Big gap...

Dana Milbank and Alan Cooperman write in the Washington Post:

...What strategists call the "religion gap" between Democrats and Republicans may be widening, despite efforts by Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and other prominent Democrats to talk about their faith and the religious underpinning of their positions.
Of course it's widening. Because people are starting to focus on the issue, to look at it. Dems have been coasting for decades on the momentum left over from when they were Americans. Ordinary people have been assuming that the lunatic fringe is just a fringe, and that those in charge were normal. Reality is starting to penetrate.
A Pew Research Center poll released yesterday found that 29 percent of the public sees the Democratic Party as "generally friendly" toward religion, down from 40 percent a year ago and 42 percent in 2003. A 55 percent majority continues to see the GOP as friendly toward religion, according to the poll.
Well, the Dems are NOT friendly toward religion. The instant loathing of Judge Roberts among "activists" and writers was a good example. (And his having a traditional family also didn't sit well with "Progressives." Nice bunch.)
Scott Keeter, Pew's director of survey research, said it appears that during the 2004 presidential race, Republicans succeeded in using Sen. John F. Kerry's support for abortion rights to raise doubts about the sincerity of the Democratic nominee's Catholic faith.
Was there a single person who fell for Kerry's obviously insincere "faith?" There couldn't have been many.
Since then, Keeter said, the charge that Democrats are anti-religious has been repeated in debates over judicial nominees, public displays of the Ten Commandments and the teaching of evolution in public schools. "My own sense is that the Democrats haven't forged a coherent response, and it's a hard charge to rebut individually, because if you start making a show of your personal piety, it can easily backfire," he said.
People of faith don't "make a show of their personal piety." It just shines through.
Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg has another explanation: "The efforts that Democrats have made to talk about faith and to present a different image is still very much an insider effort in Washington. They haven't taken it to the nation yet," she said.
Because that would be almost impossible. They will have to display their "faith" with a nudge and a wink, so the "activists" will know they are play-acting. Like Al Gore talking about what his 'faith tradition" believes. Lefties know what he means, but ordinary Americans can read between the lines too.
These trends work out over decades and generations. Dems won't close the "gap" anytime soon.

Devastation

I don't have much to say about the damage from Katrina, it's just overwhelming. As a cabinetmaker, I keep thinking about the damage to people's houses from sitting underwater for weeks...or months. Every building, every home is going to be a heart-breaking disaster-area...

Capitalist swine...

You know that picture of "Che?" The one that forms such a large part of the intellectual underpinnings of Left-wing thought?

Well, my son Rob sent this link, and said it sent his Irony Meter off the scale.

Apparently the Guevara family is mounting a world-wide legal campaign to gain control of the image, and the revenues thereof...(which are huge)

Media scum...

I borrowed this chart from Jim Miller on Politics.

Point is, the Media Wing of the Democrat Party not only fails to report good news from the War on Terror, they actively work to create the bad news. When they gleefully report the new enlistments are running below target ("Our military is imploding, Bush's fault") they don't mention that they are bending every effort to create that problem. One way: In olden times, America's heros were held up to young people as models...as heroes!

We have as many heroes now as then, but the lefty worms won't tell people their stories.

Who's Paul Smith? Can you tell me? It's a name we all should know......

Miller took the data from the September issue of the American Enterprise magazine, and they got it from a Lexis/Nexis search.

Cropped...

Just take a look at this, to see how images in the news are "improved," so they tell the desired story....

Thanks to Patum Peperium.

First time tragedy, second time farce...

Third time Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton..

Our plan: "We win, they lose"

Patrick Ruffini argues that the forces of freedom need to re-frame their arguments on Iraq. We should be speaking with more confidence and pride, asserting more strongly that our cause is right, and that we are winning.

....This narrative served us well for a time, playing into widely held suspicions of media bias, but now something different is called for.

A drumbeat of “steady progress” lacks a certain drama – a driving impulse – and falls short in telling the story of the world’s most dramatic place. It does not place the insurgency in its proper context, and arguably does not have very much to say about the violence at all. So long as the media, cooped up in the fifth floor of the Palestine Hotel, makes casualties their dominant frame, it is essential that they be addressed as part of a broader narrative about Iraq.

To the extent that the terrorist insurgency is addressed by our side, it is usually in the context of fearful, beleaguered Iraqis as the victims. Americans are urged not to lose heart -- because that’s what the terrorists would want. Unwittingly, we are training ourselves to be victims in need of therapy, to persevere through this unpleasantness just a little bit longer.

Hell, no. We refuse to be the victims. We refuse to even discuss the possibility that any terrorist thug could throw us off course. If asked for the umpteenth time to rearticulate a plan for Iraq, it needs to be Ronald Reagan’s “We win, they lose.”...

....Self-confidence like this doesn’t emerge in a vacuum; it springs from a narrative that is nourished over time.

This narrative is nothing new: we had it for a while in the spring, and now it’s time to get it back. It’s simple: everything – EVERYTHING – pivots around the Iraqi woman with purple ink-stained finger, or the Revolution babes in Lebanon, or the jailed democracy protesters in Egypt. That’s why we are being viciously attacked. That’s the narrative. That’s the first three quarters of the policy speech. It’s not that we shouldn’t be talking about progress on the ground. It’s that there's a better way to talk about progress than as a whiny alternative universe the media won't cover. Use the progress to explain the violence....

The progress does explain the violence. The violent reactions of the both terrorists and the phony "anti-war" movement. If Iraq and Afghanistan and Lebanon become free and democratic and prosperous, then it becomes all too obvious that neither of those groups has anything positive to offer the world. Only despair and hatred.

We are not just "doing OK." We do not have to be apologetic. We have already achieved prodigies. Miracles. We have changed the world, and even if all our efforts were to collapse right now, the forces of despotism will never recover their former strength. The world has seen millions of Iraqis holding up purple-stained fingers, and the nihilism of the Cindy Sheehans can never undo that.

We are the forces of good. They are the forces of evil. We are winning. And they have already lost.

And the Iraqis are not cowering hapless victims. They are proud people building a nation. And they will probably value democracy far more than, say, the Germans or the Japanese, who never had to fight for it.

Except...

From a letter to OpinionJournal:

Iraq is just like Vietnam except: We occupy Hanoi. We've captured Ho Chi Minh.
The North Vietnamese have just held a free and democratic election. The North Vietnamese are working on a new constitution. Yes, Iraq is just like Vietnam.

(Thanks to Betsy Newmark)

Fringe madness....

AJ Strata has a good post on the "protesters" at Walter Reed Hospital, Taunting Wounded Heros.

...These soldiers have been injured, some seriously, and these left wing ego maniacs have to go taunt them? Why - to make them feel better? To help them recooperate sooner? To give them emotional support?

The left has always had an incredible cruel streak in them, their desire to be right is so strong they have never really cared who they trampled or hurt along the way. Cindy Sheehan has made her son out to be such an idiot to follow George Bush into battle the poor guy’s reputation as a man of honor, who paid the ultimate sacrifice, is all but gone. For her media addiction she has ruined the memory of her son. So trampling a stranger is no big leap for the left...

...Finally, since the democrats bred this beast of fringe madness, I now call on them to call off these protests. Where are you Senator Clinton? Why are you not supporting our troops now? Where are you Senator Reid? This is not the war in Iraq, this is supporting the troops here at home. Where are you Howard Dean? You say democrats are here to support the troops - get down to Walter Reid and start supporting them...

I call on them too. but I don't expect much from them.

I call on decent people of the "anti-war" left, if there are any, to repudiate this abomination, put a stop to it. You know who you are. The ones who say, "Support Our Troops, Bring Them Home." These guys are home, and your colleagues are taunting wounded people with fake coffins. That's sick! Are you so sunk in lefty craziness that you can't see that? Are you going to start spitting on our soldiers next?

"against all forms of violence...except"

Something I find fascinating (and sickening) is how the "anti-war" left is forced, by the logic of their situation, to more and more become apologists for the terrorists.

They try to claim they are "pacifists," but then there's the awkward problem that they never hold any of those candlelight vigil things when some killer blows up a crowd of children in Iraq. People notice that. Same for the claim to be "anti-war." After a while people notice that it's only American or Israeli wars they get protested. Ditto for posturing as superior moral beings who just can't support a war that was based on supposed lies. The world asks, "If you are so goddam moral, how come you have no qualms about helping Ba'athist torturers back into power? And how come you have no enthusiasm for letting Iraqis vote for their own future?

So they are forced to say...well, here are the words of Jodie Evans, of Code Pink:

...“We must begin by really standing with the Iraqi people and their right to resist. I can remain myself against all forms of violence, and yet I cannot judge what someone has to do when pushed to the wall to protect all they love. What does the Iraqi resistance have to lose? They are fighting for their country, to protect their families and to preserve all they love..."

"...against all forms of violence, and yet... " Remember that sentence, you will be hearing more like it. And of course, Cindy Sheehan calls the terrorists "freedom fighters."

It was the same during the Vietnam War, where the "anti-war" protesters were forced to pretend that North Vietnamese regulars with tanks and heavy artillery were "guerilla fighters" waging "people's war." Those anti-war frauds were not about to protest attacks by communists, no matter how huge and bloody. Nor did they utter a single peep when Vietnam and China later fought a war with each other.

Same with Israel. To justify their anti-semitism lefties have to pretend that monsters who train little children to be murder-bombers (while they themselves die in Parisian luxury) are "freedom fighters" waging a struggle against a "nazi Israel." They can't acknowledge that Arab countries have treated the Palestinians a thousand times worse than Israel has, because they have no intention of criticizing anyone who's not Jewish.

The quote, by the way, is taken from a great post by John Byrnes, about how loathsome and creepy it is for Code Pink to be directing protests against our wounded soldiers. Normal people wouls say that Crawford and the President are fair game, but harassing people in the hospital is just sick sick sick.

#190: A Grudging Correction from the streets of Qum

KRUGMAN TRUTH SQUAD

Paul Krugman had to make an embarrassing correction of his column Don’t Prettify Our History (08/22/05) concerning the 2000 election in Florida and the subsequent unofficial recounts. Anyone who followed that election even casually could see this one coming from a mile away. The Times public editor must have been overwhelmed by popular objections.

However, as important as Krugman fact checking is (we do it ourselves when he cites the research of others), in this case it misses a much larger point. It is not so much about his “lying” as it is about the demented state of mind that leads him and other Democrats to say such preposterous things about that election. In a word, they are crazed!

Think about it. From the halls of academia to the corridors of leading businesses and law firms there are grieving liberals whose career dreams were shattered by the Gore defeat. The narrowness of the election makes it hurt all the more. They simply cannot get past it and the outpouring of woulda, coulda shouldas takes many forms including distorting the facts of the recounts. They blame the ballots, they blame the machines, they blame Katherine Harris, they blame Gore himself and even themselves. When we think of self-flagellation we normally picture Iranian Shiites marching in the streets of Qum whipping themselves about the head and shoulders. But as Krugman’s column illustrates the Democrats have a trip going all their own. And it is self-destructive.

That of course is good news. They will never win the White House until they stop whining and get over Florida in 2000. Happily, they show no signs of doing that. To slightly restate the refrain of Brando’s Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront “They coulda been contendas.”

[The Truth Squad is a group of economists who have long marveled at the writings of Paul Krugman. The Squad Reports are synopses of their discussions. ]

#189: But we have the stats

KRUGMAN TRUTH SQUAD

Summer of Our Discontent (08/26/05) is another egregious example of Paul Krugman’s hell-bent partisanship and disregard for facts. His mantra for the last few years has been that economic growth in the U.S. is disappointing and that post-recovery job growth has been slow. But he has been totally wrong about GDP growth and now that jobs are growing nicely also, he has switched to wages:

“American families don't care about G.D.P. They care about whether jobs are available, how much those jobs pay and how that pay compares with the cost of living. And recent G.D.P. growth has failed to produce exceptional gains in employment, while wages for most workers haven't kept up with inflation."

Oops. Wrong again. As the following Bureau of Labor Statistics table makes clear, wages are more than keeping up with inflation in all sectors of the economy as of the 1st quarter of 2005. The only possibilities for explaining Krugman’s column are that he doesn’t know any of this (incompetence) or that he is a flat out liar. We vote for the former. He is too ideologically hidebound to bother with facts anymore.

[The Truth Squad is a group of economists who have long marveled at the writings of Paul Krugman. The Squad Reports are synopses of their discussions. ]

Body armor...

Glenn Reynolds mentioned this article by Jack Kelly in Jewish World Review. It's worth reading.

The gist: The Army developed a new component for their body armor. This was done pro-actively; our enemies do not yet use ammo that can defeat the older armor. It was done was great speed, by cutting red-tape. The Army's director of materiel told exactly that to the NYT.

So how did the NYT story read?

..."For the second time since the Iraq war began, the Pentagon is struggling to replace body armor that is failing to protect American troops from the most lethal attacks of insurgents.

"The ceramic plates in vests worn by most personnel cannot withstand certain munitions the insurgents use. But more than a year after military officials initiated an effort to replace the armor with thicker, more resistant plates, tens of thousands of soldiers are still without the stronger protection because of a string of delays in the Pentagon's procurement system."...

You know, they say that the most effective polemical writing avoids invective and name-calling, and just lets the facts speak for themselves. I think that's true. But Random Jottings isn't an important blog, and I'm not going to change the world. So I might as well say what I feel.

Most of the people in the Gasping Media and the "anti-war" left are LIARS. They hate America, and they want us to lose. They are effectively on the other side, although I think they mainly want the world to go back to the Vietnam Era, when they felt like they were something special.

This gross lie will get repeated. Trolls will be dropping it into blog comments for years, as if it were fact. The lie will be used to discourage America, and to undermine support for our military. And it will give America-haters an excuse to pretend to be concerned for our troops, (without EVER actually doing anything to help them).

And then, if we have to fight future wars because the WoT ended in retreat and confusion, why, they will claim it's Bush's fault! If other terror-supporting states are left intact because the political cost of action is too high, why it's Bush's fault! If some future Saddam is left in power because of lefty protests, why, it's Bush's fault.

Well, bullshit. What the fake anti-war activists and the fake pacifists are doing is trying to create future wars. Which will probably be more bloody and ugly than this one. They are murderers. Warmongers. The true peace party is led by George W Bush, Tony Blair, and John Howard.

Back down to earth...

Charlene and I both noticed this paragraph in Edward Whelan's Bench Memos blog at NRO. It was written by Judge Roberts...

...“It is argued, however, that divesting the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over a particular class of cases would undermine the constitutional role of the Court as the ultimate arbiter of constitutional questions. The Constitution, however, does not accord such a role to the Court. The authority of the Court to interpret the Constitution derives from the necessity of its doing so in the course of discharging its judicial responsibility to decide those cases and controversies properly presented to it. [Lengthy quotation from Marbury.] If the necessity of interpreting the Constitution is removed, as it would be if the Court were divested of jurisdiction, the basis for the Court’s role as final arbiter of the Constitution is removed.”...

This really brings the judicial branch back down to the realm of the sensible and sane. Judges decide cases. If there are no cases, then judges have nothing to do.

The Supreme court, and other courts, do not "interpret the Constitution." They decide cases. If Congress passed a Bill of Attainder against me, and locked me up for web-logical turpitude, the Supreme Court could say or do nothing about even so obviously unconstitutional a law...unless a case was brought before them.

cringe-inducing...

One of the things that makes me want to sink through the floor is when I see members of my generation, the "Baby Boomers," who try to pretend that they are still in the 60's. Graying arthritic people still wearing long hair, jeans, frumpy hippy-dresses...it's so pathetic; I want to slink away and say "I'm not part of this, I'm older, or younger! I have no connection with people who still smoke pot and listen to Crosby, Stills and Nash."

It seems to clear to me that part of the problem is what I theorized about in my Raindrop Theory. If you don't have an underlying political and social philosophy, you can't adapt to new things and new conditions. You have no compass. The endless Vietnam comparisons just reveal people desperate to go back to when the world seemed to make sense to them. Sheehan and the others are apparently now calling the terrorists and Ba'athists "freedom fighters." How cretinous can you be? How utterly sick. And, as usual, being "anti-war" just means being anti-American war. The "freedom fighters" and Viet Cong and Palestinians can slaughter and torture as many people as they like, without a peep of protest from the hypocrites who claim to be anti-war.

And now we have old Joan Baez joining the lefty appeasers in Crawford, and apparently still singing those same stupid songs. "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" sounded profound when I was about 15. But I grew up.

And how does that song go? "Where have all the graveyards gone?" Well, graveyards we got. Graveyards for hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Only thing is, this time Baez and Sheehan and all the fake-pacifists are FOR these graveyards. They are on the side of the murderers.

Answer to prayers...

From a column by Katherine Kersten in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a heartwarming story about Americans helping Iraqi Christians...

Pastor Ghassan Thomas was overjoyed on April 9, 2003, when coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein. For four years, in the face of relentless persecution, he had operated an underground Christian church of about 50 members in the heart of Baghdad.

Saddam's police had tortured him repeatedly, Thomas says -- beating him, suspending him from a ceiling fan and attaching electrodes to his tongue.

Though Saddam's fall brought an end to official persecution, it also brought challenges. The living quarters where Thomas' fledgling flock had worshipped couldn't accommodate his swelling congregation, and he lacked resources to address their daunting needs.
As his frustration mounted, Thomas says, "I prayed to God for a sister church to stand with me and help me."
The answer to Thomas' prayers came from half a world away: Eden Prairie, Minn....

cool numbers....

Ralph Peters in the Ny Post (Thanks to InstaPundit)

...Remember last spring, when the Army's recruitment efforts fell short for a few months? The media's glee would have made you confuse the New York Times and Air America.

When the Army attempted to explain that enlistments are cyclical and numbers dip at certain times of the year, the media ignored it. All that mattered was the wonderful news that the Army couldn't find enough soldiers. We were warned, in oh-so-solemn tones, that our military was headed for a train wreck.

Now, as the fiscal year nears an end, the Army's numbers look great. Especially in combat units and Iraq, soldiers are re-enlisting at record levels. And you don't hear a whisper about it from the "mainstream media."

Let's look at the numbers, which offer a different picture of patriotism than the editorial pages do...

[the numbers are worth reading].

I've read so many times recently that our military is strained/stretched/broken...and just generally miserable and decrepit. One expects stupid rubbish from the Gasping Media, but the bloggers, if they are real bloggers, ought to be posting some corrections. I won't hold my breath.

It's certainly pleasant to see their hate-America hopes dashed. Nyahh nyahhh nyahhh!

Update: Phil Carter is saying the numbers don't really add up to meeting recruiting goals for the year. So I may be the one who has to make a correction. On the other hand, my feelings about those whose cheeks glow and eyes light up whenever America has problems--those will not need updates. I will continue to despise them.

That's what they DON'T want...

I saw this line in an article by Ron Brownstein in the LAT [Thanks to Orrin]

...But Sheehan will have done the nation a service if she inspires, or shames, both parties to resume debate over the direction of the Iraq war...

But a debate is what the Sheehan-ites DON'T want. (In fact it's funny to imagine the pickle they would be in if there really were to be some sort of formal debate, and moveon.org and the rest were informed they had to have their debaters ready for Prime Time next Wednesday!)

If there were serious debate, it would turn out like 2002. Remember summer of 2002, when Dem congressional leaders kept saying that we need to have a "national debate" on Iraq? And then they were flummoxed when Bush requested a resolution from Congress authorizing an invasion?

If you are going to debate, you have to have a position to advance, you have to be for something. And you have to not only attack your opponent's position, but defend your own. They can't do that, they have no position, no plan. They are empty inside.

What they want is for the forces of freedom to lose confidence, to become confused and abashed, and to give up the fight. What they want is VIETNAM.

They want red-state America to slink away in confusion and doubt, and the War on Terror to sort of fizzle-out in disgust, so the left never has to stand trial for the people they would be destroying. Just like Vietnam. Teddy Kennedy and John Kerry are mass murderers, who helped condemn millions to death, imprisonment and communist tyranny. But they never had to accept responsibility. Because there was no debate. The war was won militarily, and then lost amidst confusion and doubt.

Ripped-off...

Thinking a little more about the last post, I predict that Cindy Sheehan is going to be a lot less of a jackpot for Dems than they think. And that's because almost everyone has been a victim of that sort of emotional blackmail sometime in their lives. Everyone of us has had some friend or relative in a crisis, and bent over backwards to accommodate them, to help them, to soothe them, to agree with their views.......and later felt like we were a victim of extortion.

As a tiny example, I once, years ago, wrote a (polite) e-mail disagreeing with another blogger. I noticed she had written a post two weeks previous saying her mother had died. But she hadn't stopped blogging, not at all; she was dishing out criticism by the scoopful. (I don't remember what, but harsh. Evil bagel-munching Neocons working for Oilyburton, or some such.) So I felt free to make my opinion known. What did I get for a reply? "Can't you read! My mother just died! How dare you harass me! Go away!"

Of course I slunk away, but I knew full well I'd been ripped off. (And knew that my point was true. If she had had any substantive rebuttal to make, she would have made it.)

I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with Sheehan (she does not poll very well) but they don't know quite why. But the longer they are exposed to her the more likely they are to remember somebody who had to be coddled during some crisis, and agreed with. And they will remember how it left them with a new appreciation of the bad old days, when people had stiff upper lips, and bit on bullets, and thought about the feelings of others even while on their death-beds.

"like robbers leaving a bank with a hostage"

Noemie Emery has a great article in the Weekly Standard, on how the Dems are using grief as a political weapon...

...Then Wellstone's friend and campaign treasurer took the stage to address by name Wellstone's Republican friends in the House and the Senate and beg them to "honor" the fallen man by helping Mondale win the race: "We can redeem the sacrifice of his life, if you help us win this election," he said.

In translation, this is the unspoken theme of grief-centered politics: We are suffering, so you owe it to us to give us what we ask for. This is the claim of Cindy Sheehan and the Jersey Girls, and it carries with it an implied accusation: If you don't do what we ask you, you don't care that our loved one is dead. But no one had ever heard it stated so baldly or bluntly as at the Wellstone service, and the bluntness repelled...

...Political cut and thrust does not go well with the etiquette of bereavement, which tends to short-circuit all argument, which of course is the point. It inhibits argument, makes response awkward, and sometimes can stop it completely, putting an opponent in the position of Norm Coleman before the Wellstone Memorial fracas, in which Democrats were free to seek votes based on sentiment, while anything Coleman tried to say about Wellstone's replacement was called an insult to the dead. People who put mourners up front on policy issues are like robbers leaving a bank with a hostage between themselves and police fire. To do this on purpose, to drive an agenda, is beneath all contempt...

Leftists can't defend their position with facts and logic, so they try to get into a place where they can say, "If you criticize us, you are a heartless brute." We've really been getting it with Sheehan, with all sorts of conservative bloggers pussyfooting around and writing: "of course we must sympathize with her pain, her grief, her loss, blah blah blah. BUT we must interject a tiny word of criticism..." Pfui. I blow a kiss to Andrea, who isn't buying that load of manure.

Honest people, if they are going to debate in the public arena, don't hide behind emotional blackmail, or wear grief or loss as if they confer some special legitimacy. They want their ideas to stand on their merits. And if the lefties who are wearing Cindy like a badge were honest, they would send sob-sister off to the Oprah show, and debate with logic and facts. Also, honest people, if they find themselves in a position where they can't be criticized (perhaps because they are bereaved) don't criticize others. It's like hitting someone who can't hit back. It's cowardly and despicable.

Doug TenNapel put it more simply: Cindy is like the wife who cries to win an argument...and while that works in the privacy of my home, it doesn't in a national debate for our collective security.

Cargo Cult...

Stephen Spruiell points to a good quote from Christopher Hitchins on MSNBC's Hardball:

...Christopher, do you think that this represents—or she [Cindy Sheehan] represents some sort of tipping point in public opinion in America?

HITCHENS: Certainly not. She has, just today, lied about a statement that she made several times before to the effect that her son was killed in a war run by a secret Jewish cabal within the administration. She now says she didn‘t make that statement. She did make that statement. So as well as being an hysterical paranoid ideologist, or at least being manipulated by people who are, turned this into camp fruitbag and nutbag, she has decided not to have the courage or maybe the cowardice of her conviction. She now says she didn‘t make a statement that she definitely did.

FINEMAN: I think, Christopher.

HITCHENS: And she is also inviting a terrific riposte. What if we were to say, very well, the conduct of this war will depend on an opinion poll which we‘ll take of relatives of the fallen in Iraq, only they can decide, only they have the authority. She would lose...

To the poor goops who think Sheehan has "moral authority" (but would sneer at the other 2,000 or so grieving mothers if they were ever so tacky as to hire flacks and become celebrity war-supporters, or America-supporters) any lie is acceptable as long as it is for the cause. Except there is no cause.

I might have some sympathy if there were anything positive or noble that the Sheehan types were FOR. Any better plan, any hopeful scheme or dream. If there was anything they were willing to fight FOR. But they are only negative. Only AGAINST. They are empty.

They sport some rags of leftist rhetoric, but even that is a sham. There's no revolution planned, no bright future of scientific socialism. The leftists of the past one could admire for their disciplined quest for a better world, even though you knew they were totally wrong. But today's "anti-war" left is a kind of pathetic cargo cult, re-enacting empty Marxian rituals.

Sheehan will soon be forgotten. A fawning media can make her a temporary celeb, but she can't go beyond her "15 minutes." Why? Because, as the saying goes, you can't beat somebody with nobody.

An old punning poem...

At a tavern one night,
Messrs More, Strange, and Wright
Met to drink and their good thoughts exchange.
Says More, "Of us three,
The whole will agree,
There's only one knave, and that's Strange."

"Yes," says Strange, rather sore,
"I'm sure there's one More,
A most terrible knave, and a bite,
Who cheated his mother,
His sister, and brother."
"Oh yes," replied More, "that is Wright."'

blood-suckers...

David Frum writes,

...After the experience of the 1990s, few people retain an illusions about the likely character of any Palestinian state. The Palestinian leadership is corrupt through and through. The only effective opposition to that leadership is violent and extremist. Palestinian public opinion utterly rejects coexistence with Israel. A Palestinian state, whatever its borders, will wage terror war against Israel – and give sanctuary to Islamic extremists from around the world. It will murder Israelis and threaten the security of Europeans and Americans....

...In Charles Dickens’ novel David Copperfield there is a character who answers every request with a sigh: Ah, if it were up to him, he would of course say “yes” with pleasure – but his partner, Mr. Jorrocks,* is so very difficult ….. In just such a way, European and American political leaders favor a “peace process” that moves the Palestinians ever closer to statehood, without ever quite reaching it; a process that positions the Israelis as the Mr. Jorrocks of the world.

Ariel Sharon has decided to put an end to this play.

Sounds likely to me. "World leaders" don't really want the Palestinians to have a state, because that will quickly reveal the dishonesty of the world's favorite lie--that the twisted evil nature of the of the Palestinians is all the fault of Israel. And the so-called leaders of the Palestinians don't want a state either. Without it they can be thugs and hoodlums, plunder and destroy their own people, and get a free pass--it's all the fault of the Jews! But if they have a state they will have to actually lead, or be revealed as the blood-suckers they are.

And Western leftists and "liberals" don't want a Palestinian state, which is why they are so incensed about the "wall." As things are now they get a double treat. They can indulge their sick souls in endless orgies of Jew-bashing, and then congratulate themselves for "helping the oppressed."

Sharon wants to force the Palestinians to have their state. And then, you see, since the Palestinians' problems are all caused by evil Jews, those problems will all go away. Right?

By the shores of Gits-i-mo, where the tropic breezes blow....

Natalie writes, sensibly...

...I do not think it is unduly ethnocentric to think that anti-western terrorism has flourished because the west condoned and flattered terrorists. It is true that the motivation in the foreground of the terrorist's mind is more likely to be something written by a radical Egyptian preacher in 1930 rather than by a radical Californian academic in 1970. However their own words supply evidence that terrorists and terrorist-sympathisers spend plenty of time looking over their shoulders to see what the West thinks of them.

They curse themselves for doing it. The asymmetry between how interested they are in us compared to how interested we are in them is further proof of the West's dominance, and part of what makes them burn. But they do it just the same.

What we say probably does not supply the most important part of the terrorists' motivation - but its effect is not negligible, and it is the part that we can change.

Change [I write, not sensibly or seriously]? Do we get to send some of those "radical academics" on all-expenses-paid vacations where the sweet Caribbean breezes will caress their downy cheeks? Hmm? Yes? NO. Oh well, a person can dream...

And what a sweet sweet day-dream it is. Thousands of poisonous America-hating Jew-hating "progressives" having their parasitic feeding-tubules torn loose from the hive-walls of academic group-think by federal agents...and then....well my college roommates used to play these Woody Guthrie protest songs repeatedly, and there's a line that pops back into my head. "...And they won't know your name when you ride the big airplane, all they will call you will beeeeeeee....Deporteeee."

Fighting Sioux...

My son is at UND, so I noticed this interview Hugh Hewitt had with UND president Charles Kupchella, about the decision of the NCAA to ban them from championships for for being "abusive and hostile to American-Indians."

...CK: We don't have a mascot. We have a nickname...

HH: Which is?

CK: It's called the Fighting Sioux.

HH: The Fighting Sioux.

CK: And we do have a logo that's just a great piece of art. It was designed by Ben Brien, an American-Indian artist, a very respected one here in North Dakota, and I think beyond. His sculptures and work appear all over the state, and he did a masterpiece for us in this logo.

HH: Now explain to our audience what the National Collegiate Athletic Association ruled on August the 5th.

CK: Well, they basically said, I think, that we were among a group of schools, eighteen I think total, that were being abusive and hostile to American-Indians somehow, and without ever giving any definition to that. And presumably, it's simply because use the nickname Fighting Sioux. Apparently, everything is derived from that. No matter how much respect we give to that, apparently this wasn't enough for them....

...We will file an appeal, once we know what it is that we're going to be basing this appeal on. I mean, the main thing I've tried to communicate in this letter, is that we don't get it. I don't understand what they used as a standard, so it's pretty hard to know how to appeal, since you don't know what it is they used to decide. So once we get that result, then of course, we'll decide....

One can understand his total frustration at being unable to fight back when the rules are never spelled out or clearly defined. But that is intentional. The people who do this kind of stuff don't give a damn about Indians, nor about justice. It's all about power. It's bullying for its own sake. Leftists think they should be running the circus, and everybody's lives. And they leap on every "wrongdoing" as a chance to push people around. They don't want the rules clearly defined; they want their feelings and fads to have the force of law, without appeal. (And they also don't want clear rules because those can be turned back against them, such as the cases where lefty ranters have been accused of "hate speech," or people discriminating against whites and Asians have been snagged by rules against racism)

And it's about moral preening. The liberal elites get to condemn "immorality," and everybody then hangs their heads and shuffles their feet and hardly dares to answer back. Well, those days are over. Except in certain protected enclaves, like the academy. And even there Americans are starting to fight back. And though my blog is not an important blog, it's still so utterly cool to have a voice, and to be able to talk back to a certain kind of sniveler, and to say we are the good guys, and we were morally right to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we saved millions of lives by doing so.

And since the subject is up, while we all wish the native American populations had been treated better, we were morally right to settle this country, which was to become a refuge and a home for hundreds of millions of people from far worse places, and is now the world's engine promoting freedom and democracy and economic opportunity.

The Indians had to be displaced, for the good of the world. As Kit Carson said, "One Indian needs as much land as a million white men." And no matter how we had handled the problem, they would still have ended up as small marginal populations.

Intense times...

One of the people on my blogroll is Rinat, whose life I've been following with interest for 3 or 4 years now. Rinat's Brazilian, and emigrated to Israel. She's a journalist, and is in Gaza right now covering the evacuations...

...I guess that by now we can already say that most families have been evacuated fromm the biggest settlement in Gaza. The tension we felt yesterday, when settlers and policemen really confronted in the streets disappeared. Today people's feelings just came out. No violence, but some shouting and many many tears. I admit I myself cried. I guess it's the result of four days under 40C, almost no sleep, no food and lots of pressure. Tons of pressure. Went to the south of the settlement, where hundreds sat down in the street and started singing and praying. For a moment, I just lost control. I am a human being, sorry. When I heard the so typical zionist songs like "Eli, Eli" from Rachel, my eyes flooded. Sat down, drank water, calmed down. Everything under control. Passed. Not that easy to administrate our emotions here. Carried on my job. Talked to people. The hostile attitude's been broken and the sadness have found its place in the settlers' hearts.

People struggled when the policemen came to put them into the buses. Resistance. But a desperate one, not violent. The most amazing thing was the policemen and soldiers solidarity. They sat inside the settlers under the boiling sun held their hands, sang with them. People've been trying desperately to remember that altough they don't agree in what concerns disengagement and politics, they are still one people. The jewish people that can't be torn. Don't really know what goes on in the other settlements as it's hard to have a global vision of the situation when you're on the field...

...or not to ICE

Drunkbunny says skip the ICE (emergency contact info) on the cell phone (which I blogged about previously) and just put your medical info on a card in your wallet...

I started out as an EMT, then a Paramedic, then I went on to become an ER/Trauma nurse in the late 90’s, so I think it’s safe to say that I am allowed to have an opinion on this matter.

I do not have an “ICE” entry on my phone, nor will I. It’s just not necessary....

....Your cell CANNOT store an easily-accessible database of your medical history, meds, or allergies. (Emergency personnel won’t have the owners manual to learn how to work your model of cell phone, even if it does have a PDA type of function, and they don’t have time to figure it out.) Contacting your family is secondary to providing lifesaving care. Having an emergency contact number is a bonus, but again, it can go in your wallet. A second easy-to-find emergency info card can go in your cars’ glove compartment. A third emergency info card can be taped to your refrigerator door at home. Medics should ALWAYS check the door of the fridge (that’s where medical info/DNR orders have been posted for decades)...

Makes sense. (Thanks to Dustbury)

a good example of left-loon analysis...

Robert Scheer: Bush's Blind Spot on Iran

WE DON'T respect or understand any religious or nationalist fervor other than our own. That myopic distortion has been a persistent historical failure of U.S. foreign policy, but it has reached the point of total blindness in the Bush administration.
Here we go again. America is stupid and clumsy, always. I've been hearing this as long as I can remember. And what has happened to those clever countries we were so much stupider than when I was young? Gone. Either changed drastically, overthrown, declined into impotence... but the US goes from strength to strength. Funny how that works, us being so stupid and all...
The latest exhibition of this approach was President Bush's thinly veiled threat this weekend to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities or even invade the country as a last resort, sparked by Tehran's troubled negotiations with the West over its nuclear program.
The negotiations are not "troubled." The negotiations are a farce, a sham, with Iran stringing us suckers along while they build nuclear weapons.

It is telling that Bush made the comments on Israeli television, which makes them exponentially more provocative. Israel is, of course, not only Iran's archenemy but is also believed to be the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the immediate region.
Israel is a peaceful democratic nation that only developed nukes for self-defense. Iran is the number-one terror supporting nation, and is responsible for the brutal murders of many Israelis and thousands of other innocent people. To place them in a position of moral equivalence (with Israel looking the worst) is an illustration of the depravity and sickness of our "liberal thinkers." I'm proud that our president is a strong supporter of Israel, and not inclined to lionize Palestinian murderers.
It is as if Bush is not content to rattle his saber at Tehran's hard-liners; he also wants to ensure that he infuriates and publicly embarrasses even moderate Iranians.
Maybe. And maybe he gives moderates credibility when they push for diplomatic cooperation to avoid worse things. That's called playing bad cop/good cop. A common diplomatic technique, but unknown to Mr Scheer.
If diplomacy fails, "all options are on the table," Bush said. "You know, we've used force in the recent past to secure our country." But it was precisely Bush's use of preemptive force against Iraq that now makes it so difficult to pressure Iran to abandon its worrisome nuclear program.
Oh right. Sure. Iran was SO cooperative before. It's only those clumsy Americans who spoiled things.
Neither the security of the Iranians nor of the world is enhanced by any nuclear program that includes weapon capabilities. Nuclear weapons are inherently weapons of terrorism,...
Bullshit. In the hands of democratic nations they are guarantors of peace and stability. Have been for the last 60 years.
...and international monitoring of nuclear programs for all countries is in order...
Monitoring. Uh huh. If you "monitor" a problem, why then, it just goes away. Especially if it's international monitoring. Those "international" institutions are SO effective and trustworthy.
...Iran insists that it only wants peaceful nuclear power, but we cannot assume it is telling the truth...
If you weren't a brain-dead lefty, you would assume it's the obvious grotesque lie that it obviously is.
If Tehran refuses to be transparent and open to inspections, the U.N. Security Council can take up the issue of imposing sanctions.
The UN will "take up the issue." Well hey, there you go. Problem almost solved. The issue will be "taken up." Dr Johnson once spoke of the "triumph of hope over experience." Faith in the UN is the triumph of hope over a thousand experiences.

Yet as the head of the only nation to have used nuclear weapons on human beings and the one currently devising the next generation of "battlefield" nukes, it would seem that Bush should be a little more careful about trying to seize the moral high ground.
We are ON the moral high ground. WE are the good guys here. WE are working to defeat terrorism, remove brutal tyrants from power, and bring democracy and economic opportunity to oppressed regions of the world. (I guess I can't say "we," since our Democrats and leftists and "progressives" are on the moral LOW ground. Let's re-phrase: America, except anti-American/anti-semitic lefty appeasers, is ON the moral high ground.) And we were morally right to nuke Japan and bring a murderous war to an end.
This is especially the case because Washington has accommodated the nuclear programs of three allies (Pakistan, India and Israel).
Yes. They are allies. Allies of the good guys (us). They are part of the Axis of Good. (Pakistan's iffy, but I'm guessing they will stay mostly on the good side of the fence.) So their having nukes is not a big concern.
The timing of Bush's bombast is particularly unfortunate. Only last week the world marked the 60th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Seems fortunate to me. The good guys used nukes to bring to surrender an evil suicidal regime, and probably saved the lives of millions of Japanese and millions of other people. A parable for our times. A warning to evil-doers. Something we should be proud of.
The mayor of the latter city, which was apparently destroyed at least partly because the U.S. military wanted to test a plutonium-based bomb, was bold enough in his anniversary remarks to point out the hypocrisy of our current stance.
There is NO hypocrisy in our stance. And killing someone with a nuclear weapon, by the way, is not the slightest bit more immoral than killing someone by hitting them with a rock. (Guys like Scheer never mention certain things which were more immoral than our bombing of Japan. For instance, shortly before Hiroshima, the Japanese army massacred more than one hundred-thousand civilians merely because they were angry.)
"To the citizens of the United States of America: We understand your anger and anxiety over the memories of the horror of the 9/11 terrorist attacks," he said. "Yet, is your security enhanced by your government's policies of maintaining 10,000 nuclear weapons?"
YES, it is enhanced. And so is Japan's, which is protected by our nuclear umbrella. Which protection allows this silly Mayor to remain in moral infancy, while the grown-ups do the dirty work of keeping the world peaceful.
Bush's Iran policy is rife with contradictions and idiocies...
It's Iran's policy that is rife with contradictions and idiocies. Such as provoking really dangerous countries like Israel and the US. No doubt they are depending on lefty allies like Scheer to weaken our resolve so we are powerless to fight back.

...What, for example, is the point of publicly threatening Iran when doing so immeasurably strengthens the hand of hard-line nationalists and religious fundamentalists in Tehran? These are the people who, for more than a century, have secured much of their appeal by posturing as the protectors of the Muslim populace against Western imperialism.
We have no idea whose hand is strengthened. But to liberals it is an article of faith that anything America does makes things worse. How about presenting some evidence, Mr Scheer?
And the reality is that we are in a much, much weaker position vis-a-vis Iran than we should be because of our invasion and disastrous occupation of neighboring Iraq.
We are in a stronger position. Our Navy and Air Force are at leasure. Our Army and Marine Corps are blooded and tested, and at a superb pitch of readiness. We could if necessary turn Iraq over to the Iraqis and just tell them to just take off the gloves with the terrorists. And with Syria while they are at it.

Iran now holds some high cards in this poker match. It is closely allied with the most powerful force in post-Hussein Iraq: Shiite religious leaders. Any invasion of Iran might break our already strained military machine.
Rubbish. By traditional measures Iraq was just a warm-up scuffle. Our losses are a grief to us, but compared to the size of our forces, or compared to past wars, they are trifling.
If Iran were to send its fanatical revolutionary guards into Iraq as saboteurs, they could make the current carnage seem like a walk in the park.
This is a perfect example of how left-loons view the world. The other guys are fanatic unstoppable killer robots. Our side is always passive, weak, confused, unable to fight back. And the conclusion is always: we mustn't do anything for fear of carnage. But that's utter nonsense (and wish-fullfillment fantasy). The Revolutionary Guards are green troops, and they would be attacking forces already battle-wise. And if they cause carnage, well, so what? It's a war. We would have a perfect excuse to cause Iran a hundred times the carnage. Does this fool really think Iran could attack us or Iraq without retaliation? I shall pray that they attack...

And how come our threatening Iran "immeasurably strengthens the hand of hard-liners," but an attack by Iran's forces is NOT going to strengthen the hand of our hardliners? How come it only works one way?

And finally, Iran is one of the world's biggest oil exporters. At a time when oil prices are soaring, much of the rest of the world would be hesitant to back the United States in any adventure that could cut off the flow.
Screw 'em. If they won't help, they are useless. And the oil would soon be flowing again, under our control.
As German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder put it accurately on Sunday in response to Bush's comments: "Let's take the military option off the table. We have seen it doesn't work."
It's always smart to start negotiations by announcing that you are weak. And the military option does work. We were worried about nukes being made by Iraq—now we are not. Problem solved. That's what really gripes guys like Scheer. Peace Through Superior Firepower works. Tranzi grovelling and cringing never accomplished anything
What can work is what has worked in the past: carefully maximizing international pressure on Tehran to comply with the demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency so that Iran's program can be monitored and limited to nonmilitary purposes.
Yeah, and it worked with North Korea too.
Perhaps this isn't as exciting to the neocon chicken-hawks in the Bush administration who love treating the world like a big game of "Risk," but it is certainly the most prudent approach if the goal is a more peaceful world.
No, it's appeasement disguised with a lot of double-talk.

ICE

Thomas P.M. Barnett's weblog has some interesting bits of advice:

...Big point: everyone in the hospital acts like you're in a prison or something, with few rights. Nothing could be further from the truth, and if your doc can't handle you pulling out all the stops for your loved one-get another doc.

Second point comes from a USA Today story that I neglected to clip before my flight: grass-roots movement among emergency medical response personnel in Britain is spreading to the United States. Finding that many unconscious patients carry no info on them regarding whom to contact in an emergency (remember those cards in wallets?), they're asking people to do so on their cellphones.

Here is how it works:

Type in cell phone numbers for next-of-kin emergency contacts and then label the entry "ICE" in all caps. The acronym stands for "In case of emergency." The EMR techs just might find that phone on your and check the numbers (makes perfect sense to me that they'd check) and when they see that entry, they'll be able to hit the button and call.

I will assume you know who Barnett is, and that you have read his book. If you haven't, you don't know what's going on in the world, and ought to keep your mouth shut and slink around trying not to be noticed...

Update: You should read the whole post. The Barnett family had a very bad year, with a child in the hospital with cancer, and their responses are worth reading. He also talks about it in the book, as an illustrative example of how you must change all your priorities to survive a crisis; applicable to nations as well as families.

And Anne has this same ICE tip on her blog also...

Or maby it's not a great idea. See next post.

capitalism spoils charming out-of-the-way village....

I'm probably going to join PJ Media [link, link] as an affiliate, so you may see ads on this blog soon. Presumably along the right-hand side. It's not that I have dreams or expectations of making money blogging (though I'm always happy to have a little more). But it's very interesting to be a part of something new and innovative in the blog-realm.

Of course I have this sort of schoolboy feeling that someone will soon tap me on the shoulder and explain that the offer was actually intended for the cool kids who are part of the in-crowd, not me. We'll see what happens....

Correction [or maybe not]

PowerLine is reporting that the Able Danger story was much inflated. So, to the extant that I based any conclusions on it, I will say, in the immortal words of Ron Ziegler, "That statement is no longer operative."

Actually, my conclusions are probably unchanged, but may now lack an example to give them zing.

Update: Or maybe not! Correction may have to be corrected...

Playing the Sheehan card..

Hitch has some sensible stuff on Cindy Sheehan...

...Finally, I think one must deny to anyone the right to ventriloquize the dead. Casey Sheehan joined up as a responsible adult volunteer. Are we so sure that he would have wanted to see his mother acquiring "a knack for P.R." and announcing that he was killed in a war for a Jewish cabal? This is just as objectionable, on logical as well as moral grounds, as the old pro-war argument that the dead "must not have died in vain." I distrust anyone who claims to speak for the fallen, and I distrust even more the hysterical noncombatants who exploit the grief of those who have to bury them.

I have a long list of arguments in favor of the Iraq Campaign, but if I claimed that "our fallen heroes would have wanted it," I would be out of line. I have no right to speak for them. Likewise, Ms Sheehan is wrong to use her son for political maneuvers that he probably would have not agreed with (Considering that he was a 24-year old who had just reenlisted after a 4-year hitch, and that he volunteered for the mission he was killed on, though as a mechanic he had no combat duties, one suspects he would not have wanted to be pictured as a gullible child bamboozled into a war he knew nothing about.)

But it's those cynical leftists who are using Sheehan who are really disgusting. To cry crocodile tears, and pretend they care about grieving mothers, when they care nothing for the opinions of the other couple of thousand grieving mothers, is despicable. And if Ms Sheehan were to change her mind, and started saying nice things about America, or about Jews, or about the President, they would instantly discard her like a sucked-out orange peel. Frauds.

And worse, they care nothing for the hundreds of thousands of mothers whose families were tortured and murdered by Saddam. Mothers who scratch through mass-graves in the desert, looking for scraps of bone. Mothers who died in Halabja trying to shield their children from poison gas with their bodies. Those mothers aren't even human to our lefty crowd. They are just political counters that have no value at the moment, and so don't exist.

And even worse, what the "anti-war" leftists are working towards is letting the Ba'athists and terrorists back into power in Iraq. So we can have a few hundred thousand more grieving mothers. Who also will not be real to the people who are now playing the Sheehan card.

Searching everywhere except in the mirror....

I had wondered briefly at the popularity of Jared Diamond's books, then shrugged at the asininity of popular taste, and didn't exercise my brain cells any further. Now Spengler explains, and I slap my forehead and say, "of course!"

...Why should the peculiar circumstances that killed obscure populations in remote places make a geography professor's book into a bestseller? Evidently the topic of mass extinction commands the attention of the reading public, although the reading public wants to look for the causes of mass extinction in all but the most obvious place, which is the mirror. Diamond's books appeal to an educated, secular readership, that is, precisely the sort of people who have one child or none at all. If you have fewer than two children, and most of the people you know have fewer than two children, Holmesian deductive powers are not required to foresee your eventual demise.

After rejecting revealed religion, modern people seek an sense of exaltation in nature, which is to say that they revered the old natural religion. If you do not believe in God, quipped G K Chesterton, you will believe in anything. It is too fearful to contemplate one's own mortality, so the Green projects his own presentiment of death onto the natural world. Fear for the destruction of the natural world - trees, whales, polar ice-caps, tigers, whatever - substitutes for the death-anxiety of the individual...

...In fact, the main reason societies fail is that they choose not to live. That is a horrifying thought to absorb, and the average reader would much rather delve into the details of obscure ecosystems of the past than reflect upon why half of Eastern Europe will die out by mid-century.

Suicide is a rare occurrence at the individual level, but a typical one at the level of nations...(Thanks to Orrin)

And blue states....

Leaps of faith...

A friend sent me a link to this NYT Magazine piece on Muslims in Europe, An Islamic Alienation by David Reiff.

I found it an interesting effort, but a futile one. The author seems to be too much a part of the world of leftish multiculturalism to stand outside and effectively criticize.

This is his concluding paragraph...

...Figuring out how to prevent Europe's multicultural reality from becoming a war of all against all is the challenge that confronts the Continent. It makes all of Europe's other problems, from the economy to the euro to the sclerosis of social democracy, seem trivial by comparison. Unfortunately, unlike those challenges, this one is existential and urgent and has no obvious answer.

Wrong. All these problems are really the same problem. Europe has lost its faith. Its Christian faith, its Jewish faith, its faith in its own civilization, and in the future. Immigrants don't assimilate because there's now nothing to assimilate to. Their economies are stagnant because the missing entrepreneurial spirit is a kind of faith, a faith that is willing to sacrifice present comforts to build dream-like futures. Its democracies are sclerotic because real leadership is a form of faith, a willingness to take perilous paths of change or reform without knowing exactly how things will turn out. Europe's multiculturalism is a fig leaf to hide its lack of belief in anything. Its pacifism is a lie to cover the unwillingness to fight for anything.

Our leaders, and I in my small way as a voter and blogger, can send our troops into battle because we can see, can feel the future, and because we can cherish it and know that it can be good. And we can do that because we believe in what we are ourselves, and in our past, and can imagine future generations sharing what we have. We read of Washington and his men on their desperate march to the attack at Trenton, and they are us. Our faith is unbroken. We still believe that we can fight evil, and accomplish miracles. At least enough of us still do to elect leaders who are willing to call on us to take leaps of faith...

Core Values placed in blind trust to protect separation of Church and State...

Democrats are Slow to Connect with Voters
By Bill Lambrecht, Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau, 08/13/2005
After their shellacking in November, Democratic politicians promised to do a better job of telling voters about their moral values.

But judging by a candid report last week from key party strategists, Democrats have made little progress presenting themselves in a way that would recapture rural voters or make inroads into Republican turf.

The report by the Democracy Corps, based on interviews in rural areas and Republican-leaning states, offered a further testament to the cultural divide in America that has worked to Republicans' advantage in elections.

In response, several Democratic strategists said they are working to reverse voters' perceptions about the party's core values that have dogged them. The strategists say they see an array of openings caused by GOP shortcomings.
So if the problem is with the Dem core values, shouldn't the SOLUTION have some connection to Dem core values? Not GOP shortcomings?
Authors of the study also pointed to openings for Democratic candidates: growing dissatisfaction with the Iraq war, unbridled health care costs and the direction of the nation in general.
Ooops. So much for core values.
But in a withering assessment of their own party, the Democratic pollsters who put out the study raised doubts about whether Democrats can cash in on GOP problems.
"As powerful as concern over these issues is, the introduction of cultural themes - specifically gay marriage, abortion and the importance of the traditional family unit and the role of religion in public life - quickly renders them almost irrelevant in terms of electoral politics on the national level," the authors wrote....
So your issues are powerful but also irrelevant. And the Emperor IS wearing clothes. I just squinch my eyes tightly and I can almost see them..

..."The real problem for Democrats is that their elected officials, and by extension their entire party, are perceived as directionless and divided, standing for nothing other than their own enrichment," the Democratic authors wrote...
One skims ahead in the article, hoping to find some discussion of why this perception is wrong. Perhaps they were short on space and had to cut that part out.
While it carries generally negative news for Democrats, the report also presents the outline of a strategy to regain power. It notes Democratic success thus far in blunting President George W. Bush's plan to revamp Social Security and Republicans' disarray on issues surrounding stem-cell research.
Uhh, I'm still waiting for the "core values." Isn't that supposed to be the subject of this essay?
The report likens the Democrats' problems to those of Republicans in 1994, the year the GOP regained the House for the first time since the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower by running stridently anti-Washington campaigns.
Actually the Republicans campaigned on the things they were promising to DO. Remember "Contract with America?"
...The report found that particularly among less-educated voters, cultural issues "not only superseded other priorities, they served as a proxy for many voters on those other issues."

In other words, voters who paid little attention to the difference between the major parties on substantive issues like economic policy cast their lot with Republicans because of party leaders' opposition to same-sex marriage and defense of Christian values in public life.
Those "less-educated voters" are being very smart. Those issues are very good proxies. Anywhere in the developed world you can be sure that candidates who support same-sex marriage and abortion will also favor statist economic policies, oppressive bureaucracies, appeasement and, surprise surprise, contempt for "less-educated voters."
...But White sees no easy fix. "The divisions are so great that we have two parallel universes, the red and blue states, in which people speak to those who are like-minded, thus reinforcing their divisions. The distrust on both sides is enormous, and it spreads out to all kinds of preferences, not just what you believe but what kind of coffee you drink."

White was referring to a survey by pollster John Zogby, which found that people in Democratic areas are more inclined to drink Starbucks while Republican voters expressed a preference for Dunkin' Donuts' brew.
Another excellent proxy. You don't want to share a foxhole with someone who drinks Mint Mocha Chip Frappuccinos.
White offered this advice to Democrats: "They have to convey to married people with families, to rural voters and to red state voters that they do, in fact, share their values."...
Values? Core Values, maybe? Hmm? So what are they? Shouldn't we get a few specifics after reading this far? Or is this advice a dainty way of saying "We have no values, so lie to the voters."
...Democratic candidates have long fought to escape the negative connotations of the word liberal. But the Democracy Corps study suggested that they've had limited success, judging by the frequency critics used that word in describing Democratic positions on cultural issues.
How lucky! It's just a matter of the "connotations of a word," and not something wrong with those "core values." Re-branding! That's the ticket. Change the name of the party to "Christian Moderate-Centrists."
The Center for American Progress, a Democratic-affiliated non-profit group in Washington, is leading an effort to highlight the morality of many Democratic and liberal stances on social issues.
A sure winner. How about starting with, "Euthanasia. Because the loving family won't let Granny suffer."

In Kansas City last month, the center's Faith and Progressive Policy Project held a forum to discuss issues surrounding science and intelligent design during the battle in Kansas over teaching evolution.
Has anything good EVER come out of a "forum to discuss issues?" My strong advice to everybody: Avoid ALL forums and workshops. Life is too short to waste.
The project is putting together similar meetings, usually in Republican-leaning states, on topics related to poverty, health care and civil rights. The aim, leaders say, is assisting the work of religious leaders and demonstrating core values of progressive voters while at the same time defending the separation of church and state.
Oh, so now you are about to tell us what those core values are? No? Oh well, maybe next time. And by the way, when you talk about the separation of church and state, why do I see "L'Etat, c'est moi" in this bubble over your heads?
Project director Melody Barnes said that the effort wants to inject religious perspectives into controversial issues.
"Inject." "Perspectives." That kind of mush is not gonna cut a lot of ice with people the folks at Dunkin' Donuts.
"You can respect separation of church and state while understanding that there's a place in the public space for people to talk about these issues," she said.
How generous you are, to let people talk about these tacky things in the "public space." Hopefully the little people will remember their place, and be humbly grateful.
Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-St. Louis, is a member of an alliance of self-described moderates called the New Democrat Coalition. He said Democrats often are restrained when talking about their faith because of what he referred to as the need for an appropriate separation of church and state.
Now I get it. They REALLY want to pray and shout Alleluia and shake those core values, but that tiresome old Constitution just forbids it.

Good news

The California Supreme Court has put Prop 77 back on t