A pair of thin-skinned Catholics

You might have a difficult time finding a Boston Catholic whose skin is as thin as John Kerry (especially since Bernard Law moved out of town!). Today the Globe found one, though, in their own James Carroll. Carroll is all over egg about a Republican website (www.kerrywrongforcatholics.com). The website is a single page that lists a litany of stands and votes John Kerry has taken in Congress on “the issues most important to Catholics”. Here is the list of issues:

Marriage Penalty
Sanctity of [heterosexual] Marriage
Child Tax Credit
Adoption Tax Credit
Abortion
Partial-Birth Abortion
Taxpayer-Funded Abortions
Parental Consent [for abortion]
Homeland Security
International “Family Planning”
Litmus Test for Judicial Nominees
Human Cloning
Euthanasia
School Choice
Religion On Campaign Trail

While it is condescending to say that a political party knows what matters to Catholics, the Globe story by Michael Kranish (which is found here) does a balanced job of covering the website and the issues concerning “the Catholic vote”, which the Bush campaign would clearly like to chip (wedge) away from the Democratic ticket.

The odd part of Kranish’s story is the thin-skinned reaction of Mikey Meehan, the Kerry campaign spokesperson.

A Kerry spokesman, Michael Meehan, expressed offense at the nature of the Republican Party's attacks. "It is outrageous that they say Kerry is 'wrong for Catholics,' " Meehan said. "He is a Catholic, and the issues that he believes in, most Catholics believe in."

Color me stupid. Just exactly why is it outrageous, Mikey? I don’t “believe in” issues, but like everybody I have opinions about them and take stands sometimes. This website is but a list (yes, it is selective, so what?) of the stands that Kerry has taken on a set of issues. If I print out this list and slip it under the door of some selected BostonIrishCatholicDemocrat neighbors of mine, they might think twice about voting for Kerry, which is why the GOP made this website. Why is that an outrage?

The only other time Mikey is quoted he is once again in a sputtering state of outrage:

"It is outrageous that they organize by asking for church membership lists," Meehan said.

Gillespie, the [Republican National] committee chairman, confirmed that the GOP is trying to collect church membership lists from members. "There has always been an ongoing effort to get whatever lists we can," Gillespie said.

So the big bad GOP is trying to collect church memberships lists to feed its database. You don’t suppose the DNC would refuse to dirty its hands with a database of Unitarian or UCC activists do you? [those with longer memories might recall the DNC household database was surreptitiously refreshed with lists of PBS subscribers within the past few years] So what. That is part of building an organization of people with common political interests. Political parties are supposed to be about this. Mikey Meehan must have been just going through the motions of outrage.

But in his Globe column today Jim Carroll is not going through any motions of outrage. He is peeved because he sees that:

“Today, some Catholics, including many bishops, repudiate the theology of the Second Vatican Council, and they are the ones most determined to stop Kerry from being elected. Having a Vatican II Catholic as president of the United States would be a blow against those who hope to roll back the reforms begun at that council.”

Yep, Jim is on his high horse again. I’m afraid it’s time for another Fisking.

IN LABELING John Kerry "wrong for Catholics," the Republican National Committee is lying about the meaning of Catholic faith, insulting Kerry, and moving the political exploitation of religion to a new low.

They couldn’t lie because they said absolutely nothing about the meaning of Catholic faith. They reported votes and statements of the candidate. That is not an insult to Kerry, it is part of his record. Did Carroll even LOOK at the website? Finally, it is deliciously ironic for an Irish person to claim that the [stateside] Republicans are “moving the political exploitation of religion to a new low”. Sorry, Jim, but Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley have finished in a first place tie for that prize. Those fellows outdo either party here by a wide margin, and have the guns, bombs, and graves to prove it. Get some perspective, Jim.

The Globe's Michael Kranish reported Sunday on the RNC plot to target Kerry's religious unworthiness as a Catholic. Not only do the Republicans distort Kerry's positions on complicated moral questions; they misrepresent the current state of Catholic ethical thought. General outrage is the proper response to this strategy, but Catholics in particular should repudiate it.

A “plot to target Kerry’s religious unworthiness as a Catholic”? What a perfect example of hysteria. The website is reporting, not judging. If they have distorted his positions, they have done so through judicious selection, but both Planned Parenthood and NARAL give Kerry very high marks on supporting abortion rights, so the distortion can’t be too strong, at least on that issue. As for “misrepresenting the current state of Catholic ethical thought”, I’ll leave that to the ethicists and theologians to judge, but I suggest that the Globe Spotlight team has found recent evidence that ethical thought has not exactly permeated the US Bishops of late, and that the hierarchy might be a good place to start correcting misrepresentations of Catholic thought, as well as being a more useful and deserving spot for the Catholic laity to aim a proper response of general outrage.

I worship at the same Catholic church in Boston where John Kerry and his wife often attend Mass.

Just to inform the outsiders, this Globe author used to officiate at the liturgy there, before he left the priesthood.

Across the years I have observed the senator at prayer, and I have some sense of the seriousness he brings to his devotion. John Kerry's Catholicism is for real. His faith is informed by the spirit of the great renewal that occurred with Vatican II. At that council (1962-65), the Catholic Church finally and fully embraced the principle of religious liberty that had been pioneered in America.

If you have a sense of Kerry’s piety, fine. I’ll stay agnostic about his and everyone else’s to boot. And I agree 100% with Jim that the Church’s embrace of the concept of religious liberty was a great thing. But whatever has motivated Kerry’s votes in the Senate, particularly on the issue of abortion is simply not consistent with any type of Catholic thought.

If Kerry voted this way against or with his conscience is a matter for him to settle with his Maker from whom I pray for the same divine mercy for both he and I. But there is a logic to faith as well. A legislator cannot lead his constituents anywhere by forsaking his own conscience when making law. One judgment I will make is that Kerry either has a poorly formed Catholic conscience or has one that he can’t hear when he stands on the Senate floor.

Bush uses religion to justify his penchant for violence, which is manifest in nothing so much as his glib use of the word "evil." Once an enemy is demonized, transcendent risks can be taken to destroy that enemy. We see this apocalyptic impulse being played out in Iraq today. If in order to obliterate "evil" it proves necessary to obliterate a whole society -- so be it. A divinity seen as willing the savage murder of an only son as a way of defeating evil is a divinity that blesses an America that destroys Iraq to save it.

I do not believe that Bush uses the word “evil” glibly. Neither did Reagan. Carroll and his Paulist pals got all bent out of shape when Reagan called the Soviet block the “Evil Empire”. Now they don’t like applying this word to the behavior of Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and God knows who else. And furthermore we are “destroying Iraq”. Jim, if you are truly a pacifist, show some candor and just say so. Then show some consistency and courage by living someplace where your pacifism is not protected by the US Armed Forces. Think how much better you might feel! I would choose a new neighborhood carefully, though.

How dare the people who have twisted religion in these ways challenge the religious integrity of John Kerry. Nothing proves the urgency of his election more fully than the Republican profaning of all that is sacred not only about Kerry's firmly held personal beliefs and about the delicate religious balance this country has achieved but also about the precious mystery to which we refer when we speak of God.

We Republicans! We have not just challenged Kerry. We have threatened the religious liberty of this country, and we have even descended into blasphemy! I’m glad at least that Jim Carroll was a Paulist priest rather than a Jesuit. Words like that coming from a Jesuit could make one a little uneasy, especially if uttered in a dunge..errr basement. As for a little 1-page RNC website profaning the divine mystery, Jim, I think there are some websites you might have missed that do a far better job of that. As an example, I suggest you visit one which shows an Iraqi "insurgent" sawing of Nick Berg's head with a carving knife while his comrades shout "God is great!" over the last screams of their victim.

SteynOnPeople

Mark Steyn:

"If Karl Rove had labored for a decade to produce a walking parody of the contemporary Democratic Party's remoteness, condescension, sense of entitlement, public evasiveness and tortured relationship with military matters, he couldn't have improved on John F Kerry."

Truth is always stranger than fiction. One more [obnoxious] I said so for me here.

Would you hire this manager?

Several times I have mentioned that nothing in Kerry’s career required more than a smidgen of management skills, and this is a serious weakness for him as a potential US President. It seems that even managing a campaign organization is a task that is pointing out this weakness.

Sunday’s NY Times has a story by that is focused on John Kerry’s management style, such as it is. It is more the management style of a college dean than of an experienced business executive. The article literally damns Kerry with faint praise in most every paragraph. When coming from a press organ so highly predisposed to present him favorably, this story is disturbing. I suggest reading the whole thing and then asking yourself if you can imagine somebody with this temperament managing the several million people in the executive branch of government. I can’t imagine it without a shudder.

Here are some samples that give the tone of the story (emphasis mine):

The morning Medicare call was typical of the way Mr. Kerry, a four-term senator with comparatively little management experience, has run his campaign. And, his associates say, it offered a glimpse of an executive style he would almost surely bring to the White House.

Mr. Kerry is a meticulous, deliberative decision maker, always demanding more information, calling around for advice, reading another document - acting, in short, as if he were still the Massachusetts prosecutor boning up for a case. He stayed up late Sunday night with aides at his home in Beacon Hill, rewriting - and rearguing - major passages of his latest Iraq speech, a ritual that aides say occurs even with routine remarks…

In interviews, associates repeatedly described Mr. Kerry as uncommonly bright, informed and curious. But the downside to his deliberative executive style, they said, is a campaign that has often moved slowly against a swift opponent, and a candidate who has struggled to synthesize the information he sweeps up into a clear, concise case against Mr. Bush.

Even his aides concede that Mr. Kerry can be slow in taking action, bogged down in the very details he is so intent on collecting, as suggested by the fact that he never even used the Medicare information he sent his staff chasing…

His attention to detail can serve him well on big projects, as it did when he sent aides scurrying across the country to find long-lost fellow Vietnam veterans who could vouch for his war record. But sometimes, his aides say, it is a distraction, as it was in early 2003, when they say he spent four weeks mulling the design of his campaign logo, consulting associates about what font it should use and whether it should include an American flag. (It does.)

His habit of soliciting one more point of view prompted one close adviser to say he had learned to wait until the last minute before weighing in: Mr. Kerry, he said, is apt to be most influenced by the last person who has his ear. His aides rejoiced earlier this year when Mr. Kerry yielded his cellphone to a traveling aide, a move they hoped would limit his distractions in seeking out contrary opinions…

Unlike Mr. Bush, who was a governor and a business executive before he ran for president, Mr. Kerry - who has spent the past 20 years as a legislator, with a staff of perhaps 60 - has little experience in managing any kind of large operation. Several Democrats suggested that this presidential campaign was in many ways a learning experience for him.

Mr. Kerry was described by his associates as more interested in the finer points of public policy than the mechanics of politics. Scott Maddox, the chairman of the Florida Democratic Party, said he could not recall getting a call from Mr. Kerry checking in with what was going on in that critical state.

At meetings, Mr. Kerry poses contrarian questions in an often wandering quest for data and conflicting opinions, a style that his aides, sometimes with a roll of the eyes, call Socratic...

In his quest for information, he is always consulting an ever-widening circle, rarely comfortable with relying on one person or giving anyone too much power. There is no Karl Rove in Mr. Kerry's orbit.

Mr. Kerry has also, in this campaign and earlier ones, repeatedly upended his staff, edging longtime advisers aside or dismissing aides outright when things threatened to run off the tracks. As a result, while some stalwarts from Mr. Kerry's first campaign have stuck with him since 1972, the senior staff of his campaign includes few people who call themselves his friends or are personally loyal to him…

Mr. Kerry's circle is as wide and changing as Mr. Bush's is constricted and consistent. He is always calling one more friend, and the campaign lineup has shifted so often that rumors of staff changes have become part of the daily gallows humor at Kerry headquarters on McPherson Square in downtown Washington.

Instead of delegating authority to a single adviser, Mr. Kerry relies on different people for different advice. And, he made a point of saying in the interview, none of them have too much authority. "I am always in charge," he said…

But that management style has come at a cost. Mr. Kerry's top aides in this campaign are, with a few exceptions, longtime political professionals who have little history with the man they are working for. One result, aides say, is that Mr. Kerry's campaign has been afflicted this year with infighting and newspaper articles have detailed the dissension, a constant source of irritation to the candidate…

"He's not involved in the details," said John Marttila, who has been working with Mr. Kerry since his failed bid for Congress in 1972.

That does not mean he is detached from running his campaign. Aides say he takes interest in matters large and small, but typically only after he senses his candidacy is in peril…

Aides were eager to attest that Mr. Kerry is not a micromanager. Still, he took such a close interest in planning the tour on which he announced his candidacy that the campaign had to keep delaying release of the logistical details until Mr. Kerry finally signed off.

For all his eagerness to seek advice, Mr. Kerry does not always take it.

After he delivered a 35-minute speech at the University of Pittsburgh last spring, Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania gently tried to reinforce a message aides had been struggling to impart to their candidate.

"I said I thought it was a little long for an outdoor speech," Mr. Rendell recalled. "My rule of thumb for an outdoor speech is 15 to 20 minutes."

That night at the Philadelphia Convention Center, Mr. Rendell prepped Mr. Kerry by saying the crowd was full of party veterans and urging him to keep his speech short. He talked for 32 minutes.

When Mr. Kerry arrived in Allentown early this month for a rally at the fairgrounds, Mr. Rendell did not even mention his 20-minute outdoor-rally rule. "I've given up," Mr. Rendell said. "He listens sometimes, and he doesn't listen sometimes."

Mr. Kerry spoke for 38 minutes.

The Looney Left of Massachusetts

One of the wacky things about the Boston Globe is the strange choice of letters to the editor which end up published. Letters expressing conservative points of view are often borderline illiterate. Here is one published today from the Looney Left of Massachusetts, which is simply shocking for its lack of thought. It reads:

"Terrorism is not an enemy; it is a tactic that relies on creating fear in its targets. In this sense, there is little difference between Vice President Dick Cheney threatening us with attack if we vote the wrong way and Osama bin Laden threatening us with attack if we do not do as he says.

The Bush/Cheney Crips and the bin Laden Bloods have a lot in common. They both threaten us with death/destruction if we do not do as they wish.

Franklin D. Roosevelt said, memorably, 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' There were many things to fear in 1933: unemployment, poverty, hunger, a failing economy, Nazis, genocide. But Roosevelt's point was valid then, and it is valid now. The enemy cannot defeat us but fear can, by paralyzing us and making our lives into a nightmare.

A nation that lives in fear, although physically intact, is a nation vanquished. If we allow either gang to do this to us, we have lost the fight."

So in the mind (such as it is!) of this poor lady there is little to distinguish between a dictator who builds a Stalinesque terror state over 20 years while killing more than 1 million of its citizens out of paranoia and pure sadism, a terrorist who is responsible for the murder of thousands of westerners simply because they were regarded as Infidels, and Dick Cheney, the Vice President of the United States. Sadly, this lady is not able to draw the simplest of distinctions.

"Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.- Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind? Subtilize it."
-- Melville

SillyGlobe Signs Off

SillyGlobe is signing off after 2 years of blogging. They are too busy with day-job work (tell me about it!). Their final comment on the Globe is worth reading in full. Favorite excerpt:

"The best edited section, Business, receives the fewest pages and reporter resources. This latter factor speaks to a central Globe failing: instead of focusing attention and talent on the Boston area's dynamic business community and the many stories there, the Globe revels in depicting Boston as being a playground for petty political hacks who would be an embarrassment anywhere else -- oh, yeah, that and being the home/birthplace of Ben Affleck."

I agree. While Boston actually is all three of the things you describe, the Globe editors are far too obsessed with the last two.

Speaking of politicians who would be "an embarrassment anywhere else", such is epitomized by the recorded greeting from the Mayor which is played for anyone going to or from the Logan Airport parking garage. It is incredibly poorly articulated, and sounds exactly like the Mayor always sounds.

As for SillyGlobe, thanks for a job well done. Terry, live long and prosper.

And if pigs fly today...

Scott Lehigh is projecting:

"THIS WEEK, John Kerry got laryngitis but found his voice. And if Kerry rebounds to win the presidency, this period will be seen as the public turning point in the campaign."

Damn the sexism, full speed ahead!

I am starting to enjoy reading Joan Vennochi. Her Globe OpEd columns have a more sincere sound than the party-line blovations that are the stock-in-trade of the page. Today Joan wrestles with Kerry’s newest campaign strategy – focusing on the war in Iraq and positioning himself as the candidate who can fix the “mess” that the war there has become.

One thing you can say for this, at least it is a strategy. Though only six weeks before the election it seems like the most viable strategy they have tried so far. It sure beats the strategy Taranto caricatures as being “a haughty French-looking Democratic Senator who by the way served [4 months] in Vietnam”.

The difficulty with it is that over the course of the campaign Kerry has articulated so many positions at one time or another that the electorate (as perhaps the candidate himself) are uncertain where they really stand. Churchill derided legislatures that took place in “fan-shaped rooms” allowing the members to adjust their position by degrees from one side to another. He preferred the layout of the Commons, where the parties face each other and vote with their bodies by moving to one side. Winnie was onto something. Kerry is every bit as inarticulate as his opponent, not because of learning disabilities, but because he has spent his whole career adjusting by small degrees his position in fan-shaped rooms. A formidable intellect or vocabulary is a wonderful thing, but those gifts will not tell you (or anyone else) who you really are.

I love this little quote from Joan, too. In peacetime (meaning when there is not an election pending) this might be considered too sexist a remark from a liberal in the Globe. But damn the sexism, anything to beat W. Here is her remark and the column:

The pollsters and pundits say women will vote for the candidate who makes them feel most secure. Some polls show that female support is shifting to Bush. Kerry needs to change that dynamic -- and quickly. By voting to authorize war, Kerry essentially turned the car keys over to a president who recklessly drove America to the wrong war in the wrong country at the wrong time. Taking back the car keys should make many women feel more, not less, secure. Putting Kerry in the driver's seat makes sense, as long as he stops driving around Iraq in circles.

When you make a wrong turn in traffic, life, or war, you don't keep on going. You stop, acknowledge that you were wrong, and do what it takes to get back on track. As women know, a man who admits that is rare indeed, and worth electing to the presidency.

Trying a dove's clothing on for size

The candidate:

"It wasn't a vote to go [to war] that day; it was a vote to go through the process of going to the UN, building the allies, and then making a judgment of whether we had to go. The president made his own judgment, and we supported him in that judgment because he was going to war."

Amazing, even for the Globe

Jim Carroll's column in the Globe today is absolutely astounding. He tries to explain (to himself) why polls show voters supporting Bush and the war in Iraq. When reading it I felt as though Carroll had spent the last 50 years on another planet (or perhaps on a college campus in Massachusetts, which is close to the truth). Seriously, this is an amazing piece simply for its appearance in a publication like the Globe rather than in the Nation. It is a leftist Credo; a startling alternative view of history that seems so entirely immune to historical evidence that it shocks me to read it. I suggest reading the whole thing, but here are his most incredible statements:

To the mounting horror of the world, the United States of America is relentlessly bringing about the systematic destruction of a small, unthreatening nation for no good reason. Why has this not gripped the conscience of this country?

Because of Saddam’s regime? Because of what he did to his own people, or to the Kurds, or to the Kuwaitis?

Carroll shows the level of historical perspective that Tom Lehrer spoofed in the early 1960s ditty "MLF Lullaby":

"Once all the Germans were warlike and mean,
But that couldn't happen again.
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they've hardly bothered us since then..."

The answer goes beyond Bush to the 60-year history of an accidental readiness to destroy the earth, a legacy with which we Americans have yet to reckon. The punitive terror bombing that marked the end of World War II hardly registered with us. Then we passively accepted our government's mad embrace of thermonuclear weapons. While we demonized our Soviet enemy, we hardly noticed that almost every major escalation of the arms race was initiated by our side -- a race that would still be running if Mikhail Gorbachev had not dropped out of it.

Creative history at its finest. Reagan may not be spinning in his grave, but I believe I hear him laughing. I am sure he would smile at this and not be too upset with what anybody said as long as the human plague of Soviet Communism had been eradicated.

George W. Bush is proud of the disgraceful history that has paralyzed the national conscience on the question of war. He does not recognize it for what it is -- an American Tragedy. The American tragedy. John Kerry, by contrast, is attuned to the ethical complexity of this war narrative. We see that reflected in the complexity not only of his responses, but of his character -- and no wonder it puts people off. Kerry's problem, so far unresolved, is how to tell us what we cannot bear to know about ourselves. How to tell us the truth of our great moral squandering. The truth of what we are doing today in Iraq.

So there you have it; the root cause of the slumping support for the Democratic party is that Kerry is too good for us ("us" here being the unenlightened knuckle-dragging majority). Congratulations, Jim Carroll. You are fuller of excrement than anyone else who writes for the Globe OpEd page, and that takes some doing.

Why no blog?

I thank you for reading, but I am out of town now and cannot blog until Thursday. See you then.

Bob Herbert goes to confession

Bob confesses on today's NYT OpEd:

"I had a feeling John Kerry was in trouble when, coming out of the primaries, voters kept saying they were for him because he could win. It was clear that many voters had cast primary ballots for Mr. Kerry not because they liked him, or because they felt strongly about his positions on the issues, or because they were drawn to his compelling vision of a better future for the United States and the world, but simply because they felt he was capable of beating George W. Bush."

Well Bob, that doesn't speak well for your candor over the last 6 months, does it? Today is a 1st step, though.

Kerry's campaign "begins to jell"

Monday’s Boston Globe has a front page story on the Kerry campaign quoting "several key campaign adviser[s] in Kerry’s inner circle who spoke on the condition of anonymity". The gist of their story is that JFK has turned the corner. More accurately stated, it has hit rock bottom. Some quotes:

Kerry aides refer to their battle plan as "wrong choices," the strategy being to critique Bush's leadership decisions and sow doubts about four more years of them, in much the same way that Bill Clinton's aides in 1992 focused with an attack plan they dubbed "It's the economy, stupid."

This is probably the 10th theme slogan for the campaign in the last 6 months. Does their candidate know his own mind?

This week, Kerry will also take steps to address what advisers call "the likability factor" -- trying to raise voters' comfort level with Kerry on a personal level. A Pew Research Center poll released Thursday suggested that Bush edged out Kerry when voters were asked which man was "down to earth," "honest and truthful," and "willing to take a stand, even if unpopular." Asked who was the stronger leader, voters favored Bush by a margin of 57 percent to 30 percent.

With all the talk of “gaps”, THAT is one big gap.

"We have to reach a comfort level with the American people -- they have to view John with a certain level of respect, an appreciation of his own strength, values, and character, a feeling that they can trust this person for the next four years," said the senior adviser in Kerry's inner circle. "I don't know how you do all that. It's an evolving process. But we need to do it quickly."

I don’t know how you do that either. If anybody does, I’m sure you can get a job with this crew right now before they "jell".

Scott Lindlaw Appears Again

Scott Lindlaw, the AP reporter who wrote the disputed (FALSE, to be blunt) story of the booing at Bush's announcement of Clinton’s illness has resurfaced. He wrote in today’s Boston Globe (hidden on page A29) about the CBS document controversy, and (surprise) the story only mentions once that the “authenticity of the documents has come into doubt”. Uh...yeah. The whole story could have been written by Dan Rather. Here it is. For more background on Lindlaw’s previous work, see this post and this post from Power Line. Solomon has some apt comments on the Globe’s shameless parroting of the DNC party line.

Piling On

Fox News has a story today in which John O'Neil of the Swift Boat Vets alleges that JFK travelled twice (not once) to Paris and met with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegations to the Paris Peace talks. A form of harrassment, because it is obviously another question JFK does not want to answer for the press.

Excuse me for one "I told you so" on this. I predicted in August that the Swifties would aim at this question (and that same post has a pre-Rathergate comment about how the MSM appeared to be working hand-in-glove with the Kerry campaign). Suprising, though, that the Swifties raise this now. When the Kerry campaign is busy destroying itself, why would their opponents interfere? Excerpt:

"'We've had presidents who have served in the military. We've had presidents who have never served in the military. But we've never had an American president who met with the enemy in a time of war while a naval officer in reserve status. Inconceivable,' said John O'Neill, a key member of the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."

All the king's men

David Brooks has a little fun while noting a problem that no number of political consultants can fix for John Kerry. Some tasty excerpts:

The call went out to pollsters, wonks and wandering wordsmiths to come gather and fill the void of Kerry's core…Policy committees gathered. Of domestic policy councils there were 37. Of foreign policy councils, 27…And in each of these councils resided faculties and think-tankers by the score. On the justice policy task force there were 195 members, lawyers brave and strong. On the economic council, more than 200 economists did search for a conclusion. When these groups did meet, so long was the line of approaching Volvos that it was visible from outer space…while all the king's horses and all the king's men do build this grand and mighty structure, the sound of their hammers echoes limitlessly in the hollow within.

Power Line Reports: General Staudt Speaks

Power Line is relentless with CBS. Here is a story that will be on the boob tube tonight.

"If CBS had carried out a competent investigation into the documents' authenticity, they would have contacted General Staudt to get his reaction to the statement about him in the August 1973 memo. Had they done so, they would have learned that he had retired well before that date, and would have had to take into account his denial of the allegation in the memo, and of the whole thrust of their report.

Of course, if Dan Rather already knew that the documents were forged, it would explain why he didn't bother to have someone on that crack CBS staff, with all of the 'checks and balances' he tells us about, pick up the phone and call General Staudt."

Captain Ed Broadsides The Globe

Captain Ed lets the Globe have it with both barrels for today's editorial in
"Boston Globe: Where Editorials Too Stupid For The NYT Go To Die".

Today's Key Boston Globe Content

All of today's important Boston Globe stories are condensed into a single page here.

Instead today I read Krauthammer in the Post.

Have a good weekend. Go Sox!

More "help" for Kerry from the press

As if the Kerry campaign didn’t have enough problems dealing with all the “help” Dan Rather and CBS News have given them over the past week, now the BBC is helping too. In an interview with the Beebe, Kofi Annan declares the Iraq war to have been illegal. This prompts angry responses from the US, UK, and Australia (you remember them, Mr Kerry, they are members of what you called a fraudulent coalition during the primaries). The reaction as reported in the BBC story:

"I think it is outrageous for the Secretary-General, who ultimately works for the member states, to try and supplant his judgement for the judgement of the member states," Randy Scheunemann, a former advisor to US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the BBC.

"To do this 51 days before an American election reeks of political interference."

A UK foreign office spokeswoman said: "The Attorney-General made the government's position on the legal basis for the use of military force in Iraq clear at the time".

Australian Prime Minister John Howard also rejected Mr Annan's remarks,
saying the legal advice he was given was "entirely valid".

Always on the lookout for a way to humiliate the British Prime Minister, the Beebe (like CBS) is more likely to help Bush by tossing out this piece of red meat. I bet dollars to doughnuts that Karl Rove and company have a field day with this story. It paints Kerry even further into a corner. What can he say about Kofi’s remarks that will not further divide his own dwindling support?

No News is Good News

There is not much meat in today’s Boston Globe. Perhaps seeking to boost the paper’s credibility, today’s story on the Rathergate memos is not written by Globe reporters – not even the Globe “Spotlight Team” that was all over this story just one week ago. Today’s Rathergate story is written by Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post, and it is the best story they have run so far about this lamentable charade of a scoop.

Other political items include a report of the Minneapolis Star Tribune poll (Kerry leads big in Minnesota!). Hopefully not many Globe readers tune to Power Line blog, which trashes the Trib’s polling history here.

The only news from today’s Globe that we will likely remember years from now is that the Red Sox plan to add 2,000 seats to Fenway, boosting its current capacity of 36,000 and change. There will be no extra seats for this October, though.

Rather in The Washington Post (or The Onion?)

Says Dan to the September 16th Washington Post (perhaps the Onion, with this story one can't be certain):

"CBS anchor Dan Rather acknowledged for the first time yesterday that there are serious questions about the authenticity of the documents he used to question President Bush's National Guard record last week on '60 Minutes.''If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story,' Rather said in an interview last night."

Jeez, you are a few days late for that party, Dan. And later in the same article another creepy quote:

Rather said he was "relieved and pleased" by Knox's comments that the disputed memos reflected Killian's view of the favorable treatment that Bush received in the military unit. But he said, "I take very seriously her belief that the documents are not authentic." If Knox is right, Rather said, the public "won't hear about it from a spokesman. They'll learn it from me."

Wow.

I'm no shrink, but I'd say we are seeing a seriously delusional state of personality in this fellow right now. Just like the last days of the Nixon administration.

Dan Rather has become Richard Nixon. Poetic justice lives.

About that Rathergate Story Last Saturday...

Th Globe admits to a hopelessly misleading headline about Rathergate. The tide must be turning even within the LIBERAL media:

"Because of an editing error, the headline on a Page One story Saturday on whether documents released by CBS News about President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service are genuine ('Authenticity backed on Bush documents') did not accurately reflect the content of the story."

"everything important about George Bush and his presidency is a lie"

Robert Kuttner's OpEd in today's Globe is a case study in the pathology of Bush-hating. It is also indicative of the growing panic among the chattering classes at Kerry's failure to connect with the electorate despite 6 months of relentlessly positive hyping by the Mainstream Media. Listen to Bobby:

"JOHN KERRY is in trouble because the Bush campaign has seized control of what psychologists call the 'frame' of this year's presidential contest. Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and company have framed the election starkly: Bush will keep us safe in a time of terror. He will put money in people's pockets by cutting our taxes, and somehow that will also be good for the economy.

Bush and Cheney have also framed Kerry. He is inconstant, an effete elitist who lives in a lah-de-dah neighborhood, speaks a foreign language, keeps changing his mind on everything from Vietnam to Iraq. This signals that Kerry is culturally different from ordinary folks (like Bush) and that if he wavers on everything else, you can't trust him to be resolute on terrorists.

If this imagery hardens, Kerry is toast."

Bob also finds this hard to swallow:

As several biographies have documented, he virtually fell upwards, benefiting from family connections...

You mean like Senator Kennedy, Bob?

And later:

In an ideal, civics book democracy, citizens would explore the details and vote based on the merits. But in our frantic, overworked daily lives, where talk show rants pass for public discourse, the truth gets buried by the rhetoric, and the imagery of leadership wins the day.

Try giving up CBS News for some blog-reading, Bob.

So what on earth is John Kerry to do? He cannot possibly win a hearing to challenge all that is fake about Bush and his policy particulars unless he first changes the frame. First, he needs to reframe Bush by pounding on all the ways that Bush is a fraud, and he needs to do it with grace and wit. Second, he needs a clear, simple vision of a secure, prosperous America more compelling than Bush's vision.

If Kerry doesn't have the nerve to take on Bush, voters will conclude that he lacks the nerve to protect America. Kerry has about two weeks to break the frame before the election freezes into a lock.

Kerry employing grace and wit? If grace and wit are in Kerry's repertoire, that will be the biggest October surprise in history. Just say it's a lock now, Bob.

Here's A Believable Story From CBS

Democrat Tony Coehlo is quoted on the Kerry organization (a NAMED source!):

"If [Sasso] is in charge then Goddammit, say it and stop having the speculation of who's in charge because that's worse, Coelho says. It also starts to impact in regard to the whole image of leadership. If someone can't control a message in a presidential campaign, how are you going to be a good president?"

Good question, Tony. Perhaps remaining invisible in the US Senate for 20 years doesn't show much leadership potential either.

"for now at least appears to be"

Today’s Boston Globe is unremarkable. One AP story here about Bush addressing the National Guard is the only reference to Rathergate, and from the tone of this story you would thing that nothing of note had happened (keep throwing dirt on that story and hope it will stay buried, I guess). A couple other little things catch my eye:

First, the page 1 story on the campaign in the upper Midwest (which Kerry must win) has this gem of a sentence:

For all the hoopla over Ohio as a political battleground, strategists on both sides of the presidential campaign are increasingly looking northward toward the Great Lakes region, eyeing three states -- Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan -- as crucial in a race that for now at least appears to be trending toward President Bush.

Yes, for now at least it appears to be trending that way. One wonders how such a story would read if Kerry rather than Bush now led in the polls.

Second, is the insufferable egotism of Thomas Oliphant, whose job today is to state the party line about the presidential debates, which is apparently too much for him as his column lacks any structure or flow. Also it contains multiple references to the author. He ends his column today with this complete mess (emphasis on the most obnoxious portions is mine):

To be bipartisan means being willing to take partisan heat in a larger cause, and ever since 1984, co-chairman Frank Fahrenkopf (Ronald Reagan's Republican national chairman), co-chairman Paul Kirk (who picked up the Democrats' pieces after Reagan's '84 landslide) and full-time boss Janet Brown (a protege of principled Republicans like Elliot Richardson and Jack Danforth) have been my favorite stand-up people in an increasingly discredited game. They have taken the heat and built the debates the public wants. Bush's negotiator will not be Karl Rove, it will be James Baker, former secretary of state and the treasury. Kerry's negotiator is super-lawyer Vernon Jordan. I have known all the players for years and offer the following roadmap for the mess that may lie immediately ahead:

In a hotly contested election, the public's interest in a full debate schedule will be served if the media, especially TV and newspapers in the four swing-state venues, is vocal.

In this hotly contested atmosphere that resembles 1992 without Ross Perot, Bush will take at least a big risk if he ducks one of those battleground state venues.

Kerry will take a big risk if he undercuts the commission and (dare I say it) flip-flops into connivance with Baker outside its auspices.

After dithering in '92 and getting hurt (remember Chicken Man?), Bush's dad did the right thing; after dithering in 2000 and getting hurt (Gore was ahead), Bush Jr. did the right thing. This time, with interest high, it would seem clear that debating is smarter than dithering. It's also in the public interest.

Love that expression "principled Republicans".

Also, I’m so glad to know that Tommy-boy is such good chums with all the players. If that muddle is his idea of a "roadmap", I wouldn't ask him for directions. He might write stump speeches for Kerry, though. Oliphant reminds me of those kids on the school playground who were such twerps that when bullies beat them up people thought of it as a form of public service.

...but how will it play in Peoria?

Monday's Globe has some real news about Kerry's campaign. Of course this is not about the Swift Boat Vets, or about the source of the Rathergate documents. What is reported is that a group of investors highly sympathetic to Kerry have made a film entitled “Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry”. The film, directed by George Butler under executive producer Howard Samuels, will be screened tomorrow at the Toronto Film Festival (can a blogger review this, please?) and is scheduled for release on October 1.

You can see a little more about the film here (including that it co-stars Michael Kranish…hmmm that is a familiar name). I truly hope that some Toronto blogger will attend the premiere and report.

The good news for Kerry is that the screening attended by Patrick Healy of the Globe the film was well received. The bad news is that this screening took place in Greenwich Village, the film contains some segments on Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony and demonstrating, carries a short clip of Kerry from the 1971 “Winter Soldier” event in Detroit that sparked Kerry’s testimony, and includes some of the 8mm footage that Kerry shot in Vietnam and that he is reported to view so often while at home (his Beacon Hill home, that is).

Globe story excerpt:

The movie, which drew no funding from the campaign, was financed by a range of investors across the country, many of whom are friends of Kerry or are strongly supporting his presidential bid.
The possibility that "Going Upriver" could be exploited to hurt Kerry's candidacy was not lost on one of the film's executive producers, Bill Samuels, who asked the New York audience for their reactions to Kerry's conversation with the veteran at the so-called "Winter Soldier hearings" 33 years ago.

"That [scene] could be just grabbed by someone as a stand-alone and that could be on the news -- John soliciting someone," Samuels explained. "I happen to like it. I'm just wondering if that piece could be used as a stand-alone by the Bush people. Maybe I'm overreacting."

One audience member answered, "The Bush people are going to do their thing. What can you do?"

The scene remained in the film.

Production for "Going Upriver," by George Butler, the documentary director and a longtime Kerry friend, was nearly complete last month when a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth launched a television commercial that questioned the official naval record of Kerry's Vietnam heroism and whether he deserved his combat medals. The swift boat group has also aired a commercial lashing Kerry for telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971 that some US soldiers had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads," and committed other atrocities in Vietnam.

While the film includes about two minutes of clips from that Senate appearance, Kerry's testimony about atrocities is left out. Butler said, "You can't get everything in a movie."

"I did cover Winter Soldier, which almost no one else has done, that formed the basis
for his atrocity testimony," Butler noted.

The film, in which the Kerry campaign has played no role, has a wealth of personal pictures and footage from the Democrat's youth and 20s.

Kerry campaign spokesman Michael Meehan said officials at the campaign have not seen the film, and he did not express concern about some of the potentially controversial footage. "Any movie that educates the country on the Vietnam war and the troubled times that surrounded it is an important lesson," Meehan said.

Occasionally Butler, as an artist, takes dramatic license to re-create scenes of warfare. The director meticulously researched these moments and views them as accurate. One is designed to show the February 1969 firefight when Kerry (who does not appear on camera in these scenes) ran his swift boat ashore and killed a Viet Cong, an action that earned him the Silver Star. Butler also added sound effects of gunfire -- one shot for every hole in a battered boat, for instance -- and other touches that may invite criticism from the swift boat group, among others, which has alleged that some of the battles did not unfold with the intensity that Kerry has described and naval records indicate.

The Vietnam footage, which Butler weaves with interviews with Kerry's crewmates, war historians, and others, includes some film that Kerry himself took as a Navy lieutenant, which has been criticized by some veterans as calculated self-glorification.

See BS?

Joe Newcomer, a computer author, PhD and former CS professor at Carnegie Mellon Univeristy (a top school in the field) weighs in on the CBS/Rathergate documents:

"The probability that any technology in existence in 1972 would be capable of producing a document that is nearly pixel-compatible with Microsoft's Times New Roman font and the formatting of Microsoft Word, and that such technology was in casual use at the Texas Air National Guard, is so vanishingly small as to be indistinguishable from zero...

All I can say is that the technology that produced this document was not possible in 1972 in the sort of equipment that would have been available outside publishing houses, and which required substantial training and expertise to use, and it replicates exactly the technologies of Microsoft Word and Microsoft TrueType Fonts.

It is therefore my expert opinion that these documents are modern forgeries."

Via Beldarblog.

The key questions now concern CBS, not Bush

Power Line has (as always of late) the key post to read on Rathergate. It contains links to today's Globe story and a fine summary by Hugh Hewitt. Money paragraph:

"Contrast the behavior of the blogosphere with that of CBS. While we have disclosed sources and responded to all inquiries from reporters like Wallsten, CBS has taken its plays from the old Watergate playbook. Stonewalling and misdirection are the order of the day. To the extent that CBS has cited sources, they have not supported the authenticity of the documents. All in all, CBS has behaved like a criminal caught redhanded in a fraud of monumental proportions."

The Water is Getting Deep on West 57th

Powerline is doing a ritual execution of any remaining credibility CBS News possesses among the literate. Check out this post. Amazing! Be sure to click the link labeled "Flash Animation" within that Powerline post. It is well worth looking at.

The work that Powerline has done this week truly merits a Pulitzer Prize. If you haven't done so already, take a walk through their posts from Sept 8-11. Of course they have zero chance of winning such a prize, because they are nothing but a "bunch of guys hanging around in their pajamas". Nevertheless, I salute them.

Gentlemen, you have made a great contribution to our culture and our nation. Thank you.

Typical Globe Sources...?

Alert reader Gerald Chisholm points out that RedState has an interesting thread about the source quoted in the first Globe story on Bush/TANG.

9/11/2001 Remember this day Honor its dead Honor those who have died since

Always remembered

Globe Accused of Distortion on Guard Documents (!)

Today is a soccer day for me, so I can't follow this story on the National Guard document/forgery that is on page 1 of today's Boston Globe. INDC has interviewed the same people as the Globe, and reports they are unhappy with the Globe article's coverage. See this post and this post.

Thanks for the excellent work, INDC (BTW, my girl's team won 3-1 this morning).

Addendum: Here is one line from the Globe's story that is pathetic media whining:

The controversy over the authenticity of the documents has all but blocked out discussion of their content.

That's a "duh". Would the reporters prefer that we focus on the content even though the documents are likely to be forgeries?

"Open Source News"60 Minutes touches a Power Line

Thank you for visiting, but today don't read this blog if you haven't first checked out Power Line and their great stories revealing that the documents featured by 60 Minutes and The Boston Globe this week concerning Bush's National Guard service are fakes.

Besides their origin, the interesting thing about the fake documents on 60 Minutes is the way the quick unraveling of a bug in their story by hundreds of bloggers is analogous to the argument that "many eyes" quickly unravel bugs in Open Source software code. Compare yesterdays summary in Power Line blog with Eric Raymond in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". First Power Line:

"Tomorrow morning, dinosaur media across the country will be headlining the 60 Minutes 'scoop' as a blow to the Bush campaign. Before their newspapers are even printed, not only is the story obsolete, but CBS is in full retreat. As Stephen Hayes reported earlier today, Power Line 'led the charge' against the 60 Minutes hoax today. But the credit really goes to the incredible power of the internet. We knew nothing; all of our information came from our readers. Many thousands of smart, well-informed people who only a few years ago would have had no recourse but perhaps to write a letter to their local newspaper, now can communicate and share their expertise in real time, through sites like this one. The power of the medium is incredible, as we've seen over the last fourteen hours."

Now the Open Source "classic":

"The history of Unix should have prepared us for what we're learning from Linux (and what I've verified experimentally on a smaller scale by deliberately copying Linus' methods). That is, that while coding remains an essentially solitary activity, the really great hacks come from harnessing the attention and brainpower of entire communities. The developer who uses only his or her own brain in a closed project is going to fall behind the developer who knows how to create an open, evolutionary context in which bug-spotting and improvements get done by hundreds of people.

But the traditional Unix world was prevented from pushing this approach to the ultimate by several factors. One was the legal contraints of various licenses, trade secrets, and commercial interests. Another (in hindsight) was that the Internet wasn't yet good enough.

Before cheap Internet, there were some geographically compact communities where the culture encouraged Weinberg's 'egoless' programming, and a developer could easily attract a lot of skilled kibitzers and co-developers. Bell Labs, the MIT AI Lab, UC Berkeley - these became the home of innovations that are legendary and still potent.

Linux was the first project to make a conscious and successful effort to use the entire world as its talent pool. I don't think it's a coincidence that the gestation period of Linux coincided with the birth of the World Wide Web, and that Linux left its infancy during the same period in 1993-1994 that saw the takeoff of the ISP industry and the explosion of mainstream interest in the Internet. Linus was the first person who learned how to play by the new rules that pervasive Internet made possible. "

Wheez nawt missin' Nomah nomah

Orlando Cabrera (Getty Images)

Some sections of the Times maintain the credibility the entire paper once enjoyed. With the Red Sox on an incredible 20-2 winning streak, one can only imagine how the Times sports section would read if the Yankees held sway over the sportswriters the way the DNC influences the content of section one. This story would certainly never be published:

"Although many players struggle to succeed superstars, Cabrera said he realized he would never be able to replace Garciaparra's offense. He would have to win people over in more subtle ways. A flash of baggy pants and red sleeves, he reaches balls that Garciaparra could not, displays the enthusiasm that Garciaparra sometimes did not, and demonstrates the endurance that Garciaparra has not."

A thought on Beslan from normblog

normblog writes:

"It's not just about root causes and potentially bad people, both of which are ever with us. There's a particular politics here, with a distinctive outlook, a distinctive set of (criminal and murderous) ideas, behind it; and this is the transnational enemy that has now to be taken on and defeated. You can name it how you want - Islamo-fascist or other. But it needs to be named, and made central to every effort of understanding, so as to be seen clearly, that it may be taken on and defeated; and not dissolved in well-meaning claptrap about root causes. "

Panic on Morrissey Boulevard!

Today's Globe OpEd page features 3 columnists in panic. Lehigh, Kuttner, and Jackson all fret about the travails of the no longer Presumptive Nominee. Today's howlers...

Lehigh:

"During his two decades as a senator, Kerry has never been particularly good at building an effective, well-integrated, high-performing staff. But he needs to do that now. During the last month the Kerry campaign's effort was decidedly subpar. The message has been muddled, the strategic thinking murky, and the press office sluggish."

But he is still the right man to manage the tiny little executive branch, right?

Kuttner:

Hostile Media. The press (with some heroic exceptions) continues to cut Bush and the right-wing smears a lot more slack than they cut Kerry. There is no offsetting left-wing Fox.

Sure. And Aretha is skinny, too.

David Brooks

...in today's Times:

" If you look at the editorials and public pronouncements made in response to Beslan, you see that they glide over the perpetrators of this act and search for more conventional, more easily comprehensible targets for their rage.

The Boston Globe editorial, which was typical of the American journalistic response, made two quick references to the barbarity of the terrorists, but then quickly veered off with long passages condemning Putin and various Russian policy errors."

Yeah, I noticed that.

Do tell!

Brian McGrory in today's Boston Globe:

"Indeed, I've always thought that if Kerry comes into Labor Day with a lead in the polls, then he's all done. But if he trails by six points or more to President Bush, then you should assume that he has a very strong chance to win."

One might believe he "always thought" that had he written it once or twice.

Utter Moral Blindness

The horror of Beslan, like that of September 11, cannot be absorbed in a few hours or perhaps in a few days. Personally, I am trying to understand my own reaction by writing it out. It will take some time.

Today's Boston Globe should have "counted to 50" before publishing the editorial below, entitled "The bloodshed in Russia". Normally this kind of knee-jerk, dogmatic, and thoughtless reaction from the Globe would make me angry, but I am too shaken at the moment to waste anger on trivialities like Globe editorial foolishness.

The Globe calls the terrorists cruel and barbarous, but never actually takes time to condemn their unspeakable acts. Instead, they spend most of their breath criticizing Putin, the Russian government, and the Russian military for an inept response.

The conclusion of this editorial reads:

But if Putin were to admit the failure of his war policy in Chechnya and explore a political solution, he would have a chance to end the rationale for such outrages as the hostage-taking and save the lives of many Chechens and Russians.

Astounded, I must ask:

What is a rationale for herding 1000 children, parents, and teachers at gunpoint into a gym and then filling it with bombs?

What is a rationale for shooting fleeing schoolchildren in the back?

What is a rationale for torturing some mothers with a Sophie's Choice by forcing them to choose one of their children to leave behind and die?

When Belsen Concentration Camp was liberated in 1945, some of the starved prisoners were overfed by their British liberators and died as a result. The mindset of today's Globe would spend ink criticizing the British Army for ineptitude and urge Churchill to end the rationale for the Holocaust.

To illustrate I have reproduced the Globe's editorial below, but with colored text to contrast the portions that criticise Putin with those that criticize the terrorists (or the "hostage takers" as the squeamish Globe also calls them). The result is a sad but telling illustration of how events like Beslan fall in a moral blind spot of the dogmatically liberal, secularist, and relativist mindset that is epitomized by the Globe.

The bloodshed in Russia

September 4, 2004

Yesterday's horrific end of the hostage crisis in Russia's Republic of North Ossetia, with a death toll in three figures, illustrates above all the hostage-takers' pitiless cruelty.The chaos surrounding the unplanned rescue operation and the manner in which Russian special forces lost control of the situation also suggest a lack of competence that had tragic consequences.

The barbarism of the hostage takers was manifest in their refusal to allow food, water, or medicines to be brought to their captives for two days. Still, the carnage at the besieged school ought to bring home to both Russians and Chechens an inescapable truth: that violence cannot resolve the conflict between them and can only cause more suffering.

Even if the official Russian version of what happened yesterday at the school in Breslan, North Ossetia, is taken at face value, it appears the Russian forces managing the siege and the rescue operation were guilty of blunders that cost many lives. Inexplicably, they failed to establish a tight security cordon around the school where the hostages were being held. They also neglected to keep civilians at a safe distance from the site of the standoff.

Since there was no proper security perimeter, many of the terrorists were able to hide among fleeing hostages and escape into the town of Breslan after an explosion collapsed part of the gymnasium and Russian forces exchanged fire with a cluster of hostage-takers inside the school.

Russian authorities said the storming of the school was not planned and had been forced on them by the explosion. Whether or not this version of events is true, those authorities ought to have been prepared for an eventual assault on the hostage-takers.

Russian forces were nearing the moment when they would have had to mount a rescue operation on their own initiative. Conditions were becoming intolerable: no food or water and stifling heat. Children were piled on top of one another in the overcrowded gymnasium.

What makes the Kremlin's mismanagement of the rescue operation even worse is the reputation the government of President Vladimir Putin has earned for peddling propaganda to the public rather than telling the truth. Because the KGB veterans who now dominate Putin's entourage seek to control the media, harrassing[sic]independent reporters and propagating flagrant lies, particularly about the war in Chechnya, whatever they say about the desolating loss of life must be suspect.

Nothing can be done now to bring back those lost lives. But if Putin were to admit the failure of his war policy in Chechnya and explore a political solution, he would have a chance to end the rationale for such outrages as the hostage-taking and save the lives of many Chechens and Russians.

UPDATE: Here is how a Russian once explained this malady that prevents western elites from seeing, naming, and acting against evil:

"A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.

Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists."

-Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn, June 8, 1978

Pray and Remember

Pieta


A soft target

Beslan - September 3, 2004

Bodies of school children in Beslan (AP Photo)

I pray for the parents of these children, but promise them that I, too, will always remember this day. This is unfathomable depravity.

Pre-event "News Analysis"

The front page News Analysis in today’s Boston Globe entitled “President strikes with a hard message” was written and filed before the event it purports to analyze. Both early print editions of the Globe and the online edition say:

Bush, in his tight 43-minute address, seemed ready for such a campaign, insisting that the Iraq[sic] was a byproduct of his efforts to fight terrorism.

Bush’s actual speech, unlike the one imagined by the Globe, lasted well over an hour.

The author of this work of predictive analysis is none other than Peter Canellos, for whom this blog has already named a prize for fiction writing masquerading as analysis.

Congratulations, Peter. You win the Canellos prize for a 2nd time. When you write about events that haven’t yet occurred, it is polite to label the work a forecast rather than an analysis.

A Learning Moment

The acceptance speech was altogether fine, but there was one moment when it transcended politics and that moment moved both the speaker and the audience:

"I have tried to comfort Americans who lost the most on Sept. 11th -- people who showed me a picture or told me a story, so I would know how much was taken from them. I have learned first-hand that ordering Americans into battle is the hardest decision, even when it is right. I have returned the salute of wounded soldiers, some with a very tough road ahead, who say they were just doing their job. I've held the children of the fallen, who are told their dad or mom is a hero, but would rather just have their dad or mom. And I have met with parents and wives and husbands who have received a folded flag, and said a final goodbye to a soldier they loved.

I am awed that so many have used those meetings to say that I am in their prayers -- to offer encouragement to me. Where does strength like that come from? How can people so burdened with sorrow also feel such pride? It is because they know their loved one was last seen doing good. Because they know that liberty was precious to the one they lost. And in those military families, I have seen the character of a great nation: decent, and idealistic, and strong."

Apt Words for this Sad Day

From today's WSJ Editorial Page (subscription Required):

You might think that having watched workers leap to their deaths from the Twin Towers, nothing about Islamic terror could shock us.

We thought so too. But even in the midst of a bloody battle for civilization itself, the images that converged on America yesterday scream out: The photograph of the dead girl hanging out the window of a suicide-bombed Israeli bus on newspaper front pages; the Web footage of a Nepalese worker in Iraq having his throat slit, one of 12 hostages killed; and the Russian children who at this writing are being used as human shields by terrorists (presumed to be Chechens) who stormed their school, killed some people and are threatening to kill 50 children for any member of their group harmed.

An Israeli girl. A group of Nepalese guestworkers. Russian schoolchildren, their parents and teachers. What unites them is not simply that they were all murdered in the name of some Islamic cause but that they all define innocence. Maybe it is possible to believe, as many of those protesting outside the Republican convention apparently do, that even in the face of such crimes the threats to world peace are President Bush, Dick Cheney and Halliburton.

We say: Look at the pictures. Look at the children who die not because they are collateral damage but because they are targets. And ask yourself the uncomfortable but defining question of this campaign: Is this the kind of enemy that requires a 'more sensitive' war?"

Writing Like It's November 3 Already

Joan Vennochi just cannot seem to stay in the ideological lock-step that constrains the rest of the Globe's liberal OpEd writers. She is definitely a Democrat, but she can't seem to keep the Party's game face, and breaks out with a candor that I thought would not be seen until November 3. Her column today is entitled "Republicans on a roll", but Joan is on a roll as well:

Democrats took the opposite approach in Boston. They broadened their platform but forgot to broaden the appeal from the podium. They offered up Democratic icons of conventions past -- former President Jimmy Carter, former Vice President Al Gore and Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Stars like Bill and Hillary Clinton are highly polarizing. Barack Obama of Illinois, a candidate for the US Senate, has yet to win national office.

Kerry also surrounded himself with Vietnam veterans and military men, hoping to transmit an image of strength. But the first test of strength is backbone. Kerry showed little, even before the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth muddied his campaign waters. There must be polling data to support his decision to avoid making a clear statement on issues from war to abortion. But what reason could there be to let the ever-bitter emotions of a war 30 years ago poison his presidential campaign? In New York, Republicans salute the troops serving in Iraq. In Boston, Kerry saluted his own service in Vietnam, giving opponents a rationale for attack.

Parallels to the 1988 showdown between former governor Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush continue on their eerie path. In his nomination acceptance speech, Dukakis said the election was about "competence, not ideology." Republican campaign operatives made sure it was about ideology. In 2004, Kerry decided that the election should be about his Vietnam service and George W. Bush's Vietnam avoidance. With help from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Republican campaign operatives are using Vietnam to raise doubts about Kerry's honesty. In response, Kerry displayed the same intellectual arrogance as Dukakis when the Bush campaign hit him with the Willie Horton ads. Like Dukakis, Kerry took too long to rebut the charges. Then he retired to Nantucket and went parasailing.

Read the whole thing.

Petty, Pointless, and Partisan

Here is a pure non-news item in the Globe.

Yet it was run (with a huge photo on page 1B of the August 31 Boston Globe) simply to give a gratuitous slap to the Governor of Massachusetts. Entitled “Watching Romney’s Suitcase”, it would better be called “Dumping the Globe’s Baggage”.

The piece is really a complaint about a politician who is skillfully caching political IOUs that might come in handy someday, but the story swerves back to thumping at the old “Massachusetts politician away from the office” theme, including a whole paragraph about the relaxed work habits of past (Republican) Governors. The story comes complete with a graphic (below) displaying the Governor’s activities calendar during August. The graphic belies the whole premise of the article. It shows that the Governor’s “out of state” August days consisted of:

2 ½ days signing his new book in Salt Lake City, New York, and Washington DC.
1 day campaigning with the President of the United States
1 day at the Republican National Convention
2 (count ‘em, 2!) whole days in Athens at the Olympics where he received an award for his service to the 1992 Winter Games
8 days vacationing in New Hampshire with his family

None of these were at taxpayer expense, the article reports, and it also notes that the state legislature is out of session this entire month, meaning that very few legislators spent a single August day on Beacon Hill.

So who is complaining? The only person actually quoted with complaints is (!) Jane Lane, the Communications Director of the Massachusetts Democratic Party. No doubt she proved very helpful to the Globe’s intrepid reporters and highly professional and objective editors by explaining why this story was not only newsworthy, but should receive 4 columns, a photo, and a graphic on the first page of the City section during the same week when this Governor will speak on national TV at the Republican Convention.

No good deed goes unpunished. Less than 2 months ago, it was this same Republican Governor who replaced a couple of bureaucrats to move arbitration and avoid labor unrest and embarrassing picket lines at the Democratic convention in Boston; and did so without help from the Democratic nominee, who feared offending the unions.

So why is this non-story, this piece of utter trash, so played up in a responsible journal like the Globe? Perhaps we should ask old Oliphant. He is the one who recently informed the masses that the charges made by the Swift-Boat veterans didn’t “pass the smell test” of the news professionals on Morrissey Boulevard, and so were consigned to perdition.

But this story – this petty, pointless, and partisan piece of junk – did pass their smell test with flying colors.

No wonder Glenn Reynolds refers to organs like the Globe as the “legacy media”.



Image by The New York Times Company