Peroutka's Bully Pulpiteers

For a while now, a certain bully contingent in conservative Christianity has made a practice of hounding Christians who are planning cast votes for Bush for not being "authentically Christian" in their thinking.

According to this gang, Michael Peroutka of the Constitution Party is the only acceptable "national" candidate for president. Since Peroutka's supporters (at least on the Internet) have a tendency to be more than a little bombastic and self-righteous, some of those who have been pressured to vote for him have only been given one side of the story.

Recently some allegations have been published about Peroutka (hat tip to Jon Barlow for the link) which raise some disturbing questions about his character--especially since he's being touted as the "Christian candidate." Some of the charges are more well-proven than others, but since Peroutka's supporters are in the habit of quoting every feverish conspiracy rumor about George Bush that finds it's way onto the Internet, one must assume their tacit acceptance of the veracity of such charges.

Among things not widely known by Peroutka's supporters, Peroutka:

• got nailed for a DUI in 1991 (15 years after Bush's)

• transferred parental responsibility for his two teenaged stepdaughters to the state of Maryland's foster care system in the early 1990's, despite the Constitution Party's platform, which says "parents have the fundamental right and responsibility to nurture, educate, and discipline their children"

• has, according to the stepdaughters, cut them off from all contact with their mother

• has a stepdaughter who, in a sworn statement, cited "several occasions when my stepfather would mash my face into the floor, sit on me to restrain me, push me against a wall, and pull my hair while demanding that I call myself a 'slut.'"

• may have engaged in illegal political donations, including donating money to campaigns in his children's names to skirt donation laws

• is an anti-free market protectionist

There are a number of other charges and inconsistencies as well. One may still come to the conclusion that Peroutka is his man. But he should at least have all the information at his disposal when he chooses, and he won't get it from Peroutka's Internet enforcers.

Relatively Ridiculous

Rich Lowry of National Review has a marvelous column today on the weasely relativism of John Kerry.

My problem with Kerry isn't only his abhorrent views on abortion, homosexuality, and a host of other social issues. It's his sneaky, gutless stand on them. As bad as the harpies at NARAL are, at least they have the courage of standing behind their wrongheaded convictions.

Lowry simply nails it here:

Asked at the Arizona debate about Catholic bishops who say it would be a sin to vote for a candidate who, like Kerry, supports unlimited abortion and the destruction of human embryos for research purposes, Kerry said: "I completely respect their views. I am a Catholic. And I grew up learning how to respect those views."

Where to start? Saying that you "respect" the view that the destruction of human life is wrong is almost insulting. This isn't like respecting someone's choice to order the merlot instead of the cabernet. The view that the sanctity of all human life is paramount demands to be accepted or rejected. Merely respecting it is a weasely way of saying you reject it.

Because of Kerry's political gamesmanship, he won't come out and say he rejects it, even though it's the neccessary conclusion of his statements and positions. All his blather about "respect" and quoting the Bible is simply a disingenuous effort to obscure his real beliefs. Lowry continues:

Kerry then shifted to arguing essentially that, even if he were to consider all life sacred, he couldn't do anything about it: "I believe that I can't legislate or transfer to another American citizen my article of faith." This is a sophomoric relativism that ignores the fact that our most important laws have a moral underpinning. In any case, Kerry quickly contradicted it: "There's a great passage of the Bible that says, What does it mean, my brother, to say you have faith if there are no deeds? Faith without works is dead. And I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by faith."

So, Kerry presented diametrically opposed views on the role of morality in public life within about 30 seconds. He went on to say that his environmentalism and his poverty-fighting measures were borne of his faith. In other words, his faith affects everything — including his position on whether the minimum wage should be $5.15 or $7 an hour — but not how he legislates concerning life issues, because it would be wrong to legislate his morality, although he does it all the time.

As many have pointed out, morality is the only thing you can legislate. John Kerry does want to legislate a certain kind of morality. It just doesn't happen to be the morality shared by the vast majority of Americans, so he must pay lip service to "respecting" their morality while acting to subvert it.

...She Really Sits Around The House

So Kerry brought Dick Cheney's gay daughter into the conversation again last night, the second time the Dems have done this in the debates.

Today, after Lynne Cheney strenuously objected, John Edwards' wife Elizabeth said on ABC Radio:

She's overreacted to this and treated it as if it's shameful to have this discussion. I think that's a very sad state of affairs… I think that it indicates a certain degree of shame with respect to her daughter's sexual preferences… It makes me really sad that that's Lynne's response.

Nice.

Here's what I so wish. I wish that there had been a question in last night's debate about our national obesity problem. Then Bush could have responded by saying:

We ought not to treat obesity as a character or discipline problem. Why, my opponent's running mate John Edwards is married to a huge, fat woman himself. And John Edwards loves his bovine wife. I have great respect for the way that John Edwards supports (metaphorically speaking of course; I mean, he's not Superman!) his corpulent, lardy, genetically "big-boned" wife. It's touching.

Suppose Mr. or Mrs. Edwards might say something about that? Not if they're comfortable with her porcine appearance, which undoubtedly they are. Wouldn't bother them a bit. Right?

Bush Is Finally Reading My Blog

Though he should have hit it harder, President Bush finally said what I begged the administration to say in one of these debates last week.

Last Wednesday, I asked them to say the following:

Though we had United Nations approval for the [Gulf] war, and though we built this immense, multilateral coalition, it still wasn't enough for John Kerry. One shudders to think what sort of coalition would pass John Kerry's 'global test' and cause him to actually defend America's interests

Last night, Bush finally did it, saying:

In 1990, there was a vast coalition put together to run Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. The international community, the international world said this is the right thing to do, but when it came time to authorize the use of force on the Senate floor, my opponent voted against the use of force.

Apparently you can't pass any test under his vision of the world.

The debates are finally over, with the main damage against Bush being done in the first one. Things are basically even. The administration now has slightly less than three weeks to use all that money they raised to put John Kerry's record on defense out there for all to see. If you read between the lines of Kerry's debate responses, it becomes obvious that his answers are the typical liberal Democrat answers. The country always rejects those answers when they're put in plain language. The Bush campaign needs to use the remaining days to put Kerry's answers into plain language.

People Bad, Government Good

Here's the entire philosophy of the Democrat Party encapsulated in one short John Kerry quote from last night's debate:

You just heard the president say that young people ought to be able to take money out of Social Security and put it in their own accounts.

Now, my fellow Americans, that's an invitation to disaster.

To a Democrat, letting people keep and control their own money is "an invitation to disaster." Go ahead, pull the donkey lever. See how long that "optional" government health care plan that Kerry's promising you remains optional.

Ten years down the road, people who want to buy their own health insurance or pay for their own medical care rather than use the government's bloated, inefficient program will be seen as "an invitation to disaster."

Once again, we see that the Democrat notion of "choice" only applies to gay sex and baby killing. It does not apply to choosing your own school, investing your own money, or planning your own retirement.

"Stop The Presses! Now!"

Whether you like him or hate him, David Frum has some wonderful thoughts in today's National Review Online regarding the attempts of Democrats to censor an anti-Kerry documentary Sinclair Broadcasting will air later this month.

You may remember how the Librarians’ Association has been warning of the threat to free speech posed by the Bush administration’s war on terror. Yet twice now the Kerry campaign has dealt with unwanted criticism by seeking to use the full power of law to silence critics – without adverse comment from those or other supposed First Amendment enthusiasts. The Kerry campaign sent lawyer’s letters to bookstores threatening them with dire consequences if they sold Unfit for Command. Now the Democratic National Committee has appealed to the Federal Elections Commission to try to prevent a broadcaster from broadcasting a public-affairs program critically examining the qualifications of a candidate for president.

As I've always said, a fascistic impulse underlies the Left, which is ironic considering their constant accusations of "fascism" toward the Right. When it comes to non-approved expression which has not been filtered through the Left's elaborate speech codes, they will spare no effort in bringing the arm of the government down to silence it.

It's also nice to see the Left being hoisted by their McCain-Feingold petard. Some, like former conservative (and current flaming homosexual) David Brock, are claiming that the Sinclair documentary is a violation of campaign finance laws--essentially proving that the Left supported such laws as a method of silencing dissent. But evidently they didn't actually read the law close enough:

McCain-Feingold applies to candidates, not broadcasters – that’s the reason PBS is not legally required to produce a pro-Bush documentary to balance its pro-Kerry piece. (It's also the reason that so many media outlets supported the "reform": It empowered them at the expense of candidates and political parties.) Likewise the “free time” rule applies to commercials produced by the candidates – not to the broadcaster’s own comment and information.

Sinclair has precisely the same obligations to the Kerry campaign as, say, 60 Minutes did to the Bush campaign: which is to say, none whatsoever. And as far as we know, Sinclair seems to be upholding a far higher standard of accuracy and independence in its public affairs programming than 60 Minutes met.

The claims of the Left to support "free speech" are bogus, as is demonstrated time and time again in such instances. They support their own free speech, and the forced muzzling of everyone else. All who went along with McCain-Feingold were nothing more than their Useful Idiots and dupes.

Journeys With John

Last night on HBO, I watched Alexandra Pelosi's documentary "Diary of a Political Tourist."

Pelosi, who's the daughter of House Minority Leader (and radical kook) Nancy Pelosi, previously had done an amusing documentary on George W. Bush's 2000 campaign called "Journeys With George," where she tried to make Bush out to be a buffoon, but he came out looking fairly likable anyway.

In this one, she followed the Democratic candidates from about a year before the primaries up until the convention. The program was interesting, though not as entertaining as "Journeys"--which is partially due to the utter dullness of the Dem candidates, and partially due to Pelosi's drastically ramping up the annoying Michael Moore Factor, this time making herself the center of events.

But there was one particularly interesting moment, which you won't be seeing in a lot of Kerry-Edwards ads before the election. John Edwards was being heckled by an effeminate anti-war protester in Iowa who was demanding to know "what about the thousands of dead Iraqis in the war you voted for?" So Edwards wheels around on the guy, points a finger at him, and forcefully says "I think I did the right thing about this war. I think we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein! It's a good thing he's gone!"

I don't recall hearing that in his vice-presidential debate last week.

Checking It Twice

I want a TiVo for Christmas.

Just in case you were thinking of getting me something.

That's Why They Call Themselves Activists

Timothy Noah and his fellow idiots on the Left are completely missing President Bush's point in invoking the Dred Scott decision during Friday night's debate.

According to Noah and the tinfoil hat crowd, "Dred Scott" is supposedly a "codeword" which the "religious right" will understand to mean "Roe v. Wade." In other words, "opposing Dred Scott" means "overturning Roe v. Wade."

There's no question that many conservatives have compared the two rulings. And there's no question that the two rulings have many things in common--first and foremost that they are pristine examples of outrageous judicial activism.

But Bush's point is much simpler than the mouth-breathing Left wants to realize. When you let the Constitution be a wax nose to be molded by the personal opinions of the Supreme Court, you are at the mercy of the wavering opinions of a few unelected and unaccountable elites. You might think that's great as long as they agree with you, but as soon as it's your ox being gored, you might not be so thrilled.

Liberals love the activism of Roe v. Wade, while they (presumably) hate the activism of Dred Scott. But that's precisely Bush's point. The point liberals can't seem to get through their thick skulls is that both are examples of judicial manufacture of law.

Bush believes that the making of Constitutional law should be left to the people and to the Constitution itself. That only affects any particular ruling (such as Roe) insofar as the particular ruling is pure judicial lawmaking.

By screaming bloody murder over it, the liberals are proving that they know Roe is a judicial house of cards ready to fall at any moment. They ought to question whether they really want to champion a judicial philosophy that creates decisions like Dred Scott. That's Bush's point, and despite the ridicule he initially received, he's proving to have drawn some blood on it.

I Knew They Had a Messiah Complex, But...

I'm starting to think the Democrats may be overpromising a bit, as is their custom.

According to Drudge, John Edwards apparently said today, "When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk."

Now they're promising to raise the dead? If people like Christopher Reeve start to walk, that's gonna be some scary stuff. I hope they don't do that dance like in the "Thriller" video.

When You're Wrong, You're Wrong

Since I try to be fair-minded here, even though I am unabashadly partisan (and I think it's possible to be both), the time has come for me to admit something.

Marc Bulger is a pretty good quarterback.

I was hard on the Rams last year for choosing Bulger over Kurt Warner, and I think that Warner has amply demonstrated with the New York Giants that he still has a lot left to offer (contrary to what some hysterics in the media were saying last year). But Bulger has led the Rams like a real all-pro over the past three games, and was nothing short of spectacular in leading the Rams' impossible comeback yesterday.

I think I was wrong about the guy, and I'm glad I was.

(P.S. The fact that the Rams have bailed out head coach Mike Martz the past few weeks in no way proves that Martz has suddenly gotten a clue about what he's doing.)

The Sports Book Is Open

Christopher Reeve has died at 52. It is 9:43am as I write this. How long before the Kerry campaign obliquely (or not so obliquely) attempts to blame George W. Bush for his death and cash in on it?

I'm setting the over/under at 6 hours. And most serious betting people, knowing a bargain when they see one, will take the under.

Cornered

Kerry isn't the only one who whiffed tonight. The usually sharp gang over at The Corner went into full pillow-biting mode from minute one of the debate, and never really recovered. That despite the fact that "regular people" evidently kept sending them email after email telling them they were nuts.

My guess: they got caught cheerleading last time around ("Wow, he's really kicking it here! Bush is rolling over Kerry!") and were embarrassed enough that they stopped trusting their instincts. They went into self-flagellation mode and started seeing everything through Terry McAuliff's sunglasses.

Just goes to show you that even folks on the right can fall prey to groupthink.

Round Two

I don't know if Bush got the TKO he needed, but he owned this debate tonight. The media spin (as it stands now) is B.S., and it will change several times over the next few days.

As you know, the conventional wisdom on the first debate is now that Kerry destroyed Bush. I happen to share that view. BUT, remember that immediately after the debate the wimpy mainstream media was calling it a draw. It was only after the polls began showing that people favored Kerry's performance by a 60-30 margin a day or two later that suddenly the media began to see it as a blowout.

They're so terrified of getting burned by an incorrect analysis that they'll dance around for a day or two on this one too. But whatever their current spin is, it won't change the fact that President Bush was absolutely in command of tonight's (now last night's) debate. He was rested, he was articulate (for him, anyway), he was in command of the facts, and he scored some devastating points on Kerry's record.

Bush's only weak moments were in his answers to the Supreme Court question and the stem cell issue (where the questioner set him up beautifully to proclaim his support for adult stem cell research, and to point out the embryonic stem cells have produced exactly zero treatments to date--which he totally failed to do).

Kerry's weak moments were just about everywhere else. I'm still trying to figure out that odd Red Sox reference. And he wiffed--badly--at his opportunity to knock Bush out of the park on the final question ("Name three mistakes you've made") when Bush didn't admit to any mistakes. He could have said "You see? The president simply cannot admit a mistake. Do we really want a president who won't admit when he's wrong, and instead will stubbornly drive us down the old, dusty road of error?" Instead, he merely disagreed with Bush on Iraq--not exactly newsmaking at this point--and allowed Bush to dodge a huge bullet.

Tonight was a decisive victory for President Bush, and will put him back on a more even footing after Kerry's eight-day first-debate media basking.

And yes, after watching the undecided voters on TV tonight being interviewed after the debate on every network, I'm more convinced than ever that they're complete idiots.

A Plea

It's 3:39pm in St. Louis right now. Mr. President, please, for the sake of all that's holy, take a nap right now.

All The Marbles

As we saw in 2000, even if President Bush were to take his slight lead straight into the election next month, it would probably evaporate on election day. The Democrats are whipping the black vote into a frenzy (already hurling charges of "voter supression"), and if they turn out in strong numbers, it's over for Bush (at least as things stand now). And as Joel Rosenberg points out today, if undecided voters were to swing towards Kerry by a 2-1 margin, Bush again loses in a landslide.

With the polls looking as they do, President Bush will need to deliver nothing less than a knockout punch (or at least a TKO) in tonight's debate. Frankly, I don't think he has the ability on his feet to do it? Kerry will come prepared with new weapons in his arsenal--the new job numbers, the Duelfer Report, Paul Bremer's comments from the other day, etc. Kerry has the verbal ability to frame any of those issues in a way that might score points and catch Bush off guard. Will Bush be quick enough on his feet to effectively respond and turn it back on Kerry? Will he be prepared enough to be ready, but not overprepared so that his responses sound canned and unconvincing?

People have said that these debates don't really mean anything. I disagree. Last week's debate seems to have spearheaded a near-reversal in the poll numbers. Undecided voters are swinging toward Kerry in increasing numbers. Bush's lackluster performance last week handed the momentum of this campaign to a candidate who had nearly self-immolated. The president's campaign cannot survive a second consecutive such debacle.

It won't be enough tonight to be "right on substance." It won't be enough to simply repeat over and over again that Kerry is inconsistent. Can Bush take the offensive against Kerry and turn Kerry's attacks into positives on the fly? I have my doubts.

Maybe the President will prove me wrong.

From The Onion

Irrelevant Pop Stars Unite Against Bush

"I can't let this election take place without knowing I fought as hard as I could for a more compassionate leader," 51-year-old John Mellencamp said. "If playing my 1986 hit 'R.O.C.K. In The U.S.A.' at the Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City will dissuade people from voting for Bush, then I'm going to do it."

Tangled Web

Proponents of so-called homosexual "marriage" are in the habit of telling us how "normal" such unions are. Why, it will hardly cause a blip on the marital radar screen, they tell us. It's just like a regular family with only superficial differences.

I thought this was an interesting paragraph from an AP story on lesbian rock star Melissa Etheridge today:

Etheridge and actress Tammy Lynn Michaels held a commitment ceremony in September 2003. The musician, who lives in Los Angeles, shares custody of a daughter and son with former partner Julie Cypher, who had the children through artificial insemination using a sperm donation from rocker David Crosby.

Sounds pretty normal to me.

No Respect

I was sorry to see that Rodney Dangerfield died yesterday. I had previously noted his tremendous line when he went into the hospital for heart surgery: “If things go right, I'll be there about a week, and if things don't go right, I'll be there about an hour and a half.”

As we now know, things didn’t go right. The operation must have been performed by Dr. Vinny Boombatz.

I, in the course of living my rather odd life, somehow crossed paths with Rodney a couple of times.

I bumped into him once on “radio row” at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas before the Tyson-Bruno II fight in 1997, where he was, typically, making the rounds in a wild Hawaiian shirt and that awful late-career Jack Lord hairdo he wore for a while. He really did jerk around like that when he was just standing there; constant, frenetic motion. In a room full of heavyweight champions, boxing legends, and even Don King, Dangerfield was the center of attention.

The next year, I had the opportunity to interview him on my radio show. It was a thrill for me, an aficionado of comedians, to be interviewing the man whom almost every living comic looked up to as an icon (if not a mentor, as he was to many, many young comics, like Sam Kinison, Jim Carrey, Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Roseanne Barr, Bob Saget, and a whole truckload of others).

Unfortunately, the interview itself was a disappointment. Rodney was very nice and gracious, but he seemed to be in a hurry to get away. (Although that was par for the course on my show...) I wanted to talk mostly about “Caddyshack” and his place in comedy history, he mostly wanted to talk about the home video release of “Meet Wally Sparks” or something. There was a lot of selling going on. (“I get no respect, I tell ya. I get no respect at 8 and 10pm at the MGM Grand, and I get no respect on my website at www.rodney.com....”) But hey, it’s not like he came on the show because he felt the urge to spend some quality time with me. It was still a thrill, even if it wasn't one for the archives.

I saw him perform live once, at a taping of Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show.” He was probably 73 or 74 at that point. And he killed. Just ripped the place up. Even at that age, he still worked hard for every laugh.

He wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But for those of us of the male persuasion who grew up watching Miller Lite commercials and “Caddyshack,” it didn’t get more solid than Rodney.

There's a nice piece on Dangerfield at the Weekly Standard, published upon the release of his recent autobiography in August before he went into the hospital. At the time, Dangerfield was doing well, and was out promoting the book.

The author, Duncan Currie, was prophetic. The closing lines of the article:

Rodney won't be with us much longer. "I can count," he writes, "and I know my days are numbered." But, he reassures us, he's not about to go anytime soon. Why? "There are too many people out there who owe me money."

How better than to close with a classic Rodney one-liner?:

"When we got married my wife told me I was one in a million. I found out she was right!" Ba-dum-bum.

Broken Record

On a more positive note, Cheney did do well (and certainly much better than President Bush) in defending the war in Iraq.

Still, there's just one point that's dying to be made, and for some reason neither Bush nor Cheney want to make it. Now that the foreign policy portion of the debates is over, they may never get to.

Kerry, at the first debate, and Edwards again last night, both keep pointing to Gulf War I as the model of what a "real coalition" should look like.

Here's what I was dying to hear Cheney say last night:

It's interesting that the senator keeps bringing up the coalition for the first Gulf War as some sort of gold standard for coalitions. I certainly agree it was a great coalition. As the Secretary of Defense at that time, I helped build that coalition. But we must take note of something important here. After we built that coalition--which Senator Edwards uses as the benchmark of great coalitions--John Kerry still voted against the first Gulf War. Though we had United Nations approval for the war, and though we built this immense, multilateral coalition, it still wasn't enough for John Kerry. One shudders to think what sort of coalition would pass John Kerry's 'global test' and cause him to actually defend America's interests.

Cheney finally started attacking some of Kerry's actual record last night. They need to do more of it. If the Republicans stick to the "flip-flopper" attack exclusively and ignore the Kerry record, they will lose in November. Period.

A Pyrrhic Victory?

I hate to always have be the one to pee on the parade, but...

There seems to be much exuberance within Republican ranks over Dick Cheney's performance in last night's debate. Many on both sides of the race seem to think that Cheney, though gruff and low-key compared to John Edwards' smarmy Southern syrup, got the best of it. Chris Matthews, no Republican, said on "Hardball" that "it was like a squirt gun against a machine gun." Even Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert seemed to think Cheney wholloped him.

But while I'm always glad to see liberal Democrats put in their place, I have to ask those Christians who identify with the Republican Party: do you really think Cheney did a great job? I must admit, I must not be drinking whatever Hugh Hewitt (who lately seems to be morphing into Mary Matalin) is, because as a Christian I'm finding it hard to be all that enthusiastic about it.

First, it would have been a nice bonus if Cheney's best line of the debate ("The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight") had actually been true. It's not.


(Photo from the Drudge Report)

This easily disprovable claim will come back to haunt Cheney in a big way.

Secondly, when the Democrat candidate does a better job of defending the traditional definition of marriage than the Republican does, you know there's a problem on the Republican side.

John Edwards, true to his ticket, tried to have it both ways by saying that marriage is "between a man and a woman," but that the President is "trying to divide America" by endorsing a Constitutional amendment saying exactly what Edwards had just affirmed. And rather than calling him on it, Cheney sat there and declined his rebuttal.

Is it possible that some conservative Christians are getting so wrapped up in this as a team sport that they're failing to see that Dick Cheney ain't exactly what we'd want as a president and the George W. Bush could have done a lot better in filling out the ticket?

The Boys Of Summer

It's a deeply-held belief of mine that every 12- or 13-year-old boy deserves to have his team win the World Series.

As I write, the Cardinals are leading the Dodgers 7-2 in Game One of their five game divisional playoff series. In the regular season, my Redbirds (with a perfect balance of strong pitching and great hitting) put together a 105-win season this year on the way to compiling the best record in Major League Baseball.

The last time the Cardinals won the World Series, in October 1982, I was 13 years old. Sure, millions of Americans of all ages eat and breathe sports, but it's hard to describe the thrill of having the team you live and die with win it all when you're 13. Those who are not sports fans will gag in disgust as I say this, while those who've been there will know exactly what I mean: it's a milestone life-event for a kid.

Since 1982, the great Cardinals franchise (which has won more World Series titles and more pennants than any other team in the National League) has run into some tough luck. Not Boston Red Sox or Chicago Cubs-type tough luck, mind you, but tough luck nonetheless.

In 1985, their fastest player, Vince Coleman, was run over by a one-mile-per-hour tarp during warm-ups before Game One, and knocked out of the World Series. Then, the Cards were within two outs of their second World Series title in three years when umpire Don Denkinger blew a call at first base (judged the worst blown baseball call in history by the readers of USA Today) that allowed the Kansas City Royals to rally and win Game Six. They then trounced the demoralized 'Birds in Game Seven to win the title.

In 1987, the Cardinals again advanced to Game Seven of the World Series, this time against the Minnesota Twins. Their power-hitting MVP candidate Jack Clark was injured and couldn't play, and Ozzie Smith famously claimed that the Twins were monkeying with the air conditioning inside the Metrodome to help Twins fly balls become home runs, and to keep opposing home runs in the park. (At the time, he was dismissed as a paranoid nutcase; the Metrodome's superintendent later admitted to doing just what Ozzie had charged.) The Twins beat the Cardinals like red-headed stepchildren.

In more recent years, despite numerous divisional titles and post-season appearances, the've consistently fallen short of the pennant. But this year, they seem to have put it all together. They have hitting. They have pitching. They have a bullpen. They have defense. They have speed. If the Redbirds don't win it this year after the season they've had, I don't know when they ever will.

My own son is now 12 years old, and is a Cardinals fanatic to his bones. He'll stroll into the living room at 11:30pm, long after bedtime, to ask "Dad? Who do you think LaRussa will start in game one with Carpenter being hurt?" He wears his Cardinals cap so much that he might be bald underneath it for all I know anymore. He wonders endlessly about how Jim Edmonds can generate so much power with such a wide batting stance. He was a digital watch that plays "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" whenever a Cardinals game is about to begin. He is into it.

Every 12- or 13-year old kid deserves to have his team win the World Series. Man, I sure hope this is my son's year.

A Clarification

Through some reader feedback on my previous entry, it has come to my attention that I may have been misunderstood when I said that voters who are still undecided should be "put to sleep."

To clear up any misunderstanding, I'd like to stress that I was using humorous overstatement, and that I don't really think undecided voters should be involuntarily euthanized.

Internment camps, forced labor, and intensive re-education would be just fine.

The Tyranny Of The Brainless

The conventional wisdom seems to be developing around last Thursday night's debate, and as I originally feared, it's not the least bit good for President Bush. I don't think it's overstating it to say that the first debate, from the pro-Bush perspective at least, will eventually be referred to as "the disastrous first debate."

The shame of it all is that this debate, like everything else the campaigns will do for the next month, was primarily geared towards the "undecided voter." It is the "undecided voter" that holds the future in his trembling hands.

As I've mentioned before, at this stage not only should our most crucial decisions not be left up to "undecided voters," but it is my firm opinion that anyone who is still undecided this late in the game should actually be put to sleep.

"Hmmmm...." says the Undecided Voter. "I'm just not sure how I feel on abortion, homosexual marriage, the war in Iraq, taxes, governmentalized health care, homeland security, or judicial activism. I have no firm opinions yet on that stuff. Maybe the next debate will help me decide."

Such a person is not merely "undecided." Such a person is "amoral," "completely lacking a moral or philosophical compass," and "a clear and present danger to society." He should be put down for his own safety and the safety of those around him.

Pungent As The Bourbon She Gargles

If you hate Maureen Dowd like I hate Maureen Dowd, you absolutely must read this brilliant parody of her precious, cutesy, PMS snarkiness at National Review Online.

A View From A Bushophile

I can't say "ditto" strongly enough to Jay Nordlinger's critique of Bush's debate performance. I respect a guy who, though he loves the president unreservedly, is honest enough to let reality trump affection. He absolutely nails it on the head. Everything he says (written immediately after the debate) is what I mean to say:

Although the two candidates had the same amount of time, Kerry got many, many more words in. And they weren't rushed words. Kerry spoke at a good, measured pace all through.

Bush said, "We're makin' progress" a hundred times — that seemed a little desperate. He also said "mixed messages" a hundred times — I was wishing that he would mix his message. He said, "It's hard work," or, "It's tough," a hundred times. In fact, Bush reminded me of Dan Quayle in the 1988 debate, when the Hoosier repeated a couple of talking points over and over, to some chuckles from the audience (if I recall correctly).

Staying on message is one thing; robotic repetition — when there are oceans of material available — is another.

When Kerry said that our people in the military didn't have enough equipment, Bush was pretty much blasé. He showed no indignation. He might have said, "How dare you? How dare you contend that I am leaving our fighting men and women defenseless!"

Kerry leveled charge after charge that went unrebutted. People keep telling me that Bush "won on substance." I have to wonder more and more "How so?" "It's hard work" isn't substance.

And yes, we understand that Kerry is a flip-flopper. It deserves to be mentioned. But while we're at it, could we also maybe touch on the fact that the beliefs he doesn't waver on are abhorrent? As Nordlinger perceptively points out:

The worst thing about Kerry is not that he is inconsistent; not that he is a flip-flopper. The worst thing about him is that he is a reflexive leftist, who has been wrong about nearly everything important his entire career. Nuclear freeze, anybody? Solidarity with the Sandinistas?

Could it hurt to show that the things Kerry does believe are dead wrong? Bush allowed him to portray himself as a virtual Reagan Republican!

Blind Partisanship?

In sifting through the debate reactions, I'm getting the sense that President Bush did better on television than on the radio. So perhaps it wasn't as bad as I had feared.

Still, I have to wonder about anyone claiming that this debate was a "clear victory" or a "home run" for Bush. As a conservative, while Bush is not all that conservative on a number of important issues, I'm much more generally sympathetic to him than to Kerry.

And perhaps Bush was right on the merits on many of these questions. But style counts for something in these debates. As I argued yesterday, those who want to hand the debate to Bush on substance alone are largely missing the point.

In a debate, you have to make an argument, defend it, and counter the other guy. Bush's effort on that score was mediocre at best. Kerry lobbed some huge charges out there (i.e. "outsourced the hunt for Osama Bin Laden to Afghan warlords") that Bush never even attempted to counter. At some point in a debate you have to respond to the other guy's charges in order to win. Bush didn't do that.

If you think that Bush has the right positions on the issues overall, great. That's the basis on which we all ought to cast our votes. But if one were to say that Bush rolled over Kerry last night, or that the debate was somehow a disaster for Kerry, I'd have to begin wondering if that person's partisanship was clouding his senses of sight and hearing.

Debating The Debate

Before I read other reactions to the debates online this morning, I'm going to post my own before my impressions get skewed by whatever is the conventional wisdom this morning.

Because of a prior committment, I missed the first half of the debate. At about 9:30pm Eastern, I tuned in on my car radio, and what I heard wasn't good for Mr. Bush. He's never been a terrific public speaker, but what I heard of him sounded unusually disorganized, unprepared, and tired. There were long pauses between the question and his answer, as if he were struggling to think of what to say. I know he usually goes to bed early, but it seems like on the day of a debate, maybe one could catch a midafternoon nap in order to stay awake a little later.

It also sounded to me like Bush was largely on the defensive. In a debate, you have to do whatever you can to turn things around on your opponent. But in this debate, when Kerry said "It wasn't Saddam Hussein who attacked us on 9/11, it was Osama Bin Laden," Bush's rather pitiful response was to say "I know it was Osama Bin Laden who attacked us. Nobody has to tell me that." It reminded me of Nathan Thurm, the sweaty, nervous, cigarette-puffing lawyer Martin Short used to play on Saturday Night Live's old "60 Minutes" parodies--"I know that. Don't you think I know that? It's so funny that you would think I didn't know that...."

I'm told that the first half of the debate went much better for Bush, which would explain why whatever analysis I have heard this morning seems to be proclaiming it a draw. The first half must have gone extraordinarily well for Bush, because what I heard was not a draw by any means. Kerry sounded relaxed and in command of the facts, and much more authentic than Al Gore sounded in his bizarre 2000 performances.

On the other hand, legend has it that those who listened to the Nixon-Kennedy debate in 1960 thought that Nixon was the clear winner, while those who watched on television thought Kennedy won. Nobody will be judging this debate by how it sounded on the radio. As I said yesterday, the medium is the message, and the medium is television. The only important question is: what will be the lasting visual image left by last night's debate?

These Boots Are Gonna Walk All Over You

Usually when I read a news story, I read the first few paragraphs and move on. Generally, that's enough from which to glean all of the important details.

But sometimes that approach is a big mistake. As my friend Bud in Dallas points out to me, today is one of those times.

You may have seen the headline about Cleveland Indians pitcher Kyle Denney, who was shot in the calf last night by a bullet fired into the team bus. Fortunately, the wound was minor, and he's scheduled to rejoin the team tonight in Minneapolis.

But even more disturbing than random gunfire on our nation's highways was this bit, buried deep in the AP story on the incident:

[Team spokesman Bart] Swain said all of Cleveland's rookies were dressed in cheerleader outfits as part of an annual ritual -- Denney's choice was Southern California -- and the mood on the bus was jovial until Denney was shot.

...Swain said the team's trainers thought the high white boots Denney was wearing as part of his cheerleader outfit may have prevented a more serious injury. The bullet didn't lodge very far into Denney's leg, and trainers were able to remove it before he went to the hospital.

I'm glad his cheerleader boots spared him further injury, but all in all, I think I'd have rather been killed...

The Medium Is The Message

Those who have complained that tonight’s presidential debate will be lacking in substance (because of the myriad rules agreed upon by each campaign) are missing the point.

Sure, they’re correct about the debates lacking substance. But what they don’t seem to understand is that televised debates are not meant to be about “substance.” They are meant to be about image.

As the lateNeil Postman points out in his paradigm-shifting book Amusing Ourselves to Death (and as the late James Montgomery Boice echoes in a tape series I was listening to the car other day), our society no longer processes information rationally and linearly through our minds. Instead, our “information” comes to us in image after disconnected image, bypassing our rationality and appealing to our gut. Thus, the image left after the debate is all-important—and has little to do with the content of the debate itself.

This is not new. It goes all the way back to the Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960. Surely they talked about substantive issues there, but what does everyone remember about it? That Kennedy looked tan, fit, and handsome, and that Nixon looked pale and haggared. And so the myth of Camelot was born.

The pattern has continued on ever since. Think about all the recent debates you can remember. The entire effect of each one can be summed up in a sentence or two.

• Ford-Carter: “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.” Ford is dense and clueless.

• Carter-Reagan: “There you go again.” Reagan is a polished charmer, Carter is a dull dishrag.

• Reagan-Mondale: “I will not exploit my opponent’s youth and inexperience for political gain.” Reagan is self-effacing and witty, Mondale gets hoisted by his own petard.

• Bush-Dukakis: Dukakis’ blasé reaction to a hypothetical scenario involving the rape and murder of his wife. He’s a passionless robot.

• Clinton-Bush: Bush checks his watch. He’s bored and disconnected.

• Clinton-Dole: Did they even debate? It was already such a blowout nobody paid any attention.

• Bush-Gore: Gore sighs (and sighs and sighs), gets up and looms over Bush. He’s creepy and calculated and robotic.

In none of these debates can anyone recall what policy positions were advocated by any of the candidates. Policy positions are beside the point. That’s how television works.

In the 1800’s, people would gather in the town square (standing!) to hear debates, such as the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which lasted six or seven hours at a time. They weighed the positions of each candidate, which were expounded at length, and judged the candidates based on a rational appraisal of their words.

In the 21st century, people watch 20-second soundbites on the television news and see who has the better skin and which guy launched the better one-liner. They decide who makes the better “impression” and which candidate has more “star quality.” The medium is the message, and the message is image.

I’ll be watching, because I love politics and I enjoy the duel. But you won’t hear me complaining about the lack of substance, because it’s nothing new. It’s the inevitable culmination of the television age.

(Amy Ridenhour has some worthy thoughts in a similar vein on her National Center Blog.)

A Tribe Called Plagiarist

Say of them what you will, but the Weekly Standard deserves the thanks of a grateful nation for sparing us an eventual Laurence Tribe Supreme Court appointment by catching him red-handed in the act of plagiarism.

Tribe, a Harvard professor who is currently the most cited (and probably most influential) constitutional law expert in the country, is a rabid judicial activist who sees the role of the court as refashioning the "living Constitution" to suit today's needs--a blueprint for the judicial tyranny we're now living under. This is the approach that takes the original meaning of the text as written, crumples it up, sets it on fire, and throws it in a waste basket. It's the approach that has brought us to the current situation, where courts will interpret a phrase like "Congress shall make no law..." to mean "Congress shall make all sorts of laws..."

Tribe was also the architect of the "borking" strategy of personal attack that derailed the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork back in the late 1980's, and he's the mastermind behind the Democrats' current filibuster being used in the Senate to deny hearings for well-qualified conservative judicial nominees.

He's now been caught ripping off the work of historian Henry J. Abraham and passing it off as his own, a charge to which he now confesses. Though Tribe will continue to destroy the foundations of American constitutional law from his Harvard classroom and through his many writings, this incident will hopefully at least keep him off the highest court in the land--a court that hardly needs any more hardened judicial legislators.

Like I Don't Have My Own Problems

Sometimes, out of the blue, I suddenly find myself worrying about Don Pardo. He's got to be really old by now, and I'm afraid he might die soon.

Is that weird?

Reaching Out To Ethnic Voters?

Wow, I guess John Kerry is really serious about wanting to win those "red states."



If he were a sports team, his own party would be protesting him right now...

There You Go Again

I see that our "greatest ex-president" Jimmy Carter is at it again.

Now, the sanctimonious, double-digit inflation-bringing, dictator-coddling, terrorist-appeasing, North Korea-nuke-equipping former commander-in chief, last seen sitting next to Michael Moore at the Democratic National Convention, says that the election next month in Florida is doomed to be an unfair, unscrupulous sham.

Says Carter, in a Washington Post op-ed:

The disturbing fact is that a repetition of the problems of 2000 now seems likely, even as many other nations are conducting elections that are internationally certified to be transparent, honest and fair.

Not that Carter would know a "transparent, honest, and fair" election if he saw one. This from the man who "certified" the recent re-election of murderous, anti-American leftist strongman Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

In that election, Chavez supposedly won (with results "certified" by Carter) the referrendum 58% to 41%, despite the fact that exit polling showed Chavez losing the election by almost exactly the same margin--a difference of nearly 40 points between Carter's "certified" results and the results of the independent exit polling.

The bottom line: Carter has a long and indisputable history of conveniently seeing what he wants to see and ignoring what he wants to ignore in the service of electing anti-American leftists at home and around the world.

(Here is a must-read article detailing the myriad abuses Carter overlooked--as he nearly always does in regards to leftist dictatorial regimes--in the Venezuelan elections.)

We'll Sleep When We're Dead

To quote Bobby Lewis, "I Didn't Sleep at All Last Night."

With the adrenaline of the approaching hurricane, the preparations, the late-night vigil as it made landfall, etc., my internal clock is a complete mess. I could hardly keep my eyes open half the day yesterday, but when it came time to go to bed, I found myself staring at the ceiling all night.

I mean, I literally didn't get a minute of sleep. Nothing. Nada. I finally gave up and came into work early.

And right about now, I feel like Edward Norton in "Fight Club." It could get interesting later in the day as I become less and less coherent. I'm hoping it will be like the old days when the Jerry Lewis Telethon was still in Vegas and the clock would hit 4am--things could get pretty volatile. Who knows? I might get into a fist fight with Chad Everett.

Thanks For Your Prayers (Again)

There were some stong gusts, but we here in Broward County made it through Jeanne largely unscathed. Most of the stuff liable to be knocked over in a 60 mph wind evidently was already taken down by Frances earlier this month.

I didn't even lose my electricity this time, which is a minor miracle--our electricity usually goes out for at least a few seconds in even an average thunderstorm here.

Unfortunately, our neighbors to the north didn't fare as well. Incredibly, Jeanne made landfall at exactly the same coordinates (to a tenth of a degree) as Frances, but came ashore as a category 3 storm (as opposed to Frances' 2). There are a lot of folks up there just about at the end of their ropes.

As always, if you're interested in helping, I'd recommend donating to the Salvation Army, Samaritan's Purse, or the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

A Good First Step

In a largely unnoticed story yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "Pledge Protection Act," which would remove from the federal courts the authority to rule on the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Though I think the Ninth Circuit Court's ruling barring the Pledge a couple of years ago was asinine, I also can't get too excited about whatever amorphous "deity" is supposedly being promoted in that Pledge. The fact that so many people support it tells me that it's probably not saying much about the God of Christianity.

But in a way the Pledge issue itself is secondary. This is hugely significant legislation, because for the first time in memory, Congress has finally begun to exercise its constitutional duty to reign in the runaway federal judiciary.

Under Article III, section 2 of the Constitution, Congress has the authority to determine the appelate jurisdiction of the federal judiciary. But they have been woefully lax in acting to protecting their constitutional role of lawmaking, and have instead ceded that power largely to the courts for the last 40 years. Finally, they've taken a step towards reversing that trend--a small step (and one that still would have to be approved by the Senate), but a step nonetheless.

This idiotic commentary by a Princeton Seminary scholar (that should be your first warning alarm) shows that they're on the right track:

This is a remarkable violation of the separation of powers and the Establishment Clause. If the Act were to become law -- and if it were, itself, to be upheld as constitutional -- only state courts would be able to hear constitutional challenges to the pledge.

That's the second time in 24 hours where "separation of powers" has been ironically invoked in support of an unchecked judicial oligarcy.

But aside from that, let's put her "logic" to the test in light of the facts:

1). The federal courts rule on federal laws.

2). The First Amendment explicitly states that Congress can make no federal laws regarding the free excercise of religion.

Therefore:

3). Marci Hamilton hysterically informs us that this act will mean that only state courts will be able to rule on issues of free exercise of religion.

And the problem is?

Here We Go Again

As incomprehensible as it is to me, we in South Florida have yet another hurricane headed straight for us.

Though Jeanne's been out there for quite some time (killing over a thousand in Haiti alone), the forecast track put us in the center of the crosshairs only yesterday. She's expected to make landfall on Sunday already.

The town will begin shutting down in a few hours (at my own office it's expected that everyone will be sent home after the 11am advisory) and we'll go through the whole drill yet again. I'm concerned, however, because people here have been so wrung out by these storms that this one is meeting with little more than a shrug of the shoulders. Yet, with Jeanne expected to reach Category 3 status, the direct threat is everything that Frances was only a little more. The worst threat, as with Frances, is to those a little to the north of Palm Beach County, but even people as far south as Miami-Dade experienced damage from the weaker Frances.

If you have any prayers left for us down here, they'd be appreciated.

(**Just a note for the enviro-nuts who are screaming that the sudden "increase in hurricanes is due to global warming": We're up to the "J's" in this year's hurricane season. A quick look through the archives shows me that in 1971 (a year picked at random), "Janice" was a storm from September 21-24. Last year, Hurricane Juan lasted from September 24-29. In other words, the hurricanes are coming at about the same rate they usually come. In 1995, we were already up to Hurricane Marilyn by this date--that year's "J" storm occured in August.

Sure, it's been a busy year for hurricanes. But if this is the sudden result of some sort of recent phenomenon, how do you explain the following, from the National Hurricane Center?:

The most hurricanes to strike in one year were six in 1916 and 1985. There were five in 1933, and four in 1906, 1909, and 1964. Three hurricanes struck the U.S. in one year a total of sixteen times. Ten of these sixteen times occurred during the sixteen years from 1944 to 1959!

As any hurricane expert can tell you, it's a cyclical thing. There are busy decades and quiet ones. This is a busy one. And it's pretty much right on time.)

"Nobody's Gonna Separate Our Powers..."

The Florida Supreme Court, previously best known for completely disregarding Florida's election laws and making up their own during the 2000 presidential election (for which they received a rich and deserved slapping-down by the U.S. Supreme Court), has now decided Terri Schiavo's life is not worth living and sentenced her to death.

If you're not familiar with the story, Terri Schiavo suffered a stroke in the early '90's, and her husband (who now has two children by another woman and who stands to collect the remainder of a large insurance settlement if Terri dies) has been crusading to have her starved to death ever since, despite the fact that her parents are willing to take responsibility for her full care and rehabilitation.

Medical experts have testified that Terri (who has never been given one day of rehab--it's been denied to her by her husband) is not in a persistent vegetative state, not in a coma, and shows response to audio and visual stimulus. She laughs, she cries, she answers questions, and she's going to be starved to death by judicial decree.

The people of the state of Florida, outraged by her case, passed a law in late 2003 protecting her from her court-ordered execution. But the Florida Supreme Court, which has often exhibited great disdain for the duly passed laws of the people of Florida, exhibited it again today by overturning the law on the grounds that it violated "the separation of powers."

If there's one thing murderous, activist judges won't stand for, it's to have their power divided by anyone. In a turn of irony worthy of Orwell's 1984, they used the notion of "separation of powers" to assert their unfettered ability to order an innocent woman to die despite the legislative will of the people. Under the rubric of "separation of powers," the Florida courts (much like most of our federal courts) have merely assumed unto themselves the power of God Almighty Himself.

At the same time you hear Terri's final, strangled breaths as she starves to death, you'll also be hearing the death-rattle of constitutional, republican government, replaced forever more by the judicial oligarchy--an oligarchy that's in the process of destroying it's few remaining enemies.

Oprah Creates Conservatives

Undoubtedly you heard last week about the Oprah show where she gave all 276 people in her audience brand new, fully-loaded Pontiacs. The news was saturated with video clips of their wild celebrations at their newfound good fortune.

But according to the Chicago Sun Times, an unpleasant reality is beginning to set in for these Oprahphiles:

It turns out that free car wasn't so free.

That's because while Pontiac agreed to pay for most of the local charges -- things like state sales tax and licensing fees -- the recipients have to report the cars as income once tax time comes.

By adding $28,500 to someone's income, it can push them into a higher tax bracket -- which means they will have to pay about 25 percent or more of the car's value in taxes. And for a nearly $30,000 car, that probably means, for most of the recipients, shelling out $7,125 for the "free car."

Fortunately, however, they'll have some time to try to scrape together the money to pay off Uncle Sam's cut of their "gift":

Some recipients are going to wait a few months before actually picking up their cars so they can figure out how to pay for the taxes.

"We have to pick the car up between Oct. 1, 2004, and Feb. 28, 2005," said Nelson. "We've decided that we are going to wait until the first of the year so we can have all of 2005 and the first four months of 2006 to figure out how to pay for this."

But it's worth it for those soccer moms, I'm sure. I mean, what's the hardship in scrounging together seven grand next to the failed, one-semester education it will buy for some lucky Washington D.C. public school student or the six months of Social Security checks it'll provide for the old guy parking his Cadillac over at the country club?

A Hooker With A Heart of (Fein)Gold

I know I'm not the first to voice this sentiment, but I'm sick of John McCain.

The media, of course, has anointed him Arbiter of All That is Right and Good and Virtuous. He's the favorite Republican of most liberals because he's a "thoughtful conservative." "Finally!" the gist goes, "A Republican who's not a stupid caveman!"

What this actually means is that McCain holds a scant handful of positions that could be considered moderately conservative (which makes him "conservative"), and a whole bunch of positions that are nothing more than warmed-over liberalism (which makes him "thoughtful" and "not a stupid caveman"). In their view, McCain is not a hunchbacked Neanderthal insofar as he's not actually conservative.

Because he relentlessly courts them and because they are oblivious to their own narcissism, the media have been snookered into portraying McCain as a "straight-shooter" and "the kind of politician we need more of" simply because he's willing to talk with them day or night and tell them what they agree with.

In reality, McCain is is the biggest media whore to come out of either party in a generation. Just watch an interview with him--any interview.

NEWS DITZ: Senator, why can't more politicians be like you?

MCCAIN (beaming with self-satisfaction): Well, I think, unfortunately, too many people put politics ahead of the good of the country, which you--as the best reporter in America--know I would never do. (Chest broadening)

NEWS DITZ (eyes closed, breathing heavily): Oh, yeah. Say that again....only slower...

Oddly, it was never referred to as "straight talk" when Spiro Agnew would call them a bunch of idiots or Jesse Helms would give his unvarnished view of alternative lifestyles. But McCain, by giving them his phone number and saying "Call me whenever you need a Republican to badmouth conservatism," has become the poster boy for "straight talk."

Anyone see them calling Zell Miller's rebel-against-his-party speech at the Republican Convention "straight talk?"

They Just Keep Digging

The Kerry side of the ledger seems to insist on turning the Rather story into the Perfect Storm that will swallow their candidate at sea.

Terry McAuliff, the DNC chairman, is now pushing the line that yes, the memos are forged, but...they were planted by Republican operatives. Which, of course, makes perfect sense: manufacture documents that are damaging to your own candidate, then hand them to the media and cause a damaging media storm for your guy--in hopes that bloggers will eventually recognize the inconsistent superscripting. The Bush campaign decided to roll the dice and hinge their entire presidency on the investigative abilities of Little Green Footballs.

It's like O.J.'s proferred "Columbian drug kingpins" defense, except in this version Nicole hires her own killers in order to cost O.J. the next "Naked Gun" sequel.

Where's The Pink Slip, Kenneth?

Gosh, I hate to kick a guy when he's down (well, okay, I don't hate it that much...), but if I were the president of CBS News, I'd have no choice but to fire Dan Rather and his producer now, even in light of their too-late apology.

Leaving aside the devastating implications for the Kerry campaign, this story in today's USA Today is a political earthquake for CBS News. USA Today says that CBS passed the memos story on to the Kerry campaign before it even ran on 60 Minutes II.

According to the story:

[Joe] Lockhart, the former press secretary to President Clinton [and current Kerry campaign aide], said a producer talked to him about the 60 Minutes program a few days before it aired on Sept. 8. She gave Lockhart a telephone number and asked him to call Bill Burkett, a former Texas National Guard officer who gave CBS the documents.

CBS News not only rushed to get a poorly-sourced, falsified story damaging to President Bush on the air, but they also leaked it to the Kerry campaign beforehand. The political motivation is clear. As little as I respect the Kerry campaign, it's not their fault CBS called them. But for CBS, this news is absolutely cataclysmic.

I do not believe at this point that Dan Rather can survive until the election. The only way CBS can possibly restore their reputation (mediocre as it may have been) is to clean house of everyone involved in this story immediately. It's very possible that they will--at least once reality sets in, which recent events have shown is a slow process at Black Rock.

You Forgot Something

CBS has finally retracted it's Bush/National Guard story, saying "CBS Regrets Bush Memos Story."

Dan Rather has also issued a statement, saying (according to Drudge):

I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where—if I knew then what I know now—I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.

Okay....but where's the part where you retract the statements where you dismissed concerns about the authenticity of the memos as merely being the work of "partisan political operatives"? And where's the part about ignoring the 260-plus living Swift Boat Veterans for weeks and then breatlessly rushing the memo story onto the air without, as it turns out, any credible proof?

Oh well, it's a start, I suppose.

P.S. On the other hand, thanks for waiting just long enough to ensure that the story will be the main headline for at least another week! Years of charges notwithstanding, it makes me wonder if you're not actually an undercover operative for the GOP...

"No He Isn't, He's Just Sleeping..."

After more than a week and a half denying the obvious fact that the memos were forged (an episode in which Dan Rather has increasingly looked like the proprietor of the pet store in that Monty Python sketch: "This bird isn't dead...he's pining for the fjords...."), the New York Times says CBS News may announce as early as today that they were "misled" on the documents.

If they had done this 10 days ago, it might not have had to have been the effective end of Dan Rather's journalistic career.

Father Knows Best?

It sounds like a lot of folks are hot and bothered about this photo from a John Edwards campaign event where Democrat thugs tore up the George W. Bush sign of a 3-year old girl:



Some snippets from the story in the Washington Times:

"They just pounced on us," said Phil Parlock, who took his 11-year-old son, Alex, and 3-year-old daughter, Sophia, to the Democratic rally at Tri-State Airport in Huntington, W.Va.

..."She was crying; they were pushing and shoving her," said Mr. Parlock, a Huntington real estate agent. "She was scared."

...The Parlocks went to Mr. Edwards' airport rally yesterday "to support the president," Mr. Parlock said, and brought nine Bush-Cheney signs with them.

Obviously, anyone who would threaten a little kid or tear up her sign is a vile reprobate. But I have to ask: what kind of jackass shows up at a Democrat campaign event and sticks Bush signs in his kids' hands? What kind of parent puts his kid in this position?

As long as we're venting outrage, let's save some for this utter moron of a father. You've gotta wonder about a putz like that a little bit.

I Guess It’s Good To Have A Style

Last night, someone did a Google search on “Elton John” + “shut his pie hole” and got sent to my blog.

But regrettably, I was only the second site that turned up on the search.

...And May The Good News Be Yours

Ann Coulter today on Dan Rather: "Rather is TV's real-life Ted Baxter without Baxter's quiet dignity."

When Relativists Try To Moralize

Slate's Michael Crowley, in a piece taking Kitty Kelley to task for her always-suspect reportage, can't ultimately escape his own relativism.

After pointing to example after example of Kelley's questionable accuracy (saying, at one point, "After close to 30 years and five breathless tell-alls, it's clear that Kelley is no meticulous historian who nails down her facts with airtight precision"), Crowley finally gives in to the Dan Rather defense: it doesn't matter if the "facts" are true, per se. False facts help us discover the spirit of the truth.

Says Crowley

...[I]t may be that Kelley has something valuable to offer, despite her unsavory means. The news media have largely given George W. Bush a pass on "character" issues and allowed him to rope off his first four decades as "young and irresponsible years." Particularly now that Bush's allies are savaging the young John Kerry's character, it seems only fair that Bush's should be subjected to a painful colonoscopy. The view might show Bush's integrity as not quite what the White House makes it out to be, and the public will be able to look it over with due skepticism.

In other words, it doesn't matter if the anecdotes in Kitty Kelley's books are outright lies, what matters are the questions they raise.

Crowley's argument makes little sense. First of all, it's prima facie ridiculous to claim that the media has "given Bush a pass" on character issues. But even if we accept his premise, there's a fundamental distinction between Bush and Kerry on this that Crowley and his political soulmates are too addled to recognize: George W. Bush admits that he was something of an idiot until he stopped drinking at 40, and claims that he has since been profoundly changed. John Kerry still points to the character of the "young John Kerry" as the reason we should elect him.

If John Kerry had come out and simply said "Hey, when I was young, I did some things I now regret. If I had it to do over again, I'd have kept my medals pinned on and my mouth shut a little more," he'd be leading by 10 points right now, and his service record would be a minor issue at best.

But Kerry's youth is relevant for exactly the same reason Bush's is irrelevant: because of the relative weight each candidate places on his youth as evidence of his worthiness to serve as president. Bush's youth is irrelevant (except as a "before" picture for comparison purposes) because he claims he's no longer the same guy. Kerry's youth is relevant because he claims he's exactly the same guy.

But aside from the political issue, it's profoundly disturbing that we now live in a society where many journalists believe that false facts and forged documents do us a service by supposedly leading us to some sort of deeper truth. This worldview is what has led us to Dan Rather's absurd "Let's not concentrate on the fact that the documents are fake; let's concentrate on what those fake documents say!" defense.

On wonders what other "deeper truths" they are feeding us by way of false facts.

I'll Bet She'd Be A Fun Date

Here's a perfect example of the mindset of your average, humorless, liberal apparatchik.

A gal from one of these "alternative" weeklies in LA (side note: if they're all so "alternative," how come every city has one and they all look and sound exactly alike?) interviews Jay Leno and hammers him for not bringing enough affirmative action into his nightly comedy monologue. She thinks he's been handling those dirty Republicans with kid gloves.

Here are a few of her questions:

• "The White House strategy is to ridicule Kerry every single day of the campaign. And obviously The Tonight Show will be the first to pick up on that. How do you decide if you're being used to further some political party's ends?"

• "Here's my problem with the monologue. You can tell that something's featured on The Drudge Report, the writers have seen it, and the monologue is playing off that. But there's a lot of other news that gets ignored. How come there's no humor made of the fact that Cheney is making people take loyalty oaths before anyone is allowed at his rallies?"

• "The media seems to only present the Republican spin and to not present the other side of what's going on."

• "It was totally inappropriate for you to push Schwarzenneger's candidacy and then emcee his victory party. It hurt your objectivity."

• I'm not the only journalist who has perceived for a while that you seem to be bashing Clinton as if it were back in the Clinton administration instead of bashing Bush.

Fun, no?

But that's the liberal mind. Even comedy is only "acceptable" when it's used in service of the approved viewpoint. It doesn't matter if it's funny, it only matters whether or not it serves The Party. She must be driven nuts by all those conservative comedians out there like Dennis Miller and....well, there could be another one somewhere...

The only thing sadder in this interview is the gymnastic routine Leno does to try to make the interviewer like him. You see, at one point she had written a column criticizing Leno for being too right-wing in his monologue. Like a puppy dog, he put his tail between his legs and called her up to "correct the record."

In his pitiable striving to gain her approval, at one point he even says to her "I believe the media is in the pocket of the government, and they don't do their job. They have people like Michael Moore who do it for them." At another point he answers her question about how weird it is that talk radio leans so far to the right by saying "No, it's not weird. Because liberal people don't need to hear their view expressed over and over again. I think some people on the right need to hear this constant reinforcement, whereas I don't find that necessary."

That's the reason Leno has always been a pygmy next to Letterman's giant. Leno has an pathetic desperation to be liked that rivals that of Robin Williams--which is no small accomplishment. Can you even begin to imagine David Letterman calling up some ditz reporter from Supermarket Weekly to plead with her to change her opinion of him?

Hunting Red Herrings

The assault weapons ban issue is difficult to deal with for several reasons:

First, from just a knee-jerk perspective, the ban seems like a good thing. Most people don't own assault weapons and can't instantly think of why anyone would need to. From a simple reaction/consensus standpoint, it's like asking most people if child abuse should be outlawed.

Secondly, sloppy argumentation has gained the status of axiomatic truth.

Put these things together, and one standing on the other side faces formidable resistance. But truth and logic have to count for something.

In the last few days, John Kerry has made an argument that I would just dismiss as irrelevant--if the argument hadn't already gained the status of axiomatic truth and been parroted by liberals and conservatives alike all over the broadcasting spectrum in recent days.

This is the argument in a nutshell: "Nobody needs an AK-47 to go hunting with."

As a statement it's true enough, but it has nothing to do with the actual question at hand, which is whether or not such weapons should be banned.

As even John Kerry admits, there is a constitutional issue involved here regarding the Second Amendment and gun ownership. He fully acknowledges that there is an important connection between the two, and he cites the Bill of Rights in defense of his own gun ownership. In Kerry's own words on Monday, "Let me be very clear. I support the Second Amendment. I've been a hunter all my life."

The thing that Kerry and those parroting the same line don't seem to understand is that the Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting. One does not need to prove that a weapon is suitable for hunting in order to claim constitutional protection for it, as even a cursory reading of the amendment itself shows.

Why did the Founders include the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights? (Hint: It wasn't because they were avid duck hunters.) The reason the amendment was included was because America had just freed herself from an oppressive government, and the Founders recognized that an armed citizenry was a major protection against tyranny.

Let me put it more bluntly (though you won't hear it put this way on any of the chat shows; merely uttering the truth on this would marginalize you in this day and age): the purposes of the Second Amendment are:

1). for people to be able to defend themselves and

2). to be able to overthrow the government by violence if the government should become tyrannical.

The Second Amendment says: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Some have argued that this means only regulated militias (like state National Guards) should have weapons under the Constitution. You can't get that from the text as it's written, but even if we were to accept that dubious premise (and it's worth pointing out that Kerry does not; he cites the Constitution in his personal ownership of hunting rifles), note that the Second Amendment says nothing about hunting.

It's simply undeniable that, regardless of whom may bear the arms, when the Second Amendment talks about arms, it's talking about arms used for security--for killing attackers in self-defense. Weapons for killing other people. The framers of the Constitution were not talking about defending our security against bears or ducks, they were talking about defending ourselves against human enemies--and an examination of their writings and history shows that they believed these enemies could be foreign or domestic.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote, "...[W]hat country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms..." Though Jefferson did not take part in the formulation of the Bill of Rights, his statement reflects the view of the times. Anyone can disagree with him, but what they can't do is claim that the Second Amendment only (or even primarily) protects the right to bear hunting weapons. It doesn't. Any recourse to "usefulness for hunting" in this debate is simply a red herring to be discarded.

If John Kerry accepts that the Second Amendment protects personal, individual gun ownership, he has no grounds on which to argue (or even imply) that it only applies to hunting weapons.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Thomas Sowell has written the price-gouging column I wrote last month.

It's only fair, though, since most of what was in my original post was stuff I've learned directly from him.

Glockoma

I'm a bit ambivalent about the expiration of the assault weapons ban. As a believer in the Constitution, I tend to see it as the correct thing. But there's also a part of me which recognizes that, like obscene speech that hides behind the First Amendment, it's probably possible to have weapons that go beyond what most reasonable people would prefer to accept.

Of course, the media are not ambivalent at all; they are absolutely galvanized in their unanimous view that the ban was the highest good in Western civilization and that the expiration is its most heinous evil.

Driving home from work last night, I heard the anchor on our local news radio station read a story about a Miami-Dade police officer who was shot by a criminal using an assault rifle on Sunday. "The gun," the anchor dramatically informed me, "is one of the weapons that had been covered under the assault weapon ban."

The implication was clear: the lifting of the assault weapons ban nearly killed this police officer.

Now, the shooting is a terrible thing, obviously, and I greatly respect the police officers who are out there doing the world's toughest job every day. But in the hurry to make a political point, the radio anchor (and she is not alone) seems to be missing a rather crucial point: when the officer was shot with an assault weapon, the ban was still in effect. To put it another way: the ban failed to do for this police officer precisely the thing it was supposedly designed to do. It didn't work. This is not an example that proves the assault weapons ban was a good thing; it's an example that proves it didn't work. It proves that criminals, by definition, don't obey laws.

According to the Miami Herald article, John Kerry's campaign seized on the shooting yesterday by issuing a statement from former Attorney General (and current Miami resident) Janet Reno saying, "That officer experienced firsthand why the ban on military-style assault weapons needs to be renewed."

No, that officer experienced firsthand why the ban on military-style assault weapons didn't work. The ban was in effect when she was shot, and it didn't do a thing to protect her.

Is this an isolated example, this failure of the Left to understand that criminals don't tend to obey laws? Unfortunately, it is not.

Take a look at this ad from a group called Stop the NRA:



The ad says that Osama Bin Laden can't wait until September 13, when the assault weapons ban is lifted. As if Osama Bin Laden were waiting for legal permission to commit terrorism. By this logic, we only needed Congress to pass a ban on smashing airliners into tall American buildings to thwart 9/11. Why didn't we think of that?

Gosh, don't you wish the assault weapons ban were back in place so that Osama and the criminal who shot the Miami-Dade cop wouldn't be dangerous anymore?

If You Still Entertain a Shadow of a Doubt

If somehow you're still not absolutely convinced that the Bush/National Guard memos are nothing more than poorly done forgeries, you must...must...check out the animated comparison done by Little Green Footballs between the forged documents and a default Microsoft Word version. It proves the forgery beyond any sliver of a doubt.

If you still hold out hope that the documents are authentic, you are the type who also believes O.J. was actually innocent.

Oh yes, and by the way, it has also been discovered that the colonel purportedly exerting pressure on Bush's behalf actually retired from the Guard a year and a half before the memo was supposedly written.

CBS continues to stand by its story, not unlike the former Iraqi Information Minister standing before cameras with smoke in the background insisting that there was no war.

Forgery Proof: Your Own Easy Experiment

It seemed that some of the news coverage tonight on the forged National Guard documents was a bit confused.

I give the major networks kudos for checking out the story (though I'm sure their competitiveness gives them extra incentive for wanting to bring down CBS). But many of the discussions are making this far too complicated. These documents are poor, obvious forgeries. There is no way--no way--these papers were typed in the early 70's.

If you haven't looked at them yet, open some of the documents. Ask yourself if you've ever seen typewritten documents of any kind that look like this. Ever.

Then do a simple test:

Open up a Microsoft Word document on your computer. Don't do anything to it, just leave the simple default Word settings as they are. Then start at the beginning of a paragraph and start typing sentences from either of these "memos." You'll notice something amazing. The automatic line breaks on your Word document will perfectly match the line breaks in the "memos."

Do you have any idea what the odds are that someone over 30 years ago, using a typewriter, would happen to break every line at the exact same place as the MS Word default setting does it? That the typist would never use an apostrophe and never once break a line at a different place? Do you have any idea what the odds against that are?

Mathematically, it would be conclusive even without all the other evidences of forgery (such as the centered headings, the perfect lines of text, the superscripting, the Times New Roman fonts, etc.)

The silly liberal objections are beside the point, as even the mainstream media seems to understand tonight. Demonstrating that somewhere Times New Roman fonts existed, and that somewhere else there was a rare typewriter that did superscripts, is meaningless. Show us a typewriter that did both in 1972 and that would have conceivably been available to a Texas Air National Guardsman. Show us one machine somewhere that did both--and did automatic line breaks just like Word--and maybe you'll get somewhere.

Because I've got an MS Word processer that does all that by default right now, while all CBS has got is a long-dead guardsman whose family is adamant he didn't write the memos.

Worked Into A Rather

This "60 Minutes"/National Guard memos story is absolutely fascinating. It's possible that we might be witnessing the public dissolution of an entire television network.

Not that anyone had any illusions about the leanings of CBS News (particularly after Bernard Goldberg's devastating book Bias), but I'm just amazed by the brazenness of it all.

260-plus living Vietnam veterans come forward to dispute John Kerry's version of events in that war, and CBS ignores it for weeks and weeks. But somebody cranks out a couple of ridiculous fake memos on Microsoft Word--purporting to be written about George Bush in the early 70's by one dead guy--and the network can't even wait until the ink toner is dry before breathlessly rushing it onto the air.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Michael Cannon in today's National Review Online points out that if Bill Clinton's health care plan had been implemented ten years ago, he'd likely still be waiting in a long, long line for his heart surgery, with every moment perilously ticking away:

According to Nadeem Esmail and Michael Walker of Canada's Fraser Institute, the median wait for an appointment with a cardiologist in Canada's single-payer health-care system was 3.4 weeks in 2003. The wait for urgent bypass surgery was another 2.1 weeks on top of that, while the wait for elective bypass surgery was an additional 10.7 weeks. Canadian doctors reported that a "reasonable" wait would be 0.9 and 6.1 weeks, respectively. Great Britain and New Zealand have even longer waiting times for bypass surgery.

Esmail and Walker cite studies confirming that longer waits for heart surgery result in a higher risk of heart attack and death.

In fact, they report that American hospitals act as a "safety valve" for Canadian patients who face life-threatening shortages: "The government of British Columbia contracted Washington State hospitals to perform some 200 operations in 1989 following public dismay over the 6-month waiting list for cardiac bypass surgery in the province. ... A California heart-surgery centre has even advertised its services in a Vancouver newspaper."

According to Clinton's doctors, he was only weeks away from a major heart attack. Would he have made it under the knife in time?

Fortunately he never had to wait to find out, since his health care plan (much like the one currently advocated by John Kerry) was snuffed out by a Republican Congress.

Better Stick to the TelePrompTer

I know there's nothing particularly funny about asphyxiation death via diesel-powered generator. But I had to laugh at the following exchange I heard on TV during last weekend's Hurricane Hysteria here in South Florida:

CONCERNED REPORTER: ...and please keep in mind that carbon monoxide fumes are completely odorless.

ANCHOR (Nodding knowingly): Yes, that's why they call it the "Silent Killer."

Right. They call it the "Silent Killer" because it's so....odorless.

Okay, I'm Starting to Get Sick of This

A mandatory evacuation order has been issued for the Florida Keys, and the latest forecast track for Hurricane Ivan is putting him right up the southern end of the state.

Ivan's sustained winds right now are 160 mph, with gusts up to 195.

Why do I live here, again? Over the past week, I seem to have forgotten.

These Go To Eleven

Years ago, I recall reading an article about when the up-and-coming Van Halen were opening for Ted Nugent on a late 70’s concert tour. Eddie Van Halen was tearing up the fret board night after night, spellbinding the crowd with his new rapid-fire, melodic, classically-influenced style. Nugent was more than a little jealous of the new wunderkind, and snuck into the arena early one day before the soundcheck with his guitar, asking to plug into Eddie’s equipment.

The sound technicians hooked Nugent up to Eddie’s stuff, and Nuge started wailing away. He let fly with everything in his arsenal. According to those who were there, asked how Nugent sounded through Eddie’s equipment: “Still sounded just like Ted.”

That anecdote keeps popping into my mind as John Kerry desperately hires more and more old Clinton hands to staff his campaign. He can plug into Clinton’s equipment, but when all is said and done, he still sounds just like Kerry.

The best reason yet to vote for President Bush this fall.

Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season...

...As Jimmy Buffett once said.

It's been a strange few days, but thankfully we're fine here in my part of South Florida. To the north of us in Palm Beach County there's a good deal of damage, but most of Broward County has come through relatively unscathed.

As for us, we have a toppled fence in our back yard to show for Frances' visit, and we lost our electricity for about 20 hours. Other than that, we suffered nothing worse than a little anxiety and a lot of splinters from cutting and hanging plywood.

For those who don't live in a hurricane area, it's hard to understand how completely a state can shut down when one of these things is zeroing in on you. All the local governments and businesses close at least a day in advance of it (this week, much of the county shut down on Wednesday evening), and all the television and radio stations switch to 24-hour coverage of the hurricane. The whole atmosphere is eerie and single-minded.

And afterwards, strangely, after the all-clear, there is a bit of an adrenalene let-down. At a certain point yesterday, it suddenly all ended. The TV and radio stations went back to normal, the stores all opened up, and it was over. But after three or four days of relentless focus on impending doom, it's odd to suddenly pick back up with work, meetings, baseball games, school, and leisure.

Hopefully we won't have to do it all again later this week with Ivan moving in.

Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers for us over the past few days. Frances was approaching as a devastating category 4 hurricane, and suddenly downshifted to a 2. Your prayers were a part of that.

There Sure Are A Lot Of Hijackers On This Religion

The Religion of Peace® is at it again.

You won't know that, though, by reading the CNN story. There, they're only referred to as mysterious "armed attackers." Anyone think maybe it's Quakers?

And In His Likeness He Created Them

From a newspaper account of a Bill Clinton book signing in my old stomping grounds of Crestwood, Missouri:

Adults skipped work for this. People camped out overnight. Kids were pulled out of school. Anna Moreno's 10-year-old son was reported sick so he could come along.

"I made my husband call, so I wasn't the one who lied," Moreno said.

What could be more perfectly fitting for a Bill Clinton appearance?