, I voted for it. I support it. I support the goals. But..." It's always "But" with this guy. But thanks for clearing up that 'wishy-washy' stuff, Sen. "Whether"vain.

"...the president has underfunded it by $28 billion." Yes; how can the Dept. of Education possibly be expected do its job with the meager 58% budget increase it has gotten in the last 3 years?

"So I complain..." The correct word is "whine", man.

"I'm going to give you a tax cut." What...without a plan? Isn't that risky?

"The president gave..." The President and the House and the Senate, you mean...and they didn't "give a tax-cut"; one 'gives' a 'gift'. They refrained from confiscating some of the property of all taxpayers. They also transferred wealth from taxpayers to non-taxpayers through the Earned Income Credit. But even that is not a 'gift'.

BUSH: "I can see why people at your workplace think he changes positions a lot, because he does. He said he voted for the $87 billion, and voted against it right before he voted for it." Or was it 'voted for it right after he voted against it'? Prolly both.

"...for a while he was a strong supporter of getting rid of Saddam Hussein. He saw the wisdom--until...Howard Dean...began to gain on him, and he changed positions. I don't see how you can lead this country in a time of war, in a time of uncertainty, if you change your mind because of politics."

"..we increased that child credit by [to] $1,000, reduced the marriage penalty, created a 10 percent tax bracket...That's right at the middle class. He voted against it. And yet he tells you he's for a middle-class tax cut."...

DAHLE: "Mr. President,...you admitted that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, but justified the invasion by stating... "He retained the knowledge, the materials, the means and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction and could have passed this knowledge to our terrorist enemies." Do you sincerely believe this to be a reasonable justification for invasion when this statement applies to so many other countries, including North Korea?"

BUSH: "Each situation is different, Robin. And obviously we hope that diplomacy works before you ever use force. The hardest decision a president makes is ever to use force.

After 9/11, we had to look at the world differently. After 9/11, we had to recognize that when we saw a threat, we must take it seriously before it comes to hurt us...9/11 changed it all.
I vowed to our countrymen that I would do everything I could to protect the American people. That's why we're bringing Al Qaida to justice. Seventy five percent of them have been brought to justice.

That's why I said to Afghanistan: If you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist. And the Taliban is no longer in power, and Al Qaida no longer has a place to plan.
And I saw a unique threat in Saddam Hussein, as did my opponent, because we thought he had weapons of mass destruction.

And the unique threat was that he could give weapons of mass destruction to an organization like Al Qaida...So I tried diplomacy, went to the United Nations. But as we learned in the same report I quoted, Saddam Hussein was gaming the oil-for-food program to get rid of sanctions. He was trying to get rid of sanctions for a reason: He wanted to restart his weapons programs.
We all thought there was weapons there, Robin. My opponent thought there was weapons there. That's why he called him a grave threat...Saddam Hussein was a unique threat. And the world is better off without him in power.

And my opponent's plans lead me to conclude that Saddam Hussein would still be in power, [in Iraq...AND in Kuwait!] and the world would be more dangerous. Thank you, sir.

KERRY: "Robin, I'm going to answer your question." And I'm going to the bathroom...but I don't announce it beforehand; I just do it.

"I'm also going to talk--respond to what you asked, Cheryl, at the same time."
"Cheryl, I'll be speaking to you out of this side of my mouth, and Robin, I'll be speaking to you simultaneously out of the other side."

"The world is more dangerous today." Yes, it is. For terrorists. And for the electoral chances of ultra-liberal Massachusetts' Democrats.

..."Now, the president wishes that I had changed my mind."

No, John; actually, he wishes you hadn't.

(cont.)

YOU MAY ALREADY BE A WINNER...OR NOT!

Bush won the debate, Howard won his re-election in Australia...

and Afghanis have won their right to vote, with a 19 yr.-old female science student casting the first ballot. A case of success breeding success breeding success.

BTW, I'm old enough to remember when Democrats actually believed in the spread of Democracy.

And John Howard's victory is not just a win for our cousins Down Under, but a defeat for Kerry-ism; our mates just told him to go stuff his Madrid-mongering malaise. Let's all pause for a moment and offer our condolences to the Media, who've so recently lost their chance to write the screaming headline: "Bush Seen As Loser in Aussie Vote!!!!!!!!!!". *sniff*.

Let's see; France and Germany have rejected Kerry's Iraq plan. Iran has rejected his Iranian plan. China has rejected his Korean plan. Now Australia has rejected his Spanish plan; I think we're seeing that fabled "Grand Coalition" taking shape!

No worries, though, Senator; you've still got that valuable Fidel Castro endorsement.

Or, put another way;

Defeatism breeds defeat breeds defeat, ad Senator Nausem.

(Hat-tip: BrothersJudd Blog)

BLOG LOCALLY

When Cheney and Ifils were through transacting business, I half expected Edwards to pull on Cheney's pant-leg and say "Ask her for a lolli-pop, ask her for a lolli-pop!"

CBS won't release the results of their forgery investigation so as not to influence the election. Meaning, they won't finger the guilty in the Kerry camp until it can't harm his chances. Which is just another way to influence the election.

France and Germany have turned Kerry down, as has Iran. I had no idea Hillary could speak French, German and Farsi.

Personal Social Security accounts are the fabled "lock-box". And only you would have the key. Owners would no longer need transfer payments, cutting the Welfarists out of the loop. Get ready.

Despite the lies to the contrary, Kerry does support same-sex 'marriage'. He just wants it imposed by the Supremes, so liberals won't suffer the consequences. Fundamental dishonesty, by both Kerry and the judges.

HobbsOnline has a great continuing series of posts on vote fraud. Good work, Bill.

It's heartening to see that Kerry finally approves of the Gulf War. And only a dozen years after it would have made any difference. Expect a bold endorsement of the Spanish-American War soon.

will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."--Daniel Webster

"Senator, I served with senators. I knew senators. Senators were friends of mine. Senator, you're no senator."

From AP:

...""I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight," Cheney told Edwards during the debate." ...

""I guess he forgot the time we sat next to each other for a couple hours about three years ago. I guess he forgot the time we met at the swearing in of another senator. So, my wife Elizabeth reminded him on the stage," Edwards said as the crowd roared.""

"According to Edwards' staff, Cheney replied, "Oh, yeah.""

"Oh, yeah." Ouch. That's got to...something--I forget.

Or, as Mr. Nat once said:

"You're forgettable, that's what you are
So forgettable, though near or far
Like a piece of lint that clings to me
A memory loss is what you bring to me

Never before
has someone been more

Damned forgettable in every way
And forever more, that's how you'll stay
That's why, Breck Girl, it's delectable
That someone so unelectable
Is saying things so uncredible too

He's so regrettable in every way
Oh, and further more, that's how he'll play
My Silky Pony, as seen on TV
Is a phony with no pedigree
I think you'll agree, he's forgettable, too-ooo!"

Looking forward to the Veep debate tonight.

Most of you know how the over-paid liars in the Press Corpse Dowdified Cheney's recent comments, but here's a good run-down from Patterico. Let's refresh our memory, as it will no doubt be repeated tonight.

Here's Cheney's entire quote:

"We made decisions at the end of World War II, at the beginning of the Cold War, when we set up the Department of Defense, and the CIA, and we created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and undertook a bunch of major policy steps that then were in place for the next 40 years, that were key to our ultimate success in the Cold War, that were supported by Democrat and Republican alike -- Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and Gerry Ford and a whole bunch of Presidents, from both parties, supported those policies over a long period of time."

"We're now at that point where we're making that kind of decision for the next 30 or 40 years, and it's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us."

The press chose to Dowdify it this way:

"Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again."

But they could have chosen this instead:

"Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again...and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war."

But that would have been too honest. To prove it, here's a CNN link that reports Cheney's explanation--while repeating the original meme! It never stops.

The point is, we have been attacked repeatedly under both Democrats & Republicans. The question is, how do we react, and, better yet, how do we prevent attacks? One side says rely on France, the UN, courts and "stability". The other says hunt down the killers while democratising & modernizing the region. Cheney:

"The days of looking the other way while despotic regimes trample human rights, rob their nations' wealth, and then excuse their failings by feeding their people a steady diet of anti-Western hatred are over."

And since Halliburton will probably come up, I'd also like to thank those at Halliburton, who are doing a difficult & necessary job in dangerous circumstances. After John Kerry cleared North Vietnam of holding POWs, his cousin at Forbes International got a billion-dollar contract to rebuild North Vietnam. Somehow, I don't remember them getting this level of abuse. As in 'none'.

And while Dick Cheney was paying half his income in taxes and donating most of the rest to charity, Edwards was bankrupting good doctors, driving up medical bills, forcing obstetricians to leave the state...while dodging his own Medicare payroll deductions through a tax-loophole!

Enjoy the show!

AND WHY WOULDN'T A MAN WHO BASED HIS CAREER ON SELLING-OUT FULLY-GROWN HUMANS ALSO SELL-OUT THE MOST INNOCENT FORM OF LIFE?

Balloon Juice has this Kerry quote:

"But when you have a president who refuses to listen to the facts, who wants to play to the cheap seats, who wants to go down to the politics of division and the politics of ideology, who dismisses scientists and turns his back on science — then we wind up saying no to discovery and no to innovation and no to the people who desperately need cures."

Leave aside the fact that the specific case is about federal funding, and that the most promising research is on adult and cord cells, and that Bill "Cheap Seats" Clinton banned the funding while Bush compromised to let research go forward on existing lines.

For someone who is always telling us just how damned "nuanced" he is, this is a dishonest, cartoonish argument, almost Goebbel-esque in its malignant crudity. It is meant to portray Bush as a compassionless, anti-science flat-earther. "Two plus two equals four. It's science. Why, who could possibly be against science?" A lot of people, that's who.

Science, like any other human endeavor, cannot be separated from its moral implications. "Science", for example, could put a meth lab in every basement. Are you against that? You're "anti-science"!

It could put a chemical weapons lab in every garage. If someone invaded my home, I could use mustard-gas on them and save my own life. Would that trouble you? Why, you must be an uncaring, superstitious troglodyte! And you're trying to kill me!

"Science" could give us do-it-yourself home-cloning kits. By Kerry's standard, there are no other issues...it's "Science"! Science Good! Bush Bad!

In fact, Kerry even fails on the science; you'll never hear the word "cloning", which is where all this is headed. Nor will you hear the word "human". nor "fetal". nor "embryonic". All these words describe scientific facts. But you'll never hear them used; only the words "stem-cells".

Some of us believe that a human embryo is a life. We think treating human life as a commodity is morally wrong.

Even if one is unsure or doesn't fully accept that, one could still acknowledge that having the government clone human embryos, only to have them killed & 'harvested', might possibly have moral implications or raise some wee little slippery-slope issues.

But all we get from Kerry is "Stem-cells will cure everything, including Death; but Bush wants to kill Grandma...for Halliburton!" No nuance. No complexity. No context. Just raw ambition.

Winston Churchill--"But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a New Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."

Is there such a thing as 'perverted science', Senator? Or is all "science" automatically good, simply because it is "science"? If so, we should all apologize to Mad Scientists everywhere; evidently, there is no such thing. And you should reconsider your stand against proliferation--all science is good science, remember?

I understand the need and desire for cures. But I also understand that there is a desire to justify abortion, to deconstruct the family--and to profit from human cloning. Is there absolutely no line we will not cross in the search for cures? We need to debate these issues-- not distort them or pretend they have already been settled by "science". And especially not on behalf of one man's life-long quest for power.

There was a movie once, albeit a bad 70's sci-fi movie, that touched on this.

A government in the future used harvested humans in order to maintain the health of the living. The movie was called "Soylent Green", which was the future society's main food-stuff. It was made from people. We call that "cannibalism".

But then, you could just as easily call it "science", couldn't you?

In one scene, Charlton Heston screams out the secret truth; "Soylent Green is people!"

Well, what if maybe, just maybe...

"Embryonic Stem-Cells is people!", too?

will say, 'I have reason to congratulate myself that I am a civilized person, and not so bloodthirsty as the Mad Mullah.'

Somebody ought to say to him, 'A really good man would be less bloodthirsty than the Mullah. But you are less bloodthirsty, not because you are more of a good man, but because you are a great deal less of a man. You are not bloodthirsty, not because you would spare your enemy, but because you would run away from him.' "-- G.K. Chesterton, 'All Things Considered.'

A FISKING...BEFORE THE GLORY FADES

KERRY: "We didn't need that tax cut. America needed to be safe." --The Killer Tax-Cuts!

And yet: "...$200 billion that could have been used for health care, for schools, for construction, for prescription drugs for seniors, and it's in Iraq."

In other words, keeping your own money is dangerous...but massive new entitlement spending is safe.

Kerry succumbed to Sudden Bush Hatred Syndrome several times with these Moore-isms:

"The president also unfortunately gave in to the chemical industry..."
"There's a sense of American occupation. The only building that was guarded when the troops when into Baghdad was the oil ministry..."
"To save for Halliburton the spoils of the war...".--It's an open question if he'll be able to disguise his illness for two more debates.

"The president hasn't put one nickel, not one nickel into the effort to fix some of our tunnels and bridges and most exposed subway systems....95 percent of the containers that come into the ports, right here in Florida, are not inspected....their luggage is X- rayed, but the cargo hold is not X-rayed...I'm going to invest in homeland security and I'm going to make sure we're not cutting COPS programs in America and we're fully staffed in our firehouses and that we protect the nuclear and chemical plants."--Kerry seems to view the war as a giant jobs program and an opportunity to force the federal gummint to pay for big-city budgets. He wants to put a federalized, unionized guard at every overpass and speed-bump in America, while Bush emphasizes hunting down the terrorists and killing them. Advantage: Bush.

Somebody square this circle for me, please; I can't:

KERRY: "...the president made a mistake in invading Iraq."
LEHRER: "Are Americans now dying in Iraq for a mistake?"
KERRY: "No."

KERRY: "We need to rebuild our alliances. I believe that Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy, and the others did that more effectively, and I'm going to try to follow in their footsteps."
(Dream Sequence follows:)
BUSH: " Senator, I knew Ronald Reagan. I worked with Ronald Reagan. And you, Senator, are no Ronald Reagan. Or, for that matter, Jack Kennedy. But you do a great 'Teddy'."
And then I woke up. smiling.

KERRY: "The terrorism czar [Richard Clarke], who has worked for every president since Ronald Reagan, said, "Invading Iraq in response to 9/11 would be like Franklin Roosevelt invading Mexico in response to Pearl Harbor." That's what we have here."

Actually, after Pearl Harbor, FDR first invaded Casablanca. Operation Torch. Look it up. However, Clarke said some other interesting things; the bad boys at the aspirin factory were getting their precursor chemicals from Saddam. And they were probably involved in Oklahoma City.
And did you ever wonder who was going to fill the chemical tanks of Atta's fleet of crop-dusters, Senator?

"I believe that when you know something's going wrong, you make it right. That's what I learned in Vietnam. When I came back from that war I saw that it was wrong. Some people don't like the fact that I stood up to say no, but I did. And that's what I did with that [$87 billion for/against "protest"] vote. And I'm going to lead those troops to victory."

That last sentence is a complete non sequitur, a French phrase meaning "John Kerry's entire career". Let me run it through the LiberaleseTranslator(tm) for you:

"I believe that when you know something's going wrong, you make it right. That's what I learned in Vietnam. When I came back from that war I saw that it was wrong. Some people don't like the fact that I stood up to say no, but I did. And that's what I did with that vote. And if you elect me president, I'm going to make sure we lose again...JUST LIKE I DID DURING VIETNAM."

Loser.

Literally.

...AND THE MEDIA IS BIASED.

Media dinosaurs Tom Brokaw and Peter Jenning just met Dan Rather at the La Brea Tar Pits to discuss and dismiss the giant meteorite hurtling towards their world.

Hilarity, of course, ensued, which you can read about here and here.

But since Brokaw made a point of slamming the Media Research Center's L. Brent Bozell, we should highlight some of Mr. Bozell's fine media reportage and advocacy.

Here are some of Brokaw's Greatest Hits:

"In a decade [the] deficit more than tripled. How? Ronald Reagan ran for President promising Americans more while asking for less: the Reagan Revolution.” (October 5, 1990)

“Reagan, as commander-in-chief, was the military's best friend. He gave the Pentagon almost everything it wanted. That spending, combined with a broad tax cut, contributed to a trillion-dollar deficit....Social programs? They suffered under Reagan. But he refused to see the cause and effect.” (Over video of homeless people on December 27, 1989 NBC News special The Eighties)

By contrast; “From the perspective of the West, the former President of the Soviet Union of course was a courageous, far-seeing prophet whose reforms set in motion the collapse of the Soviet dictatorship and the end of the Cold War....We know that you’ve devoted your life to peace and to changing your country and those of us who have gotten to know you count ourselves among the privileged.” (Opening and closing of MSNBC interview with Gorbachev, October 29, 1996)-- Get a room, guys!

And there is this: “The Republicans were outraged by the fundraising practices of the President and the Democratic National Committee — but not so outraged that they felt the need for campaign finance reform.” (In a New York Times column, February 7, 1998)--Maybe that's true...CBS donated it's entire News Division to the Kerry Campaign--and we haven't heard a peep out of McCain.

Here are Jenning's 74 Iraq Chart-Toppers.

Scene from "The Newsroom Before Time":

Og: "Wind blow! Fire in sky! Og scared!...say, what you carve on cave wall?"
Paleolith Pete: " 'Weather bad! Republican's fault!' "
Og: "What 'Republican'?"
Paleolith Pete: (arches half of single eyebrow) "Not know--but trust me."

And let's not forget our Dan-o-saur's Jurassic Anniversary Special.

Or you can go here and look up the record of these anchors (and other reporters) alphabetically. Not all of the items are negative, by the way. And some, I think, are not evidence of bias. But taken as a whole, they are damning.

I mean, if you still need convincing.

I don't.

But then, I'm an "ankle-biting" "pajama-clad" "jihadist".

They really hate it when you talk back, don't they?

THE 1st INFANTRY, OF COURSE.

Firemen, police and EMTs, as brave and dedicated as they are, are not our "first-responders". Our very first-responders are in uniform in Iraq and elsewhere.

They are giving and receiving fire halfway around the world, so that we won't have to put out fires here.

Our gratitude goes to all...

but First things--and first-responders--First.

IS GOOD NUKES.

LEHRER: If you are elected president, what will you take to that office thinking is the single most serious threat to the national security to the United States?

KERRY: Nuclear proliferation. Nuclear proliferation. There's some 600-plus tons of unsecured material still in the former Soviet Union and Russia. At the rate that the president is currently securing it, it'll take 13 years to get it.

I did a lot of work on this. I wrote a book about it several years ago -- six, seven years ago -- called "The New War," [Funny; you forgot to mention "The New Soldier"...] which saw the difficulties of this international criminal network. And back then, we intercepted a suitcase in a Middle Eastern country with nuclear materials in it. And the black market sale price was about $250 million. Now, there are terrorists trying to get their hands on that stuff today.

And this president, I regret to say, has secured less nuclear material in the last two years since 9/11 than we did in the two years preceding 9/11.

We have to do this job. And to do the job, you can't cut the money for it. The president actually cut the money for it. You have to put the money into it and the funding and the leadership.

And part of that leadership is sending the right message to places like North Korea. We'll see just what 'message' he means in just a moment.

Right now the president is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to research bunker-busting nuclear weapons. The United States is pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons. It doesn't make sense. It makes a great deal of sense. Say that we know that a launch is about to take place from a hardened bunker. Conventional bombing may not stop it. That leaves the nuclear option. Wouldn't it be more effective, not to mention humane, to use a small, targeted bomb instead of a massive nuke? The Kerry Doctrine would condemn one side or the other--or both--to massive casualties.

You talk about mixed messages. We're telling other people, "You can't have nuclear weapons," but we're pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using. Wow. THAT'S the 'message' he spoke of. We are the moral equals of Iran and North Korea. This is the international equivalent of telling both the police and criminals to disarm. And he is shocked that we would even contemplate using any nuclear device period. Thank God Harry Truman didn't think this way. Nobody wants a nuclear bombing, but to absolutely rule it out as Kerry seems to have done is the height, the absolute apex, of heedless, reckless irresponsibility. This is a truly dangerous man--dangerous to Americans, that is; our enemies could sleep safely at night.

Not this president. [You're not the president.] I'm going to shut that program down, and we're going to make it clear to the world we're serious about containing nuclear proliferation.

And we're going to get the job of containing all of that nuclear material in Russia done in four years. And we're going to build the strongest international network to prevent nuclear proliferation.

This is the scale of what President Kennedy set out to do with the nuclear test ban treaty. [Pres. Kennedy never set out to disarm America; quite the opposite.] It's our generation's equivalent. [You're the expert on equivalence.] And I intend to get it done. [Disarming terrorists... or disarming Americans?]

LEHRER: Ninety seconds, Mr. President.

BUSH: Actually, we've increased funding for dealing with nuclear proliferation about 35 percent since I've been the president. Secondly, we've set up what's called the -- well, first of all, I agree with my opponent that the biggest threat facing this country is weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist network. And that's why proliferation is one of the centerpieces of a multi-prong strategy to make the country safer.

My administration started what's called the Proliferation Security Initiative. Over 60 nations involved with disrupting the trans-shipment of information and/or weapons of mass destruction materials.

And we've been effective. We busted the A.Q. Khan network. This was a proliferator out of Pakistan that was selling secrets to places like North Korea and Libya. We convinced Libya to disarm. [And it wasn't because he feared some Summit Meeting.] It's a central part of dealing with weapons of mass destruction and proliferation.

I'll tell you another way to help protect America in the long run is to continue with missile defenses. And we've got a robust research and development program that has been ongoing during my administration. We'll be implementing a missile-defense system relatively quickly.
And that is another way to help deal with the threats that we face in the 21st century.
My opponent opposed the missile defenses.

LEHRER: Just for this one-minute discussion here, just for whatever seconds it takes: So it's correct to say, that if somebody is listening to this, that both of you agree, if you're reelected, Mr. President, and if you are elected, the single most serious threat you believe, both of you believe, is nuclear proliferation?

BUSH: In the hands of a terrorist enemy.

KERRY: Weapons of mass destruction, nuclear proliferation. .................

Earlier, Kerry proposed trying the failed Clinton/Albright North Korea nuke policy again in Iran:

"I think the United States should have offered the opportunity to provide the nuclear fuel, test them, see whether or not they were actually looking for it for peaceful purposes. If they weren't willing to work a deal, then we could have put sanctions together."

Bottom Line:

While Kerry--and the President--are right about safeguarding Russian stockpiles, Russia is helping Iran with its nuke program. Russians are much more likely to stop under Bush's strong leadership than from the pleadings of a Cardboard Man.

Kerry wants to help the Mad Mullahs with their nuke program if they promise to use it for electricity. When they lied, we'd stop buying Persian carpets from them.That would teach 'em.

He'd stop the production of bunker-busters and missle-defense, both of which could save American cities.

He seems to have flatly ruled out using any nuclear weapons under any circumstances, which would make it more thinkable for an enemy to contemplate such an action against us.

He views America as a proliferator, just as guilty as Iran or North Korea.

Bush says keep nukes out of the hands of terrorists.

Kerry says keep them out of the hands of Americans.

Bush is onto a plan to stop a mushroom cloud.

Kerry is just on mushrooms.

NAMED "PLANET FRANCE".

Sen. ForAgainst says he'll never give veto power over a pre-emptive war to some other country...only to all other countries:

"...you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

Mark Noonan writes at Blogs For Bush:

"It is a Truth of War that if you can get a lot of allies to help you, it's better than if you have to go with a few allies, or none - but the decision to fight a war must never be predicated upon the ability to gain allies in the fight, but only on whether or not fighting is a necessity. Kerry has made a foolish necessity not only out of getting allies, but out of getting certain, specific allies - the absence of which would make fighting impossible. In Kerry's worldview, if our effort doesn't pass a "global test", then there must automatically be something wrong with our effort - in typical left-wing "blame America first" mode, John Kerry just can't imagine a set of circumstances wherein the United States, standing alone, is right and the rest of the world is wrong."

Here's Winston Churchill from 1940:

"...we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our island home, ride out the storms of war, outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary, for years, if necessary, alone."

Oops! The First Lord of the Admiralty just failed John Kerry's GlobalTest(tm)! It's too bad Kerry wasn't around then to lecture Churchill on proper strategery; Old Winnie might have amounted to something.

On Kerry's planet , it's always this country that must pass the test and prove its bona fides. Not the dictatorships. Not the authoritarians. Not the slimy, graft-taking, appeasing, socialistic, carp-while-America-does-the-heavy-lifting-even-as-we-hide-behind-her-skirts countries. Only America. And those allies foolish enough to "endanger" themselves by aligning themselves with us.

Let's parse his statement further: when he says America must pass "...the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully...", that is a Freudian slip with a Jungian bustier; the sentence should read either "the global test where the people of the world understand" or "the national test where your countrymen understand". By conflating the two, Kerry is telling us who he believes his real 'countrymen' are; his fellow globalists.

He grasps at the fading, discredited, Trans-nationalist Dream like Trailer-Park Mom clutches onto her Marlboro Lights, as someone (Lileks?) once said.

Perhaps it's not his fault. When he was a child, while the rest of us got regular globes, perhaps someone gave him a globe on which France was the size of, oh, say, the Pacific Ocean.

Indeed, one has to wonder if the Liberal impulse to first gain the approval of selfish, back-stabbing nations isn't some recurring childhood psycho-drama writ large.

One may have to wonder--but one certainly doesn't have to give a damn;

I know I don't.

Le' feh.