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logomachy--1. A dispute
about words. 2. A dispute carried on in words only; a battle of words.
logomachon--1. One who argues about words.
2. A word warrior.
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2004-03-29
What if Bush had foiled 9/11?
What if Bush had foiled 9/11?
Imagine this:
"It's 2001, and John Ashcroft . . . arrests Mohammed Atta and his merry band in several states. . . . ignoring outraged clamor from Europe, the United States puts boots on the ground in Afghanistan, toppling the Taliban."
To find out what happens, and what in 2004 the Democrats, the Axis of Weasels, and John F. "Band of Mongols" Kerry are declaring unfinished business, check out Preemptive Action in Mark Steyn's on-line mailbox.
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2004-03-28
Democrats twist lies into truth
Democrats twist lies into truth
By now, you have probably gotten the e-mail from Sonny Emerson (shak91@comcast.net), inviting you to play Twister: The Game That Ties the Truth in Knots .
For once the Democrats have labeled something truthfully. Their "game" does twist the truth in knots. The game claims to show that Bush lied in the State of the Union speech when he said that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa. On the first spin (and I won't quibble that it is always on the first spin--the spins are not random), they tell us about Ambassador Joseph Wilson's fabled most excellent tea-drinking adventure in Niger. According to Time magazine, says the Web site, "Wilson reported in March 2002 to both the CIA and State Department that the reports were false."
First of all, what Bush said was that British intelligence believed that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa. Second, what Wilson reported and has been repeating for the past several months is that Iraq had not bought uranium.
In fact, Wilson reported that he found no confirmation of purchases by Iraq, but he did report a probable attempt : The Wall Street Journal reported on October 17 :When Mr. Wilson returned from Niger's capital Niamey in early March, he said he told CIA officials it was "highly doubtful" any transfer of uranium took place. Current and former Niger officials he talked to said they were unaware of any contract being signed with Iraq. According to an official CIA summary of Mr. Wilson's report, released last summer, Mr. Wilson did report that one former Niger official told him he had been urged by an unidentified businessman to meet with an Iraqi trade delegation in June 1999. The former official interpreted that overture as an invitation to discuss uranium sales. (p. A4, "Memo May Aid Leak Probe", para 21) [My emphasis] Just to be perfectly clear: what Wilson debunked was not what Bush said. Wilson's actual report supported the British. The only thing that Wilson could have debunked is stories that Iraq had actually bought uranium from Niger. Such stories were not part of the administration's case.
The rest of the game rehashes the CIA's attempts to dissuade the White House and State department from mentioning Iraqi activities in Africa. The Democrats present this as proof that the administration lied. It's not surprising that the Democrats believe this constitutes proof. Most of their view of political reality seems to consist of asserting as true whatever must be true to reach the conclusions they want. If they were consistent about the definitiveness of accusations, Al Gore would have run as an incumbent.
The British stand by their estimate. There are always conflicting reports, estimates, and agendas in the intelligence mix. The Democrats and the press treat Wilson's accusations--and more recently Richard Clark's--as the gold standard for no reason other than that it can be distorted to polemical purposes.
Step back and think. On the one hand you have British intelligence. - Who operates Niger's uranium industry? French companies.
- What Western intelligence service would certainly have informants in that industry? The French.
- What country would certainly like to see Bush embarrassed in this matter? France.
- What presumably informed intelligence service has been strangely quiet on this matter? The French.
- What Western service would almost certainly have sensitive sources in French intelligence. The British.
On the other hand, you have the CIA, which is so bereft of information and assets in Niger that it has to send Wilson to make an open inquiry. The CIA then uses an irrelevant conclusion (that Iraq did not buy uranium) in an unwritten report of a sloppy inquiry by a biased source and two other similar reports to declare a British intelligence estimate that Iraq tried to buy uranium to be unverified. Incidentally, it seems that the CIA was doing some twisting on its own. Judging by the WSJ story, it did not mention to the White House that Wilson had reported information that confirmed the British assessment.
Given the irrelevance of the CIA's protest, the administration was perfectly justified in adding the British intelligence estimate to a list of ways in which Saddam (1) was in violation of UNSC resolutions and (2) constituted a threat on his own and as a possible source of material for Islamofascist jihadists.
So pace Time, the Democrats have been making false charges, and this Twister game is just another exercise in twisting. No need to ask what they knew and when they knew it. They have certainly known what Wilson reported at least since last October.
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2004-03-25
Natural Bedfellows
Natural Bedfellows
I don't watch much TV these days--we don't even subscribe to cable--but I have a small set at the end of the tool bench. Tonight, as I was seeing whether (A FEW MINUTES) X (DUCT TAPE) = (1 YEAR) of extra life for my fencing equipment bag, I got my semiannual dose of the liberals' fantasy island, The West Wing. If you haven't kept up, the staffers still talk in the rapid monotone bursts that actors use to indicate that oblique and cryptic dialogue shows the characters' penetrating intellect.
Tonight, Josh tried to enlist the retiring William O. Douglas-like, ultraliberal chief justice into his scheme to get an ultra-liberal, female replacement through the Senate: in exchange for a no-fuss confirmation, the President will let the Republicans pick the replacement for a retired conservative associate justice. The old liberal judge cackles that what they'll get will be an anti-choice, anti-miscegenation, gay-bashing, medieval, keep-'m-bare-foot-and-pregnant toady to the FBI and Big Oil. Or words to that effect. My memory overflowed before the venomous old coot ran out of breath or invective.
My first reaction was to laugh at such a ludicrous stereotype of liberal judgmentalism. Then I realized that the producers know their audience. Liberals wouldn't feel even the slightest bit embarrassed by the mean-spirited tirade. That's what they really believe in the fantasy bubble that most Democrats and other liberals float around in.
Democrats speak in one breath of conservatives, Republicans, Nazis, KKK, Timothy McVey, Papa Doc Duvalier, Idi Amin, and Genghis Khan. Their only evidence is their own voices. But there is evidence of whom the Democrats are in bed with, such as these pictures from the anti-war rally in San Francisco on 20 March. Kennedy, Dodd, Bonior, John F. "Band of Mongols" Kerry, et al. would be right at home with these people. The only difference is that the professional politicians wear suits.
 The blame-America-first sentiment expressed with impeccable logic.
 The only difference between him and the suits is that he admits it.
 You know how Republicans are always being required to disavow any evil intent or whiff of political incorrectness? If I found myself agreeing with these people about anything (including whether the Earth goes around the Sun), I'd recheck my sources.
 As if to show that the Democrats' position on Iraqi Freedom doesn't intersect with these loonies' by coincidence, look at the bottom of this paranoiac's sign. Isn't that the mantra that was tatooed into every Democrat's tongue during the 2000 campaign: "...and we're going to fight to save Education, So' S'curity, and th' Environment . . ."?
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2004-03-23
Clinton’s Recession
Clinton’s Recession
I recently read another conservative explanation that Federal budget deficits don't cause inflation or high interest rates or recessions (Brian Wesbury, "Deficits Don't Matter", The American Spectator, March 2004). Federal borrowing does not in fact "crowd out" private investment, however attractive the idea seems in theory.
My mind turned immediately to the Clinton years. Clinton and his apologists love to point to the three years of budget surpluses that ended his term (1999-2001). The point has been made before that the Clinton team can claim no wisdom in that regard, since right up to the day Treasury’s balance sheet went out of the red they were predicting overwhelming deficits as far as the eye could see. That was their justification for raising taxes.
Now their story is that Clinton raised taxes, gave us the best economy in history, and saved the country by producing surpluses. Then George Bush came in and cut taxes, deliberately causing a recession and corporate scandals. The way I remember it is that Clinton raised tax rates in the middle of a weak recovery, which stayed weak until the day after the 1994 elections; the day after the Republicans took over the House and the Senate, the stock market and the economy took off. The budget surpluses came at the end of the boom.
Let's pause a moment to look at where Clinton's budget surplus came from. Federal revenues increased in the later '90s. About two thirds would have occurred because of the rising GDP without Clinton’s tax changes, and about one third of the increase came from Clinton’s rate increases in the same booming economy. There is a third factor in changing the balance sheet--decreased spending. The only spending cuts Clinton made were in defense. In 2000, the budget surplus was the same as the cuts in defense spending. So in effect, Clinton "balanced" the budget by raising taxes--a known economic drag--and increasing spending to match the increasing revenues. The surplus came from defense cuts.
As I was saying, the budget surpluses came at the end of the boom. Now, I know that post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy of inference (though it is the fundamental postulate of science), but it is certain that propter hoc ergo post hoc, so we can be sure that the surpluses didn’t cause the boom. What came after--actually, in the middle of--the surpluses was the recession, which started on Clinton's watch, just as his "record stretch of economic growth" started during Bush I's term.
In fact, Clinton’s recession was probably caused less by anything he did than by the cost of heading off a Y2K computer disaster and the Federal Reserve’s attempts to deal with the Y2K uncertainties. But when you are sparring with the Clintonistas, you can twit them that the recession came after his surpluses (“massive year-after-year Keynsian drags on the economy”). They probably won’t know about the Fed, and if they do try to shift the blame from Bent Willie to the Fed, they also shift the blame from George Bush. They won’t like that in any case, so insist that they be consistent: If it’s Bush’s 2001 recession then it must be Bush’s 2001 surplus.
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2004-03-16
Eight ontological similarities of Islam and Marxism
Eight ontological similarities of Islam and Marxism- Both Marxism and Islam are based on the ravings of bitter narcissists, who borrowed key concepts from the Judeo-Christian tradition. If you like, Islam and Marxism are Christian heresies.
- Marxism and Islam claim their sacred texts are complete blueprints that conflate the public and private orders, and both create totalitarian states in order to realize the perfect society on earth.
- Both believe in the primacy of the Will over an objective moral law. For Marxist-Leninists, the Party can do no wrong, since it is acting to produce the perfect society. Muslims believe that God is bound by no laws: He can declare a thing good today and evil tomorrow. Man can only submit.
- Both came by most of their adherents through conquest, subjugation, and forced conversion. Both Marxists and Muslims look forward to an end time when their creed will be universally victorious and the righteous will slaughter the infidel.
- Islam and Marxism claim to encompass the whole truth of human nature and of all Nature. In practice, Islamic and Marxist societies are governed by hatred, lying, envy, irrationality, a paranoiac disconnect from reality, and all the disasters consequent to a flagrant disregard for objective truth.
- Just as Marxism claims to be the way to prosperity and progress for the poor, Islam promises peace and heaven for the faithful. In practice, both produce ignorance and human degradation.
- Just as Soviet strategic doctrine divided the world into the "liberated (i.e., Marxist) zone" and the "contested zone" (i.e., the Free World), Islam divides the world into two camps, dar al-salaam, the house of peace (i.e., Muslims), and dar al-harb, the house of war (i.e., non-Muslims, or infidels).
- Finally, Marxists can live prosperous and even productive lives in a free society, but their ideology requires them to present themselves as heroically alienated, "in opposition", or part of a "resistance movement". Likewise, Muslims can live personally exemplary lives in a society that gives short shrift to violence and irrationality, but it is abhorrent to all Islamic authorities that a Muslim should be subject to the rules of infidel society.
After 70 years of Cold War, the Marxist threat to freedom was ended without destroying all Marxists and Marxist enclaves. The West endured 700 years of Islamic jihad before decisively turning back Islam, but did not clear Islam from the non-European lands it had conquered.
Now, after a 450-year respite, Islam is resurgent. This time Islamic societies seem to be driven mad by the unavoidable observation that the Western infidel is happy, prosperous, and free, while Muslims live in fly-specked tyrannical dungheaps. No less than before, freedom must be defended and its enemies decisively defeated, but this time we must carry the war to them.
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2004-03-15
Kerry me back to old Bohemia
Kerry me back to old Bohemia
Posted on the American Dialect Society's listserv:
A recent issue of the German magazine Spiegel (1 March 2004, p. 109) tells how John Kerry's grandfather came to have the last name Kerry. The story probably appears in John Kerry's autobiography:
(translation): "In contrast [to the blueblood origin of the mother's side of the family], the Kerrys have a prosaic family tree. The grandfather of the little JFK [i.e., John Forbes Kerry, vs. President JFK] was actually named Fritz Kohn and was a Jew from Bohemia. Before his emigration in 1904, he looked over a map, selected a new name based on the Irish county Kerry and converted to Catholicism." Ah, fait' an' begorrah, but the name Fritz Kerry brings the mim'ries back behin' th' eyeballs. Sure, an' a fine broth of a boy he was, an' minny a day were the Fritzes and the Fitzes in and out o' one another's yards, stealing one another's cattle, as long as the sun did shine.
But why become Catholic, and then leave Bohemia. Or did Fritz convert and then have to leave? In any case, I'll bet it was a shock to arrive in Boston and find that being Irish Catholic was but small improvement on being Jewish. With a bit of luck and a better map, he'd have become Presbyterian and changed his name to Lowell. Another Jewish immigrant did that once, so the story goes, giving rise to the rhyme, This is the town of Boston,
home of the bean and the cod,
where the Cabots speak only to Lowells,
and the Lowells speak Yiddish, by God! The poster's name is Cohen. I want to be there when he addresses John F. "Band of Mongols" Kerry as "Cousin John" and gets the famous Kerry "Do you know who I am" treatment.
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2004-03-12
The liberal War on Terror
Michael J. Totten has another example of the fecklessnees of liberal prescriptions:
The greatest irony of the post-911 world is that so many Democrats hate the Bush Doctrine. Liberation, anti-proliferation, and nation-building are activist and liberal, not defensive and conservative. The perceived immorality of our actions may weigh heavily on their souls. But it's nothing compared to what we might have to face if our goal of limited war for democracy fails.
If the Middle East gets nukes before it gets freedom, it will be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to wage a war on liberal grounds. We'll be back where we were during the Cold War. The only difference is that the equation of Mutually Assured Destruction won't balance. Say what you will about the Communists. They did not want to martyr themselves to destroy us.
If terrorists detonate a portable nuke in a Western city, what's left of the Terror War will be nasty, brutish, and short. The West's so-far limited response will instantly become total and, in effect, genocidal. Any and all WMD-producing states will be considered targets for a unilateral nuclear counterattack, starting with capital cities. The UN will not be consulted. Millions could die in a day. Thanks to the Federalist for the tip.
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2004-03-10
I just have a dif-fer-ent phil...uh...intelligence
Misunderestimating Bush's intelligence
Let me run this by you: The Democrats are right. Bush isn't all that smart, in the sense of quick verbal analysis and spouting the latest shibboleths of untrammeled progressive thought, or untrammeled heartless Liberal thought, for that matter. He doesn't take his bearings from the chattering classes. But that isn't why he drives liberals so crazy.
Bush is very secure emotionally, and very perceptive and adept emotionally. He also has a healthy sense of his own failings and righteousness. Since leftist rhetoric operates at the level of emotions, in particular through equivocation and imputing guilt, Bush is neither easily manipulated or nor easily distracted. You'd think they would acknowledge his "different intelligence", but how much power would that get them?
Reporter: Mr. President, the Democrats are charging that your tax cuts have gone mostly to the rich, while half the population languishes below the median income level.
Bush: Our tax cut--tax rate cuts--have gone to folks at all income levels, and the people at the lowest incomes received proportionally the biggest changes. The tax rate cuts have helped stimulate economic growth, providing more opportunities for people to lift themselves above the median. . . what did you say?
In other words, Bush is the Republicans' Bill Clinton, except he isn't a sociopath.
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2004-03-09
J'Ack-ooze Ass
J'Ack-ooze AssJ'accuse Ass is an irregular department. It recognizes a public accusation, complaint, insinuation, alarm, or whining notable for its arrogance, irrelevance, spite, stridence, obtuseness, or mendacity.
The inaugural J'Accuse Ass is appropriately French-looking and horse-faced: Senator John F. "Band of Mongols" Kerry.
On 27 February, Senator Kerry was asked by the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle why he says he was misled into voting to authorize the President to go to war to remove Saddam Hussein. Kerry explained that he thought he was voting to bind Bush to a UN time table, to make it "harder to go to war".
Why did he say this when Bush had told the UN that its credibility as a peacekeeper depended on its enforcing the 16 Security Council resolutions requiring Saddam to disarm? Because the word among Washington insiders was that Bush didn't mean what he said, that he was only trying to placate the war hawks at the Pentagon and really wanted to go with the accommodationist follow-the-U.N. faction at State.
In other words, Kerry claims that a vote to attack is a vote to restrain an attack and that Bush misled Kerry by doing what he said he would do. Such ineffectual strategic subtlety is not what we want in a Commander in Chief, and perhaps explains why Kerry has gotten no legislation through the Senate.
Kerry isn't the only Democrat who thinks like this. Senator Jay Rockefeller's insists that Bush got us into Iraq by falsely claiming that Saddam posed an imminent threat. Well, yes, Rockefeller admits, Bush said just the opposite, that in an age of terrorism we can't afford to wait until a threat is imminent. But not saying that there is an imminent threat "is talking about the danger of an immediate attack . . . if the word imminent threat wasn't used, that was the predicate; that was the feeling that was given to the American people and to the Congress".
I've said it before: Liberals live in a different world and want to make the rest of us live there, too. To that end, they will believe whatever makes what they say "true". So when Bush says A and does A, when the Democrats want him to do B, they claim he was lying when he said A. And that's "true for them".
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2004-03-05
That's the way you do it
That's the way you do it
You've heard of the "controversy" about the new Bush/Cheney TV ads. "WTC survivors" are all over the press with complaints about the use of a couple of fleeting images of the post-collapse rescue efforts at the WTC. Well, see John Hawkin's item--no, make that scoop--at Right Wing News: 9/11 Family Members With Axes To Grind.
From the early reports you would think the families were all horrified by the Bush ads. It turns out that this is another instance of the malcontent-with-a fax-machine phenomenon. Five of the outraged have gone public with gripes against George Bush in the past couple of years, two work for a union that endorsed Kerry, and one of those two campaigned for Kerry. That's the way you dig behind the processed news, and I wish I had done it.
I have only two things to add to Hawkin's fine job. First, this is a typical PR tactic of the Left. The more trivial the complaint, and the more you make the offense one of taste and emotion while still implying that some moral stricture has been breached, the harder it is to make a defense, especially if you believe that facts and logic matter and humility is a virtue. One has to deconstruct the charges to show how silly they are, and that is tough in a TV sound-bite. I say silly advisedly. One of the outraged complained in Salon that Bush is "an action hero" who "when this country was under attack . . . was drinking milk and eating cookies with second graders". What did I say about facts and logic?
Second, Bush really came into his own with his leadership in response to Islamic terrorism, specifically when he grabbed a megaphone to express solidarity with the rescue workers a few days after the bombings. It really is fiendishly clever to try to claim exclusive use of that story and to hobble Bush's legitimate attempts to remind us of the strengths his record.
The report on tonight's ATC on NPR included opposing statements, some analysis of the denial-of-use ploy, and an inkling--nothing more--of the outrageds' less than pristine motives.
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2004-03-04
If Bush had been drinking on election night
On Wednesday, I heard JFKy's campaign manager say that they hadn't gotten to count all of Florida's votes in 2000. If you believe that, then maybe you'll believe this.
If Bush had been drinking on election night
In the hotel suite's parlor, Vice President Al Gore paced back and forth behind the sofa. "SON OF BITCH", he muttered monotonously. "SON OF A BITCH, SON OF A BITCH". He stopped and looked over the heads of his family and staff at a cluster of television sets. George Bush's lead in Florida had topped 50,000, and the networks and the New York Times had given Florida and the election to Bush. "Bush is tearing up the pea patch", boomed Dan Rather. "Smelling salts for all Democrats, please."
Gore felt in the pockets of his rumpled, relaxed-fit Dockers. They felt tighter than hot Spandex on a sandy beach. Damn. That Rather blather was starting to get to him.
"TIPPER", he said. "GIVE ME A CIGARETTE."
"But Al", she cried, "haven't you had enough? Look at your sweater." Gore brushed ashes from the soft, muted brown and green knit of his knubbly sweater. "What would Naomi say? And what about the Kyoto treaty?"
"TIPPER", he honked emphatically, "I DO NOT WANT TO FIGHT YOU FOR A LITTLE TOBACCO".
"Mr. Vice President!" Bill Daley interrupted softly but firmly. "I think you ought to call Governor Bush."
"DO YOU THINK SO, BILL?" Gore countered. "MAYBE THE NETWORKS WILL CHANGE THEIR MINDS AGAIN."
"I don't think they could be that wrong twice in one night", replied Daley.
"I SUPPOSE SO", said Gore. "YOU SET UP THE CALL WHILE I CHANGE."
The Vice President was standing in his shirttails, tying a soft red tie under the collar of a fresh white shirt when Daley walked in and handed him a cell phone. "They're ringing the governor's room now."
After a few rings, a man answered, "Y'ellow."
"THIS IS VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE", Gore began. "I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK TO GOVERNOR BUSH ..." The voice had not stopped. "Yellow", it sang. "Yellow roshe of Texshash, that Ah am go'n' ta see..."
"I WOULD LIKE TO. . . GOVERNOR BUSH? IS THAT YOU? THIS IS AL GORE."
"Yes, shir, Mr. Vishe President. I know why you're callin'. You couldn' wait."
"WELL", began the Vice President. He could feel his adenoids starting to control his timbre. "IT DID NOT SEEM TO ME THAT ANY DELAY WAS INDICATED. THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN."
"The votersh? The. Vo. Tersh. HELL!" said Bush. "Y' mean yor' lily-livered cheatin' liberal friends at the networks, you lyin', running-iron, dry hole heifer humper. Declaring you the winner in Florida before the polls closed. An' you can't even wait f' me to call you. You have no more hair on yor' ash than a bonfire in a coonskin cap. If it weren't for the memory of Davy Crockett, I'd have the Texash Air National Guard fly a training mission right up the Chattanooga Choo-choo."
"GOVERNOR, GOVERNOR, PLEASE" persisted Gore. "THERE IS NO NEED TO GET SNIPPY ABOUT IT."
"Shnippy...bippy...damn shkippy", chanted Bush slowly. "I'll bet you ushed to remin' th' teacher to give homework. We had a kid like you at An'over. A prissy little, tight-assed, pissant, goody-goody. We put a firecracker down his pet frog's throat. He looked like Tom Brokaw with frog omelet all over his face..."
Gore flinched under the impact of a flood of painful emotion: partly horrified sympathy for the many species of Ranidae mysteriously threatened by computer simulations of global warming, but mostly the memory of the fate of his beloved Skippy so long ago at Saint Alban's. His pain turned to indignation and anger as he heard the Texas Governor continuing.
"...Ah won' say anything yet. Jeb says the Florida votes are there. It's not over till the fat lady sings."
"LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, YOU... YOU ...LAME-BRAINED N-N-NOTHING", bellowed Gore. "YOUR YOUNGER BROTHER IS NOT THE CONTROLLING LEGAL AUTHORITY IN THIS MATTER. I WILL FIGHT...."
"He's the freakin' governor, you asshole", Bush interrupted. "And his daddy di'n't have to twist his arm to get him there."
The line went dead. Daley came in from the extension where he had been listening. "Wow", he said. "Bush was tighter than the lug nuts on a '57 Chevy." Gore nodded, but as he finished dressing, he couldn't help remarking how under stress Bush's voice had moved smoothly and comfortably down the spectrum from Andover toward his West Texas drawl. His native Foghorn Leghorn accent kept irrupting rudely through the brittle veneer of tight Eastern phonemes.
As Gore left the room to drive to War Memorial Plaza, Dan Rather was eerily declaring "If a frog had side pockets, he'd carry a hand gun".
At the plaza, campaign field director Michael Whouley met the motorcade. "It's turning around. It's turning around", he almost jabbered. "Florida is hotter than a three-alarm fire in downtown Hell. You can't concede. You're just tearing up the pea patch."
"BUT I HAVE ALREADY CALLED BUSH TO EXTEND MY CONGRATULATIONS", said Gore.
"You'll have to call him back and retract", said Daley.
A Bush aide answered this time and called the governor to the telephone. The Vice President heard an off-mike "Jes' a mo'". As he waited, he heard voices away from the hand set.
"'Al-and-Tipper' again, Laurie? How about some DWL-Deep 'W' Love?" There was a brief feminine chuckle, like Tipper used to make when Karenna brought home a bag of Tootsie Rolls at Halloween. Then a moment of rustling, then a brief silence broken first by a woman's umh, umh, umh, then by a baritone sing-song-mmm-mm, mmm-mm, mmm.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Vice President. Wha', wha', whew, what can I do for you?"
"GOVERNOR, SINCE I SPOKE TO YOU AN HOUR AGO, THERE HAS BEEN AN ALTERATION IN THE SITUATION", began Gore. "I BELIEVE THE CHANGE MAKES MY PREVIOUS STATEMENT INOPERATIVE. IT IS THEREFORE IMPERATIVE THAT I RETRACT IT."
"You mean t' tell me, Mr. Vishe President, you're conceding your demand f' my retraction?"
"NO, NO. I NEVER SAID THAT. WHAT I AM SAYING IS..."
"Well, are you flip-flopping, or denying, or not?"
Gore took a deep breath. "WHAT I AM SAYING IS, INASMUCH AS I AM RETRACTING..."
"You're flip-flopping and not flip-flopping. Is thish the same medication you ushed for the second debate?"
"I JUST WANT TO SAY THAT I AM NOT GOING TO CONCEDE THE ELECTION TO YOU."
"I'm not a lawyer, Mr. Vice President, but I don't think the Constitution requires me to be President to have your permission", said Bush. "Now, I may be hollerin' down a rain barrel, but I don't know whether to wind the watch or bark at the moon. Let's just leave it that we have different philosophies."
Gore listened to the hum of a broken connection.
"Al", said Daley, "Al, it's looking better all the time. People are complaining about the ballots in Florida, and we can say voting irregularities hurt us. Don't bet the trailer money yet, but I think you're sitting in the catbird seat."
Gore looked at him.
Skippy, he thought.
Maybe if Skippy had had a handgun.
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2004-03-03
"...you, sir, are no war hero"
"...you, sir, are no war hero"
Jay Bryant at Townhall.com reprints a letter from one of John Kerry's constituants, Glenn Lackey, a retired Army colonel and veteran of Vietnam (1968-69), Somalia, and the Gulf War. Lackey points out that Kerry spoke as an authority on conditions all over Vietnam after four months on a narrow section of river. Then he summarizes Kerry's slander:
I have children, and my children have children. They will, perhaps, stumble upon your words, much as one might stumble upon a pile of dog droppings. I do not relish the thought of having to explain that your "experiences" are either a bald-faced lie, or you belong to that less-than-1% of Viet Nam veterans who committed war crimes/atrocities.
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JFKy as Treebeard
JFKy as Treebeard
Insults Unpunished is sponsoring a PhotoShop contest on John Kerry's resemblance to Treebeard (sort of unfair to Treebeard; he didn't come back from destroying Saruman's fortress to denounce his fellow Ents for war crimes).
For a sample entry, see Fotoslop.
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2004-03-02
In California, the state separates the Church from, uh, itself
In California, the state separates the Church from, uh, itself
2. Marxism and Islam claim their sacred text is a complete blueprint that conflates the public and private orders, and both create totalitarian states in order to realize the perfect society on earth. --WW IV: Seven ontological similarities between Islam and Marxism
California Supreme Court has ruled 6-1 that Catholic Charities must offer its employees prescription contraception as part of their health insurance plan. This decision highlights just about everything that is wrong with this society, except maybe broadcast/cable TV and rap music.
The key point of the ruling is that Catholic Charities is "not a religious employer", which would make it exempt from state requirements for employer insurance plans. Instead, as AP reported , CC is secular
because it offers such secular services as counseling, low-income housing and immigration services to people of all faiths, without directly preaching Catholic values. . . .
In fact, Justice Kathryn Werdegar wrote that a "significant majority" of the people served by the charity are not Catholic. The court also noted that the charity employs workers of differing religions.
The ACLU "applauded the ruling and called it 'a great victory for California women and reproductive freedom'". The ACLU's version of the First Amendment separates church and state in only one direction. The state must be religion-free even to the point of hostility to religion, but it can intrude on church affairs to define the social scope of the church's mission. When a church creates an agency to put its teachings into practice without explicit "God talk", then it's being insufficiently religious. If it does preach and proselytize (crucifixes on the wall) then it cannot act with the state in pursuit of a common goal.
You would think that if the welfare-statists really had helping people foremost in mind, they would welcome strong and resourceful partners, and even leave the field to them when possible. But no. The welfare-statists are not motivated by charity. They are ideologues, Marxist at root, and their first interest is to subdue any competing source of righteousness and moral guidance.
The statists consider all social welfare--which is to say all provision of benefits that they can manipulate to bring us under their control--to be exclusively a state prerogative. They resist bitterly and lethally any intrusion into that sphere by independent, private agents. This decision demonstrates that behind the soft, sentimental face of the welfare state is the socialist longing for the police state: the police powers collect the taxes and the police keep any free competition under control.
The case also demonstrates that socialism is a substitute religion, and a particularly nasty, totalist kind of religion, that makes no allowance for free will. Like Islam, socialists claim their sacred texts are a complete blueprint for living. They make no distinction between the public and private orders, and they both create totalitarian states in the process of affirming their own righteousness. No wonder liberals are always going on about how rigid and authoritarian and oppressive the Church is. They always clear their consciences by projecting their guilt upon their opponents.
As my sister, the recovering lawyer, says, a complicating factor "with Catholic Charities is that they take Caesar's coin big time". CC might not survive cutting the juncture with government funding; certainly it would not be Catholic Charities as we know it.
But there is another systemic imbecility evident here, namely, employer health insurance (which is really not insurance but prepaid medical services). Catholic Charities could cut this Gordian knot with advantages all around. It could take the money it spends on premiums and give its employees a raise&emdash;a big raise. Then it could offer medical savings accounts and sponsor group catastrophic insurance with a large deductible option.
This course would give employees control of their health care dollars and remove one of the hooks the statists like to plant in private sector institutions.
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2004-03-01
The Sophistical Serpent
The Sophistical Serpent
I doubt that politics in our present age in the US is uniquely nasty. The Greeks had a word for sophistry because they had sophists, and before that the people who composed Genesis 3:1-5 made the Serpent a sophist, who changes the issue from what did God command to what was God's motivation.
But to heck with taking the long view. It isn't just that activists and zealots will say anything to gain the moral high ground. Ordinary leftists don't seem to live in the same world I do.
The 26 Feb WSJ (p. A11) printed two letters that accused the Journal and its writers of inconsistency and thick-headedness, if not outright dishonesty. These letters show why our political discourse seems so rancorous and ineffectual.
First, Mike Dalen, the noted Public Censor of Birmingham, lets the Journal know that he is keeping track of their self-serving field switching:
In response to Daniel Henninger's Feb. 20 Wonder Land: "Why Do Democrats Call George Bush a Liar?":
I don't recall a similar editorial when The Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Republicans were dismantling and demolishing President Clinton. Why now and not then?
What Bill Clinton did was never very much in doubt, nor that he was lying about it. The whole thing ballooned because he persisted in his lies. Leave aside all the money scandals. He could have declined to contest Paula Jones' sexual harassment complaint and settled out of court for $80,000 instead of ten times as much. If he had, he would never have had to perjure himself regarding Monica.
Henninger's op-ed column is on to something else. He scolds the Democrats for endangering the Republic by insisting that Bush lied even as headlines show that he has been right about Iraq. But Dalen is not to be stopped. By cleverly comparing apples to oranges, he shows that the Journal has been inconsistent.
A few inches away on the same page, Mr. Howard Dupuis indulges his avocation as a part-time journalism professor by calling the Journal's editors to order on the fundamentals of their craft:
In reaction to your Feb. 20 editorial "The Novak Exception": You've missed the point: Plenty of journalists know many things-the identities of CIA agents, for example-that they don't print. In the extreme, no reporter would write a story about troop movements during a war. This is basic, obvious stuff to most folk, not some conservative-vs.-liberal deal. Bob Novak's guilt lies in violating that fundamental Journalism 101 teaching.
Serious stuff, except that, as the editorial pointed out, Novak had checked with the CIA and had been told that naming Valerie Plame as a CIA employee was not a problem. Mr. Dupuis must have missed that point.
In both these letters, we see leftists using the same rhetorical tactic. Henninger and the editorial make factual statements that need to be addressed and disproved. But our perspicacious pairing disdains the humdrum marshalling of evidence to challenge those statements: Clinton lied, Iraq was trying to build WMD, and Novak's revelation was scarcely a breach of security. Instead, they charge that the Journal is inconsistent and that Novak violated journalistic ethics, charges that would make sense only if they had established a different version of the facts.
It would be easy to lay this rush to judgment to distracting tactics, or perhaps just to inadvertent circular reasoning. The truth may be sadder. Look at Dalen's reference to "dismantling and demolishing President Clinton". Hunh? It is as though they don't just brush aside facts, but are in a world where the facts are different.
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