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Steve Brown's Voter Guide
My friend Steve Brown has prepared the following Voter Guide to help Christians become better informed voters. It covers Federal Candidates and Issues as found on the ballots in Colorado's 2nd and 4th Congressional Districts.
This guide represents the express personal recommendations and opinions of the author. It is intended to provide a Christian worldview with respect to how Christian citizens should inform their consciences with respect to biblical teachings and how they impact current issues.
FEDERAL OFFICES
President: George W. Bush/ Dick Cheney (Republican). President Bush and the Republican Party are the closest to embracing Christian worldview values of all other candidates for this office. These values include sanctity of life issues such as opposing abortion on demand, banning the destruction of human life in order to conduct embryonic stem cell research, and opposing euthanasia. The President deserves our vote for supporting the traditional definition of marriage by reserving it exclusively between one man and one woman. Senator Kerry does not embrace these values, and has spoken out against most of them publicly.
United States Senator: Pete Coors (Republican). Mr. Coors has publicly stated that he is an observant Catholic who will take his faith into public office. His beliefs are more closely aligned with Christian beliefs than his challenger, Ken Salazar. Mr. Salazar represents accurately the secularism embraced by the Democratic Party.
Representative to the 109th U.S. Congress, District 2: Steve Hackman (Republican).Mr. Hackman is a relative unknown and faces an uphill battle to win this congressional seat against the incumbent Mark Udall. However he does hold a consistent Christian worldview position on the issues our elected representatives need to have, a position Mr. Udall does not share.
Representative to the 109th U.S. Congress, District 4: Marilyn Musgrave (Republican). Ms. Musgrave has championed the effort to amend the United States Constitution to reserve marriage as the union of one man and one woman only. It is unfortunate that we need this type of protection against rogue courts that have imposed laws upon our fellow citizens that threaten the very Judeo-Christian values our nation was founded upon. Ms. Musgrave deserves not just the vote at the ballot box, but a heartfelt “thank you” as well.
JUDICIARY
Judges are appointed by the governor from a list of nominees submitted by a judicial nominating commission, and they stand for retention at the next general election after two years in office. Upon retention, judges of the supreme court, district courts, and county courts serve ten, six, and four-year terms, respectively. The Colorado Judicial Institute reviews judges coming up for retention vote by the electors of the state and publishes its recommendations for each judge seeking retention for that particular election cycle. Since these evaluations do not include how each judge seeking retention has ruled in cases of interest to people of faith, nor does it provide for a public forum for any judge to express his beliefs and opinions, the evaluation process is extremely limited and of little practical value. Because of this I regularly vote to “Not Retain” all judges in hope that this limited protest by the citizens will provoke needed changes to allow for more direct representation of the people’s will in our courts as well as more information for voters to base their decisions on.
STATE OF COLORADO CONSTITUTIONAL AMMENDMENTS
Amendment 34: Vote No. This proposed amendment seeks to open the floodgates for trial lawyers to declare open season on the construction industry. The result of this would be sharply higher prices for housing as well as housing repairs and remodeling. A Denver newspaper has called this the “Lawsuit Express.” Unless you have an excessive fondness for greedy lawyers, vote no.
Amendment 35: Vote No. This amendment seeks to raise the taxes on tobacco products to fund state programs that were already supposedly addressed by the landmark tobacco legislation of the 90’s. While we do not encourage tobacco use and recognize its destructive health effects, we are opposed to taxing unpopular groups (smokers) and using their money to grow government.
Amendment 36: Vote No!!! I really emphasize this one. Amendment 36 is an attempt to gut the most widely copied portion of our U.S. Constitution by other nations around the world. This amendment would abolish the constitutional structure granting the full number of votes the State of Colorado has in the Electoral College to the winner of the popular election. Instead it would divide those Electoral College votes along the percentages of the statewide vote each presidential candidate received. This provision of the constitution was crafted so that rural areas would have a voice in national elections. If the Electoral College were to split state votes along candidate lines rather than the all or nothing system currently in place, large cities would easily out vote rural areas. This amendment would rob Colorado citizens of 85% of their voice in presidential elections, and would represent a unilateral forfeiture of our rights versus citizens in other states.
Amendment 37: Vote No. This amendment would give people and companies that install expensive solar power generation as much as $200,000 dollars each, while making all of the rest of us pay for it. It would also put huge restrictions on how our electric companies are run, forcing them to do many things that not in the best interest of power utilities or their customers.
STATE REFERENDUMS
Referendum A: Vote No. This referendum allows for more outsourcing of state jobs held by civil service employees. This would allow an incoming governor to implement his initiatives more quickly by giving him or her more hiring discretion than currently available. Of course this is a double edged sword. Any civil service employee whose job has been outsourced would be assigned another job, but which job doing what? This proposal will not reduce the size of government. In a perfect world people do the jobs they are hired to do regardless of which political party is in power, but we do not live in a perfect world. This is an issue best left up to the state legislature; it is too complicated to be dealt with effectively with a referendum that oversimplifies the issue.
Referendum B: Vote No. This referendum asks voters to approve cleaning up (deleting) obsolete provisions of the Colorado State Constitution no longer in effect. While it is true that we have a very long and tedious constitution that reflects the will of the citizens of the state during the period it has been in existence, these obsolete provisions represent an important part the historical record of the state. In an era of liberal professors rewriting history, the retention of the historical interests of citizens represented by our constitution deserves to be kept alive. Additionally, an excessively long state constitution may help prevent useless and dangerous amendments like some of those above from being approved since we will retain reminders of those things we no longer think are beneficial.
This Voter Guide is available in pdf form suitable for printing here:
http://www.soundfirst.net/CCCPL/Steve_Brown/2004FEDERALANDSTATEVOTERGUIDE.pdf
Open Letter to Professors of Economics and Business Criticizing President Bush
Recently I was sent a copy of an open letter to President Bush signed by a number of professors of Economics and Business. I passed it on to Steve Brown who wrote the following reply:
This open letter is a harsh condemnation of President Bush’s economic policies, and they pull no punches in their attack.
I was a stockbroker for a New York Stock Exchange member firm for more than sixteen years prior to my retirement. During that time I was in contact frequently with those who adhered to the manufactured concerns expressed by the likes of these professors. Truth be told, if this nation were to believe and practice the kind of economic doctrines preached by these doomsayers, we would still be mired in the ravages of policies like Jimmy Carter’s.
In response to these unfortunate distortions which they have made against not just our president, but also against the truth of the good economic progress we are currently seeing under way in our nation, I have responded with my own open letter. I hope it helps in understanding how to deal with the types of allegations that these Chicken Littles have been squawking about for years.
October 16, 2004
Dear Professors:
We, the public, hold our professors of economics and business to a higher standard of ethics and accuracy than what you have displayed in your open letter to President Bush, in which you have dishonestly twisted facts and statistics. As citizens of this open society we also disapprove of the cowardly way in which you have chosen to address our President. We have come to expect these kinds of antics from our liberal media, but it seems you have taken a page from Dan Rather at CBS News by allowing your partisan opposition to taint how you have chosen to present your positions.
In your letter, you claim President Bush’s U.S. economic policy has “taken a dangerous turn under your stewardship.” You cited several measures of the economy to support this claim, but you ignored a larger body of evidence that you are aware of, yet have chosen to ignore.
Let’s take a look at the evidence you chose to hide from your letter’s readers. Lawrence Kudlow, who has served as the chief economist for a number of Wall Street firms in the past, and is currently co-host of CNBC’s Kudlow & Cramer (you may peruse Mr. Kudlow’s impressive resume at: http://www.kudlow.com/corporate/bio.asp), has written an article which shreds your arguments. I cite this article by Mr. Kudlow because he has extensive real-world experience doing what you gentlemen can only teach. In other words, he actually has a real job that is not dependant on taxpayers.
As a retired stockbroker, I have seen first hand the difference between the ideologies of those who actually make a living using economic data versus those who are on the outside of the industry. Much of what you professors “teach” at the university level must be unlearned in the real world, or disastrous results follow. And by the way, many of you were saying the same things about President Ronald Regan when he proposed many of the same economic ideas President Bush has both proposed and followed. In the real world we go by what works, not what best suits the ideologies of those who can not do, but only know how to teach.
Sincerely,
Stephen P. Brown
Denver, Colorado
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
Wall Street Journal - October 13, 2004; Page A16
You'd think that a high-performance economy, producing above-average growth and below-average inflation, would be a re-election ace. After all, during the 10 recovery quarters since the end of the 2001 recession, real GDP -- the most comprehensive measure of the economy -- has averaged 3.4% growth, in line with the average post-World War II expansion rate. Since the supply-side tax cuts were passed in Spring 2003, real economic growth has jumped to 4.8%, putting it at the head of the class of the past 20 years.
Somehow -- blame it on many media outlets -- this message is muted. Yet over the past year:
• Inflation-adjusted consumer spending is up 3.6%.
• Residential housing investment is up 13.2%.
• Capital-goods investment by businesses is up 13.9%.
• Spending on machine tools for heavy-industry manufacturing is up a whopping 54.2%.
• Exports and imports are up nearly 11%.
• After-tax corporate profits are up 19.5%.
• Industrial production is up 5.2%.
• High-tech production is up 23.7%.
• Productivity has reached an astonishing 4.6% rate.
• Household wealth is up 11.1%, hitting a record high of $45.9 trillion.
• The GDP deflator is up only 2.2%.
• The core consumer-spending deflator (excluding food and energy) is up only 1.4%.
• Interest rates are at 45-year lows, with short-term rates at less than 2%.
• 15-year mortgage rates are just above 5%.
• Home ownership stands at a record 69.2%.
Impressive? No, remarkable, considering the economy was up against an inherited recession, a busted tech bubble, corporate scandals, 9/11, two wars and an oil-price shock. The strong performance also sharply contrasts with ongoing weakness in Europe. John Kerry may love Europe, but GDP there is growing at less than 2%, with unemployment between 9% and 10%.
Despite all this, the Kerry campaign has managed to define the economy in terms of a relatively weak set of jobs numbers taken from the non-farm payroll survey of established businesses. Team Kerry has flogged George W. Bush with the fact that payrolls have fallen (by 585,000) since the beginning of the president's term. Kerryites talk of a "Hoover" economy, even though two million payroll jobs have been recovered in the past 13 months.
In his own defense, Mr. Bush should highlight the household survey (the number of people actually working), which shows that 1.69 million more are employed today than when he took office. An additional 3.4 million have gone to work since the end of the recession, with 140 million Americans currently employed -- a new record. With all these new job entrants, the unemployment rate has dropped to 5.4%. This is no Hoover economy. But to make this point, Mr. Bush must use numbers on GDP and household employment. He must also stress personal income -- the best gauge of family spending power -- which is growing at a 5% pace. And he cannot be bashful about defending his tax cuts.
Mr. Kerry has already agreed with Mr. Bush on middle-class tax cuts. But when the senator from Massachusetts launches his class-warfare attack on tax cuts for the rich, Mr. Bush should inform debate watchers that taxpayers in the top 1% earn only 14.8% of the nation's income but pay 34.4% of individual income taxes. Similarly, taxpayers in the top 5% -- the biggest income losers during the downturn -- make a quarter of the income but pay over half the income taxes. Why not share tax relief with those who pay the most taxes?
Punishing successful earners and investors, as Mr. Kerry would do, is no way to grow an economy. Tax hikes on dividends and capital gains are nothing but tax hikes on the whole stock market and the 50% of households that own shares. And what good will it do to set up tax barriers for those who wish to climb the ladder to $200,000 salaries ($146,000 for single earners)? Mr. Kerry may say he likes jobs, but he doesn't seem to like the businesses that create them. By taxing capital investment more, business financing will shrink, as will the jobs that businesses create. (Who's the Hoover candidate now?) Mr. Bush will find that a few well-placed facts will go a long way in tonight's debate.
Mr. Kudlow co-hosts CNBC's "Kudlow & Cramer."
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109763214580043832,00.html?mod=opinion%5Fmain%5Fcommentaries
Kerry's Crassness
I had written a few days ago under the heading "Gays & Christians" about John Kerry's attempt to use Dick Cheney's daughter Mary for political advantage.
http://www.soundfirst.com/tic.html#2004-10-14_2:17_PM
Friday, Hugh Hewitt requested comments on the subject "How deep a hole have John Kerry, Mary Beth Cahill and the Edwards dug for themselves? How lasting the damage?" As of this writing he has posted links to 138 commentaries on this subject ("Gays & Christians" on "The Informed Christian" was number 79).
http://www.hughhewitt.com/#postid1022
Little Green Footballs posted "Kerry: No Apologies"
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=13182_Kerry-_No_Apologies
"Here is John Kerry’s defense of his incredibly crass remark about Dick Cheney’s daughter at the third debate:
'It was meant constructively in terms of their love and affection for a person who is who she is,” Kerry said in an interview taped for broadcast Friday night on CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now.” “And it was entirely as an example of how people come together around these choices, entirely constructively and respectfully.'
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041015/ap_on_el_pr/kerry
"Here’s what Kerry actually said [at the debate]:
'We’re all God’s children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she’s being who she was, she’s being who she was born as.'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/debatereferee/debate_1013.html
"There is nothing in there about Lynn and Dick Cheney’s love for their daughter. It’s a pure and simple, totally gratuitous cheap shot. And Kerry’s weasely non-apology only serves to reinforce what Lynn Cheney said today: 'This is not a good man.'"
Bill Kristol comments on Kerry's attempt to change what he actually said:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/782vkhgk.asp
"WAS JOHN KERRY born a shameless and ruthless opportunist, or did he choose to become one? In a way, who cares? Who knows how John Kerry became who he is? What is clear is that he is, as Dick Cheney put it, "a man who will do and say anything to get elected." And what is equally clear is that he shouldn't be elected president of the United States."
"How stupid does John Kerry think the American people are?"
"His campaign manager let slip the truth when after the debate she told Fox News's Chris Wallace that Mary Cheney was 'fair game.'"
"The Democrats are terrified of a debate on same-sex marriage, and used Mary Cheney to try to brush back the Bush-Cheney ticket from forcing a real policy debate.
"No one would blame President Bush for hesitating to engage in such a full-bore debate, partly because he undoubtedly wants to avoid further awkwardness for his running mate and his family. But the rest of the country doesn't have to be intimidated by John Kerry's McCarthyism. They should punish him for it--and also remember that when they vote on November 2, they are choosing between two candidates who have very different social, moral, and cultural outlooks. They should remember that Bush and Kerry will make very different judicial appointments, just as they took opposite stands on the Defense of Marriage Act, which sought to protect states from being forced to recognize other states' same-sex marriages, and on a constitutional amendment. This is a legitimate ground for choice--as is the character revealed by a candidate who did what John Kerry did, with malice aforethought, Wednesday night."
One Pastor friend of mine tells me he met with a number of other Pastors since this story broke, and that it has only made them more determined to motivate their congregations to get out and vote their values and not be taken in by cheap tricks.
This is the most important election of our lifetime, so lets all get out and work!
John Kerry - Faith Healer - Part 2
Charles Krauthammer who is paralyzed himself wrote about John Edwards claim that if John Kerry is elected "people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again". This of course was just after Christopher Reeve died.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/charleskrauthammer/ck20041015.shtml
The article is excellent and I quoted from it below.
In the article he makes the point that the false claims of miracle cures if we just elect John Kerry are based on the supposed promise of stem cell research. However, for whatever reason Mr. Krauthammer did not mention that there are two different types of stem cells being studied, adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells are gathered from the bodies of living adults, while to obtain embryonic stem cells an unborn child must be killed.
Private companies have been studying both adult and embryonic stem cells for many years, but the Federal Government was only spending tax payer dollars to help support adult stem cell research.
In 2001 when President Bush was considering this issue there were many researchers claiming the potential for huge medical breakthroughs if they could only have tax payer dollars for embryonic stem cell research as well as adult stem cell research. President Bush refused to consider giving tax payer dollars to kill the unborn. However in 2001 he partially lifted the existing ban on tax payer dollars going to embryonic stem cell research by allowing the funding of research that exclusively used existing lines of embryonic cells. In other words he allowed the funding of research using embryonic cells the researchers already had, but refused to fund any activity that would result in the further destruction of human life.
Now the interesting thing is that 3 years later there are hundreds of patients showing positive results from experimental treatments based on adult stem cells, but no comparable positive results from research using embryonic stem cells.
However, John Kerry continues to lie about both President Bush and the research results:
"Three years ago, the President enacted a far-reaching ban on stem cell research, shutting down some of the most promising work to prevent, treat and cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, AIDS and so many other life-threatening diseases."
1) President Bush never banned any stem cell research. Privately funded researchers have always been free to experiment with both adult and embryonic stem cells. Instead in 2001 he partially lifted the existing ban on embryonic stem cell research.
2) President Bush never shut down any work with stem cells.
3) After 3 years of both tax-payer and privately funded research using embryonic stem cells, the only positive results are from research using adult stem cells.
For more information check out these websites:
http://www.georgewbush.com/News/Read.aspx?ID=3731
http://www.stemcellresearch.org/
John Kerry - Faith Healer - Part 1
Just when you think they can't stoop any lower you find something like this:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/charleskrauthammer/ck20041015.shtml
Charles Krauthammer writes:
"After the second presidential debate, in which John Kerry used the word "plan" 24 times, I said on television that Kerry has a plan for everything except curing psoriasis. I should have known there is no parodying Kerry's pandering. It turned out days later that the Kerry campaign has a plan -- nay, a promise -- to cure paralysis. What is the plan? Vote for Kerry.
"This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: 'If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.'
"In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.
"Where does one begin to deconstruct this outrage?
"First, the inability of the human spinal cord to regenerate is one of the great mysteries of biology. The answer is not remotely around the corner. It could take a generation to unravel. To imply, as Edwards did, that it is imminent if only you elect the right politicians is scandalous.
"Second, if the cure for spinal cord injury comes, we have no idea where it will come from. There are many lines of inquiry. Stem cell research is just one of many possibilities, and a very speculative one at that. For 30 years I have heard promises of miracle cures for paralysis (including my own, suffered as a medical student). The last fad, fetal tissue transplants, was thought to be a sure thing. Nothing came of it.
"As a doctor by training, I've known better than to believe the hype -- and have tried in my own counseling of people with new spinal cord injuries to place the possibility of cure in abeyance. I advise instead to concentrate on making a life (and a very good life it can be) with the hand one is dealt. The greatest enemies of this advice have been the snake-oil salesmen promising a miracle around the corner. I never expected a candidate for vice president to be one of them.
"Third, the implication that Christopher Reeve was prevented from getting out of his wheelchair by the Bush stem cell policies is a travesty. "
"Politicians have long promised a chicken in every pot. It is part of the game. It is one thing to promise ethanol subsidies here, dairy price controls there. But to exploit the desperate hopes of desperate people with the promise of Christ-like cures is beyond the pale.
"There is no apologizing for Edwards's remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected."
Read the whole article.
Also read John Kerry - Faith Healer - Part 2
Fraud as the Means to the End
According to the Drudge Report "the Democratic National Committee are advising election operatives to declare voter intimidation -- even if none exists".
http://www.drudgereport.com/dnc66.htm
In the official 66 page Kerry/Edwards - Democratic National Committee - Colorado Election Day Manual November 2004 it directs "If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a 'pre-emptive strike.'"
http://www.drudgereport.com/dnc.jpg
A "top DNC official confirmed the manual's authenticity" but also made the false claim "We all know the Republicans are going to try to steal the election by scaring people and confusing people".
However as Hugh Hewitt documents in "If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat" the vast majority of election fraud in the USA has been orchestrated by the Democrats.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0785263195/soundfirst-20
While the Democrats have been yelling ever since the 2000 election about supposed Republican intimidation of minority voters in Florida, when the news media looked into their claims they were not able to find a single actual instance of minority voter intimidation.
On the other hand, the Democrats ran an organized effort in 2000 to throw out military ballots on any possible excuse.
Hugh Hewitt weighs in on this:
http://www.hughhewitt.com/#postid1018
"The memo that Drudge unearthed from the DNC/Kerry-Edwards to all hands encouraging them to fabricate claims of voter intimidation is as low as Kerry's breach of the unwritten rules regarding candidates' children last night. It is just like the Gore attempt to suppress military absentees in 2000 --shocking, but all too real. This had better be a blowout win for Bush, or the aftermath will in fact be a prolonged litigation crisis."
Hugh provides a link to Vodkapundit, who is far from a Republican but voting a straight Republican ticket this year for the first time in 16 years because of this issue.
http://vodkapundit.com/archives/006909.php
"To these guys, winning office is more important than the sanctity of elections. Holding power is more important than the Constitution. Much as I despise at least half of what most Republicans stand for, they don't seem nearly as willing to trash the system they're trying to run. Too many Democrats, especially at the national level, just don't care that our system, our nation is far more important than any single election.
"I could mention the Lautenberg Trick in New Jersey. Or Gore's ballot shenanigans in Florida. Or the voter-registration fraud currently going on in Colorado, Nevada, and elsewhere. Or the Democrats' successful call to bring election observers into this country. Bring them in from where, Venezuela? Hey, no big deal sullying the reputation of the world's oldest continuously-functioning democracy, just so long as we can make the Republicans look bad, right?
"The rules don't matter. The reputation of the country doesn't matter. The political health of the nation doesn't matter. Power matters.
"I don't mean to say that Republicans haven't used dirty tricks, or won't in the future. But I have yet to see them pull anything as crass as replacing a losing candidate with a more-popular one just weeks before election day, and in violation of state law. I have yet to see Republicans calling on the world's most corrupt international organization, run largely by apparatchiks from the world's most brutal dictatorships, to pass judgment on how we run our elections. I have yet to see the Republicans encouraging their own to commit fraud by shouting "Fraud!" where none yet exists, putting at risk everything we've built here in the last 228 years.
"Because, in the end, that's what the national Democrats are doing: They're trying, however inadvertently, to destroy the Republic in order to rule it.
"Democracy is the free market of political systems. And like any free market, it can't function without some basic level of trust. That trust comes, slowly, from hammering out rules even competitors can live with. That trust comes, with difficulty, by honoring those rules, even when your candidate doesn't win. That trust exists in relatively few places around the world.
"That trust is hard to come by – and it's easy to lose. Ask the German voters of 1933. Or the people who voted in Afghanistan's first-ever presidential election last week. Or the people of Iraq, whose lives are, quite literally, on the line as they try to make something decent of their nation.
"The system, the trust, is far more important than anything else. It's more important than the White House, or Congress, or Social Security, or jobs, or even the Terror War. Our Constitution is rigged to make it hard for any party to screw things up in the short time of four years. There's always another election around the corner, if you think the current crop of office-holders is screwing things up – that's the beauty of our system.
"But maybe there won't be another election, if you cause the people to lose faith that elections work."
Lets all be aware of the Democrat's tactics here in Colorado and in the rest of our nation.
Thursday 2004-10-14 2:17 PM Updated 7:40 and 8:55 PM
Gays & Christians
Last night John Kerry repeated what John Edwards had done during the vice-presidential debate and brought up the subject of the Cheney's daughter Mary who is a lesbian. See the transcript:
http://www.georgewbush.com/News/Read.aspx?ID=3927
This caused audible gasps in the crowd. The obvious intention was to try to separate Christians from the Bush / Cheney ticket by playing on what Kerry perceives as Christian bigotry against Gays.
This is based on a false concept of Christian teaching on the subject of homosexuality.
First, Christians believe that each individual is responsible for their own behavior. Therefore the parents are not responsible for the behavior of an adult child.
Second, Christians believe that while homosexual behavior is sinful, God still loves the homosexual. Therefore when dealing with homosexuals it is critically important that Christians respect them as people for whom Jesus died just as much as he died for our sins.
There has been a long standing tradition in American politics that the children of the candidates are off limits for political attacks. First John Edwards and now John Kerry broke that tradition.
Last night after the debate, John Kerry's campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill took things a step further by declaring on national television that Mary Cheney was "fair game".
This prompted Lynne Cheney (Vice President Dick Cheney's wife) to blast Kerry:
"Now, I did have a chance to assess John Kerry once more. And the only thing I could conclude is this is not a good man. This is not a good man. And of course, I am speaking as a mom and a pretty indignant mom. This is not a good man -- what a cheap and tawdry political trick."
http://www.georgewbush.com/News/Read.aspx?ID=3939
There is an old saying that if you find yourself in a hole _Stop_Digging_! The Kerry campaign obviously has not heard of this since they had Elizabeth Edwards (John Edwards wife) come out and say that Lynne Cheney is "ashamed" of her daughter!
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/10/14/news/veep.html
Vice President Dick Cheney commented today:
"You saw a man who will do and say anything to get elected. And I am not just speaking as a father here, although I am a pretty angry father."
By this point the Kerry campaign has everyone who has heard of this incident disgusted with them. They even have some of the homosexual rights groups coming out against Kerry and the campaign for doing this.
John H. Hinderaker adds his insights on this incident including an interesting personal observation of Mary Cheney and her father.
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/008186.php
Hugh Hewitt observes:
http://www.hughhewitt.com/#postid1019
"Revulsion at a political ruthlessness that would exploit candidates' children regardless of the rationale is driving the disgust.
"If a Candidate A's child had juvenile diabetes or was obese, and Candidate B used that child as a springboard to discuss the need for stem cell research or early intervention exercise programs, the disgust would be the same. If Candidate A's child won the World Championship of Poker and Candidate B denounced Candidate A for arguing for limits on Native American gaming, Candidate B would get smacked. If Candidate A's son co-habitated with his girlfriend, and Candidate B brought that up as an example of why partnership benefits should be widespread, the public would rightly hoot at the boorish ass that was Candidate B.
"It isn't about Mary Cheney. It is about John Kerry's character, and his ruthlessness. "He is not a good man," Lynne Cheney said three times today. She could have said it thirty times. "Integrity, integrity, integrity?" I wonder what the elder Mrs. Kerry would have said about using an opponent's child as a wedge issue?"
This might just be the incident that causes the remaining undecided voters to hold their noses and run away from Kerry.
See also the followup post "Kerry's Crassness"
http://www.soundfirst.com/tic.html#2004-10-16_10:49_AM
THE QUALITY OF MERSEY
Today for the first time Mark Steyn the insightful British commentator had a column spiked. However, you can read the whole thing on-line:
http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=22
Mark has some important comments on the recent beheading of British hostage Kenneth Bigley, and more importantly the British reaction to it.
"I’d written about Kenneth Bigley, seized with two American colleagues but unlike them not beheaded immediately. Instead, sensing that they could exploit potential differences within “the coalition of the willing”, for three weeks the Islamists played a cat-and-mouse game with Mr Bigley’s life, in which Fleet Street, the British public, governments in London and Dublin and Islamic lobby groups in the United Kingdom were far too willing to participate. As I always say, in this war the point is not whether you’re sad about the dead people, but what you’re prepared to do about it. What “Britain” – from Ken Bigley’s brother to the Foreign Secretary – did was make it more likely that other infidels will meet his fate."
He writes of a child killed on 9/11 and says:
"We honour Christine Hanson's memory by righting the great wrong done to her, not by ersatz grief-mongering."
Steyn explains how Kenneth's brother Paul played right into the hands of those chanting "God is great!" as they hacked off his brother's head.
"Paul Bigley can be forgiven his clumsiness: he’s a freelancer winging it. But the feelers put out by the Foreign Office to Ken Bigley’s captors are more disturbing: by definition, they confer respectability on the head-hackers and increase the likelihood that Britons and other infidels will be seized and decapitated in the future. The United Kingdom, like the government of the Philippines when it allegedly paid a ransom for the release of its Iraqi hostages, is thus assisting in the mainstreaming of jihad.
"By contrast with the Fleet Street-Scouser-Whitehall fiasco of the last three weeks, consider Fabrizio Quattrocchi, murdered in Iraq on April 14th. In the moment before his death, he yanked off his hood and cried defiantly, “I will show you how an Italian dies!” He ruined the movie for his killers. As a snuff video and recruitment tool, it was all but useless, so much so that the Arabic TV stations declined to show it."
"The jihadists have become rather adept at devising tests customized for each group of infidels: Madrid got bombed, and the Spaniards failed their test three days later; the Australian Embassy in Jakarta got bombed, but the Aussies held firm and re-elected John Howard’s government anyway. With Britain, the Islamists will have drawn many useful lessons from the decadence and defeatism on display."
This has important lessons for American as well, as many in our State department and CIA (not to mention John Kerry) have a world-view far closer to those in the British government Steyn castigates than that of President Bush.
Read the whole article, it is short.
The Kerry Doctrine
On Sunday the NY Times Magazine published a fawning article on John Kerry.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/magazine/10KERRY.html?oref=login&oref=login&pagewanted=all&position=
(registration required)
That they obviously thought this would help John Kerry is a reflection of the liberal elitist mindset that infests the newsrooms of America. Instead it reveals a way of thinking about the world, and in particular about terrorism, that is frightening.
"When I asked Kerry what it would take for Americans to feel safe again, he displayed a much less apocalyptic worldview. 'We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance,' Kerry said. 'As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.'"
James Lileks does his usual eloquent job of answering this.
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/04/1004/101104.html
(scroll down to after the photo)
James lays the foundation by talking about the life of a Jew in Hitler's Germany. He then runs rough trod over some of the inane things spouted by the Kerry Edwards campaign and repeated ad nauseam by their lackeys in the Main Stream Media.
However, he really shines when he gets to the above quote from the NY Times Magazine:
"Tony Soprano doesn’t take over schools and shoot kids in the back. The doxies of the Bunny Ranch don’t train at flight schools to ram brothels into skyscrapers.
"A nuisance?
"A nuisance? I don’t want the definition of success of terrorism to be “it isn’t on the rise.” I want the definition of success to be “free democratic states in the Middle East and the cessation of support of those governments and fascist states we haven’t gotten around to kicking in the ass yet.” I want the definition of success to mean a free Lebanon and free Iran and a Saudi Arabia that realizes there’s no point in funding the fundies. An Egypt that stops pouring out the Jew-hatred as a form of political novacaine to keep the citizens from turning their ire on their own government. I want the definition of success to mean that Europe takes a stand against the Islamicist radicals in their midst before the Wahabbi poison is the only acceptable strain on the continent. Mosquito bites are a nuisance. Cable outages are a nuisance. Someone shooting up a school in Montana or California or Maine on behalf of the brave martyrs of Fallujah isn't a nuisance. It's war.
"But that's not the key phrase. This matters: We have to get back to the place we were.
"But when we were there we were blind. When we were there we losing. When we were there we died. We have to get back to the place we were.. We have to get back to 9/10? We have to get back to the place we were. So we can go through it all again? We have to get back to the place we were. And forget all we’ve learned and done? We have to get back to the place we were. No. I don’t want to go back there. Planes into towers. That changed the terms. I am remarkably disinterested in returning to a place where such things are unimaginable. Where our nighmares are their dreams.
"We have to get back to the place we were.
"No. We have to go the place where they are."
Rudy Giuliani also weighs in on Kerry's remarks:
http://www.georgewbush.com/kerrymediacenter/Read.aspx?ID=3883
"He says we have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.
"I’m wondering exactly when Senator Kerry thought they were just a nuisance. Maybe when they attacked the USS Cole? Or when they attacked the World Trade Center in 1993? Or when they slaughtered the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972? Or killed Leon Klinghoffer by throwing him overboard? Or the innumerable number of terrorist acts that they committed in the 70s, the 80s and the 90s, leading up to September 11?
"This is so different from the President’s view and my own, which is in those days, when we were fooling ourselves about the danger of terrorism, we were actually in the greatest danger. When you don’t confront correctly and view realistically the danger that you face, that’s when you’re at the greatest risk. When you at least realize the danger and you begin to confront it, then you begin to become safer."
"The idea that you can have an acceptable level of terrorism is frightening. How do you explain that to the people who are beheaded or the innocent people that are killed, that we’re going to tolerate a certain acceptable [level] of terrorism, and that acceptable level will exist and then we’ll stop thinking about it? This is an extraordinary statement. I think it is not a statement that in any way is ancillary. I think this is the core of John Kerry’s thinking. This does create some consistency in his thinking.
"It is consistent with his views on Vietnam: that we should have left and abandoned Vietnam. It is consistent with his view of Nicaragua and the Sandinistas. It is consistent with his view of opposing Ronald Reagan at every step of the way in the arms buildup that was necessary to destroy communism. It is consistent with his view of not supporting the Persian Gulf War, which was another extraordinary step. Whatever John Kerry’s global test is, the Persian Gulf War certainly would pass anyone’s global test. If it were up to John Kerry, Saddam Hussein would not only still be in power, but he’d still be controlling Kuwait.
"Finally, what he did after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, where I guess at that point terrorism was still just a nuisance. He must have thought that because that’s why he proposed seriously reducing our intelligence budget, when you would think someone who was really sensitive to the problem of terrorism would have done just the opposite. I think that rather than being some aberrational comment, it is the core of the John Kerry philosophy: that terrorism is no different than domestic law enforcement problems, and that the best we’re ever going to be able to do is reduce it, so why not follow the more European approach of compromising with it the way Europeans did in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s?"
Last I wish to comment on the 2nd Presidential debate:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/debatereferee/debate_1008.html
(registration required)
Kerry was asked:
"DEGENHART: Senator Kerry, suppose you are speaking with a voter who believed abortion is murder and the voter asked for reassurance that his or her tax dollars would not go to support abortion, what would you say to that person?"
Now listening to Kerry's reply live, I thought he had said that he believed life began at conception, but actually he replied:
"KERRY: I would say to that person exactly what I will say to you right now.
"First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins."
What a marvelously disingenuous answer. His intention was obviously to make people think he said what I thought he said when actually he was being condescending to the person who holds such a belief. This is further magnified by his next sentences:
"I'm a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life. It helped lead me through a war, leads me today.
"But"
If you listen to John Kerry much you will find he frequently uses the formulation "I'm saying what I think you want to hear, BUT, I'm going to take the opposite position but say it in a nuanced way and hope you don't notice." For example he frequently says (I'm paraphrasing) he will never let other nations have a veto over our national security, BUT, our actions must pass a global test.
In answer to the preceding question regarding who he would pick to be on the US Supreme Court he said:
"Will a woman's right to choose be protected?
"These are constitutional rights, and I want to make sure we have judges who interpret the Constitution of the United States according to the law."
In other words he believes that the Constitution
http://www.soundfirst.com/Founding_Documents.html
contains a "right" to abortion!
Returning to his answer on abortion:
"you have to afford people their constitutional rights. And that means ... making certain that you don't deny a poor person the right to be able to have whatever the constitution affords them if they can't afford it otherwise."
In other words I don't care if some poor benighted person is so morally obtuse as to think "abortion is murder". If I become President I will make sure that no matter what they think, their tax dollars will be spent for abortion on demand.
Then to really drive home his vision of his moral superiority he concluded:
"You'll actually do a better job, I think, of passing on the moral responsibility that is expressed in your question. And I truly respect it."
Forcing Christians and others who object to abortion to pay for abortions is the morally superior position!
President Bush replied:
"I'm trying to decipher that.
"My answer is, we're not going to spend taxpayers' money on abortion."
Bush went on to detail a number of abortion related issues where he disagreed with Kerry including Partial Birth Abortion and Parental Notification.
Kerry's response was:
"I'm against the partial-birth abortion, but you've got to have an exception for the life of the mother and the health of the mother under the strictest test of bodily injury to the mother."
Another marvelously disingenuous response.
First, the law signed by President Bush that Kerry voted against did include an exception for the life of the mother. As Kerry knows, this is a ridiculous red herring since even the American Medical Association (AMA - the largest doctor's organization in the country) has said that there is never a situation where Partial Birth Abortion is needed to save the life of the mother.
Second, the "health of the mother" has been ruled by the courts as including the "mental health". In other words according to court rulings if a mother would be upset if she did not get an abortion that was enough to fulfill the "health of the mother" clause in existing abortion laws. In other words if Kerry and like minded folk had managed to get a "health of the mother" clause into the Partial Birth Abortion law, it would have had the effect of making the law unenforceable.
Kerry was not content to leave it at that, he had to go on and explain why he was opposed to parental notification. (Note this was not parental consent, but merely a law that said the parents had to be at least told if their daughter was getting an abortion.)
"with respect to parental notification, I'm not going to require a 16-or 17-year-old kid who's been raped by her father and who's pregnant to have to notify her father."
So now those who support parental notification are in Kerry's view supporting rape and incest?
All of the above go to show how highly Kerry thinks of his liberal world-view, how condescending he is to those who disagree, and how dangerous he would be to lives all over the world and particularly here in the USA if he were to become President.
Voter Guides
Here are some good Voter Guides to give to your friends, or distribute in churches or other organizations.
Has a Presidential Voter Guide in English:
http://www.nrlc.org/EandP/CompareEnglish.pdf
and in Spanish:
http://www.nrlc.org/EandP/CompareSpanish.pdf
They have US Senate Voter Guides for several states available here:
http://www.nrlc.org/EandP/compareindex.html
The Colorado US Senate Voter Guide is here:
http://www.nrlc.org/EandP/CO.pdf
has a Presidential Voter Guide here:
http://www.faith2action.org/voterguides/F2APresidentialCandidates2004.pdf
as well as US Senate Voter Guides for several States. The Colorado US Senate Voter Guide is here:
http://www.faith2action.org/voterguides/F2AColoradoSenate2004.pdf
Reproduces the Faith 2 Action Colorado US Senate Voter Guide here:
http://www.rmfc.org/US_Senate_Guide.pdf
They have their own Colorado State House and Senate Voter Guide here:
http://www.rmfc.org/Colorado_Voter_Guide.pdf
Print copies of all of these as well as Deterrence by Bill Whittle and give them out to everyone you know.
http://www.soundfirst.net/CCCPL/DETERRENCE_by_Bill_Whittle.pdf
Terrorism and the Election
Please read Hugh Hewitt's comments today:
http://www.hughhewitt.com/#postid996
"Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain did not intend for Hitler to rise or metastasize into the monster he became, or to cause ruin and woe to the cities and people of Great Britain. They were patriots. They were also, both of them and those who supported them, terribly, horribly wrong, and the consequences of that error was the near destruction of their nation and the murder of millions."
"The presidential and congressional elections are, collectively, a referendum on how the United States is going to respond to terrorists and the nations that harbor, fund, or in any way cooperate with them. A sweeping win for Bush and Republican candidates for the Senate will send a clear message of our determination to our enemies that an aggressive war on terror has been put to the people and endorsed."
"If you have any effort left, or any money still available for the donating, here are the links to the key U.S. Senate races.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40679
Sign up for the 96 hour get-out-the-vote effort via www.georgewbush.com
or just go down to the local GOP headquarters and offer to do whatever needs to be done."
http://www.bouldercountygop.org/
Hugh also suggests everyone read Deterrence by Bill Whittle.
http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000108.html
http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000107.html
Bill is what I would call a 9/11 Democrat. "We like to say that the world changed that day. What a ridiculous, self-centered thought. The world didn’t change. Our illusions about the world changed. The scales had (mostly) fallen from my eyes in the years leading up to that morning. But many, many conservatives (as I define myself) were born precisely at 9:17 am EDT, when United 175 flew past the burning North Tower – an accident? – and exploded through the second, on the morning of September the 11th, 2001."
If the times were different he would be voting for John Kerry. However Bill Whittle like many other Democrats (but not John Kerry) realizes we are at WAR. "We might yet be able to stop this on the cheap. If we do not, I fear the day will come when 3000 civilians and 1000 American soldiers will look like a very, very small bill to pay."
On 9/20/2001 Bill heard President Bush give his famous speech where he laid out the first part of what has come to be known as "The Bush Doctrine". This speech changed Bill. "I sat amazed at the confidence and the vision President Bush outlined in that speech. I remember saying out loud, to no one in particular, 'I was wrong about this man.'"
When it comes to this election he writes "I am interested in one thing only from these two men: who will best deter the enemy? Who will best be able to stop a thousand 9/11’s in a millisecond of religious ecstasy? That’s all I care about."
Read the whole thing and give it out to anyone who cares about the future of our country and indeed of freedom in the world. I have formatted this article for printing and you can download the pdf document from:
http://www.soundfirst.net/CCCPL/DETERRENCE_by_Bill_Whittle.pdf
OOOOPS
This story just appeared in today's Washington Times.
http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20040924-081541-3615r.htm
"Dear Larry,
"Last Thursday I put out one of my Bush/Cheney signs in my front yard. Between midnight and 3 a.m. someone stole it. On Friday night I put out sign No. 2. Since I didn't have to get up early, I thought my dog and I would "stake out" our sign. This time I put the sign a little closer to the gate leading to my backyard. With my dog on an extra long leash, I planted myself on a lawn chair and read 'Unfit for Command' by flashlight until about 1 a.m. Here comes the fun part.... I noticed that the car coming down the street was slowing down and pulling over to the curb right next to my yard. Sure enough, he gets out of his car and heads right for my sign. Just as he was about to uproot and desecrate it, I opened my gate and let my dog make the initial introduction. As he ran to hide behind the rear end of his car, I promptly moved to the driver-side door, which was still open. It was a fairly nice car with power everything and still running. While my dog continued to 'introduce' herself, I rolled up the window and hit the power door lock button. With that, I slammed the door, grabbed my Bush sign and headed into the back yard.
"And now for the 'rest of the story.' About 40 minutes later, I heard a knock at the door. I opened the door to one of our city's finest... the Vancouver Police Department. The officer asked me what was going on and when I told him, he could not stop laughing. I followed him out to the perp's car and stood there while he asked the guy a few more questions. Upon learning that the guy lived a couple of streets down, I — knowing what was about to happen — asked him, 'Why do you have Oregon plates on your car if you live just down the street (here in Vancouver, Wash.)?' Larry, Oregon has no sales tax, so often Washington residents will buy and register cars in Oregon to avoid paying sales tax... it's a crime and the fine is pretty stiff. Here comes the best part.... The look on this guy's face told me he knew he was about to get busted. When the officer asked for his license and registration, the 'Democrat' mumbled that (his license) was suspended. Just for kicks and giggles I asked the officer if he smelled any alcohol coming from the guy. The officer looked at me, smiled and promptly gave him a field breathalyzer test. Guess what? You got it, he blew a .10, legally drunk in the state of Washington.
"DUI, illegal registration and the brand of 'MORON,' all 'cause he hates Bush.
"Sincerely,
"John."
Don't know if this story is true, but thought you could use something a bit lighter after all the serious news.
CBS - Kerry - DNC - MoveOn.org
We now know that CBS received the forged documents Dan Rather based their "60 Minutes" broadcast of the evening of September 8th from Bill Burkett the retired Texas Army National Guardsman who has a personal grudge against President Bush. We know this because both CBS and Burkett have admitted it after days of this being reported on the Internet.
Remember Burkett had tried to extort then Texas Governor Bush with this same story.
http://www.calpundit.com/archives/003280.html
He also believes Israel's Mossad intelligence service warned President Bush about 9/11 before it happened.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/045912.php
This does not sound like what any rational person would call an "unimpeachable source" to quote Dan Rather. Instead it sounds like an inhabitant of Michael Moore's fever swamps.
We also know that Burkett tried to get the Gore campaign interested in his charges 4 years ago, but they decided not to use them. It sounds like the Gore campaign was more rational than CBS or the Kerry campaign!
Former Senator Cleland who has been working for Kerry says he talked to Burkett a month ago and passed his name and phone number on to the Kerry campaign research department. What they did with it is unknown, but one question is did they pass it on to CBS?
Someone did pass Burkett's name to CBS, because they called Burkett, not the other way around. So who gave CBS Burkett's name? Here is the transcript of the CBS broadcast where they said they approached Burkett:
http://www.mudvillegazette.com/archives/001381.html
Note that while Rather said "I'm sorry" he never admits the documents were forgeries, and continues to defend the story.
There have been conflicting stories about when CBS got the forgeries from Burkett, but we know that CBS producer Mary Mapes called Joe Lockhart of the Kerry campaign the weekend before CBS ran the story to suggest he talk to Burkett.
Burkett asked CBS to connect him to the Kerry campaign.
http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/kerry200409202230.asp
The other "unimpeachable source" that CBS based their September 8th program on was Ben Barnes who has raised an estimated $500,000.00 for the Kerry campaign. He is a Vice Chair of the Kerry campaign.
http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/releases/pr_2004_0319b.html
He claimed to CBS "I got a young man named George W. Bush into the National Guard when I was lieutenant governor of Texas".
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/09/politics/main628437.shtml
One problem with this is that Barnes was not lieutenant governor in 1968 when George Bush entered the National Guard, but was in the Texas House.
Lieutenant Governor Barnes had been a rising star in Texas politics when his career was cut short because of his involvement in the Sharpstown stock-fraud scandal of 1971-9172.
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/SS/mqs1.html
The day after Ben Barnes appeared on "60 Minutes", his daughter Amy apparently called a Texas radio station to say that her father had denied in 2000 exactly the claims he made on "60 minutes". She said that he was doing this to help get Kerry elected and to promote his the book he is writing.
http://www.wbap.com/listingsentryheadline.asp?ID=239369&PT=wbaptopstories
Now a lot happened the very next morning after CBS ran this story.
1) The Boston Globe received copies of the documents
2) The New York Times ran a story
3) A group called "Texans for Truth" funded by MoveOn.org started running ads based on this story
4) Terry McAuliffe the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee held a press conference calling President Bush "AWOL"
5) The Kerry campaign started running TV commercials called "Fortunate Son" based on the CBS story
This seems like an amazing amount of activity to happen based on a CBS story that was only hours old.
The question is, did they have advance notice? In the case of the Kerry campaign we know that was the case because of the call from Mary Mapes to Joe Lockhart.
Hugh Hewitt asked "Would you term the CBS -Joe Lockhart-Bill Burkett trilogy as collusion?"
http://www.hughhewitt.com/#postid935
His guest Ben Ginsburg former general counsel for Bush-Cheney '04 said in summary "I think coincidences in the last six weeks of a presidential campaign are about as real as the tooth fairy."
Let Channel 4 know what you think of Dan Rather!
A friend just suggested that viewers who were planning to refuse to watch Channel 4 news (CBS in Denver CO) while Dan Rather was still anchoring the broadcasts should let the station know. They have a feedback form here:
http://news4colorado.com/feedback
Who Is Dan Rather?
Front Page magazine has an article this morning examining Dan Rather's history, and his personal animus against both Presidents Bush while giving fawning interviews of Hillary Clinton, Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein. The most surprising to me item in his past was his boasting in the July 1980 issue of the Ladies Home Journal that he had tried marijuana, LSD, and heroin, and that he told his kids to "try [pot] at home".
http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15157
The word is out that CBS might admit today that the documents Dan used to attack the President were forgeries, but they apparently plan to stick with the line first expressed in a NY Times headline that the documents were "Fake but Accurate".
More CBS Meltdown
Hugh Hewitt and Powerline continue to have the best overall coverage of this story.
Apparently at least one of the forged memos has been traced to a Kinko's in Abilene Texas.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24635-2004Sep15.html
This is the nearest Kinko's to the home of Bill Burkett who apparently was one of CBS's sources. Mr Burkett has an account at this Kinko's.
http://www.crosswalk.com/news/weblogs/kmc/1285083.html?view=print
Burkett has a huge personal grudge against President Bush, and blames him for supposedly denying him medical benefits. In fact he tried to blackmail Bush with this same story in an attempt to get medical benefits.
http://www.calpundit.com/archives/003280.html
Further Burkett is even loonier than Michael Moore as he claims Israel warned Bush about 9/11 before it happened. Burkett also is a supporter of Cynthia McKinney the loony former congresswoman who has made similar charges.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/045912.php
The question now is, was Burkett the source of the CBS documents?
The link I had used to Investor's Business Daily in yesterday's post is no longer good, so I have substituted a copy of the article I saved. If anyone knows a good link to this article on the IBD website please send it to me.
WHY we must call Congress
Dave Humphrey pointed out to me I did not provide a good explanation of WHAT happened and therefore WHY we should call Congress. He suggested this story in Investor's Business Daily as a good summary:
http://www.soundfirst.com/blogs_take_lead.html
For ongoing coverage of CBS's attempt to swing the election to Kerry, I would suggest checking the following sites:
Hugh Hewitt - radio talk show host (KNUS 710 AM here in Denver 4 to 7 PM weekdays), author, law professor, and former Reagan Justice Department Lawyer.
http://www.hughhewitt.com/
Power Line - run by 3 lawyers in their spare time.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/
Urgent call Congress
U.S. Representative Christopher Cox a member of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, part of The Committee on Energy and Commerce, just sent the following letter to Congressman Fred Upton (R-MI) Chairman of the Subcommittee.
==== Begin Letter ====
Dear Chairman Upton:
This is a request that you commence a Subcommittee investigation into the continued use by CBS News of apparently forged documents concerning the service record of President George W. Bush intended to unfairly damage his reputation and influence the outcome of the 2004 presidential election.
In February 2001, the Energy & Commerce Committee held hearings calling the television networks to account for irresponsibly (and inaccurately) calling the outcome of the presidential election in Florida before the polls had closed. At those hearings, CBS News vowed that the competitive drive to get the story first would be subordinated to 'making sure we are correct,' given that the stakes --the outcome of the presidential election-- were so high....
Despite the growing abundance of the evidence that CBS News has aided and abetted fraud, the network has declined to reveal the source of the disputed documents. USA Today possesses the same documents, obtained independently from a person representing them to be authentic, and likewise is refusing to disclose his identity.
Given the shortness of time between now and the election which the apparent fraud is meant to influence, and the even shorter time before Congress is scheduled to adjourn, I strongly urge that the Subcommittee move with all deliberate speed to uncover the facts.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter within the Subcommittee's jurisdiction.
Sincerely,
Christopher Cox
U.S. Representative
==== End Letter ====
We need to call the Republican members (at least) of this Subcommittee and politely demand that the Subcommittee hold public hearings on this matter before they adjourn for the election.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has based their latest round of attack advertisements against the President on this fraudulent "reporting" by Dan Rather and CBS News. The Spectator reports that these documents were first unearthed by opposition researchers working for the DNC. The question the Hearings must address is how these documents got from the source discovered by the DNC to CBS. There is much speculation as to the path. Were they:
1) Given directly by the DNC or the Kerry Campaign to CBS?
2) Was CBS merely told where to find them?
3) Was the conduit from the DNC to CBS through Dan Rather's daughter Robin who is a Texas Democratic operative and a neighbor of Democrat Ben Barnes who has been making the charges against the President?
By the way, Ben Barnes' daughter Amy says her father is lying and changed his story since 2000 because he wants to elect Kerry (he has raised $500,000.00 for Kerry) and is writing a book.
Here are the numbers to call:
Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) Chairman of the Energy & Commerce Committee
(202) 225-2002
Congressman Fred Upton (R-MI) Chairman of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-3761
Congressman Cliff Stearns (R-FL) Vice Chairman of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-5744
Congressman Michael Bilirakis (R-FL) Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-5755
Congressman Paul E. Gillmor (R-OH) Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-6405
Congressman Nathan Deal (R-GA) Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-5211
Congressman Ed Whitfield (R-KY) Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-3115
Congresswoman Barbara Cubin (R-WY) Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-2311
Congressman John Shimkus (R-IL) Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-5271
Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R-NM) Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-6316
Congressman Charles "Chip" Pickering (R-MS) Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-5031
Congressman Vito Fossella (R-NY) Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-3371
Congressman Steve Buyer (R-IN) Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-5037
Congressman Charles F. Bass (R-NH) Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-5206
Congresswoman Mary Bono (R-CA) Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-5330
Congressman Greg Walden (R-OR) Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-6730
Congressman Lee Terry (R-NE) Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
(202) 225-4155
Tuesday 2004-09-09 8:34 AM
Muslim terrorists are victims: The view from NYTimes Land
Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City, has just written an article on the attempt by the New York Times to somehow make the Muslim terrorists into the victims!
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0904/koch2004_09_09.php3
"The New York Times editorial of September 4, which followed the slaughter of hundreds of boys, girls and many other innocents by Chechen terrorists and their Arab confederates, was contemptible. The Times tried to shift blame for the atrocities to the Soviet Union under Stalin more than 60 years ago."
"Why did The Times omit any mention of the war time treason of the Chechen people — one of 120 or more ethnic groups making up the then Soviet Union? The Chechens allied themselves with the Nazi armies that had invaded Russia in 1941 and were on the verge of overrunning the entire Soviet Union. Had the Soviets been defeated, the allies, England and the United States, would likely have been defeated as well and, at the very least, been required to sue for peace with the Nazis."
"The Times' suggestion that Russia submit in some manner to the Chechens' demand for separation, allowing them perhaps to create their own independent state, is wrongheaded. Yielding to terror is the worst response possible as it will only embolden the terrorists."
"The Times editorial denounces the Russians for responding to Chechen efforts to secede, "mainly with force and intransigence." In the days of the Civil War and the South's efforts to secede from the Union, did The Times propose to President Lincoln that he "reach for compromise" and let the South go? Lincoln's refusal to allow the secession, despite the knowledge that it would result in a tragic civil war, was nevertheless the right thing to do. Will Putin follow in Lincoln's footsteps? I hope so."
"What is required is nothing short of a full-scale war against international terrorism. As Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the 9-11 commission stated before the Russian catastrophe, "They want to kill us." With the declaration of the Bush Doctrine, "We will go after the terrorists and the countries that harbor them," our President has set the standard for world leaders.
"Some in the Arab world recognize that the deaths of so many Russian children have created "an international backlash against Islam and its followers." In Egypt, reports Newsday, "one newspaper headline here read, 'The painful truth: All the World Terrorists are Muslims."
"Nevertheless, true to form, others in the Arab world are seeking to cover up their torturing and killing of 340 Russians, mostly children, by blaming the Jews. The AP reports, "Ali Abdullah, a Bahraini religious scholar who follows the ultraconservative Salafi stream of Islam, condemned the school attack as 'un-Islamic' but insisted Muslims weren't behind it. 'I have no doubt in my mind that this is the work of the Israelis who want to tarnish the image of Muslims and are working alongside Russians who have their own agenda against the Muslims in Chechnya,' said Abdullah.""
"The tragic events in Russia should be another wake-up call to the civilized world. As we grieve with the Russian people, we should remember that we are allies in a common war against international terrorism."
Moderate, peaceful Muslims — where is the evidence?
That is the title of a new piece from Cal Thomas.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0904/thomas090904.php3
"Following the massacre by mostly Muslim terrorists in Beslan, Russia, that killed, at last count, 338 people, including at least 156 children, and wounded hundreds of others, a rare voice of reason was heard from an unlikely place.
"Abdulrahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television in Dubai, wrote in a London Arabic newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat, "Our terrorist sons are an end-product of our corrupted culture."
"Under the headline "The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists Are Muslims!," he wrote, "Most perpetrators of suicide operations in buses, schools and residential buildings around the world for the past 10 years have been Muslims." He also wrote that if Muslims want to change their image, they must "admit the scandalous facts," rather than disparage critics or justify terrorists' behavior.
"As a good Baptist would say, "Amen!" It's about time somebody spoke the truth."
"major American media are going out of their way to cover up the obvious, preferring words such as "militants" and "extremists," and refusing in many cases to identify the religious motivation behind the killings.
"The U.S. government is promoting "tolerance" and "diversity" sessions led by Muslim organizations, some of which have questionable ties to groups that have either supported or condemned with disingenuous statements killings by Muslim extremists, or sought to justify them because of policies promoted by Israel or the United States."
""Moderate" Islamic clerics should defrock and denounce other clerics who preach hate and the destruction of Christians, Jews and all things Western."
"Instead, we hear from Ali Abdullah, an Islamic scholar in Bahrain, who said of the massacre in Russia: "I have no doubt that this is the work of the Israelis who want to tarnish the image of Muslims and are working alongside Russians who have their own agenda against the Muslims in Chechnya." Omar Bakri Mohammed, the leader of the extremist sect al-Muhajiroun, told London's Sunday Telegraph (Sept 5), "If an Iraqi Muslim carried out an attack like (the Russian massacre) in Britain, it would be justified because Britain has carried out acts of terrorism in Iraq.""
"We should be listening to the likes of Abdulrahman al-Rashed or, for a reality check, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who last October called on the world's 1.3 billion Muslims to unite against "a few million Jews," whom he said rule the world and get others to fight and die for them.
"Moderate? Peaceful? Where is the evidence?"
In America today our culture has been taken over by a morally confused world-view that denys the existence of evil and thinks "everyone is good". In politics this has infected both Republicans and Democrats, although the Democrats have taken it to it logical conclusions by:
1) Denying that we are in a WAR
2) Refusing to identify the enemy as radical Islam
3) Blaming the victims
As we talk to folk about the War on Terrorism and the election, lets never forget that such thinking WILL GET US KILLED. Electing Democrats at this time, particularly to national office, is attempted suicide.
Thursday 2004-09-09 7:40 AM
Brace Yourselves
Ed Gillespie, Republican National Committee Chairman has just sent out this warning email.
==== Start of RNC Email ====
In response to President Bush's Agenda for America's Future and a critique of his policies and Senate record, Senator Kerry's campaign is implementing a strategy of vicious personal attacks against the President and Vice President.
The campaign is bringing in a bevy of former Clinton henchmen, including CNN commentators James Carville and Paul Begala. In August alone, Begala called President Bush a "gutless wonder," said he has a "lack of intelligence," and called Vice President Cheney a "dirt bag." Carville said the President is "ignorant big time" and said "George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are a couple of nobodies."
It's not like Bob Shrum needed encouragement to engage in personal attacks. At a Kerry rally Friday morning in Ohio, campaign surrogate John Glenn compared the Republican Convention to a Nazi rally, and Kerry called the President unfit to lead our nation and once again sought to divide the country by who served and how 35 years ago.
Of course, the President was called a "cheap thug," a "killer" and a "liar" at a Kerry-Edwards campaign event in New York, Mrs. Kerry has called the President's policies "unpatriotic" and "immoral" and DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe falsely accused the President of being AWOL.
Democratic strategist Susan Estrich outlined the strategy last Wednesday in a column warning Republicans to "watch out." "I'm not promising pretty," she wrote before going on to call President Bush and Vice President Cheney alcoholics, then ask "is any alcoholic ever really cured?" ("I can see the ad now.") She deems the President's service as a National Guard fighter pilot "draft dodging," and says, "a forthcoming book by Kitty Kelly raises questions about whether the President has practiced what he preaches on the issue of abortion." (Interestingly, the New York Daily News reported back in February that the Kerry campaign intended to spread such a rumor in pro-life chat rooms late in the campaign.)
So the former Dukakis campaign manager has an advance copy of Democrat donor Kitty Kelly's book, which promises to throw unsubstantiated gossip at President Bush in the same way she falsely maligned the late President Reagan as a date rapist who paid for a girlfriend's abortion and wrongly castigated Nancy Reagan as an adulterer who had an affair with Frank Sinatra. A recent story says Kelly's book alleges President Bush used cocaine at Camp David while his father was President, which is as credible as her story that then Governor and Nancy Reagan smoked marijuana with Jack Benny and George and Gracie Burns.
And tonight on CBS, longtime Democratic operative Ben Barnes-a friend of, major contributor to and Nantucket neighbor of Senator Kerry's and vice chair of the Kerry Campaign--will repudiate his statement under oath that he had no contact with the Bush family concerning the President's National Guard service. (Anyone surprised that Barnes would contradict a statement he made under oath probably doesn't know his long history of political scandal and financial misdealings.)
So brace yourselves. Any mention of John Kerry's votes for higher taxes and against vital weapons programs will be met with the worst kind of personal attacks. Such desperation is unbecoming of American Presidential politics, and Senator Kerry will pay a price for it at the polls as we stay focused on policies to continue growing our economy and winning the War on Terror.
==== End of RNC Email ====
Tuesday 2004-09-07 10:07 PM
They Shoot Children, Don't They?
Dennis Prager just wrote a powerful article about the massacre at the school in Russia "They Shoot Children, Don't They?" and the establishment reaction to the massacre.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0904/prager_muslims.php3
"With the psychopathic cruelty at a Russian elementary school, have we reached the point where people of goodwill can ask serious questions about Muslims and Islam? Or are any challenging questions still to be dismissed as "Muslim bashing" or, even more absurdly, "racist," as if religion were a race? "The truth is that everyone with a conscience has questions about Muslims and Islam. But the most powerful religion in America, the religion of tolerance, has rendered it almost impossible to ask any such questions. Most people are so afraid of being branded intolerant that the most natural and goodhearted questions are only posed by the handful who have the courage to do so (usually conservative Christians)."
Keep in mind Mr. Prager is not Christian but Jewish.
Daniel Pipes writes "They're TERRORISTS — not activists or victims" and goes on to show how our news media goes to extreme lengths to avoid calling Islamic terrorists by their correct description.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0904/pipes2004_09_07.php3
He concludes:
"Worse, the multiple euphemisms for terrorist obstruct a clear understanding of the violent threats confronting the civilized world. It is bad enough that only one of five articles discussing the Beslan atrocity mentions its Islamist origins; worse is the miasma of words that insulates the public from the evil of terrorism."
My personal belief is that the root cause of this is the modern disbelief in the existence of evil. In this modern "theology of unbelief", violence has replaced evil as the ultimate sin. Thus since the USA is so powerful, and uses military force, WE become the source of all that is wrong in the world, not those evil doers who attack innocents. In this theology they deny that violence can ever be used for good purposes such as self defense, except by those downtrodden by society or our government, hence they despise our soldiers and policemen.
Mark Steyn writes "Being sad isn't enough".
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0904/steyn_2004_09_07.php3
"Photographed from above, the body bags look empty. They seem to lie flat on the ground, and it's only when you peer closer that you realize that that's because the bodies in them are too small to fill the length of the bags. They're children. Row upon row of dead children, more than a hundred of them, 150, more, many of them shot in the back as they tried to flee."
"What happened in one Russian schoolhouse is an abomination that has to be defeated, not merely regretted. But the only guys with any kind of plan are the Bush administration. Last Thursday, the President committed himself yet again to wholesale reform of the Muslim world. This is a dysfunctional region that exports its toxins, to Beslan, Bali and beyond, and is wealthy enough to be able to continue doing so.
"You can't turn Saudi Arabia and Yemen into New Hampshire or Sweden (according to taste), but if you could transform them into Singapore or Papua New Guinea or Belize or just about anything else you'd be making an immense improvement. It's a long shot, but, unlike Putin's plan to bomb them Islamists into submission or Chirac's reflexive inclination to buy them off, Bush is at least tackling the "root cause".
"If you've got a better idea, let's hear it. Right now, his is the only plan on the table. The ideology and rationale that drove the child-killers in Beslan is the same as that motivating cells in Rome and Manchester and Seattle and Sydney. In this war, you can't hold the line against the next depravity. "
Zev Chafets writes "The jihadists' dream is a return to empire." "America's enemy is not "terrorism." It is international Islamist imperialism."
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0904/chafets_2004_09_07.php3
"Americans often wonder how the Muslim masses can be so indifferent to the savage murder of Russian schoolchildren or the beheading of Nepalese workers; how they can cheer for church-burners in Pakistan, bus bombers in Israel or suicide pilots in Manhattan.
"The answer lies in human nature. The Muslim world knows that it is engaged in what it regards as a just war — and in war you kill your enemies, including the civilians. The slaughtered schoolchildren of Beslan are merely collateral damage on the Chechnyan front in the Great Islamic War of Restoration.
"This is a war in which the U.S. can prevail. The Islamic imperialists are no more formidable than their Soviet and Nazi predecessors. But it can't be won until it is defined. That means honestly telling the American people who and what is at war with them.
"'Terrorism' is not the enemy, and getting through a political convention with Madison Square Garden still standing is not victory."
Read all these articles in full. Prayerfully consider them. Let them inform your voting decisions in November.
Tuesday 2004-09-07 9:17 PM
Another prominent Democrat for Bush
Orson Scott Card is a well known best selling Science Fiction author (I actually like some of his SF which puts him in a very small select group).
He is also a Democrat, but one which has not been infected with Moore's disease (as in Michael Moore).
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-08-29-1.html
His most recent weekly column was a review of Hugh Hewitt's wonderful book "If its not Close, They Can't Cheat - Crushing the Democrats in Every Election, and Why You Life Depends on it".
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0785263195/soundfirst-20
"Hewitt doesn't hate Democrats. He just hates it when Democrats are in office. At least now."
"Hewitt believes that not only must we have George W. Bush in the presidency for the next four years, but the Democratic Party seems poised to go on, for the foreseeable future, choosing presidential candidates who would be disastrous to our defense against people who want our civilization in ashes and us dead."
"Even if you're a Democrat so loyal that you think Al Franken is sane enough to operate heavy machinery and John Kerry knows how to make facial expressions but merely chooses not to, this book nails exactly what the strengths and weaknesses of both major parties are in coming years; why third-party votes are wasted and harmful; how Democrats have finally succeeded in rigging election funding to benefit them and hurt Republicans, and how Republicans can counter it."
"It's not enough, he says, to reelect President Bush if you don't vote for Republicans in every national race -- Senate and House of Representatives.
"His warning is especially to conservative purists who would like to throw out proven vote-getters like Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania because he's "too liberal."
"The time for idealogical purity, in other words, says Hewitt, is not during election season.
"The Democrats know this; the Republicans keep forgetting."
"Now, as a Democrat, what can I say to that except that, because my party has been taken over by an astonishingly self-destructive bunch of lunatics who are so dazzled by Hollywood that they think their ideas make sense, I have to agree that right now, any President but Bush and any Congress but a Republican-dominated one would be disastrous.
"As a Democrat, I would hope that a solid trouncing of our fanatic-ruled party at the polls this November would serve as a wakeup call and remind Democrats that they only get to do the things that the Democrat Party exists to do if they get enough votes to control the White House and Congress. Which requires that you have serious candidates and embrace serious issues that most Americans, not just tiny pressure groups, care about.
"And on that day, Democratic moderates can take the party back. And yes, Democratic moderates actually exist. They're all voting for Bush this year, but they'd rather have had a Democratic candidate to vote for."
He then goes on to explain why he is voting for a Democrat for Sheriff instead of straight Republican. His argument makes sense in his situation and reminds me of when I voted for the current Democrat Sheriff of Boulder because the candidate the Republicans ran that year was a stupid fool. He put out campaign literature that said that while he supported the 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms, and he was willing to issue concealed carry permits, if a law was passed that required him to round up all firearms in civilian hands (which would be blatantly against the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution), well he would go round up everyone's guns "because that was the law". Now given the political climate in Boulder, I could almost see the City Council passing such a law even though they knew it was unconstitutional. But aside from the Constitutional issues, what marked this candidate as a fool that should never be elected even if he was a Republican, was that he was giving out his literature with this position on it AT A GUN SHOW! All I can say is it was surprising he was not lynched.
Read Orson Scott Card's entire column, and then go buy and read Hugh Hewitt's book. Then pass the column and book on to any serious Democrat you know. As Hewitt says "Your Life Depends on it".
Sunday 2004-09-05 10:42 PM
Welcome Victory Academy friends!
For those of you wishing a copy of Zell Miller's Speech at the RNC, you can get a copy in pdf from here:
http://www.soundfirst.net/CCCPL/Zell_Millers_Speech_at_RNC.pdf
Yesterday Michelle Malkin wrote a wonderful column for The Washington Times titled "All the bias that fits". It starts "Over the past two months, the New York Times has hammered Republicans for including conservative Christians in the American electoral process".
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20040903-084338-8619r.htm
She does a great job hammering the NY Times!
I have been recommending Hugh Hewitt's wonderful book "If it's Not Close They Can't Cheat". It was the red (as in Red State) book I held up at the Academy today. You can get it from Amazon by following this link:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0785263195/soundfirst-20
Or if you come by the "For Such a Time as This: Christians in the Public Square" event presented by the Rocky Mountain Family Council this coming Friday and Saturday evening the 10th and 11th of September from 7 to 9 PM at Loveland High School you can pick up a copy from me. If you are in the North Colorado area you should plan to be at this event anyway. You can download the event flyer in pdf form from here:
http://www.soundfirst.net/CCCPL/FORSUCHATIMEASTHIS-Ad.pdf
Hope I see many of you Friday and Saturday evenings!
Everyone who is concerned about the current assault on the institution of marriage, or wonders what the fuss is all about, should read Dr. James Dobson's wonderful little book "Marriage Under Fire":
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1590524314/soundfirst-20
Highly recommended!
If you like Science Fiction and are concerned about terrorism you might want to read Dean Ing's prophetic novel "Soft Targets" published in 1979 and now out of print. It was subtitled "International Terrorism in the Too-Near Future". That future is now upon us. While Dean Ing does not give any specific suggestions on living in an age of terrorism, reading this book will help you think about the subject. You can often find used copies of this book through Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0441774059/soundfirst-20
When I asked Mr. Ing if he planned to write a book on surviving terrorism he suggested that I write it. Maybe some day I will.
Someone asked me about elections decided by a single vote. Dick Rehg has written a nice little flyer on "The Power of One" addressing this topic. You can download a copy in pdf form from:
http://www.soundfirst.net/CCCPL/THE_POWER_OF_ONE.pdf
Dick & Sue Rehg run the "Committee for Conservative Christian Political Leadership". This is a ministry devoted to helping Christians run political information tables at churches. While voter registration drives are important, it is almost more important to educate potential voters so they understand the issues.
Mallard Fillmore is a cartoon about a mallard duck who is a TV newscaster, and Conservative. Do these cartoons remind you of any of your friends or fellow church attendees?
If you would like to learn how to run an effective voter education and voter registration table at your church I would strongly suggest you contact the Rehgs. They can provide guidance and materials.
Dick & Sue Rehg - pharm75@earthlink.net
Someone at the Victory Academy asked me about suggested websites for news and political information. There are many great websites listed on the lower part of this page, but here is a short list to get you started:
Hugh Hewitt
http://www.HughHewitt.com/ - Hugh is a radio talk show host (he is on 710 AM in Denver from 4 to 7 PM weekdays), but also a great commentator on the political scene.
Best of the Web Today
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/ - James Taranto the editor of the Opinion Journal free webpage from the Wall Street Journal writes this most weekday afternoons. Readers send him links to stories of interest which he publishes with his comments. The comments are wonderful and make this a must read each afternoon.
Jewish World Review
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/ - Binyamin L. Jolkovsky the editor and publisher of JWR is an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn New York. While he has as one would expect stories from a Jewish perspective, he also carries one of the largest and best collections of columns by Conservative commentators to be found on the web. To put the icing on the cake, he also carries some great cartoons including Mallard Fillmore.
Opinion Journal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/ - The rest of Opinion Journal is also wonderful and well worth reading. It contains opinion pieces from the Wall Street Journal and is the only way for those not buying a subscription to the Wall Street Journal On-Line is the only way to read some great pieces.
OpinionJournal's Political Diary
http://www.opinionjournal.com/politicaldiary/ - This is a subscription only daily political email newsletter. The price of $3.95 per month is low enough to allow anyone interested in politics to take a subscription.
The Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/ - The Washington Times is the conservative newspaper from our nation's capitol.
Drudge Report
http://www.drudgereport.com/ - Matt Drudge provides links to many stories of interest, plus on occasion breaks stories of his own. He has one of the best collections of links to news sources and commentators from all viewpoints around.
WorldNetDaily
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/ - Joseph Farah is a Lebanese - American Christian newsman and the editor of WND. He believes the purpose of the media is to provide a check and balance to government, and his website shows that bias. He provides links to news stories from many sources in addition to considerable original reporting. Most of the commentators on his site are conservative or libertarian in outlook, but he always runs at least one article from the left.
The above set of links should get you started finding news from a Conservative perspective on the web.
Friday 2004-08-27 12:31 PM
John Kerry's Civil War.
Yesterday Herman Jacobs wrote in insightful column on Kerry's Vietnam problems titled "Kerry's Lost Opportunity - He could have healed the wounds of Vietnam. Instead, he tried to exploit them."
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005524
I grew up during the Vietnam era and therefore can totally sympathize with Mr. Jacob's starting comment "The subject of Vietnam is one that most of us--especially those of us who came of age during that era--would very much wish to let alone." He then goes on to detail what he calls "an unwritten domestic truce" over Vietnam that has held for most of the last 30 years.
He goes into great detail over this uneasy truce and shows how Kerry was uniquely positioned to help heal the wounds of Vietnam, but chose instead to attempt to exploit Vietnam for his personal political gain. Kerry also seems to have been blind to the fact that others who had lived through that era would object to his attempt to use his service which he just a couple of years after it happened said he was "ashamed of and hated" as his primary qualification to be President.
As Mr. Jacob wrote:
"How can it possibly be that his actions 30 years ago, which Mr. Kerry himself described as shameful war crimes, are now so undeniably honorable that no one is allowed to question Mr. Kerry's account of those actions, not even the very men whom Mr. Kerry accused of committing war crimes?
"Why must we treat it as acceptable for John Kerry to have demeaned the honor of thousands of his former comrades in 1971 while those men were at that very moment still in Vietnam's swamps and jungles fighting for their lives, but now, when Mr. Kerry himself is well out of harm's way sleeping comfortably every night on the cushion of billions his wife inherited from her dead Republican husband, it's politically incorrect for the men Mr. Kerry called war criminals to raise a question about his antiwar activities?
"Why are we are not permitted to consider the possibility, supported by the testimony of credible witnesses, that a man who said he was ashamed to have been involved in war crimes against innocent civilians would not have taken advantage of a few very minor scrapes to extricate himself from further participation in activities he considered to be shameful war crimes?
"Why is that in 1971 it was patriotic dissent for John Kerry to tell young men to avoid going to Vietnam (because it was dishonorable), but now an official web site of Mr. Kerry's Democratic Party suggests it was dishonorable for George W. Bush not to go to Vietnam that same year? Yes, the official DNC web site throws down the gauntlet with the statement: "Kerry vs. Bush: Compare their service." To help us make that comparison, the Democrats have for years questioned every last detail about Mr. Bush's National Guard record. But as soon as anyone points out the contradictions in Mr. Kerry's actions during the Vietnam era, Mr. Kerry hides behind his tiny "band of brothers" and wraps himself in the flag with neopatriotic statements like this:
'We call her Old Glory. The stars and stripes forever. I fought under that flag, as did so many of those people here tonight and all across our country. That flag flew from the gun turret right behind my head. It was shot through and through and tattered, but it never ceased to wave in the wind. It draped the caskets of men I served with and friends I grew up with.'
"Is that the same Old Glory displayed in so mocking a fashion on the cover of Mr. Kerry's antiwar book, "The New Soldier"?"
Mr. Jacob then goes on to quote at length from American POWs in Vietnam who were tortured and taunted by the Communist Vietnamese with Kerry's false claims of American "war crimes".
He concludes by writing:
"The truce is over. The Swift Vets and all the other vets John Kerry has freshly maligned are determined that this time around he is not going to have it both ways. Men like Michael Benge, Kenneth Cordier, Joseph Crecca and Jim Warner, who have already lost too many years of their lives to the Vietnam War, would have much preferred that Mr. Kerry had not restarted this fight. But now that he has, they are not going to let it alone."
Today Hugh Hewitt also writes on this topic:
http://www.hughhewitt.com/#postid836
His conclusion is the same:
"The men John Kerry slandered are now fighting for their honor --again. Karl Rove didn't tell them to do so, and they aren't going to stop because Peter Beinart thinks they deserved to be branded barbarians.
"It was a branding. It is still a brand --a dishonest, slanderous one. Men fight for their honor, and the ads aren't going away as a result."
In the weeks to come there will be much more about this topic and major further attacks by the Democrat party and the Kerry campaign on the very same Vietnam Veterans that John Kerry slandered in 1971. I hope this gives you some background on this small scale civil war that John Kerry through his actions has ignited.
Thursday 2004-08-26 8:17 AM
Meet the "Bloggers".
For many years there have been people posting their thoughts on issues of interest to them to the Internet. Some of this is through email discussion groups. I participate in a few of these devoted to sound.
There are also people who post their comments to a web page in what has been come to be known as a "web log" or "blog". This webpage has of late become a "mini-blog".
The Republican National Convention will have 15 official certified bloggers writing their comments live from the Convention in NYC. The Wall Street Journal did a survey of all 15 and provides links to their Blogs:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109278109869594104,00.html?mod=home_inside_today_us
The blogger on the list I read the most is Hugh Hewitt:
Hugh is a lawyer who served in the Reagan administration, teaches law, hosts a great radio program (4 to 7 PM Monday through Friday on KNUS AM 710 here in Denver), and has written a must read book about the election "If it's Not Close They Can't Cheat":
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0785263195/soundfirst-20
Gene Schneider first introduced me to Hugh's radio program for which I am very grateful.
Wednesday 2004-08-25 8:53 AM
Attempted Kerry Diversions.
Now that the Kerry campaign has had to admit that:
1) Despite the memory being "seared - seared" into him (Kerry speech on the floor of the US Senate), Kerry was nowhere near Cambodia on Christmas eve of 1968. He has been repeating this story for 30 years.
2) Despite the fact that Kerry's service in Vietnam was cut short at 4 months and 12 days because he was awarded 3 purple hearts ("The Purple Heart is awarded to members of the armed forces of the U.S. who are wounded by an instrument of war in the hands of the enemy,") his campaign is now admitting that the wound for his first purple heart may have been self inflicted as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have claimed! Kerry's own diary is raising questions since it says he "was not shot at".
Instead of allowing reporters to speak to Kerry and ask him about these issues, he has refused to meet with reports for about 2 weeks now!
Instead Kerry has chosen to attack President Bush, falsely charging him with illegal coordination with the independent 527 group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Bush has responded by condemning all 527 groups.
What the mainstream media has refused to report is that:
1) The vast majority of 527 groups are Democrats.
2) Democrat 527 groups including MoveOn.org, The Media Fund and ACT have spent $63 million attacking President Bush.
3) Democrat 527 groups have falsely accused President Bush of lying, condoning torture and poisoning pregnant women.
4) The Democratic National Committee's explicit connection with MoveOn.org (the DNC said on its website on May 9, 2003, that "The Democratic Party is partnering with MoveOn.org" and other groups).
5) John Kerry's former campaign manager is now the head of a 527 group attacking President Bush.
6) John Kerry's Internet expert used to do the same for a 527 group attacking President Bush.
7) Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has spent only $200 thousand on their ads, but have had a much greater impact on the campaign than the $63 million from such sources as Teresa Kerry (John Kerry's wife who is worth several Billion) and George Soros (who has pledged at least $50 million out of his Billions to defeat President Bush).
http://insider.washingtontimes.com/blog/2004_08_24_archive.php#109337353971627806
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040825-125217-7993r.htm
When will the "mainstream media" start reporting honestly on this campaign?
Sunday 2004-08-22 8:49 PM
More on Christmas in Cambodia.
The melt-down continues.
Today Michael Barone writes in U.S. News & World Report about Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia Myth:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/040830/opinion/30barone.htm
This article ends "But character counts in presidents, and some of Kerry's statements over the years-not all, but some-count against his character." This story is at long last breaking into the "main stream media" (weeks later than very respectable sources on the Internet, but at least it is getting out.)
On 18 August the Minneapolis Star-Tribune published an article on this story a version of which is available here:
http://www.claremont.org/writings/040818hinderakerjohnson.html
This story is as much on the failure of the "main stream media" to honestly cover the Christmas in Cambodia story as it is on the story itself. This article concludes "Whatever the reason—and we have our suspicions—when it comes to scrutiny of Senator Kerry's veracity, the mainstream media are saluting, but they are decidedly not reporting for duty."
Deborah Orin writes for the New York Post that "what worries some pro-Kerry Democrats is the fear that Kerry has, as one put it, "an Al Gore problem" — that he's a serial exaggerator." She goes on to enumerate many false claims made by Kerry down through the years.
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/27161.htm
Her summary "Just imagine the coverage if 264 vets who served with Bush in the Texas Air National Guard made similar charges. ... this story has become a test of the mainstream media's credibility — and its liberal anti-Bush bias."
Robert L. Pollock wrote in the Wall Street Journal about this story. He got the Kerry campaign to admit that Kerry was not in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005483
His conclusion "So far the veteran whose testimony is doing John Kerry the most damage is . . . John Kerry."
Matthew Continetti in The Weekly Standard writes about Kerry's attacks on the Vietnam veterans who first called attention to this story, and about Kerry's absurd claims that Bush was behind this story coming out, all while still refusing to address the central issue of his claims since at least 1976 that he spent Christmas eve 1968 in Cambodia.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/481yyfvo.asp
He ends "If you watch Kerry on the stump, or read his speeches, or saw him take the stage at the Democratic National Convention, you could be forgiven for thinking that Kerry wanted this election to be a referendum on his experience in the Vietnam War at least as much as he wanted it to be about other issues. With the release of Unfit for Command, he got his wish."
Order "Unfit for Command" from Amazon.
Hugh Hewitt takes on Kerry's official historian Douglas Brinkley over his treatment of this story.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/476jwkqo.asp
Hewitt says "Douglas Brinkley owes the public an accounting of John Kerry's accounts. Perhaps he will salvage the senator's Cambodian tale. And perhaps he will sink it."
John Kerry made his 4 months and 12 days in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign, capping it off with starting his speech at the Democratic National Convention with "Reporting for Service!" However, it is now becoming increasingly obvious, even to the "main stream media" that little he has said about Vietnam has been true.
Friday 2004-08-20 9:04 AM
Kerry's curiously edited website.
Things are getting very interesting when Kerry's own campaign website finds it necessary to edit a Kerry speech rather than post an accurate transcript.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40059
Thursday 2004-08-19 9:38 PM
Iran talks attack on America.
The Middle East Media Research Institute is the worlds foremost organization translating what is said in the Arab press for the English speaking world. Their Executive Director Steven Stalinsky has just written an article about the public threats the Iranian government is making of attacking the USA, the UK, and Israel.
Please consider this. Can the USA afford a president who has voted against every major weapons bill in the last 20 years, and who authored a bill in the US Senate to decimate our intelligence services so extreme that even Teddy Kennedy refused to vote for it?
In his speech before the Democrat National Convention, John Kerry promised to respond to any attack on the USA. Can we afford to wait until the terrorists, or Iran, or North Korea, attack the USA?
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0804/memri_iran_attack.php3?printer_friendly
Thursday 2004-08-19 11:58 AM
For Such a Time as This.
Rocky Mountain Family Council and CCCPL (the folk who help churches do information tables) are sponsoring two educational meetings on September 10 and 11 in Loveland. These are _not_ political meetings but are designed to educate and get Christians involved in cultural issues. Here is the flyer for the event, and the letter from CCCPL.
Please consider attending and if possible volunteer to help at the events.
http://www.soundfirst.net/CCCPL/FORSUCHATIMEASTHIS-Ad.pdf
http://www.soundfirst.net/CCCPL/CCCPL-RMFC.pdf
Friday 2004-08-13 9:10 AM
A question of character.
The melt-down over John Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" fiction continues. Here are some of the latest commentaries.
LYING AND ITS IMPACT ON CREDIBILITY - by Hugh Hewitt
Kerry's Cambodia confusion - Washington Times
Fact and fiction - Andrew Antippas
A question of character - Patrick J. Buchanan
Friday 2004-08-13 8:39 AM
Church, state and politics.
Today's Washington Times contains an Op-Ed indicating that a minister in Arkansas has been taken to court in a case pushed by the notorious "Americans United for Separation of Church and State" and accused not of endorsing Bush, but of implying his congregation should vote for Bush. As Paul Greenburg shows, this is a dangerous escalation of the attacks on Conservative Christians, particularly given that Liberal churches and their ministers routinely violate current law but get away with it.
Church, state and politics - Paul Greenberg
Sunday 2004-08-08 1:04 AM
Kerry on Marriage
This evening Hugh Hewitt posted the following commentary on Kerry's positions on Marriage.
Kerry on Marriage - Hugh Hewitt.
Friday 2004-08-06 11:32 PM
The New Immaturity.
Here is another great article from Victor Davis Hansen.
A Return to Childhood, The new immaturity - Victor Davis Hanson
Wednesday 2004-08-04 10:34 PM
Peggy Noonan on the election.
Today Peggy Noonan wrote an unusual weekly column.
For those who don't remember the name, she was President Reagan's speech writer, and since leaving the White House has been an outstanding writer of books and columns. Her series of articles written after 9/11 will move you to tears, and have been collected in book form as "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag : America Today".
She wrote a wonderful book on her time in the White House "What I Saw at the Revolution : A Political Life in the Reagan Era"
and "When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan".
Today she announced that "Every four years everyone says 'this is the most important election of my lifetime,' but this year I believe it is true." "With the decline of the Democratic Party I have become convinced there is a greater chance we will win the war if the Republican Party wins the election." "I am going to take three months' unpaid leave from The Wall Street Journal and attempt to support the Republican Party in the coming and crucial election."
Let me repeat her comment "With the decline of the Democratic Party I have become convinced there is a greater chance we will win the war if the Republican Party wins the election." This is the defining issue of this election. Peggy Noonan is willing to put her money where her mouth is. What are we willing to do?
Now Is the Time - Peggy Noonan.
Wednesday 2004-08-04 8:16 PM
Dr. Dobson on the election.
This afternoon Hugh Hewitt had Dr. James Dobson on his show for the last hour. Here are some key excerpts from the interview.
Hugh Hewitt's Interview with Dr. James Dobson.
Tuesday 2004-08-03 11:10 PM
The Terror Web.
The current issue of The New Yorker has an outstanding article entitled "The Terror Web". This should be read by all who wish to understand the mentality of our enemy, and in particular by liberals and democrats. It will be accepted by those of the left because of the source.
With this as a background, how can anyone think Kerry's claims that GWB is to blame for "creating more terrorists" are rational? Can we afford a president who is so out of touch with reality?
THE TERROR WEB - LAWRENCE WRIGHT
Sunday 2004-08-01 10:36 PM
Men Without Chests.
Here is a great article by Mark Steyn the US correspondent for Britton's "The Spectator" magazine. Sometimes it takes an outsider to see clearly the choices in American politics. In particular I love his reference at the end to C. S. Lewis. Below is the full quote from Lewis.
Terminator or girlie man? - Mark Steyn
The first chapter of C. S. Lewis' "The Abolition of Man" is entitled "Men Without Chests" and is devoted to debunking a British textbook. Not wanting to publicly shame the authors, Lewis writes "I shall refer to these gentlemen as Gaius and Titius and to their book as The Green Book."
This chapter ends:
"But this course, though less inhuman, is not less disastrous than the opposite alternative of cynical propaganda. Let us suppose for a moment that the harder virtues could really be theoretically justified with no appeal to objective value. It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism (such as Gaius and Titius would wince at) about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. We were told it all long ago by Plato. As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the ‘spirited element’. The head rules the belly through the chest — the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest—Magnanimity—Sentiment—these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.
"The operation of The Green Book and its kind is to produce what may be called Men without Chests. It is an outrage that they should be commonly spoken of as Intellectuals. This gives them the chance to say that he who attacks them attacks Intelligence. It is not so. They are not distinguished from other men by any unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardour to pursue her. Indeed it would be strange if they were: a persevering devotion to truth, a nice sense of intellectual honour, cannot be long maintained without the aid of a sentiment which Gaius and Titius could debunk as easily as any other. It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.
"And all the time—such is the tragi–comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful." - C. S. Lewis
Saturday 2004-07-31 11:09 PM
Pastors, Priests, and Politics.
While the following is addressed to Pastors, it has good things for all of us to listen to and think about. It is written by Doug Giles a pastor from Miami.
Pastors, Priests, and Politics - Part 1 - Doug Giles
Pastors, Priests, and Politics - Part 2 - Doug Giles
Pastors, Priests, and Politics - Part 3 - Doug Giles
Saturday 2004-07-31 10:15 PM
Neat Bush commercials - and more.
You may not have seen these as they were done by an individual, not by the Bush campaign.
They are excellent reviews of how the economy has improved.
If you have seen Fahrenheit 9/11 or have a friend that has seen it, you might want to give them a copy of this.
59 Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11 - David Kopel
David Kopel is a life long Democrat who voted the same way as Michael Moore in 2000 (for Nader) so this can't be dismissed as something written by the right. It is the short summary of a huge article on his website.
Fifty Nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 911
Monday 2004-07-12 11:09 PM
Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11.
Dave Kopel writes a massive rebuttal of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.
Kopel is not a right wing Bush lover, in fact he makes the point that like Moore he voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. Kopel feels that Bush has told some lies "But two wrongs don't make a right, and the right response to Presidential lies is not more lies from his political opponents. Moreover, regarding the issues presented in Fahrenheit 9/11, the evidence of Bush lies is extremely thin."
"In this report, I number Moore’s deceits. Some of them are outright lies; some are omissions which create a false impression. Others involve different forms of deception. A few are false statements Moore has made when defending the film. Judge for yourself the credibility of Michael Moore's promise, "Every single fact I state in 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is the absolute and irrefutable truth...Do not let anyone say this or that isn't true. If they say that, they are lying.""
Kopel then goes on to totally decimate all the main points of the film in painstaking detail. Show this article to anyone who thinks Moore is right, or does not realize that Moore's film is "the cynical propaganda of a man who gives wartime aid to America’s murderous enemies, and who accepts their aid in return." A powerful piece.
Fifty Nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 911
Sunday 2004-07-11 10:48 PM
"Mainstream" media bias.
We all know that the "Mainstream" media is biased, but rarely have I read such a well written article dealing with this bias. Orson Scott Card the best selling Science Fiction author looks at Fox News versus CNN and MSNBC. As an example of media bias he randomly selects a single issue of a newspaper and examines the bias in the stories in this single issue.
His conclusion? "Mainstream" reporters aren't just liberal--they're fanatical.
Saturday 2004-07-10 11:30 PM
Many "Christian" teens hold non-Christian views.
1/3 of American teens say they are born-again
88% of American teens say they are Christians
60% believe that "the Bible is totally accurate in all of its teachings."
56% feel that their religious faith is very important in their life
But ...
60% think good works will get them into Heaven
2/3 think Satan is just a symbol of evil, not really a living being
6% think there are moral absolutes
9% of "born-again" teens believe moral truth is absolute
6% of non-Christian teens feel music piracy is wrong
10% of "Christian" teens feel music piracy is wrong
60% of "evangelical Christian" teens believe all faiths teach equally valid truths
Christian Teens? Not Very. - DALE BUSS
I am afraid that our teens reflect the beliefs of the average American church attendee who may claim to be a Christian, but then acts (and votes) in ways that are in opposition to the beliefs they claim to hold.
Our churches are in part to blame for this situation since they all too often don't teach the basics of the Christian faith to their members. There are limits to how much Christian doctrine can be absorbed by osmosis absent an intentional effort by the Church to teach their members.
This reminds me of the lady I met about 35 years ago who boasted she had spoken in tongues for 25 years, but was not certain that God was going to win out over the Devil in the end!
Saturday 2004-07-10 9:19 PM
Why we MUST get all Christians to vote.
If you had any doubt that we are in a battle for the soul of our country against those who despise everything we believe in, and are opposed to everything Godly or even moral, consider these quotes:
Published 7/1/2004 under the headline "Bush's God":
"The great conflict of the 21st century will not be between the West and terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, not a belief. The true battle will be between modern civilization and anti-modernists; between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe their allegiance and identity to a higher authority; between those who give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is mere preparation for an existence beyond life; between those who believe in science, reason, and logic and those who believe that truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma. Terrorism will disrupt and destroy lives. But terrorism itself is not the greatest danger we face."
In other words we and everyone else who believes in God are a greater danger to our country than terrorists.
Who is this anti-Christian bigot? None other than Robert Reich who was Bill Clinton's secretary of labor and is still a leading Democrat party activist. He is promoting his new book "Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America" in among other places the United Methodist Church in Venice CA at an event hosted by the LA Democratic Club at the church. The irony is that the article that this quote comes from starts off by blasting the Bush campaign for emailing churches and warning "that any religious organization that endorsed one candidate over another could lose its tax-exempt status", yet he feels free to speak his filth at an official Democratic party event HELD AT A CHURCH!
Robert Reich’s Religion Problem - Ramesh Ponnuru
Next are three different news accounts of the John Kerry / John Edwards / Democrat National Party fundraiser (the Kerry campaign and the Democrat party are splitting the money) last night:
"Whoopi Goldberg delivered an X-rated rant full of sexual innuendoes against President Bush last night at a Radio City gala that raised $7.5 million for the newly minted Democratic ticket of John Kerry and John Edwards.
"Waving a bottle of wine, she fired off a stream of vulgar sexual wordplays on Bush's name in a riff about female genitalia"
"Other celebs also competed to bash Bush. Singer John Mellencamp sang a specially written song that called the president "just another cheap thug" and ridiculed him as the "Texas bambino."
"Kerry could be seen laughing uproariously during part of Goldberg's tirade - and neither he nor Edwards voiced a single objection to its tone when they spoke to the crowd.
"They hailed the fund-raiser as a great event.
"Edwards said it was "a great honor" to be there and insisted, "This campaign will be a celebration of real American values."
"Kerry thanked all the performers for "an extraordinary evening," hailed the "great producers" - Harvey Weinstein of Miramax and Jann Wenner - and said "every performer tonight ... conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country." "
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/24791.htm
"An array of Hollywood royalty and music stars paid tribute Thursday night to the new Democratic presidential ticket in a $7.5-million fundraising concert dominated by harsh and occasionally off-color denunciations of the Bush administration."
"Jessica Lange denounced the current occupants of the White House as "a self-serving regime of deceit, hypocrisy and belligerence," accusing Bush of violating international law.
"Chevy Chase accused the president of invading Iraq "just so he could be called a wartime president" and quipped that the most recent book Bush had read was "Leader of the Free World for Dummies."
"In a song called "Texas Bandido," John Mellencamp sang, "He's just another cheap thug that sacrifices our young … You're going to get us killed with your little white lies." And Meryl Streep bemoaned Bush's frequent invocation of religion, saying, "I wondered to myself through the shock and awe, I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our president's personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families in Baghdad."
"Goldberg, who repeatedly referred to Edwards as "Kid" throughout the night, delivered the most inflammatory performance of the show in a comedy bit that involved a sexual pun playing off the president's name."
"At the end of the concert, when the two candidates took the stage with their wives, neither made reference to the more inflammatory remarks. Edwards repeated the same campaign speech, and Kerry thanked the performers, saying they conveyed "the heart and soul of our country.""
Stars Raise Voices Against Bush - Matea Gold - LA Times (registration required)
""Texas Bandito, how much money did you put in your pocket today?" John Mellencamp crooned in a country ballad. "You better split from that Texas Bandito, he's made this world unsafe today. Our thoughts are not free from the Texas Bandito, he's just another cheap thug that sacrifices our young."
In a two-and-a-half hour gala that raised $7.5 million, a record for a single event, Chevy Chase poked fun at the president's pronunciation of "nuclear" and "terrorist" and said Mr. Bush had invaded Iraq "just so he could be called a wartime president." Paul Newman decried "tax cuts for wealthy thugs like me" as "borderline criminal." The comedian John Leguizamo, who is half Puerto Rican, said the notion of Hispanics supporting Republicans was "like roaches for Raid." And Whoopi Goldberg, after joking about refusing to submit her material to campaign censors, made an extended sexual pun on the president's surname.
Then the Academy-Award-winning actress Meryl Streep asked which candidates Jesus might support.
"I wondered to myself during 'Shock and Awe,' I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our president's personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad?" Ms. Streep said.Steve Schmidt, a Bush campaign spokesman, denounced the event as "a Hollywood fund-raiser filled with enough hate and vitriol to make Michael Moore blush.""
Can you believe that a candidate for President of the USA from one of the two major parties could claim such vileness is "the heart and soul of our country"? Yet that is exactly what John Kerry the Democrat party candidate for president said last night according to the rabidly pro-Democrat LA Times newspaper.
Then there is Michael Moore the viciously anti-American propagandist (you should read what he has said in the foreign press about us as Americans and his hatred of everything our country stands for). For example he has praised the terrorists in Iraq and compared them to the "Minute-Men" of the American Revolution, and slandered our servicemen and military.
At the US premier of his latest film "Fahrenheit 9/11" he got a standing ovation from the Hollywood stars and Democrat party leaders in attendance. He was even hugged by Democrat Senator Tom Daschle after the showing. And what is the theme of this film? That the entire war on terror was invented by the Saudis with their friends the Bushes and Cheneys in order to line all their pockets with money. This is fever swamp conspiracy theory stuff, but the Democrat party and their allies WILL DO ANYTHING to win, and could care less if their claims are truthful.
Do your children or grandchildren attend public schools? Then you might like to know that the NEA, the national teachers union just showed this film at their national convention right after John Kerry addressed the convention in an attempt to brainwash your children's teachers who will in turn indoctrinate your children.
There are several websites devoted to addressing the films and books of Michael Moore, which is far more material than I can begin to cover in this post.
On July 4 Moore published an Op-Ed for the LA Times that was raving. Unfortunately they no longer appear to have it on their website. One of the better short refutations of this Op-Ed is this by James Lileks.
Moore writes:
"For too long now we have abandoned our flag to those who see it as a symbol of war and dominance, as a way to crush dissent at home. Flags are flying from the back of SUVs, rising high above car dealerships, plastering the windows of businesses and adorning paper bags from fast-food restaurants. But these flags are intended to send a message: "You're either with us or you're against us," "Bring it on!" or "Watch what you say, watch what you do.""
Lileks replies in part:
"I knew a paranoid schizophrenic once. He believed that the New York Times was sending him personal messages through its front-page headlines. He might also have believed that car-dealership flags were telling him to watch what he said."
5 PM Sunday night at Vinelife Community Church we will be part of the national telecast in support of the Federal Marriage Amendment. The US Senate will be voting on this next week, and the papers are reporting that the Senate Democrats have been holding meetings planning how they can defeat it.
Two of those Senate Democrats, John Kerry and John Edwards are running for President and Vice President. A leading "Gay Rights" organization just endorsed them calling them the most "Gay Friendly" candidates in history.
Passing the Federal Marriage Amendment is one of the most crucial tasks our generation faces. Please attend the telecast and learn how you can help.
I am sure you have noticed that all the above dealt with the Democrat party and where it would like to take our country. While there are good, honest, and Godly men in the Democrat party such as Senator Zell Miller (and of course plenty of far from ideal Republicans), the Democrat party as a whole has been hijacked by the fever swamp conspiracy theory crowd to whom the ultimate danger to our country is the election of anyone but a fellow inhabitant of the swamps.
This helps explain why Christian author and talk show host Hugh Hewitt has just written a new book "If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It".
This may sound harsh, but if you think so re-read this post and then ask yourself if there is any other solution if we are to reclaim our country.
What is your political position? Politics in America is far too complex to be described in the simplistic Left - Right way the media does. It requires at least two dimensions to be able to give each distinct major political movement in America today its own location on a political map. Dr. Jerry Pournelle wrote his dissertation on this very issue, and here gives a summary of his Pournelle Political Axes political mapping system. I would be interested in hearing from Christians as to their positions using his system.
An excellent book on political theory is Thomas
Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions". He shows how the conflicts
between political systems down through the centuries can be traced to two
conflicting assumptions about human nature. What he calls the "Unconstrained
Vision" assumes that humans can perfect themselves through their own efforts,
while the "Constrained Vision" assumes that humans can never attain perfection
on this world. He points out that Christianity is a sub-set of the
Constrained Vision. Since we believe in an Unconstrained God, we
must therefore believe in a Constrained humanity. Unfortunately,
many Christians follow political systems which if they examined them are
at conflict with their Christian beliefs. Eventually one or the other
will prevail in their lives. Thus we see many who call themselves
Christians, but believe and act in ways incompatible with their claims.
Edited 9/26/2005
Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 Ray A. Rayburn
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