Normally I'm not into Bob Novak, but he really hits it here. France's anti-American obsession goes way beyond Bush. Like the arab republics it supports, France is all to happy to misdirect its people toward Bush as the economy tanks, and the governmnent sinks into corruption.
Robert Novak (archive) townhall.com
PARIS -- U.S. diplomats here respond to Jacques Chirac's continued Yankee-bashing following George W. Bush's re-election by saying the French president is out of step with his people, who are not nearly that anti-American. But thoughtful Frenchmen believe President Chirac is mining a deep vein of sentiment among fellow citizens that transcends President Bush.
During a week in Paris, I encountered none of the rudeness I had been warned to expect because of my nationality. However, the question goes beyond amenities to visitors. One French intellectual described anti-Americanism to me as "a cancer that is sweeping across the country." It may not be as deadly as cancer, but it surely is not healthy for France.
The chronic nature of French hostility toward the United States contradicts claims by Bush's domestic critics that his unilateral policies caused deterioration of Franco-American relations. It is less the U.S. with a French problem than France burdened with a serious American problem.
On his recent visit to London, Chirac pressed for "multipolarity": a return to international rivalries that produced the carnage of the 20th century. He also suggested there was no point trying to repair his country's difficulties with Washington and taunted British Prime Minister Tony Blair because "our American friends" do not "pay back favors." Mocking Donald Rumsfeld's designation of France as "Old Europe," he pretended not to remember the secretary of defense's name and referred to him, sarcastically, as "that nice guy of America."
State Department officials thought Chirac would reach out to Washington once Bush was re-elected, and U.S. diplomats here say he has misread French opinion. On the contrary, playing the anti-American card is seen in political circles here as Chirac's strongest position as he prepares to run for a third five-year term in 2007. He is unpopular, detested by the Left and considered an apostate on the Right, but may survive by bashing Uncle Sam.
The impression by U.S. officials that Chirac is going too far in chiding the Americans may be based on anecdotal evidence, such as my encounter with a Paris kiosk owner from whom I bought a newspaper. "Oh, we just love Americans," he beamed as he gave me a free piece of chocolate candy to go with the International Herald Tribune, "it's Bush we hate."
However, the problem goes much deeper than Bush or the 80 percent election preference for John Kerry in French polls. A writer here told me of his 19-year-old daughter attending a one-day French army briefing, mandatory after conscription was abolished. The last four hours consisted of a harangue on U.S. foreign policy, especially in Iraq. That war was described as a plot by American capitalists to cheat Iraqis out of their oil in a lecture that would have done justice to a conspiracy-minded Internet blogger.
U.S. officials say Charles DeGaulle at least gave the U.S. help when needed and so is unlike the latter-day Gaullist Chirac. Actually, DeGaulle was an inconstant ally in the Cold War who often sided with the Soviet Union in return for soft treatment by the then powerful French Communist Party.
Yet, the attitude Chirac reflects cannot be blamed on DeGaulle. The U.S. may have replaced Britain, which for centuries was "Perfidious Albion" to the French. Jean-Claude Casanova, editor of Commentaire (France's leading intellectual quarterly) sees France's "naive superiority" toward the Americans.
France is burdened with problems distant from American shores. The economy is stagnant, and the replacement of the franc by the euro has meant higher prices but not higher wages. Last Thursday, some 50,000 railroad employees poured into Paris to protest insufficient new hiring. The civil service dominates the government, which suffocates the powerless National Assembly. Michel Gurfinkel, editor of a small newsweekly, told me the press is "free but not independent" of the government.
The lone potential breath of fresh air viewed by internal critics is flamboyant populist Nicolas Sarkozy, who is resigning as finance minister to seek leadership of France's governing party and then perhaps run for president. Although Sarkozy is unabashedly pro-American, it has not hurt him so far. But his opponent is likely to be Jacques Chirac, still waving the bloody American shirt and still hard to beat.
Breaking news is now riveted on events in the Ukraine, where a Prime Ministerial candidate (Viktor Yanukovich) supported by Moscow is being accused to trying to steal the election from pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko.
The Central Electoral Commission said Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych won 49.4 percent of the vote in the election and Yushchenko had 46.7 percent. European and U.S. monitors said vote counting was flawed. The future of the former Soviet republic of 47 million people, sandwiched between the European Union and Russia, is in the balance 13 years after it declared independence, with Yushchenko advocating a free-market economy and closer links to the European Union and Yanukovych urging the country foster deeper ties with Russia.
The announcement of Yushchenko as a "so-called people's president, and calls not to fulfill decisions of legitimate power, are enormously dangerous and may lead to unpredictable consequences," President Leonid Kuchma said in his first statement, posted on his official Web site.
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators are in the streets surrounding Yanukovich's headquarters; Russian Special Forces have been reported by former US Congressman Bob Schaffer as guarding the Kremlin's candidate. Schaffer is an election observer. (Via Instapundit) Russian special forces dressed in Ukrainian Special forces uniforms are in Kyiv. Ukrainian militia have been instructed by the mayor to protect the people from the Russian troops. Ukrainian militia have established a hotline for Ukrainians to report any incidents with the Russians and pledged to protect Ukrainians. These Russians flew into Ukraine this morning. They're now surrounding the administration buildings they say "to protect Kuchma (the outgoing president and his PM Yanukovich). Following is a chain of email messages I've been sending by blackberry. Please pass along to others. Bob Schaffer.
... A representative of the Greek Catholic Church (a man who appeared to be a priest -- dressed as one) announced at the demonstration that he was speaking on behalf of the Greek Catholic Church, the Kyiv Patriarchiat and several Protestant denominations (Lutheran was the only specific one I heard but there were several others). He said this coalition of churches recognizes Yushchenko as president.
Yuschenko is now leading one million people from the square and surrounding streets to the administration headquarters of the Ukrainian government. He is in front of the column and many fear he is vulnerable to getting shot. They should be at the steps in 15 mins. Keep in mind, this is where the Russian special forces are stationed, dresses in Ukrainian garb.
Yushchenko declared himself the victor and took an oath of office and act which Yanukovich's allies described as a "farce". Vaclav Havel has issued a statement in support of Yushchenko (via Instapundit again), according to Radio Free Europe, but the statement is couched in very general terms. (Again via Instapundit) Allow me to greet you in these dramatic days when the destiny of your country is being decided for decades ahead. You have its future in your hands. All trustworthy organizations, both local and international, agree that your demands are just. That is why I wish you strength, perseverance, courage and good fortune with your decisions.
Yours truly,
Vaclav Havel
American, European and Canadian diplomats all expressed concern at the Kremlin's actions, creating remarkable psychological solidarity which is in stark contrast towards the wrangling over Iraq. The Guardian intoned (The Guardian!)
International reactions to the presidential elections in Ukraine have been remarkably uniform. From the US, through the European parliament, to Nato, the view is that serious irregularities and worse marred Sunday's second-round run-off. Expressions of concern and dismay might have little practical effect if it were not for the fact that the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, yesterday claimed victory over the official winner, Viktor Yanukovich, raising the stakes both at home and abroad. Demonstrators massing dramatically in freezing temperatures in Kiev have invoked the example of Georgia last year, when the "rose revolution" overthrew Eduard Shevardnadze in favour of a pro-westerner.
Both Yanukovich and Yushchenko are negotiating to avoid an open breach. Although the Kremlin has deployed some Special Forces units to the Ukraine, it seems highly unlikely that Russia would risk an all out military campaign to bring the Ukraine within the fold. Although there are no explicit NATO security guarantees to the Ukraine, there have been many half-promises and partial arguments. The NATO website summarizes the situation thus:
NATO-Ukraine relations were formally launched in 1991, when Ukraine joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (later renamed the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council), immediately upon achieving independence with the break-up of the Soviet Union. A few years later, in 1994, Ukraine became the first of the Commonwealth of Independent States to join the Partnership for Peace – a major programme of practical security and defence cooperation between NATO and individual Partner countries. ...
Relations between the Allies and Ukraine hit a low point in 2002, when the Alliance expressed grave concerns about reports of the authorisation at the highest level of the transfer of air-defence equipment from Ukraine to Iraq. Yet NATO remained engaged in its cooperation with Ukraine, demonstrating the strength of the Allies' commitment to develop strong NATO-Ukraine relations and to encourage Ukraine to work towards closer Euro-Atlantic integration. In May 2002, just before the fifth anniversary of the Distinctive Partnership, President Leonid Kuchma boldly announced Ukraine’s goal of eventual NATO membership. In response, at a meeting in Reykjavik later that month, NATO Foreign Ministers agreed with their Ukrainian counterpart to explore ways to take the NATO-Ukraine relationship to a qualitatively new level. This paved the way for the adoption of the NATO-Ukraine Action Plan by Ukrainian and Allied foreign ministers at their meeting in Prague in November 2002.
The tug-of-war between Russia and NATO now in evidence was discernible even then. In this crisis, the counterweight of NATO is effectively the power of the United States, which has slowly been positioning itself not only on the western marches of the former Soviet Union but also in Central Asia. A list of US allies in Iraq illustrates this dramatically. These include the Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Mongolia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Albania, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Armenia; almost as if the entire former Warsaw Pact had come under CENTCOM control. If that were not enough, the United States has acquired a network of military bases at Khanabad in Uzbekistan, and at Manas in Kyrgyzstan.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland public school students are free to thank anyone they want while learning about the 17th century celebration of Thanksgiving (search) — as long as it's not God.
And that is how it should be, administrators say.
Young students across the state read stories about the Pilgrims (search) and Native Americans, simulate Mayflower (search) voyages, hold mock feasts and learn about the famous meal that temporarily allied two very different groups.
But what teachers don't mention when they describe the feast is that the Pilgrims not only thanked the Native Americans for their peaceful three-day indulgence, but repeatedly thanked God.
"We teach about Thanksgiving from a purely historical perspective, not from a religious perspective," said Charles Ridgell, St. Mary's County Public Schools curriculum and instruction director.
School administrators statewide agree, saying religion never coincides with how they teach Thanksgiving to students.
Too much censorship can compromise a strong curriculum, some educators said.
"Schools don't want to do anything that would influence or act against the religious preferences of their students," said Lissa Brown, Maryland State Teacher's Association assistant executive director. "But the whole subject of religious toleration is a part of our history and needs to be taught."
Lord, Jesus, through the hands of Your Blessed Mother, I offer You all my thoughts, words, and actions this day for all the intentions of Your Most Sacred Heart. Especially, I offer You all the acts of faith in You and Your Love that I perform, in order to obtain from Your Sacred Heart the grace of Baptism for all the innocent babies who will be murdered by abortion today. Because their own fathers and mothers will violently refuse them life, and thus refuse to stand before You as guarantors of their baby's faith in You, accept me as the spiritual father/mother of those babies. And, within the Divine economy of Your Mystical Body except me as guarantor of those babies' desire to be with You forever, so that having been killed most cruelly, they may be admitted to Your Presence as sinless, martyrs to the truth of Your Love and Your Salvation. I ask this for Your Holy Name Sake. Amen.
Soldiers take on insurgents with a musical vengeance, cranking up the volume to distress the enemy. The choice of tunes might surprise.
Soldiers take on insurgents with a musical vengeance, cranking up the volume to distress the enemy. The choice of tunes might surprise. As tanks geared up to trample Fallujah and American troops started circling the city, special operations officers rifled through their CD cases, searching for a sound track to spur the assault. What would irk Iraqi insurgents more: Barking dogs or bluegrass? Screaming babies or shrieking feedback? Heavy metal. The Army's latest weapon. AC/DC. Loud. Louder! Let's roll. This is a great idea, but what would make it perfect would be if the soldiers used music by artists like Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand and the Dixie Chicks, who've been flamboyantly unsympathetic to the American cause.
I think the winning idea for “The Blinding Flash of the Obvious” goes to the 101st Infantry Division. In the course of combat operations and searching for weapon caches the 101st came across large amounts of Ba’athist cash. They immediately turned right around and spent the money in the local economy for humanitarian efforts. During 2003 they seized and spent $178 million. Other units are now continuing the program.
Taking Condy from the babies
The level of dislike some white liberals have for minorities is absolutely amazing. I should be more specific – minorities who are smarter than they are, and on a different side of the political aisle. My apologies if the redundancies continue to accumulate.
Since Dr. Condoleezza Rice was nominated to be secretary of state, the vile racism of those who have made their living telling minorities how much they love them, has been nothing short of amazing. One white radio host called Rice an "Aunt Jemima," and Colin Powell an "Uncle Tom." There have been several cartoons – by white liberals no less – which draw Rice as some sort of plantation slave, exaggerating features in the vein of 19th and early 20th century racist "art."
It's alright to be racist if your a liberal, but just let one conservative spout this rhetoric and watch all hell break loose. Although, it appears that the Hispanic population is catching on (Bush almost doubled his Hispanic votes since 2000), but when will the rest of the minorities?
One rarely gets a hangover without having drunk too much. World opinion got drunk with the prospect of a Kerry victory, in order to forget the nightmare of an America choosing this time clearly and without ambiguity George W. Bush. Now the world must face up to things. The "Bush moment" cannot be considered as an unfortunate moment to let pass - Bush is not all of America, but he represents the majority of America.
As with all traumas, after phases of shock, denial, and anger comes acceptance. This is particularly true for Europe, for the five international projects that awaited the reelected president concern us directly. If we want this reenergized Bush administration to take into account our interests in the managing of these issues, we must rapidly inject a serious dose of realism and lucidity into our foreign policies.
The first issue is of course Iraq. The political deadlines are clear: elections in January 2005 and a constitutional statute in December 2005. We have an interest that this process unfolds as favorably as possible, because the scenario of an explosive civil war would implicate Turkey and therefore Europe. Rather than focusing on the unrealistic hypothesis on an American retreat in the short term, we must reflect on the best manner of contributing to this institutional process that will be imperfect and transitory, but will also be a decisive step in the evolution of this country. It is not an American retreat that will permit institutional consolidation, but rather institutional consolidation that will permit an American retreat.
The second issue is Iran. After more than two years of crisis on its nuclear program, the IAEA is preparing to decide whether or not it will submit its dossier on the subject to the U.N. Security Council at the end of November. If we do not want to revisit the misunderstandings of the winter of 2002-03, we must prepare ourselves seriously for the following steps. Are we ready for sanctions against Iran? If yes, of what kind, for what goal, and with what deadlines? Would we accept the legitimacy of the regime of mullahs if it renounced definitively its military nuclear options? Inversely, would we be ready to close our eyes on the maintenance of a know-how in this domain if the regime renounced terrorism and adopted a constructive attitude in the handling of crises in the region? Europeans must ask these questions now, since if we do not we will approach a new transatlantic crisis and only the Iranian regime will profit.
The third issue is the Middle East after Arafat. This must be the occasion of a European reflection on our implication in the handling of the conflict. If we believe that the policy of the Bush administration is unbalanced, Europe must nonetheless face up to reality: its involvement as an arbiter in the conflict is not perceived as legitimate by one of the parties present. America is not exactly impartial, but if we want to play a role other than the banker of an ineffective and often corrupt Palestinian Authority, we must adjust our position. The closing of the Arafat era is a historic occasion for this point of view.
The fourth issue is North Korea. This small faraway country is surrounded by a halo of mystery and only rarely interests the EU. But why shouldn't we feel ourselves concerned by the negotiations that involve six nations and have been unfolding for 18 months? The response is simple: because, as with Iran, this is where the future of nuclear proliferation is happening, and because any increased instability in the region would have massive economic repercussions around the world. We must be prepared to contribute the moment it comes to a global handling of the North Korean question, including financially.
Finally, the "war against terrorism." Here is a real and legitimate divergence between America and the majority of Europeans. The majority of American opinion, and the majority of elites, believes that the threat of terrorism is of a nature that threatens the foundation of Western societies, and that it is necessary not to reduce but to defeat terrorism. We prefer to see it as a nuisance and live with it, against which no victory is possible. This difference could one day be broken (let's hope not) by a major act of terrorism in Europe, Madrid having not been our 9/11. In the absence of such a foundational event, we must set aside this difference of perspective, but also recognize that we face a terrorist problem the magnitude of which surpasses by far what we have experienced in Europe, and which cannot be treated merely as a problem of information and police. This implies doing away with the incantations on the stability of the Middle East that, in addition to being inaudible in Washington, have not proved particularly effective in promoting democratic ideals. On the contrary, they have encouraged the obstruction of Middle Eastern societies and violent disputes.
It is not at all certain that Bush will be magnanimous in victory and present an olive branch to the European countries most opposed to his policy. But it is also quite certain that he is not a priori ideologically opposed to Europe (contrary to certain members of his administration). If we show clearly our will to act together on these five projects in a constructive spirit, while respecting the singular perspective of an America that believes itself "to be at war," we will be heard by the White House, and our own interests will have much more of a chance of being taken into account. Inversely, if we go on talking about "multipolarity" (which is currently illusory), and give the impression of putting into effect all our energies toward the promotion of dubious initiatives (lifting the embargo on the sale of arms to China, for example), we will not advance these interests.
Certain Europeans secretly congratulate themselves on the reelection of Bush in the name of a strategy similar to the revolutionary vote: they hope that Bush's American conservatism will help construct a stronger and more unified Europe. They are going to be tempted to exaggerate transatlantic differences to the benefit of strengthening a European singularity. It is not at all certain that this strategy would be effective. Contrarily, it is quite certain that it will be dangerous: the enemies of liberty and democracy only rarely make a distinction between Americans and Europeans and, above all, when they do so, they know perfectly well how to play on our differences. We can choose to try to construct a European fortress on the field of the ruins of transatlantic relations, but this would be a Faustian bargain. Without the cooperation of the U.S. in the Balkans, the Middle East or in Asia, we would sooner or later pay the price for the instabilities that we would have allowed to develop.
It is not a matter of denying the political and cultural divergences that separate the majority of Americans from the majority of Europeans, but of recognizing that the importance of common challenges and the necessity of managing them together implicate and transcend personal and ideological preferences. Bush's reelection is a sort of test for Europe: does she prefer to get drunk on her differences or confront reality? The "Bush moment" is, for us, a moment of truth.
Among the magazines even die-hard right-wingers should sometimes read are the neo-liberal ones "The New Republic" and the "Washington Monthly." They often contain thoughtful articles with stimulating fresh thinking. Alas that makes it all the worse when they publish something moldier than a slab of Roquefort cheese. So it is with their current combined attack on adult stem cell research, designed to support the alternative of embryonic stem cells.
Adult stem cells come from all over the body, plus umbilical cords and placentas. Embryonic stem cells come from pulling apart human embryos, and thus have aroused ethical concerns. The result says Chris Mooney in the "Washington Monthly" is that "conservatives have latched onto fringe science in order to advance moral arguments" by embracing adult stem cell research. We are presented with the illogical argument that since some people prefer adult stem cells for non-scientific reasons, they must therefore have little scientific value.
Yet adult stem cells have actually been used therapeutically in the United States since 1968. At one website you'll find a list, far from comprehensive, of almost 80 therapies using them. This is treatment, not practice or theory. Amazingly, there are also more than 300 adult stem cell clinical trials.
In contrast, the number of treatments using embryonic stem cells is zero. The number of clinical trials involving embryonic stem cells? Zero.
Embryonic stem cell propagandists will tell you adult stem cell research had a huge head start and embryonic stem cells only need time (and more importantly, massive government funding) to catch up.
Yet as a new book called The Proteus Effect points out, both types of stem cell research date back half a century. You might think the author of The New Republic piece, Harvard Professor of Medicine Jerome Groopman, would know this since ostensibly his contribution is a review of the book. Research with embryonic stem cells has progressed at snail's pace simply because they are so terribly difficult to work with.
Ironically, some of the very diseases he says embryonic stem cells may conquer have long been treated with adult stem cells. Groopman specifically mentions Fanconi's Anemia, but it was first treated with umbilical cord stem cells 16 years ago.
The only possible advantage of embryonic stem cells is potential. "It's well established that embryonic stem cells can generate any kind of tissue found in the body," Mooney writes flatly. "There is no disagreement among experts about the capacity of (ESCs) to form any and all cells and tissues of the body," Groopman declares. Translation: Disagree with Groopman and you're not an expert.
But we already know embryonic cells cannot generate placental tissue. The President's Council on Bioethics, in its January 2004 report, observes, "Embryonic stem cells are capable of becoming many different types of differentiated cells if stimulated to do so in vitro (outside the body)." However, "it is not known for certain that human embryonic stem cells in vitro can give rise to all the different cell types of the adult body."
Meanwhile, three different labs have found three different adult stem cells that may be transformable to all cell types. "In aggregate, our study and various others do support the idea that one (ASC) can give rise to all types of tissue," said Ira Black, the head of one of those labs.
Or perhaps we don't need a "one-size-fits-all" cell. Scientists have already discovered at least 14 different types of adult stem cells. Even if each has limited plasticity, combined they could perhaps be reprogrammed into each type of mature cell we need. So when Groopman says adult marrow cells may not be "fully optimal as treatment for many fatal diseases," he's ignoring at least 13 other adult stem cells that could be.
Almost "every other week there's another interesting finding of adult (stem) cells turning into neurons or blood cells or heart muscle cells," notes molecular biologist Eric Olson at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Unfortunately, it seems every other week there's also another article in the popular press claiming adult stem cells range from nearly worthless to utterly worthless.
Ironically, the original motivation for the massive disinformation campaign is precisely the relative scientific superiority of adult stem cells. Savvy venture capitalists have plowed their money into adult stem cell research and treatment, leaving embryonic stem cell researchers desperate to feed at the government trough. It is they and their supporters who have latched onto fringe science.
Among the magazines even die-hard right-wingers should sometimes read are the neo-liberal ones "The New Republic" and the "Washington Monthly." They often contain thoughtful articles with stimulating fresh thinking. Alas that makes it all the worse when they publish something moldier than a slab of Roquefort cheese. So it is with their current combined attack on adult stem cell research, designed to support the alternative of embryonic stem cells.
Adult stem cells come from all over the body, plus umbilical cords and placentas. Embryonic stem cells come from pulling apart human embryos, and thus have aroused ethical concerns. The result says Chris Mooney in the "Washington Monthly" is that "conservatives have latched onto fringe science in order to advance moral arguments" by embracing adult stem cell research. We are presented with the illogical argument that since some people prefer adult stem cells for non-scientific reasons, they must therefore have little scientific value.
Yet adult stem cells have actually been used therapeutically in the United States since 1968. At one website you'll find a list, far from comprehensive, of almost 80 therapies using them. This is treatment, not practice or theory. Amazingly, there are also more than 300 adult stem cell clinical trials.
In contrast, the number of treatments using embryonic stem cells is zero. The number of clinical trials involving embryonic stem cells? Zero.
Embryonic stem cell propagandists will tell you adult stem cell research had a huge head start and embryonic stem cells only need time (and more importantly, massive government funding) to catch up.
Yet as a new book called The Proteus Effect points out, both types of stem cell research date back half a century. You might think the author of The New Republic piece, Harvard Professor of Medicine Jerome Groopman, would know this since ostensibly his contribution is a review of the book. Research with embryonic stem cells has progressed at snail's pace simply because they are so terribly difficult to work with.
Ironically, some of the very diseases he says embryonic stem cells may conquer have long been treated with adult stem cells. Groopman specifically mentions Fanconi's Anemia, but it was first treated with umbilical cord stem cells 16 years ago.
The only possible advantage of embryonic stem cells is potential. "It's well established that embryonic stem cells can generate any kind of tissue found in the body," Mooney writes flatly. "There is no disagreement among experts about the capacity of (ESCs) to form any and all cells and tissues of the body," Groopman declares. Translation: Disagree with Groopman and you're not an expert.
But we already know embryonic cells cannot generate placental tissue. The President's Council on Bioethics, in its January 2004 report, observes, "Embryonic stem cells are capable of becoming many different types of differentiated cells if stimulated to do so in vitro (outside the body)." However, "it is not known for certain that human embryonic stem cells in vitro can give rise to all the different cell types of the adult body."
Meanwhile, three different labs have found three different adult stem cells that may be transformable to all cell types. "In aggregate, our study and various others do support the idea that one (ASC) can give rise to all types of tissue," said Ira Black, the head of one of those labs.
Or perhaps we don't need a "one-size-fits-all" cell. Scientists have already discovered at least 14 different types of adult stem cells. Even if each has limited plasticity, combined they could perhaps be reprogrammed into each type of mature cell we need. So when Groopman says adult marrow cells may not be "fully optimal as treatment for many fatal diseases," he's ignoring at least 13 other adult stem cells that could be.
Almost "every other week there's another interesting finding of adult (stem) cells turning into neurons or blood cells or heart muscle cells," notes molecular biologist Eric Olson at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Unfortunately, it seems every other week there's also another article in the popular press claiming adult stem cells range from nearly worthless to utterly worthless.
Ironically, the original motivation for the massive disinformation campaign is precisely the relative scientific superiority of adult stem cells. Savvy venture capitalists have plowed their money into adult stem cell research and treatment, leaving embryonic stem cell researchers desperate to feed at the government trough. It is they and their supporters who have latched onto fringe science.
When liberals speak of values they are talking about material goods and services, which are presumed to flow exclusively from collectivized government.
Liberals and traditionalists are talking about entirely different things when they address values. Like Big Brother in George Orwell's chilling novel 1984, liberals employ a NewSpeak lexicon in which the word values is unrelated to its historical meaning.
Two things explain this gulf. First, liberalism is the American sect of the international religion of socialism. Second, socialism is a secular and materialistic religion.
When liberals speak of values they are talking about material goods and services, which are presumed to flow exclusively from collectivized government. Those values fall under the heading of so-called social justice, or redistribution of income and property as equally as possible.
In a July 3, 2004, New York Times article headlined "Kerry Invoking 'Values' Theme to Frame Issues," reporter Jodi Wilgoren wrote: "Forty-eight minutes into a rambling speech about education, health care, jobs and equal opportunity here the other morning, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts went off-script to sum up his White House quest in a simple sentence. "In the end it's about values," he told a conference of the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition."
In the same vein, a Reuters dispatch dated October 24, 2004, said: "Earlier, Kerry liberally quoted scripture as he told supporters in Fort Lauderdale that the Bible demanded deeds to match words and said his faith gave him "values to live by and to apply to the decisions that I make."
"I will put middle class families and those struggling to join them ahead of the interests of the well-to-do and the well connected," he said. "Justice and lasting peace require the strength of our ideals as well as the strength of our arms."
Viewing values as strictly secular and materialistic inputs, and measuring them by income levels, is straight out of Karl Marx, who wrote that religion is the opium of the masses, conceived by the ruling classes to oppress the workers, and that human behavior is a variable controlled by the physical conditions in which people work and earn their livings.
The writings of every socialist, from Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte to Irving Howe, the late dean of American liberal-socialists, affirm that socialism is a secular religion and that liberalism is its American sect.
Bertrand Russell, one of the last century’s most prominent socialists, said of the German socialist party: “For Social Democracy is not a mere political party, nor even a mere economic theory; it is a complete self-contained philosophy of the world and of human development; it is, in a word, a religion and an ethic. To judge the work of Marx, or the aims and beliefs of his followers, from a narrow economic standpoint, is to overlook the whole body and spirit of their greatness.” (from Lecture One, German Social Democracy).
Two decades before Marx, Auguste Comte proclaimed The Religion of Humanity. God and spiritual religion were dismissed as superstitious ignorance, a belief absorbed by the youthful Herbert Croly attending a church of The Religion of Humanity in Manhattan. In 1871 his father had written A Positivist Primer, an introduction for American readers to Comte’s philosophy of Positivism and his secular Religion of Humanity. Young Herbert became the famous founding editor of The New Republic, the most influential periodical of American liberalism in the first half of the 20th century.
American liberals' focus on secular materialism also reflects the precepts of John Dewey, their leading icon during this period. Professor Dewey’s Reconstruction in Philosophy called for scrapping all existing ideas of morality, philosophy, and religion, because he regarded them as impediments to the advancement of science and to the socialist catechism of social justice.
In his 1908 lecture at Columbia University on Intelligence and Morals, Professor Dewey said, “…the abandonment by intelligence of a fixed and static moral end was the necessary precondition of a free and progressive science of both things and morals…The effective control of [men's] powers is not through precepts, but through the regulation of their conditions. (italics added)…
"…The progress of [Darwinian evolutionary] biology has accustomed our minds to the notion that intelligence is not an outside power presiding supremely but statically over the desires and efforts of man, but is a method of adjustment of capacities and conditions within specific situations [i.e., moral relativism]. History has discovered itself in the idea of [evolutionary] process. The genetic standpoint makes us aware that the systems of the past are neither fraudulent impostures nor absolute revelations; but are the products of political, economic, and scientific conditions whose change caries with it change of theoretical formulations [i.e., today's "values" are valid only until further notice].
"…From this point of view there is no separate body of moral rules; no separate system of motive powers; no separate subject-matter of moral knowledge, and hence no such thing as an isolated ethical science.”
In other words, the Judeo-Christian tradition of timeless moral virtues, the essence of Western civilization, is unscientific nonsense. Liberal “values” are expressed in regulations devised by intellectuals like Professor Dewey to herd the masses into the conformity of egalitarian social justice.
Teaching children American history and traditions with stories of patriotic, honest, respectful, courageous conduct cultivates individualism and therefore interferes with preparing students for collective living. Concepts such as spiritual religion and moral codes are “value judgments,” and therefore unacceptable.
One would think that in a column titled "The Day the Enlightenment Went Out" [Garry] Wills might try out an argument or two. Nope. In the place of anything even remotely resembling reasoned argumentation is bald bigotry aimed at his own religious heritage.
George Neumayr, American Spectator . Now, it seems, the conservative rural red-neck Calvinist vote has captured America. A plurality of voters, emerging from poll booths, said that the most important issue in the campaign had been ‘moral values.’â€
The Economist
Let me say from the get-go, trying to offer a fair, even-handed, and accurate representation of what the "moral values" debate isabout presents a formidable challenge. The term, like a storm-tossed ship, has taken on so much water there is a real chance it will drown in hyperbole, non-sequitors, and mean-spiritedness.
And conscious distortion aside, it is also by no means something that can easily be nailed down. Trying to tease out howresistance to abortion figures in it is even more complicated. But if you stay with me to the end, I promise it will be worth your while.
Without running through the entirety of yesterday's TNV, we know that when the question is asked specifically, we candefinitively measure how important pro-life single-issue voters were to the President. We know that President Bush's pro-life position provided him with a crucial--and probably decisive--edge among those voters who cast their ballot based on Mr. Bush's pro-life position or Sen. Kerry's pro-abortion stance. That net advantage for the President was a hugely important 4%.
How the term "moral values" relates to our concerns is trickier. Moral values refers to the answer 22% gave Election Day to an exit poll question that asked what was the one issue that mattered most when deciding which Presidential candidate an individual voted for.
No other issue by itself ranked as high. Nearly 80% of those people voted for President Bush! A post-election survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that an even higher figure--27%--chose moral values as the issue that mattered most in deciding their vote.
Many critics went ballistic. They are still seething. It wasn’t enough to agree that the term “moral values†was not spelled out norexplored in the November 2 exit poll question. Nor was it enough to concur that if other separate questions were combined into one category (such as joining the war in Iraq and terrorism), that total would be larger than the 22% (or 27%) who cited moral values.
Indeed, it wasn't enough to readily admit that if people were given the opportunity to offer their own response (as opposed tochoosing from a list of issues), moral values was no longer number one. None of this tamps down the anger.
It would be impossible to cite on a family-friendly blog what was said on some Internet blogs; the language was pretty vile. Butsome of the profanity-free criticism will give you the flavor.
Often the critique did not distinguish between those weak-kneed conventional wisdom-grasping media outlets who, we were told, mindlessly printed the figure, on the one hand, and those individuals who offered it as a reason (members of a “bureaucratized evangelical movement†whose “closest analogy†is the Palestinian terrorist movement Hamas, “which draws in poverty-strickenPalestinians through its own miniature welfare state,†to quote Barbara Ehrenreich), on the other.
It’s no exaggeration to conclude that for the Barbara Ehrenreichs, moral value issues voters are the thin edge of an incipient totalitarian wedge. And, of course, President Bush was excoriated for various positions he had taken--his supposed use of “wedge issues,†such as abortion, for example--to "whip" his supporters into a "frenzy."
If you step back, what seems to be at the heart of the rage that poisoned so much post-election commentary is the insistence that“moral values†is either (a) so amorphous as to be meaningless, (b) merely a prod used to drive mindless voters into the voting booths, like so many cattle, or (c) has precious little to do with such “cultural issues†as abortion. Any truth to this?
First, let's backtrack for one second. Whatever ranking moral values had, it was seldom mentioned by Kerry voters. By contrast,moral values was “the most frequently cited issue for Bush voters,†according to Pew. Looking to the future, this is valuable information.
Second, when Pew gave people an open-ended question it’s true that moral values was no longer the issue volunteered most asthe decisive issue. But it WAS the second most cited. However, that leads to further complications.
Judging by their responses to Pew, when they cited moral values, people were thinking of a constellation of both issues, often abortion, and personality characteristics, such as honesty and integrity. [Others answered in terms of traditional values such as “right and wrong,†while others “explicitly mentioned religion, Christianity, God, or the Bible.â€]
I hope this gives you a flavor of what the discussion is about and why it so unhinges critics who hate Bush and despise many of the people who gave him a second term. But there is one last more directly abortion-related analysis which is very important.
Kerry’s pollster, Stanley Greenberg, produced a document dated November 9 titled, “Solving the Paradox of 2004.†Among themost significant findings for us is that in “battleground states and among swing voters,†only labor unions made more contacts than did pro-life groups.
But, according to Greenberg, Kerry lost because he could not win over enough of the Bush “waverers†(people who considerednot voting for him but did in the end). "The single biggest response [doubt] is Kerry as 'flip-flopper' (36 percent), but when grouped the responses were dominated by worries about cultural issues."
In other words, people were “skeptical that Kerry has firm principles and worry that he is out of touch with them on the cultural issues.â€
Most important, while people who decided very late pretty much split their votes evenly, "that was swamped by the shift ofdownscale voters in the final week and a half, as values trumped the undeveloped economic concerns," Greenberg writes. "In that period [which coincides precisely with the time period in which NRL PAC was most active], the vote broke for Bush by 55 to 44 percent.â€
That produced a "cultural surge at the end, an intensified polarization that took down many Democrats in the rural states and the South, that diminished their blue collar support generally and that allowed George Bush to get a national majority from red America."
Let's conclude with one more lengthy but important Greenberg observation.
“The debate about whether ‘moral values’ was really the top issue concern of voters, in some senses, misses how powerful a factor were the cultural issues in this election. When asked what was the most important issue in your vote, 19 percent say ‘moral values,’ equal to the number who say the war in Iraq, terrorism and national security, and the economy and jobs.
“For the certain Bush voters [as opposed to “waverersâ€], terrorism and national security are the dominate voting issue, followed closely by moral values. But for the Bush waverers, who were the key swing group in the election, moral values is as important as terrorism and national security, and ,critically, are followed by concerns with the economy and jobs which are also quite important.â€
For all these reasons, and more that we’ll examine in the next day or two, abortion was pivotal in re-electing President George W.Bush.
A glimpse inside a mens' room at the Charlotte Coliseum gives a hint as to why the previous tenants, the NBA Charlotte Hornets, relocated to New Orleans. (Associated Press)
On Monday we began talking about the magnitude of the President’s victory and the furious attempt by pro-abortion forces to blur or obscure the clear lessons of his magnificent victory. Today we'll have a go at explaining the considerable impact the abortion issue had on the outcome and also try to tease out the abortion component of the much discussed moral values. Hint: in both cases, abortion was very important.
As you know, there has been a running controversy over what the 22% of voters meant who said “moral values†in response to the question, Which one issue mattered most in deciding how you voted for president?" Alas, as a result, insufficient attention has been paid to more straightforward documentation of how the single-issue abortion voter affected the outcome.
We’ve talked about it some previously, but those basic outlines need further amplification. There are two aspects: the general impact of abortion on voting patterns and the more stringent direct impact.
A whopping 42% of voters in a post-election Wirthlin Worldwide poll said yes to the question, “Generally speaking, did the abortion issue affect the way you voted in today’s election?†Candidates who opposed abortion received 25% while 13% voted for candidates who support abortion. This yielded a 12-point net increment for pro-life candidates.
Getting more specific, respondents were asked, “Which of the following was most important to you?†How many chose abortion out of a list of eighteen choices? Wirthlin reported 8%.
Of those 6% voted for President Bush while only 2% voted for Sen. Kerry. This yielded a net “most important†issue increment for Bush of 4%.
In some ways more important, 9% picked abortion as the most important issue in the 13 “high activity states,†which included “presidential battleground†states and those with a closely-contested pro-life vs. pro-abortion U.S. Senate race. Of those, 8% voted for Bush while only 1% cast ballots for Kerry. President Bush was the beneficiary of a huge 7% increment in crucially important states.
One last dimension that we need to know in advance of further discussion. In the most stringent test of “single issue†voting, Wirthlin also asked respondents an open-ended “what was the main reason you voted for President?†question. Six percent volunteered “his position on abortion.†How did their votes break?
Of that category of voters, 5% voted for President Bush as contrasted with only 1% for Sen. Kerry. The President enjoyed a 4% net “most important†issue increment. So, collectively, what do all these numbers mean?
In a thoughtful analysis that appears in the November issue of the "pro-life newspaper of record," NRLC Executive Director Dr. David N, O’Steen drew this conclusion: “Using this variety of tests, the poll shows that the nationwide net increment gained by President Bush because of his pro-life position was more than the President’s margin of victory in a number of close states, including Florida and Ohio, as well as his overall margin of victory in the nationwide popular vote.â€
It will be of inestimable value to you in the months to come if you memorize that conclusion.
See you tomorrow. Decoding the Post-Election Spin Battle Part Two
On Monday we began talking about the magnitude of the President’s victory and the furious attempt by pro-abortion forces to blur or obscure the clear lessons of his magnificent victory. Today and tomorrow we’ll have a go at explaining the considerable impact the abortion issue had on the outcome and also try to tease out the abortion component of the much discussed “moral values.†Hint: in both cases, abortion was very important.
As you know, there has been a running controversy over what the 22% of voters meant who said “moral values†in response to the question, “Which one issue mattered most in deciding how you voted for president?" Alas, as a result, insufficient attention has been paid to more straightforward documentation of how the single-issue abortion voter affected the outcome.
We’ve talked about it some previously, but those basic outlines need further amplification. There are two aspects: the general impact of abortion on voting patterns and the more stringent direct impact.
A whopping 42% of voters in a post-election Wirthlin Worldwide poll said yes to the question, “Generally speaking, did the abortion issue affect the way you voted in today’s election?†Candidates who opposed abortion received 25% while 13% voted for candidates who support abortion. This yielded a 12-point net increment for pro-life candidates.
Getting more specific, respondents were asked, “Which of the following was most important to you?†How many chose abortion out of a list of eighteen choices? Wirthlin reported 8%.
Of those 6% voted for President Bush while only 2% voted for Sen. Kerry. This yielded a net “most important†issue increment for Bush of 4%.
In some ways more important, 9% picked abortion as the most important issue in the 13 “high activity states,†which included “presidential battleground†states and those with a closely-contested pro-life vs. pro-abortion U.S. Senate race. Of those, 8% voted for Bush while only 1% cast ballots for Kerry. President Bush was the beneficiary of a huge 7% increment in crucially important states.
One last dimension that we need to know in advance of further discussion. In the most stringent test of “single issue†voting, Wirthlin also asked respondents an open-ended “what was the main reason you voted for President?†question. Six percent volunteered “his position on abortion.†How did their votes break?
Of that category of voters, 5% voted for President Bush as contrasted with only 1% for Sen. Kerry. The President enjoyed a 4% net “most important†issue increment. So, collectively, what do all these numbers mean?
In a thoughtful analysis that appears in the November issue of the "pro-life newspaper of record," NRLC Executive Director Dr. David N, O’Steen drew this conclusion: “Using this variety of tests, the poll shows that the nationwide net increment gained by President Bush because of his pro-life position was more than the President’s margin of victory in a number of close states, including Florida and Ohio, as well as his overall margin of victory in the nationwide popular vote.â€
It will be of inestimable value to you in the months to come if you memorize that conclusion.
See you tomorrow. Decoding the Post-Election Spin Battle Part Two
On Monday we began talking about the magnitude of the President’s victory and the furious attempt by pro-abortion forces to blur or obscure the clear lessons of his magnificent victory. Today and tomorrow we’ll have a go at explaining the considerable impact the abortion issue had on the outcome and also try to tease out the abortion component of the much discussed “moral values.†Hint: in both cases, abortion was very important.
As you know, there has been a running controversy over what the 22% of voters meant who said “moral values†in response to the question, “Which one issue mattered most in deciding how you voted for president?" Alas, as a result, insufficient attention has been paid to more straightforward documentation of how the single-issue abortion voter affected the outcome.
We’ve talked about it some previously, but those basic outlines need further amplification. There are two aspects: the general impact of abortion on voting patterns and the more stringent direct impact.
A whopping 42% of voters in a post-election Wirthlin Worldwide poll said yes to the question, “Generally speaking, did the abortion issue affect the way you voted in today’s election?†Candidates who opposed abortion received 25% while 13% voted for candidates who support abortion. This yielded a 12-point net increment for pro-life candidates.
Getting more specific, respondents were asked, “Which of the following was most important to you?†How many chose abortion out of a list of eighteen choices? Wirthlin reported 8%.
Of those 6% voted for President Bush while only 2% voted for Sen. Kerry. This yielded a net “most important†issue increment for Bush of 4%.
In some ways more important, 9% picked abortion as the most important issue in the 13 “high activity states,†which included “presidential battleground†states and those with a closely-contested pro-life vs. pro-abortion U.S. Senate race. Of those, 8% voted for Bush while only 1% cast ballots for Kerry. President Bush was the beneficiary of a huge 7% increment in crucially important states.
One last dimension that we need to know in advance of further discussion. In the most stringent test of “single issue†voting, Wirthlin also asked respondents an open-ended “what was the main reason you voted for President?†question. Six percent volunteered “his position on abortion.†How did their votes break?
Of that category of voters, 5% voted for President Bush as contrasted with only 1% for Sen. Kerry. The President enjoyed a 4% net “most important†issue increment. So, collectively, what do all these numbers mean?
In a thoughtful analysis that appears in the November issue of the "pro-life newspaper of record," NRLC Executive Director Dr. David N, O’Steen drew this conclusion: “Using this variety of tests, the poll shows that the nationwide net increment gained by President Bush because of his pro-life position was more than the President’s margin of victory in a number of close states, including Florida and Ohio, as well as his overall margin of victory in the nationwide popular vote.â€
It will be of inestimable value to you in the months to come if you memorize that conclusion.
TheMuslim religion: Is thefastest growingreligion per capita in the United States, especially in the minority races.
Allah or Jesus?
by Rick Mathes
Last month I attended my annual training session that's required for maintainin g my state prison security clearance. During the training session there was a presentation by three speakers representing the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Muslim faiths, who explained each of their belief systems.
I was particularly interested in what the Islamic Imam had to say. The Imam gave a great presentation of the basics of Islam, complete with a video.
After the presentations, time was provided for questions and answers.
When it was my turn, I directed my question to the Imam and asked: "Please, correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that most Imams and clerics of Islam have declared a holy jihad [Holy war] against the infidels of the world. And, that by killing an infidel, which is a command to all Muslims, they are assured of a place in heaven. If that's the case, can you give me the definition of an infidel?"
There was no disagreement with my statements and, without hesitation, he replied, "Non-believers!"
I responded, "So, let me make sure I have this straight. All followers of Allah have been commanded to kill everyone who is not of your faith so they can go to Heaven. Is that correct?"
The expression on his face changed from one of authority and command to that of a little boy who had just gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He sheepishly replied, "Yes."
I then stated, "Well, sir, I have a real problem trying to imagine Pope John Paul commanding all Catholics to kill those of your faith or Dr. Stanley ordering Protestants to do the same in order to go to Heaven!"
The Imam was speechless.
I continued, "I also have problem with being your friend when you and your brother clerics are telling your followers to kill me. Let me ask you a question. Would you rather have your Allah who tells you to kill me in order to go to Heaven or my Jesus who tells me to love you because I am going to Heaven and He wants you to be with me?"
You could have heard a pin drop as the Imam hung his head in shame.
Needless to say, the organizers and/or promoters of the 'Diversification' tr aining seminar were not happy with Rick's way of dealing with the Islamic Imam and exposing the truth about the Muslim's beliefs.
I think everyone in the US should be required to read this, but with the liberal justice system, liberal media, and the ACLU, there is no way this will be widely publicized. Please pass this on to all your e-mail contacts.
This is a true story and the author, Rick Mathes, is a well known leader in prison ministry.
He's been trapped in a job opposite such hawkish counterparts as Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, forced to travel around the world mouthing the words of an administration whose positions he is said not to have shared.
Finally, after four years of suffering as America's top international representative, General Colin Powell is leaving his job as Secretary of State to pursue other ventures.
Yet, by his own admission, General Powell does not know what his next step is going to be.
That's why -- as part of our new employment consultation service that we felt was our duty as an online satirical publication to offer -- we would like to ask our reader(s) to lend Colin Powell a hand and help him decide what line of work best matches his skills and experience.
Wednesday, November 17 at 07:13 AM: Maggie from Lewisville, Texas wrote: "Become a Democrat"
Wednesday, November 17 at 06:22 AM: Clyde Bradshaw from Little Rock wrote: "Man in dunking booth at county fair."
Wednesday, November 17 at 06:15 AM: John from Pennsylvania wrote: "Fishing booth attendant at carnivals"
Wednesday, November 17 at 04:06 AM: Cooter from Down south wrote: "Test subject for medical students learning to perform prostate exams. "
Diana wrote me this letter and it deserves to be read by those who encourage others to abort their babies.
You know, if I weren¹t a Christian, and merely an observer, I might say that what goes around comes around such as in Hannarabi¹s Code of Law. Of course, Jesus told us to disregard that law and to learn how to turn the other cheek.
I have seen so many people desperate to have children and are bearen, and so many irresponsible women from mindless teenagers all the way to power hungry adults. I have yet to see a good reason to get an abortion from these women, yet they always seem to come up with a good excuse. Invariably, it¹s just the desire to not have their life changed because of the actions they so carelessly decided to venture in. I also know that most and I say MOST of these women have multiple abortions, not just one. My children are survivors. My son came from a good time with a man that I thought I loved, but now realize I didn¹t even know him. It was a sin, yes, but a greater sin is to kill your child. All of my friends encouraged me to get an abortion. One girl even set up the appointment for me, and was almost pushing me out the door to get it. Others explained how painless it was and within 2 days it felt like nothing happened. Nothing happened? You just killed your child and you have no remorse? One even tried to explain to me that she asked God to forgive her BEFORE she went through with the abortion and she was convinced He understood.
The funny thing is at the time I was agnostic. I had been a Catholic all of my life, but I hadn¹t been practicing or even believing in many years. Yet, something just compelled me that I must keep this child. He is now 8 years old and attends Catholic school. He has been stating for years that he wants to be a priest. Born of sin, he has redeemed me. Maybe this is why I had to keep my child. I¹ve also been blessed with moderate wealth, a good marriage, a wonderful occupation, and it really doesn¹t seem like I¹ve worked too hard to achieve it. My friends that had to get the abortions because they couldn¹t support a child, or weren¹t ready to commit, I really haven¹t seen them do too much with their lives. Hopping from bed to bed trying to find love, when all I have to do is look at my son¹s eyes and know what real love is to have and to receive it. Money? Well, in the end, I met a very successful man that loved me and my child the way we were, and I love him, too. The guy that got me pregnant? I guess that he has been running from collection agencies to this day, even though he never paid a cent of child support and willingly gave up the rights to my husband so he wouldn¹t be financial liable for his son.
I cry every time I think of another child that could have gone to the loving arms of a couple that wants to raise a child so badly. So, my heart knows I should forgive and feel sorry for these women that go at risk and kill themselves when they get an abortion, but it is very hard for me to do.
Please pray for my heart so that I may open it up to my enemies as willingly as I open it up to my friends, Dianna
This week will be devoted to any number of questions raised--and some tentatively answered--by the tremendously encouraging November 2 results. Why is this necessary?
For one thing, there is a fierce counter-offensive by pro-abortion Democrats and various of their buddies in the "mainstream media" to misrepresent and minimize President Bush's against-all-odds victory. We'll try to straighten out various crooked accounts.
For another, there are going to brutal battles in the upcoming 109th Congress, impelled by an almost claustrophobic sense on the part of pro-abortionists that the electoral walls are closing in. They have made their bed with the most unrelenting abortion-now-and-forever crowd and they are paying the price for being on the wrong side of history.
Tomorrow, we'll begin to get in to many nitty-gritty details. Today I'll offer a couple of quick reflections on President Bush's 51% to 48% victory. There are two basic ways to analyze this.
First, let's look at the "positive" dimension. As William Kristol wrote in the Weekly Standard, "On November 2, 2004, George W. Bush won more American votes than any other presidential candidate in history--8 million more than he won in 2000, as a matter of fact. He was the first presidential candidate since 1988 to win more than 50 percent of the popular vote. He was the first incumbent since 1964 to win reelection while simultaneously expanding his party's representation in both houses of Congress. He had coattails, in other words; Republicans were elected to no fewer than six Senate seats that had previously been occupied by Democrats, for example, and in all six of those states, Bush ran well ahead of the rest of his party's ticket.â€
Writing in the Los Angles Times this morning, Ronald Brownstein both laid out the dimensions of the Bush victory and half-heartedly attempted to minimize his triumph. But the operative paragraph was extremely insightful:
"In all, Bush increased his margin of victory in 20 of the 30 states he won last time and reduced the Democratic margin in 11 of the 20 states he lost in 2000. With turnout surging, he won more popular votes than any of his predecessors."
Then there's looking at the elections from the "negative" side--what Bush had to overcome. Brownstein noted that Bush “attracted this support in a difficult climate marked by an uneven economic performance at home and a grueling war in Iraq." But while true, this doesn't begin to touch on the other tremendous hurdles President Bush had to overcome.
Writing on his blog this morning, Hugh Hewitt pointed out, "President Bush won in the face of the most intense opposition an incumbent has ever faced, and in the face of a huge, super-funded 527 effort against him. He won with nearly all of the MSM [Mainstream Media] arrayed against him..." That Mr. Bush carried 286 electoral votes in the face of vicious opposition which would stop at nothing is a tribute to his principled stands on issues such as abortion, and his uncanny political skills.
More tomorrow. In the meanwhile, I hope you'll drop me an email with your thoughts.
They may be smarter that PETA people, but they sure taste good. Especially the big ones like telapias and arrowanas raised as pets to a large size and then eaten raw as sushi or cooked in a delicate cream sauce, BAM!, KICK IT UP A NOTCH!
2 hours, 55 minutes ago
By DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer
NEW YORK - Touting tofu chowder and vegetarian sushi as alternatives, animal-rights activists have launched a novel campaign arguing that fish — contrary to stereotype — are intelligent, sensitive animals no more deserving of being eaten than a pet dog or cat.
Called the Fish Empathy Project, the campaign reflects a strategy shift by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as it challenges a diet component widely viewed as nutritious and uncontroversial.
"No one would ever put a hook through a dog's or cat's mouth," said Bruce Friedrich, PETA's director of vegan outreach. "Once people start to understand that fish, although they come in different packaging, are just as intelligent, they'll stop eating them."
The death certificate issued for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat by French authorities last week indicates his place of birth as Jerusalem and not Cairo, officials said Monday.
Oh my. France's delusions and COLLABORATION WITH AND LOVE OF TERRORISTS knows no bounds. France is a disgrace.
French death certificate says Arafat born in Jerusalem AFP: 11/15/2004
PARIS, Nov 15 (AFP) - The death certificate issued for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat by French authorities last week indicates his place of birth as Jerusalem and not Cairo, officials said Monday.
Municipal officials at Clamart, the suburb of Paris where Arafat died last Thursday, said they issued the document on the basis of a family record book itself issued by the French foreign ministry in 1996.
The issue is symbolically important because Israel considers Jerusalem as its eternal capital, while Palestinians want to make east Jerusalem, occupied by the Jewish state since 1967, the capital of their promised state.
Arafat was born Mohammed Abdel-Rawf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Hussaini, on August 4, 1929.
The official version of his life history records he was born in Jerusalem. However numerous biographers agree that he was, in fact, born in Cairo, where his father, from Gaza, owned a business.
And it was Egypt that hosted Arafat's funeral last Thursday with full military honours.
A spokesman for the Clamart mayor's office had initially said the place of birth was put down as Jerusalem based on Arafat's passport.
Later, the office said the detail had come from a family record document, known as a livret de famille, which authorities in France deliver for largely administrative purposes.
In Arafat's case, it would have been delivered because his wife Suha gave birth to their daughter at Neuilly-sur-Seine outside Paris in July 1995, and mother and daughter spend much of their time in the French capital.
The 75-year-old veteran of the Palestinian drive for statehood died after nearly two weeks of treatment in a French military hospital at Clamart.
He was airlifted there from his Ramallah, West Bank base on October 29 and had been in a coma for over a week.
French officials, citing privacy laws, still refuse to reveal the precise cause of death or the nature of his condition, leading to rumours -- strongly denied by Palestinian officials -- of poisoning.
"Medical secrecy continues to hold, and I have nothing further to add," a French foreign ministry spokesman said Monday.
Abidjan - France has completed the evacuation of 5 000 Westerners and others from violence-torn Ivory Coast as Africans - with no hope of such rescue - have fled into neighbouring countries.
Two French-organised flights to Paris and to neighbouring Ghana ended six days of shuttles overseen by the French military, French spokesperson Jacques Combarieu said.
With anti-foreigner rampages subsiding and commercial flights restored in Ivory Coast's largest city, any other foreigners who want to leave will be able to do so on their own, Combarieu said.
"It was terrible," said a German who had lived in Ivory Coast for a decade as he waited for one of Monday's last evacuation flights out. He provided only his first name, Helmut, and said he was an aid worker.
He described hiding in the bush around Ivory Coast's southern cocoa port of San Pedro while mobs sacked French shops and warehouses.
"But I'll come back" when Ivory Coast calms down, Helmut said, as calls over Abidjan's airport loudspeakers instructed the last evacuees to gather their luggage. "I'm sure I want to come back."
As Ivory Coast's defiant leader, President Laurent Gbagbo, remained holed up in his lagoon-side mansion and surrounded by hard-liners, the United Nations Security Council voted to impose an immediate arms embargo against Ivory Coast, giving the country's warring sides one month to revive a shattered peace process or face more sanctions.
African leaders had urged late on Sunday that the sanctions be imposed immediately.
Gbagbo's government reopened the nation's civil war on November 4 with airstrikes on the rebel-held north. Two days later, Ivory Coast warplanes bombed a French peacekeeping post, killing nine French troops and an American aid worker and plunging the world's top cocoa producer into its current unprecedented crisis.
France blew up Ivory Coast's airforce on the tarmac.
Loyalists led by the government-allied Young Patriots popular militias took to the streets in five days of violent attacks after the French retaliation, burning and looting French businesses and schools across the loyalist south.
No deaths have been confirmed among non-Africans in the street violence. France says several expatriates were raped. Ivory Coast claims more than 62 loyalists died when French forces fired into crowds.
Helmut, in his 50s, said he and other foreigners in Ivory Coast's cocoa centre escaped on a prearranged route through one another's yards when violence broke out.
The last yard led into the forests, where expatriate families hid for hours at a time.
For others, last week's violence would be the last. Michele, a French man and another 10-year resident of Ivory Coast, said he was getting on Monday's flight to Paris - and never coming back.
"They say to me, 'French, go home - you have nothing to do here,"' said Michele, a legal notary. "I think what's going to happen will be like a Rwanda."
Since Wednesday, French forces have evacuated 4248 foreigners who came to Ivory Coast from a total of 63 countries, French military spokesperson Colonel Henry Aussavy said.
Flights organized by businesses for their employees have taken out about 870 people, Aussavy said.
Spain, Canada, the Netherlands and others have evacuated about 550 others.
The number makes it the largest evacuation in Africa in at least a decade. In 1997, a French led evacuation brought 5 000 foreigners from the Republic of Congo amid election violence and civil war there.
Separately, the United Nations refugee agency in Geneva said about 10 000 Ivorians have fled into neighbouring Liberia.
Many are descendants of immigrants from neighbouring countries, or members of tribes at odds with those who control the southern-based government. Both groups have been targeted by loyalist attacks since 1999, when a first-ever coup ended decades of stability and relative prosperity in Ivory Coast.
About 700 other non-Ivorian African nationals have fled across Ivory Coast's eastern border, into Ghana, the UN refugee agency said. - Sapa-AP
BEIJING (Reuters) - Portraits of Kim Jong-il have been removed from some public meeting halls in North Korea, a Pyongyang-based diplomat says, but others say the leader's picture remain prominently displayed.
It was not immediately clear on Tuesday what the removal of some portraits meant about the political fortunes of the North Korean dictator, but the diplomat said the pictures had been down for some time.
Portraits of Kim were ubiquitous in homes, offices and public buildings across North Korea, where they have hung prominently for years beside a picture of his late father, the reclusive communist state's founder Kim Il-sung.
"In some meeting places where they used to be placed side by side the one portrait has been removed," the diplomat told Reuters by telephone from Pyongyang.
"In some places they have been replaced with portraits of Kim Il-sung," he said.
Kim has poked fun at the cult of personality pervasive in North Korea, and analysts said the removal of some portraits could be an indication he wanted to tone it down in line with incremental economic reforms.
Russian news agency Itar-Tass quoted an unidentified foreign diplomat as saying guests invited to official receptions in the North Korean capital Pyongyang had seen only portraits of state founder Kim Il-sung.
"Only a light rectangular spot on the yellow whitewashed wall and a nail have remained in the place where the second portrait used to be," the source said.
FAMILIAR FACE
But a Canadian tourist who landed in Beijing from Pyongyang on Tuesday said he saw Kim's portrait beside his father's frequently, including in office buildings and on subway cars as usual.
"Just yesterday, actually, I was in an office and saw the pictures on the wall," he said, adding they were also up in the subway.
Portraits of the younger Kim were also hanging as usual outside the North Korean embassy in Beijing.
North Korea has been embroiled in a two-year-old crisis over its nuclear arms programmes and the United States, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia have teamed up to try to persuade the North to scrap the weapons programmes.
An analyst at Radiopress, a Japanese news agency that monitors North Korean media from Tokyo, said there were no signs of anything unusual in the broadcasts it monitored.
"Nothing seems different," he added.
The diplomat quoted by Tass said officials in the hardline communist state had offered no explanation for the change.
He added that, according to his information, a secret directive had been issued to remove portraits of Kim Jong-il.
Chirac: Britain cannot be an 'honest broker' between Europe and US
The French President reasserts his vision of a separate Europe balancing US influence
PRESIDENT CHIRAC claimed last night that the Prime Minister was misguided to imagine that he could play the honest broker between Europe and the Bush Administration.
Speaking three days before his first official visit to London for eight years, M Chirac voiced his affection for Tony Blair and the “tough love” between France and Britain.
But he reasserted his vision of an “historically inevitable, multipolar” world in which Europe would counterbalance the United States.
The French leader, who turns 72 next month, sketched his vision and what he called the ancient Franco-British bond in a rare interview with The Times and other British newspapers in his gilded meeting room on the first floor of the Elysée Palace. On Thursday, he is to stay with the Queen at Windsor Castle after a summit with Mr Blair.
It was now vital for the United States to relaunch the Middle East peace process, M Chirac said, but he was not optimistic that it was possible to do business with Washington or that Britain could play the linking role across the Atlantic that Mr Blair claims with the Bush administration.
“I am not sure, with America as it is these days, that it would be easy for someone, even the British, to be an honest broker. Perhaps that will change but that is the current state of things,” he said.
He recalled the Franco-British summit at Le Touquet on the eve of the Iraq War last year. “I said then to Tony Blair: ‘We have different positions on Iraq. Your position should at least have some use. That is to try to obtain in exchange a relaunch of the peace process in the Middle East . . . You absolutely have to obtain something in exchange for your support. Well, Britain gave its support but I did not see much in return. I am not sure that it is in the nature of our American friends at the moment to return favours systematically."
M Chirac made clear that he was in no mood to make a gesture towards Washington as President Bush enters his second term. In passing, he referred to Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, as “that nice guy — I’ve forgotten his name — who talked about Old Europe”. He outlined in the clearest terms for some time his theory of a “multipolar” world. Washington sees this as code for French attempts to lead Europe as a counter-power to the United States.
“The evolution of the world towards a multipolar situation is inevitable. That is part of the evolution of human history,” he said. “In consequence there will be a great American pole, a great European pole, a Chinese one, an Indian one, eventually a south American pole. These great poles have to live together.”
To prevent war between the poles, there must be a United Nations, he added. “The second condition is that the two poles that are founded on the same values — that is America and Europe — get on together so that they can be an element of dissuasion towards poles which have another culture, other historical values. The transatlantic link is absolutely essential in this multipolar world.”
In relaxed and reflective form as night fell outside, M Chirac added: “I do not feel at all angry towards the Americans. We have never shown the slightest bad mood towards them.” There was, however, no chance that he would send French troops to Iraq.
The French leader said he had “a lot of esteem and a lot of friendship” for Mr Blair and had only fallen out with him once — not over Iraq but over agriculture. For the first time, he gave an account of the celebrated spat between the two at a Brussels summit two years ago after a Franco-German deal on the Common Agriculture Policy.
“I got angry with him. It was probably the fatigue after a long summit. We said unpleasant things about each other that we didn’t mean.” According to the British account at the time, M Chirac called Mr Blair “badly brought up”.
Media reporting of bad blood between the two leaders was fantasy, he said. “We have no reason to quarrel. When I go to London I am very happy. I arrive (in Downing Street) and he gives me news of Leo (Tony Blair’s youngest son) or Leo comes up and says ‘bonjour Chirac’ in French. I’m happy to see them.”
M Chirac also played down the tension between the rival British and French approaches to the European Union. “There is no opposition between a British vision and a French vision of Europe. All that has no meaning. That is an extraordinarily superficial and facile idea of what Europe is about . . . We have always had differences with Britain and we have always continued hand-in-hand.” The British would eventually vote “yes” in their referendum on the EU Constitutional treaty, M Chirac predicted. “Good sense triumphs in the end over mood.”
By Charles Bremner in Paris and Philip Webster, Political Editor
JACQUES CHIRAC dealt a blow to Tony Blair’s attempt to heal the wounds between the US and Europe last night by saying that the Prime Minister had won nothing for supporting the war against Iraq.
As Mr Blair used a keynote speech to present Britain as a “bridge across the Atlantic”, President Chirac doubted whether anyone could play the “honest broker”. Speaking before he visits London on Thursday, he said that it was not in the nature of this Administration to return favours.
Mr Blair suffered another setback when Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State and the administration figure most trusted by Europe, resigned. There were doubts over whether his successor, possibly Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser, would be as accommodating.
M Chirac, speaking to British journalists, including The Times, soon after General Powell’s announcement, revealed that he had urged Mr Blair to demand the relaunch of the Middle East peace process in return for backing the war.
“Well, Britain gave its support but I did not see anything in return. I’m not sure it is in the nature of our American friends at the moment to return favours systematically.”
In other remarks that will sting the Bush Administration, he again outlined his vision of a “multipolar” world in which a united Europe would be equal with the US, and mocked Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, for his division of Europe into old and new.
M Chirac said that there would be no division between Britain and France.
“It is like that nice guy in America — what’s his name again? — who spoke about ‘old Europe’. It has no sense. It’s a lack of culture to imagine that. Imagining that there can be division between the British and French vision of Europe is as absurd as imagining that we are building Europe against the United States.”
The comments underline the scale of the task facing Mr Blair as he tries to be a bridge between Europe and America, a job to which he devoted last night’s foreign policy speech at Guildhall in London.
The Prime Minister, aware that Mr Powell’s departure would be received with apprehension by European governments, bluntly told the US Administration to reach out to Europe and enlist its support in the war against terrorism.
“Multilateralism that works should be its aim. I have no sympathy for unilateralism for its own sake,” he said.
Mr Blair also said that Europe had a big opportunity because the US realised that lasting security against terrorism could not be provided by conventional military force but required a commitment to democracy and freedom.
Democracy was the meeting point for Europe and America. He was not advocating military solutions to achieve it but Europe and America should work together to bring democracy to places denied it.
He balanced his warning to the Americans by telling Europe that it was not sensible to ridicule US arguments or parody their political leaders.
Mr Blair hinted that he understood the difficulties, even before M Chirac’s intervention. He said that Britain’s role could be a bridge, a pivot or even a “damn high wire”.
M Chirac, whose visit to Britain concludes the Entente Cordiale anniversary celebrations, said: “I am not sure, with America as it is these days, that it would be easy for someone, even the British, to be an honest broker.”
The following celebrity blog is impersonated, quite badly we might add, and therefore the celebrity should not be held liable for either the content which they did not create, or spelling and grammar errors, which they did not intend and most certainly not for their words which they did not write. It should not be viewed, read, or printed by anyone. However, forwarding via email to all your friends and co-workers is highly encouraged as it will probably bring you great fame and notoriety, help you lose weight and may actually reduce the likelihood of male erectile dysfunction. Ask your doctor.
What the hell happened? I feel sick. How could this happen again? Maybe it’s the Top Ramin and all that dorm food. I feel like I let my country down. I feel like my country let me down.
I’ve been up all night pouring over the exit polls. It’s hard to know where to start. Even though I hit 52 cities in the final days of the campaign, the Democrats did not increase the numbers of the youth vote. The evangelicals kicked our ass. Bush played the socially divisive card in the form of gay marriage, stem-cells, and patriotism. Howard Dean had it right: the Republicans are now officially the party that cares about Guns, Gods, and Gays, but apparently, not about America.
Doesn’t it seem like we’re being crowded out of our own country? Look at the flag. Two hundred years ago, old glory was a lot bluer. But as the years passed and we killed more Injuns and took their land, the blue started to get replaced. It’s the same amount of red we’ve always had, but it sure feels like a lot more…
I feel for all my brothers and sisters, especially the ones trapped within red states. Perhaps the rest of us should organize an airlift together…like we did in Berlin back in the good old days. We can drop behind enemy lines and supply the disenfranchised with food, water and copies of the New York Times.
It’s no longer crazy to talk about succession. I’m serious people. California is clearly big enough for all of us to survive and I’m pretty sure we can talk Arnold into it. We can add on Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii without too many people noticing.
It’s going to be harder to cobble a coalition on the East Coast. The Republicans, or the anti-science party, are not going to give New York up without a fight, not because they like New Yorkers, but because the Big Apple is still a target and the Republicans still need to instill fear in their believers.
They’ll obviously concede to us Massachusetts, and we should be able to take New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the smaller states. At least with this configuration we can still watch The Soprano’s.
To the few Midwest states we have left, I advise you all to see if you can make a go with Canada. They’re good people and I’m sure they’ll take you in. We promise to visit you often. And a big shout out from the stage to the great state of Illinois. You kicked Bush’s ass big time. Nice work. Maybe if our side had Alan Keyes on the ballot in the swing states, instead of Gay Marriage, we would have won.
No, Kerry shouldn’t have caved so easily. We should have given his lawyers a few days to investigate voter fraud and make sure there’s not a back room full of votes somewhere. I still have suspicions about those Diebold electronic voting machines, and I find it hard to believe that Zogby and all the exit polls got it so wrong. A few days wouldn’t have made that much of a difference. Kerry owed it to his supporters.
It’s in our hands now kids…
If you’re asking me if Bush could have stolen the election, remember this is a guy who lied to us about a war and scared over half of our citizens into believing someone else was behind 9/11. Sure, he’d steal it if he could, and I’m not saying he didn’t.
The stock market is going up, the corporations are going to start jockeying for space at the free giveaway tables being set up at the job fair on Whitehouse lawn. Our allies abroad are thinking we’ve lost our mind, and you can bet the boys in Iran and Syria are making sure they’ve got some extra supplies of batteries and bottled water.
We need to join together. We need to make November 2, 2004 a political 9/11 for our side. We’re fighting a bunch of religious fascists. They hate what we stand for. They hate our freedom. They don’t believe in liberty for all their citizens. They want to take us back to the Stone Age. Does this sound remotely familiar?
We’ll regroup. We’ll get over our grief and come out fighting. We’re smart, we’re reliant, and we do really care about our country.
The question is this: does our country care about us anymore?
Fierce fighting continued today in Najaf, considered one of the holiest cities in Islam, while at the same time mortar fire and other military attacks continued in Falluja, one of Islam's holiest cities.
Small arms fire erupted in Karbala, the holiest city in the Muslim world, while in the holy city of Kufa, coalition forces cleared out a basement warren said to be housing members of Al-Qaeda, the holiest terrorist group in Islam.
In the Port city of Naf Shahr, one of Islam's holiest port cities, a cargo ship was searched for weapons and Al-Qaeda members, but none were found. That same day in Moweh Jabari's al-Difindi (Abu Yussef)'s Delicatessen, the holiest delicatessen in the Muslim world, patrons said they saw several shots fired from a passing red 1976 Saab V-4, the holiest car in Islam.
Several men drinking apricot juice, the holiest juice in the Muslim world and coffee said they heard the phrase "Allah Akhbar", the holiest phrase in the Muslim language, as the men fired. Two bystanders were killed and two children wounded in the drive-by shooting, the holiest type of shooting in Islam.
Meanwhile, the people of Mecca were said to be very upset.
NOT TOO SWIFT
The Swift Boat Veterans For Truth added charges to those already leveled against Presidential candidate John Kerry today. Members of the group, who claimed they served with Kerry in Viet Nam say he often paraded around in blackface mocking black soldiers, and would routinely steal marijuana and cocaine from the footlockers of his crew. "That dude NEVER had his own stash." said Lt. Commander Grant Hibbard. In addition, they said Lt. Kerry carried on homosexual affairs with several officers and crew members. "In fact" said John E. O'Neill, one of the founders of the group, "I am one of them. I'm not gay, I swear, I'm not gay, honest, I'm not, but Kerry was in charge and I had to do what he said, even though I'm definitely not gay."
According to the group, Kerry, known in Viet Nam as Killer Kowalski for his penchant for shooting anyone he didn't like, shot and killed a sergeant for insubordination when the sergeant failed to hold a salute long enough, and kicked to death a private who had stated a preference for the Yankees over the Red Sox. "This guy was some piece of work" said veteran Van Odell. "He'd just as soon shoot you as look at you. If this loon were President, he'd be sending out troops to invade any country we didn't like."
Kerry's camp dismisses the charges as "No worse than a bad cold". Meanwhile, members of the Alabama and Texas National Guard who recalled serving with George W. Bush could not be found for comment.
LAWSUIT FOR LIMBAUGH
Rush Limbaugh's civil attorney has filed a lawsuit against several members of a Kerry support group who questioned Limbaugh's service record. According to papers certified by a Florida court clerk, members of the Delray Beach Loves Kerry political organization inaccurately told the Orlando Sentinel that Limbaugh was hated by members of his basic training group at the now defunct Ft. Dix, New Jersey, and was thrown into the shower by his barracks mates for smelling "like last week's mackerel."
Limbaugh vigorously denies the charges, telling McGuffin's The Untrue News "I've never served in the military one day in my life. These people are liars."
READ MY BRIEFS:
TRIAL OF SADDAM WILL START IN SEVERAL MONTHS. Best guess is sometime just before election day...p 6. ECONOMY WILL SHOW STRONGEST SIGNS YET OF RECOVERY, SAYS FED. Highest consumer gains should appear sometime just before election day... p 9. BIN LADEN IS ON THE RUN. His capture expected sometime just before election day...p 10. OIL PRICES SHOW SHARP DECLINE. Or will, sometime just before election day...p 14. JESUS APPEARS ON EARTH TO ENDORSE GEORGE W. BUSH. Second coming will occur sometime just before election day, Cheney Promises...p 21
ANSWERS TO OUR POLL:
We asked our special member readers which member of the Bush cabinet was most likely to receive blowjobs from a sex partner. Answers came pouring in. Here they are:
7,416 responses:
Wolfowitz.....2% (predominantly from elderly gay men) Rumsfeld......4% Powell........24% Rice...........68% Don't care....2% (although "don't care" was not an option on the poll, we thank those readers who took the time to write to us saying they didn't care.)
Become a special member of McGuffin's The Untrue News and get to answer our polls as well as receive free notices of when Untrue News is being published. We'll also put your name on a postcard and mail it to a celebrity. It's only $100 per year and half the money goes to the McGuffin Care Fund. The other half helps us buy announcements like this, which can only do you good if you go for it. Cash, postal money order or Paypal only, no personal checks.
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HOTTEST NEW FOOD SUPPLEMENT, DOES IT WORK?
The goods on sun chlorella by McGuffin's The Untrue News science and medicine editor Dr. Mel E. Levine
Hey everyone! I just got back from a great gig at Tickle Me Funny down in Lubbock. It sure gets hot down there at this time of year. It was so hot I saw a dog chasing a cat, they were both melting. Hey, it's hot. Luckily the club had ceiling fans. Larry and Mike, they're big fans of the ceiling. Anyway, we had a great time at our Monday night opening show, and we're sorry that the food inspectors closed the place down, cancelling my next two days. But what hicks down there. I had to explain to the audience the difference between tipping a cow and tipping a waitress.
About sun chlorella, it's a type of chinese lichen and the only people who are hyping it are those who are selling it, they haven't proved anything except that it did cure some cancers in mice, but no evidence to show it has the amazing powers described by the hucksters, or has any value at all for humans. Save your money for my next standup gig at Half-Laffs, in Mountain Home, Arkansas. It was voted Mountain Home's third best comedy club. I'll be doing the midnight show on the Tuesday after the Labor Day weekend. See you there!! --M.E.L.
Dr. Mel E. Levine is the author of the book "Funny, You Don't Look Fluish" the misadventures of a doctor who wants to do stand up comedy and the patients who need the laughs. Any resemblance to "Patch Adams" is unintentional, but it's too late to do anything about it now.
WATCH CONVENTION COVERAGE ON FOX NEWS.
We're there as George W. Bush, America's greatest president, whose foreign, domestic, and economic policies have done what no other President could do to strengthen and unite our country and return it to greatness once again, accepts his party's nomination to continue the brilliant leadership he has shown for the past four years. Political scholars compare Bush to Washington and Lincoln, not like that flip-flopping wuss Kerry. So don't miss a minute of the Republican convention on FOX. Fox News...always fair and balanced.
FOX NEWS. News at the speed of lies.
LESS SEMEN, MORE SEMINARY PLEASE.
Madonna's continued study of the Kabbalah has prompted Orthodox Hebrew Rabbinical Scholar Lev Shloman to say "It pains me that there is not a Jewish version of hell to which God could assign this nafka." In a letter to the Orthodox Jewish Theological Seminary, Madonna replied "Rabbi Shloman's words hurt. Just because someone wants to learn some secret things about symbolism and numbers that some people consider sacred but nobody really understands so she can talk about it and appear smart and inside without actually knowing anything in order to compensate for her failing career and aging physical appearance, is no reason to be mocked and called a nafka, which I happen to know is the Jewish word for mushroom."
McGuffin's The Untrue News is Copyright 2004 by Fool Moon LLC, all rights reserved. The caul was won, I recollect, by an old lady with a hand-basket, who, very reluctantly, produced from it the stipulated five shillings, all in half pence, and twopence halfpenny short--as it took an immense time and a great waste of arithmetic, to endeavor without any effect to prove to her.
Arafat the monster Boston Globe YASSER ARAFAT died at age 75, lying in bed surrounded by familiar faces. He left this world peacefully, unlike the thousands of victims he sent to early graves. Jeff Jacoby November 11, 2004 --
Arafat the monster
November 11, 2004
YASSER ARAFAT died at age 75, lying in bed surrounded by familiar faces. He left this world peacefully, unlike the thousands of victims he sent to early graves.
In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg. In a better world, the French president would not have paid a visit to the bedside of such a monster. In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, "God bless his soul."
God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea! Bless the soul of the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his agents to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the sky, bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline terminals? Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich? Human beings might stoop to bless a creature so evil -- as indeed Arafat was blessed, with money, deference, even a Nobel Prize -- but God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity.
Arafat always inspired flights of nonsense from Western journalists, and his last two weeks were no exception.
Derek Brown wrote in The Guardian that Arafat's "undisputed courage as a guerrilla leader" was exceeded only "by his extraordinary courage" as a peace negotiator. But it is an odd kind of courage that expresses itself in shooting unarmed victims -- or in signing peace accords and then flagrantly violating their terms.
Another commentator, columnist Gwynne Dyer, asked, "So what did Arafat do right?" The answer: He drew worldwide attention to the Palestinian cause, "for the most part by successful acts of terror." In other words, butchering innocent human beings was "right," since it served an ulterior political motive. No doubt that thought brings daily comfort to all those who were forced to bury a child, parent, or spouse because of Arafat's "successful" terrorism.
Some journalists couldn't wait for Arafat's actual death to begin weeping for him. Take the BBC's Barbara Plett, who burst into tears on the day he was airlifted out of the West Bank. "When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound," Plett reported from Ramallah, "I started to cry." Normal people don't weep for brutal murderers, but Plett made it clear that her empathy for Arafat -- whom she praised as "a symbol of Palestinian unity, steadfastness, and resistance" -- was heartfelt:
"I remember well when the Israelis re-conquered the West Bank more than two years ago, how they drove their tanks and bulldozers into Mr. Arafat's headquarters, trapping him in a few rooms, and throwing a military curtain around Ramallah. I remember how Palestinians admired his refusal to flee under fire. They told me: `Our leader is sharing our pain, we are all under the same siege.' And so was I." Such is the state of journalism at the BBC, whose reporters do not seem to have any trouble reporting, dry-eyed, on the plight of Arafat's victims. (That is, when they mention them -- which Plett's teary bon voyage to Arafat did not.)
And what about those victims? Why were they scarcely remembered in this Arafat death watch?
How is it possible to reflect on Arafat's most enduring legacy -- the rise of modern terrorism -- without recalling the legions of men, women, and children whose lives he and his followers destroyed? If Osama bin Laden were on his deathbed, would we neglect to mention all those he murdered on 9/11?
It would take an encyclopedia to catalog all of the evil Arafat committed. But that is no excuse for not trying to recall at least some of it.
Perhaps his signal contribution to the practice of political terror was the introduction of warfare against children. On one black date in May 1974, three PLO terrorists slipped from Lebanon into the northern Israeli town of Ma'alot. They murdered two parents and a child whom they found at home, then seized a local school, taking more than 100 boys and girls hostage and threatening to kill them unless a number of imprisoned terrorists were released. When Israeli troops attempted a rescue, the terrorists exploded hand grenades and opened fire on the students. By the time the horror ended, 25 people were dead; 21 of them were children.
Thirty years later, no one speaks of Ma'alot anymore. The dead children have been forgotten. Everyone knows Arafat's name, but who ever recalls the names of his victims?
So let us recall them: Ilana Turgeman. Rachel Aputa. Yocheved Mazoz. Sarah Ben-Shim'on. Yona Sabag. Yafa Cohen. Shoshana Cohen. Michal Sitrok. Malka Amrosy. Aviva Saada. Yocheved Diyi. Yaakov Levi. Yaakov Kabla. Rina Cohen. Ilana Ne'eman. Sarah Madar. Tamar Dahan. Sarah Soper. Lili Morad. David Madar. Yehudit Madar. The 21 dead children of Ma'alot -- 21 of the thousands of who died at Arafat's command.
Americans who voted for George W. Bush on November 2 are celebrating this week, and despite the anti-Bush hysteria in much of the Western press, we're not celebrating alone.
At what John Donne called "the round earth's imagined corners," other freedom-loving souls in their hundred millions celebrate with us, unseen.
Like us, they're feeling joy and relief and renewed resolve, but they could use a little recognition too, because throughout this long campaign, John Kerry and the elite media, here and in Great Britain, have been insisting that they don't exist, that "the world" consists of old Europe, the U.N., and a bevy of NGOs and Arab states, all consumed with hatred and fear of us as a result of the "unilateral" actions of our president.
The real world is a very different place, and this is a good time to take a fresh look at it, in order to recognize our friends as well as our adversaries, and get some perspective on both.
Let's start with Europe. For the elite media, it consists of a European Union dominated by France and Germany, and not much else. In fact, France and Germany together have just under 143 million people, whereas Europe — if you include Russia and Turkey, the two great nations that straddle Europe and Asia — has a population well over 800 million.
That's almost triple our 293 million, but we are one nation, while Europe is divided up into 44 separate states. Currently, 25 of them with a total population of 462 million are members of the EU, but they were far from unified, even before the addition of ten new members this year, and the divisions are certain to increase, making Franco-German dominance a phenomenon that will not last.
This is so, in large part, because most new members are former captive nations of the east. They were eager to join the EU for the economic benefits membership now confers, but most are keenly aware that it was Ronald Reagan's America — not the EU or the U.N. — that made their liberation possible, and they generally see George W. Bush as Reagan's heir.
His religiosity — anathema to much of the post-Christian West — doesn't offend them. A half century of Communist suppression of independent churches left many in ignorance about their ancestral faiths, but not hostile to them. Consequently, they have little sympathy for the anti-Bush histrionics of the Franco-German axis.
More central still, their long and bitter experience with totalitarian ideology and control inclines them towards a much more realistic appraisal of the Islamofascist threat and, in general, to a worldview that is much closer to our own.
For evidence of that, we have only to look at the 32 nations whose troops are with us in Iraq: 21 are European, and of those, 15 are from the east. Unsurprisingly, Kerry's repeated trashing of their contributions to what he kept calling "a trumped-up so-called Coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought, and the extorted," didn't win him many friends in this group.
For all these reasons and more, millions of east Europeans as well as significant numbers of our other Coalition partners were rooting for a Bush victory, although few of their leaders were quite as vehement as Polish president Alexander Kwasniewski.
Kwasniewski was outspokenly angry, but a surprising number of other heads of major states also abandoned their traditional public stance of neutrality with regard to American elections in order to make their preference for a Bush victory clear.
The list includes Portugal's Jose Manuel Barosso — the new president of the European Commission — along with Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, Japan's Junichiro Koizumi, Australia's John Howard, and Russia's Vladimir Putin.
Putin's endorsement is especially interesting because he is the only member of this group of Bush fans who opposed our invasion of Iraq and sent no troops to join us there. In the past, Putin joined instead in the Islamofascist appeasement policies of the Euro-Arab axis led by France and Germany, preferring — except for occasional propaganda purposes — to see the violence in the Caucasus as a separate, unrelated problem.
As I've argued, the participation of Arabs and other foreign Islamist terrorists in funding, planning, and carrying out the massacre of Russian school-children in Beslan shocked Putin into reconsidering that stance, and George W. Bush's patient cultivation of his friendship makes that easier to do. So, too, do the attitudes of the Russian people. Recent, much publicized polls in parts of western Europe and the Middle East lands show that popular sentiment in many allegedly allied countries is predominantly hostile to us, but Russia was the great exception: we are popular there, and so is our president.
Sadly, the other two-continent giant, Turkey, is moving in the opposite direction, away from us and towards the French and the Germans. Turkey is currently obsessed with gaining acceptance into the EU, not just for the economic benefits, but because EU membership is mixed up, in many Turkish minds, with profound questions of identity — with being recognized as a progressive, civilized, and modern nation, and not just another despotic Muslim backwater.
In fact, although Turkey is still much poorer than the countries of western Europe, its people, at least in its great cities, have long been more similar to Europeans than to Arabs. And, although they get no credit for it, their political culture is, in many ways, superior to that of their European counterparts. Condescending Euros love to dwell on the fact that Turkey experienced a few brief, bloodless, and scrupulously honest periods of military rule, but they studiously ignore the fact that unlike their own countries, the Republic Ataturk founded 81 years ago never succumbed to fascism, communism, or any other form of totalitarian rule.
For the moment, alas, none of that matters much. If the EU admits Turkey to the candidate status she craves at their December 17 summit, the long, convoluted "accession process" which follows is likely to keep Turkey subservient to the Franco-German worldview for at least a decade, assuming that the EU lasts that long as something more than a customs union.
Events beyond any president's control may have temporarily distanced the Turks, but President Bush's diplomacy has strengthened our ties to longstanding allies in Asia and extended them to significant new ones. Because our elite media lives in a small, gossipy, Eurocentric world, they have largely ignored these developments, but they are extremely important. In the real world, there are more than six and a third billion people, and more than three and a half billion of them live in Asia. Most Americans know that over a billion of them are in China. Many do not know that India, too, has a population of over a billion, but it does, and relations with India are much warmer under George W. Bush than they were when the Clinton administration was issuing its futile condemnations of India's nuclear development. India never was a threat to us; Pakistan was, due to its role in nuclear proliferation and its support for terrorism, but President Bush has done a masterful job of reversing that, to the extent that it can be reversed, given the hold that Islamist fanaticism has on much of the population there. With the aid of our remarkable military, the Bush team has worked even more of a miracle in Afghanistan, as the brave and moving turnout of voters for that country's first ever free election clearly demonstrated. Elsewhere in Asia, we have many staunch allies who are celebrating with us because they see the Bush reelection the way Australia's John Howard does, as "a victory for the anti-terrorism cause." Eleven of these Asian allies sent troops to join us in Iraq, and so far, ten are hanging tough, in spite of the dangers they face and the scorn heaped on them by John Kerry and his parochial brand of Europhilic "multilateralism."
In the Middle East, large percentages of the people in three key countries are celebrating too. In Iraq, it's mainly the leaders and the middle classes who share our joy at the president's decisive election victory. In Iran, it's the opposite: Ordinary people of all classes had their hopes rekindled; only the fanatic Mullahs who misrule them are gnashing their teeth, along with the EuroArab axis. In Israel, both the leaders and the people from all spheres except the small and shrinking Left are breathing a big sigh of relief. Most American Jews are still too lost in puerile fantasies about the fake peace of Oslo to understand the hope of real peace and security that George W. Bush brings to the region, but almost all of Israel's Jews get it, and are grateful. And, although I am on record as being much less sanguine than our president about the possibilities for anything like democracy in the rest of the Middle East in his lifetime, there are handfuls of freedom lovers scattered about, even here, and they, too, are celebrating, although most are forced to do so in secret.
The kind of deep-rooted, fanatic hatred that pervades and disfigures so many of the failed states of the Middle East is largely absent among our Spanish-speaking neighbors to the south, but an infantile Leftism still holds many in thrall. The most striking exception is El Salvador, another country that freed itself from Communist rule with our help, and contributes troops to our Coalition in Iraq. Africa is, for the present, too immersed in the monumental problems of its own troubled continent to contribute troops to Iraq, but there, too, there are leaders with enough vision to be valuable partners in the future. If I had to bet, I'd put my money on Rwanda's Paul Kagame. This remarkable man may be a problematic non-person to the U.N., the NGOs, and the sneering crowds in Brussels and the Hague, but like our other ignored and derided friends and allies around the world, he may be part of a better future than the Chiracs, Schroeders, Cooks, and Pattens can imagine. And while we celebrate the fact that we have a president who is working skillfully to create that better world, it behooves us all to take some time out to salute the brave allies who are helping him do it, as well as the "numberlesse infinities" of the nameless oppressed who are praying that he succeeds.
Here, then, is the list of 32 Coalition partners to salute, listed by population size, from largest to smallest within each region. EU members are starred.
Asia's 10: Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Australia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Singapore, New Zealand, Mongolia and Tonga. Total population: 295 million.
Eastern Europe's 15: Ukraine, Poland,* Romania, Czech Republic,* Hungary,* Bulgaria, Slovakia, Georgia, Moldova, Lithuania,* Albania, Armenia, Latvia,* Macedonia, and Estonia.* Total population: 167 million.
Western Europe's 6: Great Britain,* Italy,* Netherlands,* Portugal,* Denmark,* and Norway.* Total Population: 155 million.
Central America's 1: El Salvador. Population: 6 and a half million.
Don Bendell is a former Green Beret captain, who served in Vietnam on an A-Team and in the Top Secret Phoenix program in 1968 and 1969, as well as in three other Special Forces Groups. He is a best-selling author of 21 books, with over 1,500,000 copies of his books in print worldwide, and a seventh degree black master in four martial arts, who was inducted into the International Karate Hall of Fame in 1995 and Martial Arts Museum of America in 1996.
Thank you, John Kerry, for helping make us Vietnam veterans war heroes now, but you also were the primary reason that the American public grabbed sturdy unbending brooms of judgment and swept us into the closet of silence and shame for so many years. Now, with your latest unreported insanity, you are getting ready for our society to grab those same stiff brooms and sweep our brave, noble young men and women fighting against the War on Terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, into that cold, dark cell of heartbreak and betrayal, like we Vietnam veterans had to endure in silent dignity. I cannot and will not watch this country go through that again.
The hardcore America-hating, Israel-hating, jihad-spouting Muslim clerics in the mideast are very excited and passing around a front page newspaper story from the very anti-American TEHRAN TIMES in Iran. In the country that is home of the world's toughest theocratic dictatorship, an e-mail from Presidential nominee, you, John Forbes Kerry, sent to the paper by your campaign committee, although they deny sending it, was printed word-for-word on the front page of Iran's main newspaper.
Your message states emphatically that, if elected President, you, John Kerry plan to travel to the mideast and elsewhere and apologize for our actions and the actions of President Bush in the War on Terror. You are already apologizing.
It says that you plan to apologize to friends and foes alike. That is right, folks. John Kerry will say he is "sorry," and in his mind, all those jihad extremists, who have vowed to kill all Americans wherever we are, will simply forgive us, hold hands with Kerry, start singing "Kumbaya," and all will be right in the world. This is insane! You have also made statements you will do these actions within 100 days of becoming President.
Senior writer Kenneth R. Timmerman in the March 1st edition of INSIGHT, tells about the massive campaign contributions to the Kerry-for-President campaign by three Iranian businessmen living in the US, who are lobbying for the US lifting of sanctions on Iran and accepting the anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-American Tehran regime and the close ties of one to the chairman of Mobil Oil.
"Pro-democracy dissidents" in Iran are shocked and appalled at your remarks, and have reported that in Iran and other Mideastern countries, that all the extremists and anti-west mullahs who strongly supported the attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, USS Cole, Marine Barracks, and anyplace Americans congregate, want you to become our President, but they are scared to death of George W. Bush. Just think, The Democratic candidate for President, you, John Forbes Kerry, is endorsed by the Al Q'Aida, Hezbollah, PLF, and Hamas.
But on February 27, 2004, in a speech at UCLA , you, while trying to talk tough, despite voting against all major weapons systems for the past 18 years, stated that you will continue the War on Terror, but would use our police forces, and especially those in foreign countries, and you would also put our troops back under the powder blue flag of the United Nations.
You recently made comments about Bush making troops fight without Kevlar vests, but you, Senator Kerry, voted against buying them while you were in the Senate. Senate Bill 1689. Passed 87-12. You were one of the 12. Remember?
Like the Kama Sutra, Senator, you change positions constantly. You're not going to end the War on Terror, but instead use police to handcuff terrorists and read them their rights; then a week later, you are going to end the War on Terrorism and apologize to everyone we have offended, such as Iran. What is it going be next week, John Kerry? You flip-flop more than a beached tuna on steroids.
You convinced TV reporters Chris Wallace on Fox and NBC's Tim Russert that a photograph circulating the web and news showing you a few rows away from Jane Fonda at a September, 1970 Anti-War Rally at Valley Forge, was simply a coincidence and that you and Hanoi Jane barely knew each other. But, in fact, Senator, there were only 8 speakers that day, including Fonda, Donald Southerland, and Bella Abzug, and Hanoi Jane funded that rally, and the keynote speaker was you, John Forbes Kerry, executive committee member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
We must be Americans first, and think about our political parties after that. Sometimes we lose sight of that. I have six grown children and two are democrats. I voted for Jimmy Carter. This is not about politics. It is about standing up to the ultimate playground bully, and not simply cowering and kissing his shoes.
I left it "all on the field" in the jungles back there when I was medivaced out of Vietnam in March of 1969 and sent back to hospitals in "The World." Although You, Mr. Kerry, painted all of us Vietnam veterans with the yellow brush of My Lai and Tiger Force, most of us, draftees and lifers alike, actually poured our hearts out in the tropical rain forests and in the rice paddies, thoroughly gave it our all, and acted as warriors who had honor.
I have a son earning his green beret at Fort Bragg right now and daughter-in-law who was on orders for Iraq but is making me a grandpa again. I am not going to stand by and watch them go through the same treatment we did, because some of our well-meaning fellow Americans choose to wear blinders and believe things just because they heard it on the network news or simply not care enough to get involved.
I am not a "baby-killer, torturer, or murderer," John Kerry. I am a Vietnam veteran and an American who will not soon forget, or ever want to see again, any more jets loaded with fuel and screaming, innocent Americans slamming into our buildings on our very own soil. I have shed enough tears for ten lifetimes. We all have. I will never again let my fellow countrymen get away with making American veterans feel like bastard step-children.
Santayana said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
John Kerry, I now call on my "Band of Brothers," those who have heard the sound of guns and cries of orphaned children, those who hate war more than anyone who has not been there, to join me in this difficult battle ahead.
Republicans, democrats, independents, and the apolitical; I call on the 25,000,000 veterans of this country to help me confront this evil facing our great nation, not with guns and bombs, but with our voices, our votes, our computers, and with all our fighting spirit.
My fellow veterans, your families, survivors, and neighbors: God bless you and God bless America.
You want proof of all I have to say. Here are the references:
Want more proof? Read the very exposing February 27, 2004 article, on page 8, of the NY Sun by Thomas Lipscomb, founder of Time Books and publisher of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt's best-selling book. "ON WATCH ".
Also read what the man who pinned the Silver Star on John Kerry had to say about him. The article is entitled "Setting Straight Kerry's War Record"
Kerry has a long and well-documented history of providing "aid and comfort" to the enemy in time of war -- particularly in the case of North Vietnam, Nicaragua and Cuba. Kerry, by his own account of his actions and protests, violated the UCMJ, the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Code while serving as a Navy officer. Kerry met, on two occasions, with North Vietnamese negotiators in 1970 and 1971, willingly placing himself in violation of Article three, Section three of the U.S. Constitution, which defines treason as "giving aid and comfort" to the enemy in time of warfare.
Thus, in accordance with the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3, which states, "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President ... having previously taken an oath ... to support the Constitution of the United States, [who has] engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,"
We, the People of these United States, believe John F. Kerry is unfit for ANY public office.
Please join your fellow Patriots and sign the petition demanding that John Kerry be prosecuted for "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" and disqualified for national office.
The French President refused to fight Saddam but he sends his troops to fight in Ivory Coast the world leading cocoa producer to protect the French interests.
I will try to translation as best I can.
from the Milan's daily LIBERO - 10 november 2004
Let's hope that history doesn't repeat itself and Ivory Coast will not be the small Vietnam for the small Chirac. It's really not the case that France will count its dead soldiers at thousands like the major wars for adults. And for cocoa then, that it has in Ivory Coast its world leading producer.
Hanoi, Kaboul, Baghdad have been historical crucial steps to block communism in Asia and to free the Afghan and Iraqi people from the bloody dictatorships of the Talibans and Saddam.
But to die for Abidjan? France and Ivory Coast have been linked for decades by the French self called Imperial past of Paris until 1960, when the indipendence of the African state has anyway not changed the French influence.
Chirac, and his impotent nostalgia for 'la Grandeur' (sic!) that brings him to dream a French hegemony on 25 European states, they are today 'busy' to face a country of 17.000.000 of people with an average age of 17 y.o. that since years is divided by different etnic groups and religions.
It's really nothing of high 'profile' like Iraq to do: it's not oil to steal over there (as many French and leftist belive in their anti american campaign), and it's not freedom to give to the Ivorians (as the pro american could say).
But there are anyway the looting in the roads, the violence towards whoever is white because he is belived to be a French and also a poor American missionary was killed.
But Le Monde writes that this American missionary was linked to the occupation troops.
It's the resistence, the real one not how the French call the terrorists in Iraq, a resistence towards the invaders, but it is not headed by the local Al Zarqawi, but by the Speaker of the Ivorian Parliament.
Now, while France mourns its 9 soldiers killed, the French Defence Minister, a nice lady, she has said that the French contingent doesn't have the role to fight against the Ivorian Institutions, but the role of Paris is to bring peace. Yes, with the tanks around the Presidential palace..
The truth is that Paris is now seen in Ivory Coast as a armed Godfather that doesn't satisfy anyone: not by the supporters of President Gbagbo and not by the rebels of the north that consider France as an occupant country.
But a solution is not around a corner as the world markets feel and in fact the price of cocoa is growing every hour. Meanwhile a lot of young Ivorians died because of the chocolate 'late-imperialism' of Chirac.
As Yasir Arafat lies dying in a French hospital, it is clear that after having brought disaster to the people he claimed to represent, he is leaving them in the lurch.
To reach real peace, Palestinians will need to overcome Arafat's legacy. The Fatah ("Conquest") chief leaves behind him a legacy of violence against innocent civilians, corruption, irredentism, manipulation of religion, brainwashing, and child abuse for political purposes.
While the UN, Western Europe, and the Israeli left treated him with kid gloves, their inability to confront the evil Arafat embodies a sad moral lesson and an exercise in human hypocrisy.
Arafat was born in Cairo in 1929, when "Palestinian" still meant a Jew who lived in what later became Israel. From his teen years he was connected to the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, a radical Islamist movement with links to the Wahhabi Islam of Saudi Arabia, which was later to spawn Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a constituent part of Al Qaeda.
He came of age in the era of pan-Arab nationalism, and became a tool of Nasserist foreign policy, which targeted Israel. The Palestinian cause he symbolized for decades was a construct by Arab and Soviet strategic planners designed to wipe Israel off the map. After all, "Palestinian" Sunni Arabs do not differ from their brothers in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
A leader of Fatah since 1959, and with a lot of Egyptian and Soviet support, Arafat cobbled together the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1968. Eventually, he also received a lot of Saudi funding.
Arafat's terrorists pioneered attacks on "soft" civilian targets, including multiple hijackings of airplanes; attacks on airports, such as Lod in Israel and Fiumincino in Rome, the murder of schoolchildren; and attacks on hotels and cruise ships. In 1972, Arafat's Black September murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. In 1973, Palestinian terrorists took over the Saudi Embassy in Sudan, killing US Ambassador Cleo Noel and others. James J. Welsh, a US National Security Agency analyst from 1969 to 1974, has charged Arafat with complicity in these murders.
In 1974, PLO terrorists took over a school in the Northern Israeli town of Ma'alot, where they threw school children out of windows. All told 26 people, including 21 pupils were murdered. This did not prevent Arafat from subsequently addressing the UN General Assembly while holstering a gun.
That same year, the Palestinian National Council adopted the "phased plan" which calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state on any territory evacuated by Israel as a base of operations for the ultimate destruction of the Jewish state.
In 1985, the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked by terrorists who reported to Arafat. A wheelchair bound elderly American, Leon Klinghoffer, was shot and thrown overboard with his wheelchair.
The Israeli left, led by Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin naively believed that Arafat, given a state, would behave responsibly. They brought him out of Tunisian exile and entrusted him with Gaza and parts of the West Bank. The Oslo accords, signed in 1993 on the White House lawn, and feted around the world, was the largest misinformation campaign operation pulled off by Arafat.
At the peak of the "Oslo process," in 1996, Arafat addressed an Arab audience in Stockholm, saying, "We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion... We Palestinians will take over everything, including Jerusalem."
Addressing a Bethlehem rally the same year, Arafat announced,
"We have one word -- jihad, jihad, jihad. Whoever does not like it, can drink Dead Sea water..."
When referring to the Oslo accords, he often compared himself to the Prophet Mohammad and Salah a- Din, a great Muslim military leader who defeated the Crusaders. Arafat often invoked the ten-year peace treaty with the tribe of Koreish, which Mohammad broke after two years, massacring the Koreish tribe. Arafat also often referenced Salah a-Din breaking a truce with the crusaders and defeating them. He also made Khaibar -- a Jewish tribe in the Arabian Peninsula annihilated by Mohammad -- into his own battle-cry. The West and the Israeli left completely ignored his hate speech.
Rejecting the generous proposals put forward by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Bill Clinton to for a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank in 2000, Arafat once again chose war over peace. As the late dovish Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban used to say, he never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Arafat's terror war, known as the Al Aqsa Intifada after a Jerusalem mosque to which Muslims have full access, but which he nevertheless declared he would "liberate", has left over 1,000 Israelis and 3,600 Palestinians dead so far. While the majority of Palestinians who were killed were terrorists, the majority of Israelis were civilians. Moreover, Arafat's terror war destroyed the Palestinian economy, driving families to despair -- and youngsters into the hands of terrorist recruiters.
As always, Arafat sought plausible deniability by renaming some of his terror outfits, such as Tanzim and Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades, while enjoying the acceptance and support from the Arab world and the European Union. He also allowed Hamas and Islamic Jihad a free run.
Arafat created a brainwashing machine on a scale unseen since the Joseph Goebbels' Propagandaministerium of the Third Reich. Children as young as two are paraded with suicide belts on. Youth camps for terrorists proliferate. The school system has turned into a jihad factory, and even the US-sponsored Palestinian version of Sesame Street preaches the murder of Jews and Israelis.
While terrorist propaganda blurts nonsense about the 72 virgins ("houries") young men will enjoy after blowing themselves up on buses, in markets, restaurants and movie theaters, often what it really all comes down to is cold hard cash. Until his deposition, Saddam Hussein used to distribute up to $22,000 to each family of a suicide murderer, while the Saudi Arabian state-run TV has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for Hamas and other terror groups in telethons presided over by members of the royal family. Arafat always encouraged such "charity" -- and took a cut.
As his rule is ending, Palestinians had best reassess and reject his legacy. Instead of the cult of death, it is time to promote the culture of peace. It is time to reject the destructive agendas of the PLO's Syrian, Iranian and Saudi sponsors. Arafat, like Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il, belongs to another era, that of totalitarianism and hatred. Only when Palestinians undergo this catharsis, will there be peace with their Israeli neighbors.
A unilateral invasion without the permission of the United Nations. Thousands of civilian deaths. Mass graves uncovered. A foreign power imposing its will on a xenophobic, restless, resentful populace. Massive protests in the streets against the meddling foreigners, calling their leader a "terrorist" and "enslaver." More troops pouring in, desperately trying to keep order and failing. Widespread fear of a quagmire. Whole segments of the population begging President Bush to help them expel the hated French invaders...
Hang on... what was that last part again?
On 19 September 2002, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) erupted into civil war. Two separate rebel factions fought each other and the government for control of the African nation, which produces about 43% of the world's cocoa. Both the Popular Ivorian Movement for the Far West (MPIGO) and the Ivory Coast Patriotic Movement (MPCI) attempted to overthrow President Laurent Gbagbo, taking control of the largely Muslim northern part of the country. At least one of the rebel groups (MCPI) may have ties to the neighboring country of Burkina Faso. The rebels claim to be loyal to the country's former leader, General Robert Guei, who seized power in a military coup in 1999 but lost power in the election of 2001. He died on the first day of fighting, but the various insurrections continued. A few hundred French paratroopers entered the country to protect the 19,000 French nationals living there, but soon found themselves battling the rebels. American Special Forces landed as well, but only to evacuate trapped students from an American school. Over 1,000 French troops set up a "buffer zone" to divide the country in half in October 2002, but it had little effect. French troops put down protesters with tear-gas as they chanted "Down with France" and "Chirac the enslaver."
A third major rebel group emerged by January 2003 -- the Movement for Peace and Justice (MJP). They absorbed MPIGO, but continued the fighting. The other main group, the MCPI, signed a cease-fire with the Ivorian government. With the emergence of new rebel groups and political parties, the fractured nation had over ten sides to the war by that time. The French government drew up a peace plan that divided the Ivorian President's power. The Linas-Marcoussis Peace Accord created a new cabinet, which would draw members from various opposition parties and rebel groups, and declared that Gbagbo may not run for office again. When Gbagbo and the leaders of several groups signed the plan, the populace erupted in protest against the French. Carrying signs declaring "Chirac is a terrorist" and declaring that "he is killing democracy in Ivory Coast" while begging the US to help expel the French troops, over 100,000 Ivorians marched for four days in the nation's economic capitol, Abidjan, even bombing the French Embassy. President Gbagbo declared the plan he signed to be "null and void."
Finally, in February 2003, the United Nations quietly passed a resolution agreeing to the deployment of the French troops that had been there for five months already. Remember the huge outcry by American Liberals against the unilateral French invasion of Côte d'Iviore? Don't feel badly -- neither do I. Keep in mind that this was the same time period during which the French (and Liberals) were condemning the 46-nation Coalition of the Willing for the "unilateral" invasion of Iraq. By March 2003, there were over 3,000 French troops attempting to put down the rebellion and protect the peace treaty, to no avail. France continued to send troops, and by July 2003, a shaky peace was declared, protected by the 4,000 French troops in the country by then. But the protests, if not the fighting, continued.
After Ivorian security forces fired on protesters in March 2004, the rebel groups and the main opposition party withdrew from the government in protest themselves, but rejoined the government after two days of talks. 6,000 UN peacekeeping troops were deployed. The country has been relatively quiet since, except for the discovery of mass graves as fighting between rebel factions continues. Now the virulently anti-French protests continue amid escalating violence in Côte d'Ivoire. French troops fought Ivorian soldiers and angry mobs alike, after Ivorian planes killed 9 French soldiers and one American. The French retaliated by destroying the Ivorian planes and helicopters. On 6 November 2004, Reuters reported:
Mob violence erupted in Ivory Coast's national commercial capital, Abidjan, upon France's retaliation, sending thousands of angry loyalists armed with machetes, axes and clubs out into the streets in fiery rampages in search of French targets. "French go home!" loyalist mobs shouted, as thousands set fire to at least two French schools and tried to storm a French military base, seeking out French civilians as French and Ivory Coast forces briefly traded gunfire. "Everybody get your Frenchman!" young men screamed to each other, swinging machetes.
How long will it be, I wonder, before the French ask for our help? What should we tell them? Should we say that our own troops are busy fighting in Iraq -- you remember, the place you refused to send troops when we asked for help? Should we remind them that the last time they got in over their heads and asked for American aid was in a place called Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and we'd rather not repeat history? The French loss at Dien Bien Phu led to Vietnam being split in two, and America, having already become invested in the outcome, was almost inexorably drawn into the conflict between North and South. Will we turn our backs on the French in Côte d'Iviore as they continue to do in Iraq, even after the emergence of a democratic government? Jacques Chirac is still trying to cause trouble by snubbing Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Chirac skipped out on greeting him in Brussels to visit dying terrorist Yasser Arafat.
The question is, can we turn our backs on the Ivorians if they need our help? On the other hand, can we deal with more anti-war protesters in the streets of New York, this time chanting "No Blood For Cocoa?"
The thrashing of John Kerry's Democrats prompted a knee-jerk reaction from the left-leaning media on both sides of the Atlantic. Predictably they blame Bush's sinister marshalling of the "religious right" and morally driven middle America for the implosion of their aspirations.
Commentators on the right (such as Charles Moore in the Sunday Telegraph) have taken up the defence of Bush's morally motivated supporters and those in Europe who would vote Œmorally' too if they ever got the chance.
In varying degrees, they are all missing the point.
It is not so much the arrival of "moral value" voters that is changing the political scene, but a broad based rejection of the established progressive-left moralists who dominate the media and Government across the western world.
We have just witnessed the total rejection of the left's moral values. People are discovering a desire to halt the "progressive" socialist, Marx-influenced internationalism that has been taken for granted by the self appointed elite as the right moral course for mankind.
Is this the beginning of the end?
One thing is certain. The doubters have found a voice. To my mind, the mainstream media's flagrant bias against Bush encouraged even more voters to reject the outcome "chosen" for them by their betters.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
The 2004 presidential election might not have been the first to be blogged, but it the first in which new media played an important role by offering alternative news sources and points of view. Old media's stranglehold on information was finally broken by the dedicated hard work of alternative broadcasters and news outlets.
Look at the success of Fox News and America's numerous weblogs. Democracy of choice is not proving to be kind to Dan Rather and those like him: one doesn't have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder how the liberal media got the polls so wrong.
It seems that a lot of people are sick of the left's snobbery and propaganda, its corruption and incompetence. More still have had enough of its social engineering agenda. What's more, voters don't like the trendy and urbane telling them how to live: and not because they are uneducated bigots, but because they simply beg to differ. It is a mark of America's civilisation that its people chose to topple the elite by rejecting it peacefully at the ballot box.
The basic political message of modern democrats and socialist parties has become ludicrously out of date. Like Bruce Springsteen and Michael Moore it looked good once, but seems suddenly passé.
It is ironic that the left sneers at the "religious right". After all, the left's chosen fantasy, Marxism, is often described as a religion of sorts. In all its evolved forms and perversions, however pale pink, it has its roots in moral righteousness.
The real question here is: whose moralizing swung the vote?
Europe's Moral Minority
Europe's reaction to the events in the US is largely governed by its flabbergasted "media monopoly" which is, incidentally, a million miles from taking on board the lessons that could spare it the same fate as its American cousin.
Gazing ruefully at weblogs and talk radio sites, poor old John Kerry can only dream of the cosy relationship enjoyed by the European left's media and political elite. However, even this comfortable symbiosis could be headed for a messy divorce.
Unlike the US, Europe is unlikely to upset the entire bien pensant CAP-funded apple cart with one big vote. We have our rednecks too and no-one is likely to invite them to spoil the party.
But voter by voter, state by state it is happening. Britain, for example, is going through a period of palpable resentment in the street. Voters are disillusioned not only with the government but with all the main parties. They too are fighting for the middle ground and have left a lot of disaffected people on the fringes.
Tory leader Michael Howard has become the most vocal champion of the anti-Bush anti-Iraq war whingers from the two main parties. His continuing opportunistic grumbling about the Iraq war has left him perched to the left of Senator Kerry, who in his concession speech urged Americans to support their new president to win the war in Iraq. Howard is now boasting of how he has yet to congratulate President Bush on his re-election. Not long ago, Washington's Republicans dismissed Britain's Tories as "wankers." Howard seems determined to waste what little goodwill remains between the west's two leading conservative parties.
Britain is becoming like France, with large centrist party in power (either will do) and an opposition establishment that broadly agrees with the government, only offering cosmetic alternatives. Real change is not on the menu for voters.
This is true even on the European level. Forget even the chummy backroom deals between the Socialist bloc and the Christian democrats that lead to the appointment of mediocre timeservers instead of decent statesmen. The European Union itself is the most absurdly dated monolithic bureaucratic folly since the Soviet Union. Despite the unconvincing efforts of the EU's right-liberals, the union continues to embody the principles of international socialism, driven by a utopian bureaucratic elite which rams through a staggering amount of laws aimed at re-engineering society according to its morality.
A morality built on doubtful Historicism and bogus inevitability. Its courts, which are about to be handed a blank cheque in the form of the European constitution, rule on the principle of the political motive of Œan ever closer union' thus denying proper justice.
Political power is shared and divided according to good behaviour among the various states, the big policy decisions bartered and traded behind closed doors (like your fishing industry for our budget deficit) and the best jobs divided up among the believers.
As for democracy, or the lack of it, well some will admit that it can be a troublesome detail but generally the trick is to plough forward with the agenda, sign the deals and put it to the plebs when its too late, or never at all. If it's a petulant small country that votes the wrong way then make them re-vote until they get it right.
And as for National democracy? Well, it doesn't matter most of the time because the vast majority of our laws are now made in Brussels - and don't forget that they have a morally superior vision of the future over there!
This vision is shared by nearly every mainstream broadcaster and newspaper of record - not to mention the main political parties - right across Europe. Unfortunately, Europe has yet to produce a George Bush capable of shaking its elite out of its tree.
But don't give up hope too quickly. Ideas and political events can have a momentum of their own. Relentless Bush bashing turned out to backfire in the US and the wrong campaign message for the media turned out to be the right message for the voters.
In Europe, relentless left wing pontificating could backfire in the same way. Europeans may suddenly want a government that acts in their interest and that is in some way representative. No doubt the BBC, Guardian, Le Monde and their colleagues will warn us of the dangerous "religious right rednecks" in our midst.
But the Œmorally-correct Europeans' may not be in such a strong position after all.
"Democrats said President Bush's defeat of Senator John Kerry by three million votes had left the party facing its most difficult time in at least 20 years. Some Democrats said the situation was particularly worrisome because of the absence of any compelling Democratic leader prepared to steer the party back to power or carry its banner in 2008." New York Times, November 7.
When you lose a political race you've convinced yourself was [or ought to have been!] in the bag, it shouldn't come as a surprise to outsiders that you lash out in bitterness and vindictiveness. If you've read much of the political commentary that followed the President's re-election, you can't help but be shocked by how ugly, even threatening, is the language.
Much of the energy that fueled the Democrats campaign against President Bush was unadulterated hate. The dilemma they ultimately faced on election day, however, was that, while people had questions about this or that policy--and even strong disagreements-- most Americans like the President. They saw in him all the personal qualities absent in Sen. Kerry: likeability, strength of character, a life-affecting faith, resoluteness, and utter determination not to be deflected, once he had sent his course.
But my concern today is what some more-or-less responsible Democrats (all of whom, to the best of my knowledge, are pro-abortion) and their supporters in the media are saying. What solutions do they have for a Democratic Party which, according to the New York Times, "emerged from this week's election struggling over what it stood for, anxious about its political future, and bewildered about how to compete with a Republican Party that some Democrats say may be headed for a period of electoral dominance"?
A lot of it was very general. According to the Times, "'We really need to work on the question of what we are for,' said Walter F. Mondale, the former vice president whose 1984 loss to Ronald Reagan was invoked by some Democrats in assessing the party's spirits now. 'Unless we have a vision and the arguments to match, I don't think we're going to truly connect with the American people.'" Yes, but what "vision" and what "arguments"?
Michigan Democratic Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, told the Times "that in order to be competitive with Republicans, Democrats had to have a message that was ''strong and strongly pro-work, pro-responsibility, pro-duty, pro-service, pro-child, pro-seniors.''' You noticed, of course, the one "pro" item she omitted.
You can almost draw a one-to-one correlation between facing the truth--addressing how much out of touch the party is with mainstream America--and possibly running to be a part of the presidential ticket in 2008.
Indiana Democratic Senator Evan Bayh, always described as a "moderate" but never as a pro-abortionist, said, ''We need to be a party that stands for more than the sum of our resentments." Bayh also told the Times, "In the heartland, where I am from, there are doubts. Too often, we're caricatured as a bicoastal cultural elite that is condescending at best and contemptuous at worst to the values that Americans hold in their daily lives.''
Our Movement in general, NRLC in particular, is non-partisan. Our cause is our political party. And because we can look objectively, we see that the hole in the Democrats' argument is larger than the surrounding donut. They can't win if, nationally, they remain the party of abortion.
If I had to guess, I would think the chances of having an honest-to-goodness debate over abortion,or any other important issue, are close to nil. They will likely take the easy way out. They will repackage economic grievances in an even more shameless manner. They will play to their base by assaulting the President morning and night and then whine that Mr. Bush is playing "partisan politics."
But pro-abortion Democrats will be far more devious when trying to finesse abortion. They will attempt to recast the political and moral vocabulary to their advantage.
Everybody has "values," they have said, and will say again. Don't get hung up on that little diversion--that each year we snuff out 1.3 million babies each year.
There are many issues that command attention and over which there is legitimate debate. However, for a decisive slice of the American electorate, abortion is not one of them. As we noted in this space last week--and will again in the November issue of National Right to Life New--the President benefited from a four percentage point advantage among voters for whom abortion was THE decisive issue.
Until the Democrats get right on the right to life, they are doomed to becoming a smaller and smaller minority party.
You have to have a human being before you can get human stem cells.
I want to talk to you about an idea, a concept - the underlying moral principles that drive ideas. My deep concern about our nation is that there is radical confusion, not just in the population in general, but in the church in particular, about how to do moral thinking. One of the most immediate examples of such a thing is the area of embryonic stem cell research and cloning. You know that Congress is debating right now whether to allow human cloning or not, and whether to allow the cloning of embryonic stem cells for research. Actually those are both the exact same issue.
There has been an attempt to obfuscate (confuse) the issue morally, an attempt to draw a distinction between a blastula (the earliest stages of human development) and the later stages, as if in the first case you don’t have human beings and in the second you do. People will say that is not a human being, that is just an embryo or that is just a blastula. You know, when you think about it, friends, there are many, many kinds of embryos. Embryo is not a thing — it is a stage. It is like saying a ten-day-old, or an adolescent, or a youngster. It does not tell you anything about the thing except for its level of development. It could be a young dog, or it could be a young parakeet, or it could be a young human being. It could be a fish embryo, it could be a dog embryo, it could be a human embryo. You see, embryo, or blastula, or blastocyst are just terms to describe this earliest stages of development where stem cells are present; these are just words that identify a stage of the development of a thing. It does not give you any information as to what that thing is that is developing.
To say that an embryo goes from an embryo after a certain level of development into a human being is to create a kind of category error, it is mixing terms. It is kind of like saying this thing went from a ten-day-old to a young rabbit. A ten-day-old what? Well, a ten-day-old baby rabbit into a young rabbit. These are terms that represent two different categories of things. To be clear about these things, we have to acknowledge that distinction. So when we say embryo, we are talking about a stage of development, we are not talking about the thing.
The question is what kind of embryo is it? And in this case the embryos are human embryos, the blastula are human blastula. You have to have a human being before you can get human stem cells. So, this discussion about the legitimacy of cloning for the stem cells versus cloning to create a human being, is a rationally confused distinction. There is no difference. You cannot get human embryonic stem cells but from a human embryo. So, you must create a human being first in its embryo stage, which then is either allowed to grow into subsequent stages, fetus, newborn, adolescent, etc., or is destroyed before it can begin to develop into other stages and is then cut up an used for body parts. But it still is what it is when it is destroyed — a human being in a blastula stage.
The problem with this issue has to do with a challenge in trying to weigh means and ends. I have an article from the LA Times from March 6, 2002. Midway through the first section under "The Nation" is a compelling photograph of actor Christopher Reeve appearing on Capitol Hill with Senator Edward Kennedy and California Senator Diane Feinstein because he spoke before the senate in favor of what is called "therapeutic cloning" - cloning for disease research. That is, cloning to produce this young embryo that is then divided up and not allowed to grow to further stages. My point here is that there is no significant (pardon me for the use of this word, but it is the right word to use here) ontological difference (I’ll explain in a moment); there is no ontological difference between therapeutic cloning and cloning to create a human being.
Ontology has to do with the nature of existence or the being itself. The question "What is that thing?" is an ontological question. What is the essence of its existence? The question with embryonic stem cell research is whether the distinction between therapeutic cloning and cloning to create a human being is meaningful. As I mentioned earlier, therapeutic cloning must first create a human being before it has human stem cells to be used for that purpose.
Christopher Reeve's story is dramatic, of course. Christopher Reeve, the actor, the handsome Adonis, human perfection prior to his accident. Superman. A tremendous actor, actually. Good looking, healthy, and then he, after a horse accident that broke his neck, became a quadriplegic. There is some question as to whether therapeutic cloning might be able to produce a therapy that will help regenerate broken spines, or bad spinal columns, and the like, so that Christopher Reeve might be able to be healed. Now, I don’t know that he is holding out for himself, but he is certainly thinking about others like him.
This is a powerful picture, and it goes along with the point that we have made many times in the past. If you want to have a moral impact on an issue, use pictures for their moral impact. Now, the important thing, of course, is you are not just using pictures for impact, but you are using pictures to go along with a good argument. This is the way we argue against abortion. You see the impact here. He has shown us himself to argue his case. Here is this dramatic moment where Christopher Reeve shows up, and everybody knows the way he was, they see the way he is. They see his indomitable spirit. They see him arguing for the use of cloning for the purpose of producing medicines that will help people in his circumstance. It has a powerful emotional impact.
I will tell you what is troubling me about this. Those of us who opposed embryonic stem cell research do not realize the good that can come from this kind of experimentation. We have to have a quadriplegic paraded before us to soften our stony hearts so that we would realize what is really at stake here. Open your eyes. In fact, the article opens up with this statement: "His 13-year-old daughter at his side, Hollywood director Jerry Zucker lamented the fact that Congress might pass a law ‘stopping us from trying to save my daughter’s life.’" Apparently, his daughter has an affliction that might be healed by embryonic stem cell research. So he sees these actions as merely hard-hearted actions that are just meant to hurt people. The same thing with Christopher Reeve. Don’t you guys get it? Wake up! Are you so callus that you don’t see the good that can be done from therapeutic cloning?
My answer is, we get it! That’s not the issue. Here is our lesson for today. The whole question that we are faced with in this is whether the ends justify the means. That’s it. It is a question of means-and-ends relationship. And the whole question of ultimate ends, the benefits, all of the good things that might come out of embryonic stem cell research justify whatever means is necessary.
By the way, I am just granting that for the sake of argument because it is not clear that all these good things will come out of embryonic stem cell research. And it is also not clear if stem cell research can produce good results that there are not other less morally questionable means of getting those same results. Granting all of that, let’s just say this is the only way to do it and this will cure all these diseases. That does not settle the question because the whole question of ultimate ends is completely irrelevant without a clear answer to the question of means. As you know, a noble end, in this case healing or preventing debilitating disease, is only moral given the means that we use to get there. What do we have to do to get to this thing?
There are two extremes on this, and one extreme is from our side. And people say things that turn out to be not helpful. On the one hand, we have to avoid statements like, The ends never justify the means. Think about that statement for just a moment. You don’t believe that. The ends never justify the means? Well, that’s not what we mean. As stated, this is not a helpful moral guideline because there is always a relationship between means and ends. Certain means are justified by some ends but not by others. And whether a certain means is justified or not, whether the method you use to get what you want is right or not, depends entirely on what it is you are trying to get. So you can’t say the ends never justify the means. You have to ask whether the ends in this circumstance do justify the means in this circumstance. There is a relationship there.
For example, killing may not be a justifiable means to get a seat on the bus. Killing - that’s the means. Well, obviously, those ends do not justify the means. But what if the same means here — killing - was to accomplish a different end, that is, maybe to save someone else’s life. You have a child under attack and you use lethal force to stop this lethal attack on a child’s life. There you have the same means, killing, but you have a different end. In the first case it was getting a seat on the bus, but in the second the means does justify the end. So whether a certain means is justifiable or not depends entirely on what it is you are trying to accomplish. And when the circumstances change then the moral equation changes with it. Now, some people are uncomfortable when I say it that way. They say, that is relativism. That is situational ethics. This is not situational ethics and this is not relativism if one clearly understands what those terms mean.
Situational Ethics is a proper noun. It is a specific kind of ethical system developed by a man named Joseph Fletcher. And Joseph Fletcher is not a relativist; he was an absolutist. The absolute rule he believed was that you should always do the loving thing. The circumstance determine what is loving in any given situation. I am not advocating that. I am advocating that you must look at the situation itself before you can know what proper and appropriate objective or absolute moral principle applies. All moral decision making is situational in that sense. Is killing right? Well, it depends. Not to get a seat in the bus, but killing arguably is right in self-defense. Do you see the relationship there?.
Relativism is when the moral claim is relative, not to the circumstances themselves, but is relative to the subject. It's also called subjectivism. In the same circumstances, different subjects have different moral rules. If you and I are in the exact same situation, I could say that one course of action is right for me, but an opposite course of action could be right for you. The only thing that is changed is you and I. That is relativism.
All truth claims of any kind are always relative to the circumstances - you have to know which rule to apply in any given circumstance. We have to be careful to be aware that when we are making moral judgments with regards to means and ends, it is not enough to simply dismiss alternatives with the statement, The ends never justify the means. Oftentimes, the ends do justify the means. You have to look more closely. But, on the other hand, we cannot simply look at noble goals and act as if that is all that matters.
We cannot just trot out people in wheelchairs before the Senate in place of a moral argument. Of course, it is a noble end; no one is taking exception with that. This question is what do we have to do to get the ends that you have in mind? It isn’t that people like us just want sick people to stay sick. We are callous and hard and need to see more handicapped people wheeled around in wheelchairs and more Alzheimer’s patients to finally melt our cold hearts. No, that is not what is going on. The key here to the means and ends discussion is in weighing the means and the ends to see if there is proportionality.
We just have to ask the question whether the ends justify the means in this case. As I stated, there always is a relationship between the means and ends. We have to look at each individual case. We cannot just blanket it and say the ends never justify the means because sometimes they do. But do they, in this particular case?
In the case of embryonic stem cell research, arguably, a human being is being sacrificed for her body parts so that someone else can survive or get healthy. Our view is about what is the price we have to pay to reach that end. It may be the case that human beings are sacrificed for other people’s benefit. Even with those noble ends, it should be clear to see that it is just simply wrong to take the life of one innocent human being to improve the health of another, or even to save that person’s life. Now, sometimes we may choose to sacrifice our own lives to save the life of someone else. That is called heroism, but heroism is not required morally and we ought not be forced to jeopardize our lives on behalf of others. Certainly when we do that, if we choose to, that is morally commendable. But in this case, we are not talking about that. We are talking about children, human beings, who do not have the capability of giving such consent, but are being sacrificed on behalf of others. Simply put, we do not carve up infants for their body parts to save the lives of other children. Or, in the Apostle Paul’s words, we don’t do evil that good may come.
Back to the main point. The good ends are desired by everyone. We don’t need Christopher Reeve to convince us of that. But we must face this question: What is it that you are asking us to do to accomplish this noble end? And it brings us back once again to the pivotal issue, what is the unborn? A human being. Well, that is what needs to be discussed, not the good that can come from stem cell research. What is the embryo? The stem cells? The blastula? The blastocyst? Because as I mentioned, human embryos don’t become human beings; they already are human at a particular stage of development. That is the issue. We aren't against embryonic stem cell research per se; we are against killing human embryos to use their stem cells. That is the issue we have to focus on.
Parading handicapped people before us misses the point. We’re just as concerned about these handicapped people as others. In fact, we would also campaign that you cannot take the life of these handicapped people because they are handicapped. You cannot remove the feeding tube. In Christopher Reeve’s own book that he wrote, Still Me, he said that he realized that even though he'd lost the use of his body that he was still the same person. And if he is intrinsically valuable before the accident, he is intrinsically valuable after the accident. We acknowledge that intrinsic value. He is not instrumentally valuable because he is formerly Superman. He is valuable because he is a human being made in the image of God. And if that is the case, then his value is the same as all other human beings made in the image of God, regardless of their size, their level of development, their environment, or their degree of dependency. As it turns out, the blastula, the embryo, is a human being that is just smaller, more dependent, in a different location, and less developed than a Christopher Reeve. It's valuable because of what it is, not how it can be used.
Here is a commentary "First Test in the Biotech Age — Human Cloning", Wednesday, March 6, L.A. Times. Do we have the will and the wisdom to say no? ask William Crystal and Jeremy Rifkin, with regards to human cloning." I am going to read a bit of what they have written here because I think it really captures some moral consistency and moral clarity. First they argue for a moral rule and then specify its application, rather than simply looking at the application and saying, that is a great application so the moral rule does not matter. It’s another way of putting the means and ends discussion, and the relationship of the two.
They write, "With regards to this brave new world prospect here, will we be content to frame the discussion in the old terms of religion versus science, or pro-life versus pro-choice? Or are we willing to see that the debate is over two distinct views of human life and the good society?" I think they have nailed it.
"On the one side are the utilitarians. These are the ones who basically see cloning life in terms of markets and patents and progress. On the other side are those who believe in the intrinsic value of human life. They mention for various reasons, but whatever their rationale, religious or otherwise, this is what they believe. They all share a respect for the human and the natural and oppose efforts to reduce human life in its various parts and stages to the status of mere research tools and manufactured products. The utilitarians argue that the potential medical advances of harvesting stem cells from cloned human embryos for medical research justifies going ahead. However, those of us to hold to the intrinsic value of life believe that creating embryonic clones for research and eventually for the creation of spare body parts if unethical. Even though, we strongly support continued research on adult stem cells which has proved promising in recent clinical trials."
They look at the distinction being made between reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning and are say that in both cases we are confronted with the same moral problem. We cannot treat them differently. They point out that these bills before the Congress right now would, in effect, authorize the creation of human clones and then mandate their destruction. Then they take the roof off. They show the natural consequence of this way of thinking.
"If using a 12-day-old cloned embryo for producing cells and tissues is morally acceptable, what about harvesting more developed cells from say, an eight-week-old embryo, or harvesting organs from a five-month-old cloned fetus if it were found to be a more useful medical therapy."
They are showing that when you take this to its logical conclusion, it produces morally absurd results. They are taking the roof off.
"Humans have always thought of the birth of their children as a gift bestowed by God or beneficent nature. In its place, the new cloned progeny would become the ultimate shopping experience designed in advanced, produced to specifications, and purchased in the biological marketplace. A child would no longer be a unique creature, but rather an engineered reproduction. Human cloning opens the door to a commercial eugenic civilization where life science companies already have patented both human embryos and stem cells."
How do you patent a human embryo? They go on, "Giving them ownership and control of the new form of reproductive commerce with frightening implications for the future of society."
Friends, my point in cloning has always been that the greatest harm is not the cloning per se. I’m not sure. I’m troubled by cloning per se. I’m troubled by how one would view the bona fide human beings that would be the result of the human cloning process. A cloned human being would be a real human being with a soul. Clones would have souls. Dolly the sheep has a soul. CiCi the kitten has a soul. It is theologically sound. It is philosophically sound. Humans have a different kind of soul than animals have, but clones would have souls. A human body without a soul is called a corpse, okay? But the problem is, since the body, the human being in this case was accomplished through this highly scientific process, the question of ownership comes up. Do these cloned human beings belong to families and ought be treated like human beings as members of the families. Or are they merely the products of the laboratory and the property, therefore, of the scientist? That is the problem.
They close, "As the Senate prepares to debate, we should not be fooled about the stakes. This is the first major test of the biotech age, a moment of decision for a civilization that may have gone too far already in their commercialization and the destruction of the human and ecological worlds. Do we have the wisdom and the political and the moral will to say stop?"
If it's not wrong to kill human beings, and then use their body products for commercial purposes, how could it be wrong to kill human beings, in order to use their body parts for commercial purposes?
Since July 1993, it's become legal now to cannibalize and commercialize the "tiny bodies of murdered babies." I am refering, of course, to the legislation the president Clinton signed into law on June 10, "The Institute of Health Revitalization Act of 1993."
Part two of this legislation has authorized for the first time in U.S. history government funded research using tissue from aborted fetuses.
This is a volatile topic for a lot of people. You have individuals who don't understand what the brew-ha-ha is all about, the fetuses, as they would term them, are being aborted and lost anyway, so some good may as well be made of these fetuses for medical and commercial purposes.
Research can be done. Cures can be found it is suggested for diseases such as Alzheimer¹s Disease. In fact, February 22 of 1993 year Newsweek, in anticipation of this legislation, entitled its cover story "Cures From the Womb" and gave it considerable space in the discussion of the possibility of turning up cures as a result of research on aborted fetus tissue. I would point out that there have been no cures to date from fetal tissue transplantation which is something that the article itself pointed out.
I guess the best way to talk about this is to read the process that is involved in extracting the necessary tissue from a fetus to be used for research.
I realize two things before I read this. First, some are going to think that I'm just doing this for shock value. Probably anybody looking at an appendectomy for the first time is going to be so grossed out that they'd never want to have one of those done to them. But that doesn't imply that because they're grossed out that there's something morally inappropriate about that behavior. I assure you that I'm not doing this for shock value. I am trying to give you a window as it were into a process, into a medical procedure that is being performed on a regular basis with the sanction of our government, and that is having a vital impact on the nature of how we value human beings. Sometimes it's possible to talk about an issue in the sterility of academia or an office environment or even a radio talk show. But when we actually get to look at the particular thing that we are discussing there is a moral quality to it that is self-evident because we're seeing it as it really is. That's really my purpose here. My purpose is to help you to have an insight or perspective on this procedure.
The second thing that comes to mind is that some of you might be thinking, along the lines that I mentioned earlier, that if these are bodies that are being discarded anyway, then why not use some of the remains for something good, because after all a corpse is a corpse. I think you will see that this goes far beyond merely recycling old human parts that are going to be tossed into the garbage. This becomes an added motivation for taking the lives of unborn children. And not only that, but we have taken one step further down the slippery slope in terms of the ghastly means and ways that we can terminate the lives of innocent human beings.
It's important to remember that a child born alive presents a major problem to an abortionist. It is the ultimate complication, because legally every effort must be made to keep a breathing newborn alive. And that's why the physician usually crushes the fetus' head while still in the uterus. However, a baby who is born dead is of less value to researchers because brain tissue and other organs quickly deteriorate when deprived of oxygen. Thus the abortionist must employ a means of extracting the body parts and brain matter from a living baby who is not yet expelled from the birth canal. The method is called dilation and extraction, or D and X.
"Over two days the cervix is dilated. Then an ultrasound device and forceps are used to reach in and grab the baby's feet. The little body is pulled downward until just the head remains in the cervix. Next the abortionist grasps the nape of the neck and cuts open the back of the skull with blunt scissors. A device called a cannula is then inserted into the wound and the brain material is sucked out. If kidneys and other organs are desired they are removed while the child is still partially in the vagina. Initially at least, these surgical procedures are performed on a live baby who has not specifically been anesthetized (although the mother's medication may reduce some of the pain). If puppies or kittens were subjected to such cruel treatment, the protests from the animal rights people would be heard around the world.
"At what gestational age does this ghastly procedure occur? Most fetuses are aborted during the first or second trimester, although many states do no prohibit an abortionist from waiting until a few weeks or even hours before the normal due date. Does this happen routinely? No, because there is no reason for a woman to carry a baby to term if she does not intend to let it live. But the advent of tissue harvesting changes the equation. A medical researcher may pay a pregnant woman to provide him with the mature organs he needs. Or a mother might be motivated to conceive and carry a child specifically to provide spare parts for a family member with Parkinson's Disease or failing kidneys. Growing babies only to be dismembered for the use of their organs appears to be on the horizon." And here he footnotes the Newsweek article. "Admittedly the new federal legislation prohibits the tissue donation linkages between mothers and relatives or mothers and researchers, but there is no enforcement provision in the law. Nothing prevents collaboration between women and their physicians. Officials at the National Institutes of Health have no power to police free-standing abortion clinics, and no other agency of government is authorized to nose around in the doctor/patient relationship. Abuses will occur just as millions of abortion took place before the Supreme Court legalized them in 1973. And when the public has been sufficiently desensitized, who can say where this practice is headed."
This piece speaks pretty much for itself. One strains to be able to describe this process in civilized terms. This is another example of what I have come to call the "Death of Humanness." And in Dobson's last remarks he points out something I have been saying for a while--"our values are being velocitized." What that means is that when you get in a car that goes 60 mph it feels pretty fast until you get used to it. It doesn't feel fast at all. Then you accelerate to 90 and you think that's fast until you get used to that too. You can do that up and up. They call this concept of getting used to it "being velocitized." That applies to your values too, my friends. What was unthinkable yesterday, is thinkable today and ordinary and commonplace tomorrow.
I have two parting thoughts for you after reading that material.
First, note that "new federal legislation prohibits tissue donation linkages between mothers and relatives or mothers and researchers."
I guess mothers apparently can't have abortions just to give tissue for relatives or to researchers. I read that and had to ask why is that?
Coming from the perspective that they're coming from, why is that a concern. If it's not wrong to kill human beings, and then use their body products for commercial purposes, how could it be wrong to kill human beings, in order to use their body parts for commercial purposes? I can't figure that out.
A second thought came to mind when I picture what necessarily goes on for doctors to accomplish this kind of thing. I thought for a moment of the mother. I imagine that most women are conscious during this operation. What must a mother be thinking as she watches her newborn child dangling between her legs--not crying yet because its head is still in her vagina, although it would cry, in many cases, if it was simply given some air--and then watches as a doctor methodically removes its vital organs and suctions out its brains while it's still alive, and then gives one last tug to expel the shapeless head and the lifeless body of her own flesh and blood? What must she be thinking? I'm mystified.
I have been to two different concentration camps, Majdaneck (little known but the largest in Europe) and Auschwitz, both in Poland.
In the cell blocks that once housed human beings like cattle, awaiting their turn to be slaughtered, are displays of the product of the mingling of the Nazis' advanced technology and their enlightened ethic: lamp shades made of human skin, mattresses stuffed with human hair, and gold dug from the teeth of corpses on their way to the ovens. The rooms are scrubbed clean and the strong smell of disinfectant hangs in the air. Sometimes when I walk into public institutions when they've scrubbed with that same disinfectant I'm immediately transported back. That smell mixed with the images on display before me was enough to turn my stomach. This was unbelievable; this was unthinkable. But these were human beings who were in the way and expendable; and more than that they were a cash crop. Why waste what others can benefit from?
Men and women, what is the difference here? Once again we have human beings who are in the way and who society has branded "expendable." And the brand is no less vivid than the faded yellow star of David stitched to the striped uniforms of every Jewish inmate in Auschwitz. The star and the brand both mean the same thing: human garbage. And once again we have a cash crop.
I don't see the difference, except that the victims are smaller, and more defenseless: they're infants. Among the most heart wrenching images of the Nazi death camps--and there were many--were the images of children. Whole sections of the memorials are dedicated to them.
You see, we're still making lamp shades out of people's skin, we're still making mattresses out of their hair, and we're still stealing gold from their teeth, but now we smash the "gold" from their skulls while they're still alive and aware, while they're still kicking and feeling. At least the Nazis waited until their victims were dead.
Well, sometimes when I ask, I really do receive. Many of you were kind enough to respond to Wednesday's TN&V by passing along your own emotional "take" on Tuesday's elections. I get here VERY early in the morning; what a delightful way to start the day.
Reactions ran in length from just a couple of sentences to very long, very thoughtful expositions. But in their own way, each andevery one was as unique as a snowflake. I was pleasantly surprised how many e-mails came from younger readers.
One of my favorites was also the briefest: "This election ROCKED! One of the best in history!" Yes, it did, didn't it?
And, of course, everyone was caught up in the emotions of the day. The normal tension and anxiety that attends the end of long campaigns was cranked up when the results of grossly misleading early exit polls somehow were "leaked." The numbers--which showed Sen. Kerry racing across the electoral landscape faster than he windsurfs over water--were picked up by both pro- andanti-Bush bloggers and false rumors that the President was in deep trouble rapidly like wildfire.
The following typified the angst and the subsequent relief: "You asked for e-mailed reactions to last night's elections. I just can't stop crying. I am so overcome with emotions --gratitude, relief, hope. My constant prayer for this election was for the unborn, for God's will to be done and human life protected and respected. It was so crucial to re-elect President Bush and pro-life Congress members because of the presumed upcoming vacancies on the Supreme Court."
Another wrote that "because of the Lord's help," she was "very calm on Tuesday. I was even able to go to bed at a reasonable time on Tuesday when it became clear that the election wouldn’t be called that night. What I awoke to was extreme jubilation! I was so excited, excited that Bush won, excited that Tom Daschle lost, excited that we gained seats in the House and Senate, excited that Hollywood doesn't really call the shots in politics after all. I am extremely grateful to my Heavenly Father for the outcome of the election. It was a great victory for all of us."
The bottom line was summed up this way: "Today has been one of the best in memory as far as moving the ball down the field toward protecting the unborn." He was nice enough to add, "Keep up the inspiring and insightful commentary."
Many, many picked up on the theme of a media elite which hardly bothered to even fake objectivity. But, thankfully, their best (worst) efforts failed.
One TN&V reader wrote back, "Again the media, because of its personal bias, ends up with egg on its face. All these 'new' voters didn't materialize for Kerry. National Guard documents turned out to be forgeries. Exit polls were incredibly skewed, perhaps to discourage voters? Efforts to destroy Bush failed. I'm so relieved and thankful. This election result was beyond my wildest dreams.
Most important it’s hugely successful for the babies. What more can we pro-lifers ask than yesterday's results?"
Still others kindly thanked NRL PAC for its efforts. "Congratulations, on NRLC’s hard won victory," read one. "May God bless you and the NRLC."
I need to sound a note of caution. One reader wrote to tell me about a development I've seen mirrored elsewhere yesterday and today. "Paul Begala [a Democratic Party operative who is often described as the "architect of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign"] reflected on how the Democratic Party could win the next election and the subject of abortion surfaced."
Truth be told (so to speak), any number of pro-abortion Democrats talked about how (as USA Today paraphrased them] "the problem is more the party's than Kerry's. They said it is the second presidential election in a row that Democrats were on the short end of the culture divide." Begala was then quoted as saying, "Democrats need to take a hard look at how they relate to middle class voters on social and cultural values."
This gosh-we-must-get-with-the -program must be taken with a pound of salt. To switch metaphors, we are definitely going to look a gift horse in the mouth if it is a political operative who has worked with pro-abortion candidates to hide and/or soft peddle their staunch support for abortion. My guess is that pro-abortionists of both parties will spend lots of time and resources retooling howthey verbally disguise their support for abortion.
But let me end with my favorite email which brought it all home in one sentence: "The only thing I could think of this morning in the shower was...'Lord, This was one for the little people.'"
Opposition to abortion spans ideologies and ethnic groups
Today's political culture demands diversity, and a preelection meeting sponsored by the National Pro-Life Religious Council shows that the pro-life movement has it in abundance. Representatives of groups not normally considered pro-life demonstrated the many reasons—from within their ideologies—to oppose the medical slaughter of unborn children.
Democrats for Life, for example, cite their party's long record of fighting for the underdog. Kristen Day, the executive director of the group, called for the election of pro-life Democrats to help change what has become the "Party of Death." Ms. Day said she hopes for a "pro-life majority" consisting of all political parties, so that "no matter who is in charge, the pro-life position will always prevail."
Libertarians tend to favor individual freedom to the point of favoring the legalization of drugs, prostitution, and other "victimless crimes." And for the most part, they instinctively agree with "the woman's right to choose."
But Libertarians for Life makes a libertarian case against abortion. "I'm a Jewish atheist and a former abortion choicer," said Doris Gordon, head of the organization, "and I am happy to admit that the pope is right on abortion." She went on to make a rigorously logical case why abortion is unlibertarian. There is no such thing as a potential human being, she argued, and thus the child before birth deserves his or her own liberty. There can be no right to kill an innocent person.
As for the hard cases, Ms. Gordon's logical syllogisms allow for no exceptions. In a pregnancy due to rape, "If A (the father) harms B (the mother), that does not entitle B to harm C (the child). What if the mother's life or health is at risk? In such cases, so is the child's. . . . This is mainly a problem for medicine; physicians must remember they have two patients to look after."
The pro-life movement also has ethnic diversity. The head of the group Indians for Life, Little Hawk Hernandez, a Lakota Sioux, lifts up the Native American example "of not killing our unborn babies, elders, and people that are handicapped or sick." Black Americans for Life sees legalized abortion as being particularly devastating in the African-American community. "Abortion has become the new form of black genocide which is systematically destroying about 400,000 black babies every year," said Day Gardner, director of the organization.
The National Black Catholic Apostolate for Life backs up the charge. The group cites evidence that a disproportionate number of abortion clinics are located in black neighborhoods and that 35 percent of all abortions are committed against black women, who represent only 13 percent of the population.
Many pro-lifers are conservative evangelicals and Catholics, but pro-life groups also exist within liberal denominations. The United Church of Christ Friends for Life and the Lifewatch Taskforce of United Methodists on Abortion and Sexuality oppose abortion in the name of social justice. "Like no other domestic problem," said Paul Stallsworth of Lifewatch, "abortion is an exercise of raw power against the weakest."
So many different perspectives make for fresh arguments in the crucial battleground of public opinion. When people tell you they are pro-choice, suggests Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, ask them to describe the choice. "And if it is too terrible to describe, why is it not too terrible to permit?"
Dennis DiMauro of Lutherans for Life cites Bonhoeffer's warnings against "cheap grace" and challenges each Christian to bear the Cross in self-sacrifice: "If the pro-choice candidate promises me more income, I will still vote for the pro-life candidate. If the pro-choice candidate promises me more security, I will still vote for the pro-life candidate. If the pro-choice candidate promises me free medicine, I will still vote for the pro-life candidate."
There are lots of reasons, from many different points of view, to be pro-life. Medical science keeps adding to the scientific evidence that the fetus in the womb is a human child. As pro-lifers win the rational arguments, the pro-abortionists have retreated to their two last and desperate bulwarks: "Women should be able to choose whether or not to have their babies," and, more importantly, "the courts say abortion is OK."
As a moral position, just asserting "choice" cannot be coherently defended. As a political position, though, the stranglehold of abortionists on our legal system will be harder to dislodge. To do so requires changing public opinion across the whole spectrum of the culture. And despite legal and political setbacks, in the long march through the culture, pro-lifers are making progress. —•
The Democrats threw everything they had at this election. They ran a phony Vietnam War hero and a phony Southerner. They had middle-aged women executives at MTV hawking "Rock the Vote" to entice the most uninformed young people to vote for Kerry. They had Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews and New York Times darling Eminem. They had documentaries, books, the universities, Hollywood (and the French!) on their side.
They had liberal thugs ransacking Bush-Cheney headquarters, stealing Bush-Cheney signs and slashing the tires of Bush-Cheney get-out-the-vote vans on Election Day. In Colorado, they traded voter registrations for crack cocaine. In Ohio, they registered Mary Poppins and Dick Tracy. In South Carolina, Emily's List called Republican households and gave them incorrect information about the location of polling places.
The media campaigned heavily for Kerry with endless Abu Ghraib coverage, phony National Guard documents and, days before the election, false news reports that hundreds of tons of munitions had been looted in Iraq.
The Democrats' cheating never stopped. The big story of this election is the fraudulent exit polls on Election Day. Strange as it seems to me, it is well acknowledged that people are more likely to come out and vote for a winner. Early exit polls showing Kerry the clear winner could be expected to depress the vote for Bush.
Stunningly inaccurate exit polls released around noon on Election Day convinced news anchors, talking heads and even the campaigns that Kerry would win walking away. But at 9 p.m., when the first actual results began to come in, the election flipped to Bush. It was the first Kerry flip-flop that actually served the national interest.
The exit polls were absurd: They showed Kerry winning Pennsylvania by 20 points and Bush tied with Kerry in Mississippi. Only monkey business can explain the wildly pro-Kerry exit polls – admittedly hard to believe with a party that has behaved so honorably throughout this campaign. Michael Barone speculates that the sites of exit polling were leaked to the Democrats, and Democrats sent large numbers of voters to those polls to take exit polls and throw the results.
But for all their chicanery, vote-stealing, Hollywood starlets, fake polls and faux patriotism, the Democrats were wiped out on Election Day.
Bush won the largest popular vote in history with a 3.5 million margin. Indeed, simply by getting a majority of the country to vote for him – the left's most hated politician since Richard Nixon – Bush did something "rock star" Bill Clinton never did. Bush maintained or increased his vote in every state but Vermont. Republicans picked up seats in the House and Senate, and continue to dominate state governorships. Also making history of a sort, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle lost his election, marking the first time in half a century a Senate leader has been defeated.
To Michael Moore, George Soros, Terry McAuliffe, Dan Rather, Al Franken and the whole gang at Air America Radio – you were great, guys! Thanks for the help! We couldn't have done it without you!
Of course, we could have done it a lot earlier on election night but for "Boy Genius" Karl Rove. It's absurd that the election was as close as it was. The nation is at war, Bush is a magnificent wartime leader, and the night before the election we didn't know if a liberal tax-and-spend, Vietnam War-protesting senator from Massachusetts would beat him.
If Rove is "the architect" – as Bush called him in his acceptance speech – then he is the architect of high TV ratings, not a Republican victory. By keeping the race so tight, Rove ensured that a race that should have been a runaway Bush victory would not be over until the wee hours of the morning.
As we now know, the most important issue to voters was not terrorism, but moral values. Marriage amendments won by lopsided majorities in all 11 states where they were on the ballot. Even in Oregon, the state targeted by gay marriage advocates as their best shot of defeating a marriage amendment, the amendment passed by 57 percent – a figure noticeable for being larger than the percentage of votes cast for Bush in Oregon. In the great state of Mississippi, the marriage amendment passed with 88 percent of the vote.
Seventy percent to 80 percent of Americans oppose gay marriage and partial-birth abortion. Far from appealing exclusively to a narrow Republican base, opposition to gay marriage is strongest among the Democratic base: blacks, Hispanics, blue-collar workers and the elderly. There were marriage amendments on the ballot in Michigan and Ohio. Bush won Ohio narrowly and lost Michigan by only 2 points. How different might that have been if Bush hadn't run from the issue.
But Rove concluded Bush should stay mum on gay marriage and partial-birth abortion – contravening the politicians' rule of thumb: Talk about your positions that are wildly popular with voters. "Boy Genius" Rove decided Bush shouldn't even run radio ads on gay marriage, and at the last minute, Bush started claiming he was in favor of civil unions, just like John Kerry.
Amazingly, it was the Democrats – the ones who support gay marriage – who used the gay issue for political advantage, most famously when Kerry gay-baited Mary Cheney during the third debate.
The one toss-up Senate seat lost by the Republicans was Pete Coors in Colorado, where the Democrats did not hesitate to run commercials of a bacchanalian gay festival in Canada sponsored by Coors Brewing Co. The most narrow Republican win in a toss-up Senate race was in Alaska, where the Republican candidate was another "progressive" on the social issues.
When contemplating a former New York mayor as their next presidential candidate, Republicans should remember: This election should have been over sometime in August, not 1 a.m. election night.
The Democrats threw everything they had at this election. They ran a phony Vietnam War hero and a phony Southerner. They had middle-aged women executives at MTV hawking "Rock the Vote" to entice the most uninformed young people to vote for Kerry. They had Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews and New York Times darling Eminem. They had documentaries, books, the universities, Hollywood (and the French!) on their side.
They had liberal thugs ransacking Bush-Cheney headquarters, stealing Bush-Cheney signs and slashing the tires of Bush-Cheney get-out-the-vote vans on Election Day. In Colorado, they traded voter registrations for crack cocaine. In Ohio, they registered Mary Poppins and Dick Tracy. In South Carolina, Emily's List called Republican households and gave them incorrect information about the location of polling places.
The media campaigned heavily for Kerry with endless Abu Ghraib coverage, phony National Guard documents and, days before the election, false news reports that hundreds of tons of munitions had been looted in Iraq.
The Democrats' cheating never stopped. The big story of this election is the fraudulent exit polls on Election Day. Strange as it seems to me, it is well acknowledged that people are more likely to come out and vote for a winner. Early exit polls showing Kerry the clear winner could be expected to depress the vote for Bush.
Stunningly inaccurate exit polls released around noon on Election Day convinced news anchors, talking heads and even the campaigns that Kerry would win walking away. But at 9 p.m., when the first actual results began to come in, the election flipped to Bush. It was the first Kerry flip-flop that actually served the national interest.
The exit polls were absurd: They showed Kerry winning Pennsylvania by 20 points and Bush tied with Kerry in Mississippi. Only monkey business can explain the wildly pro-Kerry exit polls – admittedly hard to believe with a party that has behaved so honorably throughout this campaign. Michael Barone speculates that the sites of exit polling were leaked to the Democrats, and Democrats sent large numbers of voters to those polls to take exit polls and throw the results.
But for all their chicanery, vote-stealing, Hollywood starlets, fake polls and faux patriotism, the Democrats were wiped out on Election Day.
Bush won the largest popular vote in history with a 3.5 million margin. Indeed, simply by getting a majority of the country to vote for him – the left's most hated politician since Richard Nixon – Bush did something "rock star" Bill Clinton never did. Bush maintained or increased his vote in every state but Vermont. Republicans picked up seats in the House and Senate, and continue to dominate state governorships. Also making history of a sort, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle lost his election, marking the first time in half a century a Senate leader has been defeated.
To Michael Moore, George Soros, Terry McAuliffe, Dan Rather, Al Franken and the whole gang at Air America Radio – you were great, guys! Thanks for the help! We couldn't have done it without you!
Of course, we could have done it a lot earlier on election night but for "Boy Genius" Karl Rove. It's absurd that the election was as close as it was. The nation is at war, Bush is a magnificent wartime leader, and the night before the election we didn't know if a liberal tax-and-spend, Vietnam War-protesting senator from Massachusetts would beat him.
If Rove is "the architect" – as Bush called him in his acceptance speech – then he is the architect of high TV ratings, not a Republican victory. By keeping the race so tight, Rove ensured that a race that should have been a runaway Bush victory would not be over until the wee hours of the morning.
As we now know, the most important issue to voters was not terrorism, but moral values. Marriage amendments won by lopsided majorities in all 11 states where they were on the ballot. Even in Oregon, the state targeted by gay marriage advocates as their best shot of defeating a marriage amendment, the amendment passed by 57 percent – a figure noticeable for being larger than the percentage of votes cast for Bush in Oregon. In the great state of Mississippi, the marriage amendment passed with 88 percent of the vote.
Seventy percent to 80 percent of Americans oppose gay marriage and partial-birth abortion. Far from appealing exclusively to a narrow Republican base, opposition to gay marriage is strongest among the Democratic base: blacks, Hispanics, blue-collar workers and the elderly. There were marriage amendments on the ballot in Michigan and Ohio. Bush won Ohio narrowly and lost Michigan by only 2 points. How different might that have been if Bush hadn't run from the issue.
But Rove concluded Bush should stay mum on gay marriage and partial-birth abortion – contravening the politicians' rule of thumb: Talk about your positions that are wildly popular with voters. "Boy Genius" Rove decided Bush shouldn't even run radio ads on gay marriage, and at the last minute, Bush started claiming he was in favor of civil unions, just like John Kerry.
Amazingly, it was the Democrats – the ones who support gay marriage – who used the gay issue for political advantage, most famously when Kerry gay-baited Mary Cheney during the third debate.
The one toss-up Senate seat lost by the Republicans was Pete Coors in Colorado, where the Democrats did not hesitate to run commercials of a bacchanalian gay festival in Canada sponsored by Coors Brewing Co. The most narrow Republican win in a toss-up Senate race was in Alaska, where the Republican candidate was another "progressive" on the social issues.
When contemplating a former New York mayor as their next presidential candidate, Republicans should remember: This election should have been over sometime in August, not 1 a.m. election night.
Exodus of US Gay Population Expected Following yesterdays US election, Europe is bracing itself for a pink exodus from over the Atlantic. It turns out that the motivating factor for an estimated 20 million Evangelical Christian voters was the presence on the ballot of a simultaneous vote to ban Gay marriage. It is expected that over 15 million gay US citizens will emigrate to Europe over the next few years, Steven Pink an analyst with BigBoy data told BIGfib. "As long as they all look like the guys in queer as folk I can't see anyone complaining". >>> World asks Democrat voters to wear badges World leaders have asked Democrat voters not to throw away their Kerry/Edwards badges in order to avoid the massive discrimination expected against all US citizens worldwide. "Until this election, peoples distaste was aimed at George Bush" political analyst Gerald Aurdian told BIGfib. "People knew that Bush was elected with less than half of the vote, so they didn't really blame the American people." "However, now that it transpires that a majority of Americans do support these policies of hatred, arrogance and war I think there is going to be a huge backlash." >>>
Evangelical Christians now the Biggest Danger to World Peace Evangelical Christians are now a greater threat to world peace than Muslim terrorists, or so says the Swedish Peace institute (SPI). BIGfib's Lolo Laroche flew to Stockholm yesterday to speak to Benny Ulveus, ex ABBA songwriter and current director of the SPI. "George BUSH has been the worst president the USA has ever seen. His only motivation has been Money Money Money.” “Now that the American people have had this guy Kerry offering an alternative, and saying Take A Chance On Me, we need to look at why the majority of Americans have rejected it and let an opportunity for a fresh start Slip Through Their Fingers." "The answer is the Evangelical Christian movement, and the influence they have had on the US vote." >>> Republicans confused about Ballot Obsession Republican leaders were this morning expressing confusion as to why the Democrat leaders are obsessing about the provisional ballots in Ohio. "The provisional ballots put simply, are the ballots whose validity have been put into question by the 3000 legal challengers we placed in every black neighborhood of Ohio." Bush aide Nicolle Devenish told BIGfib. "The fact that these ballots are provisional only because the voters were black, and only because they were challenged by Republican challengers is no reason to assume that they might be votes for Kerry. They're just as likely to be votes for George W. Bush." >>>
America fails IQ test
An Voter Who Failed Yesterday's Test
The world's most powerful nation yesterday failed the largest IQ test ever to have been administered to a group of people. Over 120 million people took place in the simultaneous intelligence test across the USA. The results have astounded world analysts, revealing that over 50 percent of those taking part have an IQ below 50 points. (A mongoose has an IQ of 43) The test, which asked people to choose which of two men best represented the universal ideals of peace, freedom and prosperity was calculated to require only an IQ of over 50 in order to find the correct answer. The test proposed one candidate as a draft dodger who had created the biggest budget deficit in history, reduced personal liberties and declared war twice over the previous four years. The second candidate was presented as a successful politician who had fought in a previous wars, actively campaigned to end it, promised to get the budget deficit under control and restore personal freedoms, and build international relationships to avoid future conflicts. The impact of the result - that over 50 percent of those tested, incorrectly chose the first candidate, may have long running repercussions as the world considers revoking Americas driving license.*
*World driving licenses require a minimum IQ of 50 as the minimum required to avoid dangerous decisions, which could cause worldwide havoc. >>>
The following celebrity blog is impersonated, quite badly we might add, and therefore the celebrity should not be held liable for either the content which they did not create, or spelling and grammar errors, which they did not intend and most certainly not for their words which they did not write. It should not be viewed, read, or printed by anyone. However, forwarding via email to all your friends and co-workers is highly encouraged as it will probably bring you great fame and notoriety, help you lose weight and may actually reduce the likelihood of male erectile dysfunction. Ask your doctor.
There comes a time in every family where the baton is passed. When one generation makes way for a new one. It’s a ritual that has occurred in every nation and in every culture since humans left the trees, discovered fire and started dreaming up 527 ads. I remember clearly that day for my family back in Flint, Michigan.
That was the day Dad lent me the old Buick. I remember the look in his eyes as he handed me the keys. No words were said, the entire event unfolded in total silence but I remember exactly what the look on my father’s face meant: “You fuck this up Mike and you’ll be grounded until after the Red Sox win a World Series!”
I was excited. Every American kid dreams of driving Dad’s car, especially in Flint, the birthplace of General Motors. And even though I couldn’t wait to rip those keys from his hand and speed off at 90mph into adulthood, I still managed to feel the worry and concern that oozed from my dad’s face. Dad didn’t talk much, but if he did, I imagined he would say something like this: “Mike, I don’t know if you’re ready for this. I’m not sure you’ve matured to the point where I can completely trust you. Sometimes you act like a man, and too often you don’t. I’m scared to death that you might not be grown up enough for this important responsibility, but I have no choice…it’s your time.”
These past several weeks I’ve been touring college campuses all over the country. I’ve met some wonderfully bright and intelligent students that made me proud to be an American. I also have encountered some of the laziest, dumbest, self-centered slackers you can possibly imagine. Basically, hobos in khakis, wearing the latest iPod, living off dad’s credit cards, all the while downloading Paris Hilton video’s.
And I feel like my father must have that day. I’m not entirely sure the youth of America are ready for November 2nd, but like my dad, I know for certain this is your moment.
The election really is in your hands. We adults are split 50-50. We’ve been that way since Vietnam. That’s why THAT war has been the backdrop for this entire campaign. John Edwards is right…there really are two America’s. Not just rich and poor. Not just religious and secular. It’s about those who have Dark Side of the Moon on CD against those who don’t. This is about a deadlock that has dominated our country for thirty years, and it’s finally up to you -- the young people of this country -- to finish it, once and for all.
Forget the fact that our country is already in two wars, and you may be called to serve.
Forget the fact that Karl Rove said, “no war in 04,” indicating there will be encores if Bush is elected again, and more will die. Forget the fact that our country spends more now on financing the national debt than we spend on the entire Budget of Homeland Security. There was a reason why we couldn’t wait for that Pink Floyd album to be released on CD. We knew, even back then, it was really about Us and Them…and Money.
You will decide not only the outcome of this election, but you will change the face of history as well. Your vote to rehire George Bush for another 4 years, or not, will forever change how Americans are viewed in this world. For the last two hundred years, others have said of our country, “I’m not always sure about your government, but I love the American people.” If we re-elect Bush now, that distinction, I fear, will be gone forever. If Bush wins, the entire world will think of us as dyslexic, religious retards.
So, forgive me if I wince a little as I hand over to you the keys of our country. Sure, I’ll cop to it. I admit I’m a little afraid that you might not be ready for such a heavy responsibility, just like my dad probably was that summer day. But it’s your time.
Ten (10) Commandments of Moses –in the– Sixteen (16) Commandments of God
God's Sixteen Undiminishable Commandments
Prime Commandment
"Be fertile and multiply." — Genesis 1:28; 9:1,7
Marriage for Life Commandment
"the two of them become one" — Gn. 2:24 "male and female He created them || in the divine (inseparable) image" — Gn. 1:27 "Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate." — Mt. 19:6 (God separates at death. Members of the Holy Trinity can not die and therefore will never be seperated.)
Execution Commandment
"Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed." — Gn. 9:6
(Kill first degree murderers — Dt. 4:42)
"You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, 'Raqa,' will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, 'You fool,' will be liable to fiery Gehenna." — Mt. 5:21-22
Ten Commandments
1. "I, the LORD, am your God, You shall not have other gods besides me."
2. "You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain."
3. "Remember to keep holy the sabbath day."
4. "Honor your father and your mother."
5. "You shall not kill."
6. "You shall not commit adultery."
7. "You shall not steal."
8. "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."
Version from Exodus 20:1-17 Then God delivered all these commandments:
[2] "I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. [3] You shall not have other gods besides me. [4] You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; [5] you shall not bow down before them or worship them. For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their fathers' wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation; [6] but bestowing mercy down to the thousandth generation, on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments.
[7] "You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain. For the LORD will not leave unpunished him who takes his name in vain.
[8] "Remember to keep holy the sabbath day. [9] Six days you may labor and do all your work, [10] but the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD, your God. No work may be done then either by you, or your son or daughter, or your male or female slave, or your beast, or by the alien who lives with you. [11] In six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the LORD has blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.
[12] "Honor your father and your mother, that you may have a long life in the land which the LORD, your God, is giving you.
[13] "You shall not kill.
[14] "You shall not commit adultery.
[15] "You shall not steal.
[16] "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
[17] "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife,
"[You shall not covet your neighbor's house], nor his male or female slave, nor his ox or ass, nor anything else that belongs to him."
Version from Deuteronomy 5:6-21
'I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. [7] You shall not have other gods besides me. [8] You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; [9] you shall not bow down before them or worship them. For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishments for their fathers' wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation [10] but bestowing mercy, down to the thousandth generation, on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments.
[11] 'You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain. For the LORD will not leave unpunished him who takes his name in vain.
[12] 'Take care to keep holy the sabbath day as the LORD, your God, commanded you. [13] Six days you may labor and do all your work; [14] but the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD, your God. No work may be done then, whether by you, or your son or daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or ass or any of your beasts, or the alien who lives with you. Your male and female slave should rest as you do. [15] For remember that you too were once slaves in Egypt, and the LORD, your God, brought you from there with his strong hand and outstretched arm. That is why the LORD, your God, has commanded you to observe the sabbath day.
[16] 'Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD, your God, has commanded you, that you may have a long life and prosperity in the land which the LORD, your God, is giving you.
[17] 'You shall not kill.
[18] 'You shall not commit adultery.
[19] 'You shall not steal.
[20] 'You shall not bear dishonest witness against your neighbor.
[21] 'You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.
'You shall not desire your neighbor's house or field, nor his male or female slave, nor his ox or ass, nor anything that belongs to him.'
Golden Commandment — Matthew 7:12
"Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets." – (Lk. 6:31)
"Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves," — Philip. 2:3 – (Col. 3:23)
Great Commandments — Mt. 22:37-40
"You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."
"The first is this: 'Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' [31] The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." — Mark 12:29-31
"Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. [6] Take to heart these words (all commandments) which I enjoin on you today. [7] Drill them into your children. Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest. [8] Bind them at your wrist as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead. [9] Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates." — Deut. 6:5-9
"Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against your fellow countrymen. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD." — Leviticus 19:18
"In this way we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments. [3] For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome," — 1 John 5:2-3
WASHINGTON — Four states account for nearly half of all justifiable homicides by private citizens in the United States, and Californians lead the way, killing at almost three times the national rate, according to a computer analysis of FBI records.
The records, obtained by the Newhouse News Service, provide a rare look at the increasingly common phenomenon of defensive violence in America.
Among other things, the analysis shows that:
• Justifiable homicides are concentrated in just a handful of states. California, Michigan, Oklahoma and Louisiana, with only 18 percent of the nation’s population, account for nearly half the justifiable homicides by civilians. Alabama ranked 27th in the nation.
• Most of those killed were young black men, and most of them were killed by other black men.
• Women committed only 12 percent of the justifiable homicides. Only 3 percent of those killed were women.
• The weapon of choice is the handgun, accounting for two out of three killings.
The results also contained some surprises. Colorado, which gained national attention in 1985 when it passed a “Make My Day” law, has a justifiable homicide rate well below the national average.
According to the FBI data, there were 1,412 justified homicides in the United States from 1987 through 1991 (the most recent figures available). In the last 10 years, the FBI says justifiable homicides have jumped 33 percent. Anne Seymour, a spokeswoman for the National Victim Center, said the killings reflect people’s growing fear of violent crime and their inability to stop it.
“People’s frustration levels just go ballistic,” she said.
As high as those numbers may seem, some experts think the FBI numbers understate the case.
“The FBI is radically undercounting the number of defensive homicides,” said Gary Kleck, a professor at Florida State University and author of “Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America.”
Kleck said the undercount results, in part, from the restrictive definition the FBI uses when counting homicides as justified. Under the FBI definition, a killing is counted as justified only if it occurred during the commission of a felony.
As a result, cases like the recent shooting of a Japanese exchange student in Louisiana are not counted as justified — even though the homeowner who shot the student was later acquitted by a jury. It wasn’t counted because the victim was not committing a crime at the time he was killed.
Kleck said projections he has made indicate the actual number of “defensive shootings” is between four and eight times the number reported by the FBI.
Whatever the true number, it is clear that California, which has some of the toughest gun control laws in the country, led the nation in justifiable killings.
From 1987 to 1991, Californians shot, stabbed and beat to death 456 criminals. That is far more than any other state in the country, even when the results are adjusted for the state’s population.
Experts interviewed gave no clear reason why California ranked so high. But many pointed to the state’s high level of violent crime. California’s violent crime rate is surpassed only by Florida, the District of Columbia and New York.
“It’s like a war zone here,” complained La Velle Garratt, 62, a victims’ rights advocate from Fresno whose mother was murdered five years ago.
California’s gun control laws include a 15-day waiting period on the purchase of handguns and a ban on rapid-firing "assault weapons.”
But those controls seem to have had little effect; Californians used handguns slightly more often than the nation at large.
Most, but not all of the states with high rates of justifiable homicide also had high rates of violent crime — a factor that frequently parallels the number of killings by civilians, said Richard Kania, chairman of the department of justice and policy studies at Guilford College in North Carolina.
Most of the justifiable homicides took place in the nation’s large cities. Los Angeles alone had 138, and New York had 125.
But many large cities reported few justifiable homicides. Dallas, for instance, had none during 1987-91. Boston had two.
The same held true on a state level. Many large states — like Ohio, with 17 — had relatively few killings.
MONDAY November 1, 2004. There's no business like show business, except perhaps for politics. In an upset that is sure to go entirely unnoticed by the mainstream media the Electoral College has released a full itinerary for each state, including, how many votes it will award to each candidate tomorrow night. The itinerary has Bush taking the election by a clear 10 electoral votes.
What is unprecedented about this move is the brazen manner in which the administrators are announcing that the popular vote will not be a consideration in the outcome of the election. But rather, the vote will be decided by the less popular means of the Electoral College. The Electoral College has never really been that much of an issue to American democracy that has always placed a great faith in the responsibility of elected leaders to follow the will of the people. What will happen when this faith is betrayed?
In a quote made famous by Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 Bush declared to a gathering of have-mores, “Some people call you the elite, I call you my base.” Only now are we seeing the extent to which this statement is true. Those who benefit most from the misdeeds of the Bush administration (tax cuts for the rich, inflated military spending on a illegal war, social security reform etc.) are the exact ones who get to decide whether or not he will stay in power. They’ve checked their pockets and there is still enough room in them for a little more cash - the decision is final.
As of today, the greater bulk of political polls have John Kerry leading the popular vote by a clear 8 points. How will his supporters react to this move? How will the disenfranchised African American community of Florida respond?
Two months ago, in a move that was viewed largely as political theatrics by commentators. Bush recalled quite a substantial number of National Guard reservists “so they could spend more time with their families.” These same reservists are now on alert for possible insurgency within the United States.
We interviewed both republican and democratic voters on the matter and received the following responses:
Democrats
- This is a disgrace to democracy. - The people won’t suffer it. - I just don’t believe they would let America down like that.
Republicans
- If that’s what it takes to defend our country then I support it. - We don’t know everything that’s going on, perhaps he really will win. - I can’t read this report, it might have anthrax on it.
Regardless of public opinion Bush will win. It is a sad day for America and for the democratic world.
In an unrelated matter Wal-Mart is selling machetes for about six dollars.
He's been trapped in a job opposite such hawkish counterparts as Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, forced to travel around the world mouthing the words of an administration whose positions he is said not to have shared. 
where to start. Even though I hit 52 cities in the final days of the campaign, the Democrats did not increase the numbers of the youth vote. The evangelicals kicked our ass. Bush played the socially divisive card in the form of gay marriage, stem-cells, and patriotism. Howard Dean had it right: the Republicans are now officially the party that cares about 
but it sure feels like a lot more…
It’s going to be harder to cobble a coalition on the East Coast. The Republicans, or the 
this configuration we can still watch The Soprano’s.
It’s in our hands now kids…
The question is this: does our country care about us anymore?
"That dude NEVER had his own stash." said Lt. Commander Grant Hibbard. In addition, they said Lt. Kerry carried on homosexual affairs with several officers and crew members. 
"In fact" said John E. O'Neill, one of the founders of the group, "I am one of them. I'm not gay, I swear, I'm not gay, honest, I'm not, but Kerry was in charge and I had to do what he said, even though I'm definitely not gay." 
Kerry, known in Viet Nam as Killer Kowalski for his penchant for shooting anyone he didn't like, shot and killed a sergeant for insubordination when the sergeant failed to hold a salute long enough, and kicked to death a private who had stated a preference for the Yankees over the Red Sox. "This guy was some piece of work" said veteran Van Odell. "He'd just as soon shoot you as look at you. If this loon were President, he'd be sending out troops to invade any country we didn't like."
Rush Limbaugh's civil attorney has filed a lawsuit against several members of a Kerry support group who questioned Limbaugh's service record. According to papers certified by a Florida court clerk, members of the Delray Beach Loves Kerry political organization inaccurately told the Orlando Sentinel that Limbaugh was hated by members of his basic training group at the now defunct Ft. Dix, New Jersey, and was thrown into the shower by his barracks mates for smelling "like last week's mackerel." 
The goods on sun chlorella
About sun chlorella, it's a type of chinese lichen and the only people who are hyping it are those who are selling it, they haven't proved anything except that it did cure some cancers in mice, but no evidence to show it has the amazing powers described by the hucksters, or has any value at all for humans. Save your money for my next standup gig at Half-Laffs, in Mountain Home, Arkansas. It was voted Mountain Home's third best comedy club. I'll be doing the midnight show on the Tuesday after the Labor Day weekend. See you there!! --M.E.L.
Madonna's continued study of the Kabbalah has prompted Orthodox Hebrew Rabbinical Scholar Lev Shloman to say "It pains me that there is not a Jewish version of hell to which God could assign this nafka." In a letter to the Orthodox Jewish Theological Seminary, Madonna replied "Rabbi Shloman's words hurt. Just because someone wants to learn some secret things about symbolism and numbers that some people consider sacred but nobody really understands so she can talk about it and appear smart and inside without actually knowing anything in order to compensate for her failing career and aging physical appearance, 
is no reason to be mocked and called a nafka, which I happen to know is the Jewish word for mushroom." 
That was the day Dad lent me the old Buick. I remember the look in his eyes as he handed me the keys. No words were said, the entire event unfolded in total silence but I remember exactly what the look on my father’s face meant: “You fuck this up Mike and you’ll be grounded until after the 
dad’s credit cards, all the while downloading Paris Hilton video’s.
You will decide not only the outcome of this election, but you will change the face of history as well. Your vote to rehire George Bush for another 4 years, or not, will forever change how Americans are viewed in this world. For the last two hundred years, others have said of our country, “I’m not always sure about your government, but I love the American people.” If we re-elect Bush now, that distinction, I fear, will be gone forever. If Bush wins, the entire world will think of us as dyslexic, religious retards.
country. Sure, I’ll cop to it. I admit I’m a little afraid that you might not be ready for such a heavy responsibility, just like my dad probably was that summer day. But it’s your time. 
Among other things, the analysis shows that:
