Common Ground: Federalism

On Page 1 of today’s Boston Globe is the story that the US Supreme Court has declined a case that sought to overturn the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s gay marriage decision. A welcome decision to all, save those wearers of tin-foil hats who are on the far right of the political spectrum. Federalism is a wonderful thing, which nobody minds too much unless it is called “states rights”. Knuckle draggers such as I agree wholeheartedly about this decision with Gary Buseck, the legal director of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (there they are again…that special interest litigation group that represents homosexuals and ampersands!) when he is quoted in the Globe:

"Today's result was inevitable, and I don't think it tells either side anything in particular, except that no court, not even this Supreme Court, is going to entertain wild claims like this and reach out to intervene and overturn what the SJC has done. They just didn't see any appropriate basis for doing that."

Would that the US Supreme Court had exercised such admirable restraint in January of 1973.

“Reverse Historicism”

Sunday’s Boston Globe made me feel sorry for all the trees that were felled in the waste of bringing its bulky lack of content to subscribers. Am I being too critical or perhaps in a post-election lull to say that very little in it seemed of interest?

For one thing anyway, I can express at least some gratitude. That is a book review in the Globe's exaggeratedly named Ideas section of a new novel -- “Gilead” -- by Marilynne Robinson. The review in the Globe did not draw my attention to the book, but rather to the author. She is an unusual person who has written only one other novel and 2 books of essays. One of her essays defended the work of John Calvin as being widely misunderstood and at the same time fundamental to many important ideas and historical developments that followed his time. Then the reviewer writes:

It's odd then that through our culture's reverse historicism, the term "Calvinism" has come to mean "moralistic repression."

I have to disagree. Calling our cultural perversity “reverse historicism” sounds like an excuse for something that Calvin no doubt wrote about and St Paul certainly did in his Letter to the Romans (though it is a novel excuse, since this 2-word combination is as of today not found elsewhere by Google). Reverse historicism indeed!

In keeping with the unfortunately 2nd class corporate citizenship of the Boston Globe, today’s Sunday NY Times has a much more interesting review of the same book here and a recent NY Times Magazine has a story about the author here. We may have the World Series trophy in Boston for once, but we still aren’t close to having the Sunday Times.

A Thanksgiving

Freedom has a spirit. Like the very Spirit of God in some way it is everywhere and in each person. As Jefferson wrote, “the God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time”. Yet also like God’s Spirit, the spirit of freedom is so focused at some times, places and in some hearts that the time, that place, or that single heart becomes a hinge about which history turns.

It sprouted in our land in 1620, in the cabin of a ship anchored off Cape Cod. It was there at Lexington and at Concord Bridge in Massachusetts, and in a hall in Philadelphia. It spoke through Lincoln at Gettysburg. From its root in this land it nourished other hearts who built the soil of harsher climates. It animated Gandhi. It kept Solzhenitsyn working through years of prison, disease, and exile. It struck a young catholic seminarian who saw his Poland brutalized by both Nazi and Communist conquerors, and a British aristocrat who eagerly seized the reins of government even though he could see nothing ahead but “blood, tears, toil, and sweat”.

It moved the heart of an Alabama woman to hold her seat on a city bus. It turned a steadfast electrician in Gdansk and a playwright in Prague into leaders of free peoples. We saw it briefly in Moscow. It was present in the thousands of Tiananmen Square who gathered around a statue made of paper, and most clearly in that one courageous heart who stood his own body in front of a tank.

Today we are honored to see it in some Islamic women of Afghanistan who prepared their bodies for burial and then went outside their homes and waited in line to cast their first vote. We see it also in the brave men and women who fought to give them that chance, and who fight and die this very day in other cities in that same hope. Also on this very day hundreds of thousands of unarmed citizens spend the frigid nights outdoors in Kiev to see that their vote is honored.

Tomorrow, in the land that has grown from that vision expressed on the Mayflower, families and friends will gather to celebrate the many blessings we have been given, both by God and by those who were here before us. As I bow my head at our abundant table, I’ll remember in prayer those who struggle with such courage to give the gift of liberty to themselves, to their children, and to others who are still deprived of it.

Incredible

News from the Ukraine without intermediation, and of the highest importance is here thanks to Instapundit for pointing this out.

This event feels just like 1989 all over again. Is it too much to hope for a democratic outcome here? No, as long as EVERYONE watches over those brave folks spending their nights outdoors. God bless them.

A Feast in the Globe as Turkey Day approaches

Today's Boston Globe
Today seems to be a red-letter day for the Boston Globe OpEd folks. There are 3 pieces that I found outstanding. Happy to find one, it is really a treat to find 3 in a single day that are quite worthwhile. Here are my recommendations:

First, Fr. John O’Donnell explains something about the demographics of Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Boston. For readers outside the Hub of the Universe, the new Archbishop of Boston has struggled to close almost 60 parishes in a consolidation that has been difficult at best. The Archdiocese has sent a very confused message about why this is necessary, and the feeling persists that the whole reason for it is the large payments that are required to settle the lawsuits pertaining to clerical sexual abuse of minors. Not so, of course, but Fr. O’Donnell makes a good start at explaining this. He also takes an unvarnished look ahead at the future of the Church, which is needed early and often.

Second, Peter Canellos talks about the gains that President Bush made in support from minorities in the November election, and notes the President’s recent appointments of Gonzales and Rice to 2 of the “top 4” cabinet posts (these being the departments of State, Justice, Treasury, and Defense). Other points I would add on this topic are that minority support for the Republicans may be under-reported by exit polls (similar stories about higher but unrecorded support for Bush among Jewish voters were circulating after the election)…and of course if Bush wants to name 3 minorities to the “Big 4”, the next slot filled should be Defense.

Last but not least, like baseball and the Melting Pot, Thanksgiving is an American miracle. Jim Carroll writes a wonderful column that captures the spirit of the day very well (you’re reading this right, that is what I said!) and in which he takes only a passing shot at Bush and realizes that even that little snipe is outside of the wonderful spirit of the holiday. A damn fine column by Jim. Perhaps he should have been a preacher!

Old murders discovered in Boston

Today's Boston Globe
I missed it in yesterday’s Boston Globe, but today there is no way to miss the first coverage of the van Gogh murder and the reaction to it in the Netherlands. The Globe had 2 related stories yesterday here and here, as well as a page 1 story today here.

Van Gogh was murdered on November 2, 2 ½ weeks ago. Clearly stories about failures of Islamic immigrants to assimilate into European national cultures are something that Europeans and the media in general are uncomfortable to discuss in detail. They raise questions about cultural values that are always difficult, but of course will not go away as long as people live together.

Thanksgiving or Halloween?
On the macabre side, there is this story of the woman who shot and killed her husband in 1983 and left his body in a freezer for years unknown to all until she made a death-bed confession to one of her children. [Nasty remark about Somerville deleted].

John Kerry gives more

If the poor Demos are conflicted about John Kerry, it is showing in today’s Boston Globe. Two stories cover the cash-heavy financial position with which the Kerry campaign ended. Among the news stories is “Some Democrats decry Kerry's unspent $16m”. In it some Democrats speak without nuance:

But Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist who managed Gore's 2000 presidential campaign, said she was ''totally shocked" to learn that so much money was left over. Aside from Kerry's defeat, Democrats lost two seats in the House and four in the Senate this year. ''I've never heard of having that amount of money left over," she said. ''This is not about John Kerry. This is about how do you deploy resources. We kept saying, 'This is the greatest, most important election in our lifetime.' Yet we have money left over? I don't know what else to say."

Meanwhile on the OpEd page Scott Lehigh speculates that:

“Kerry's argument [that he ran as well against Bush as anyone could have] is revealing for this reason: It seems designed to buttress the notion that his campaign was competitive enough not to foreclose another try in a party that seldom grants a second chance.”

So maybe the reason that Kerry seems much less distraught with his election loss than many other Democrats is that he figures his good show in November, his pulpit in the Senate, and his wife’s (war) chest give him another shot at the White House in 2008.

To all those church-going Republicans, this sounds like an answer to prayer -- the likes of which they have not seen since the era of Stevenson-Kefauver.

UPDATE: DOH! How could everybody be so stupid about this? Why didn't Kerry spend or give away the $16M? Because it was a mere detail! When you are married to a billionaire, $16M is not a fortune. It is a paycheck. Cases in point: John Kerry and Suha Arafat.

Maintaining "the public conversation"

Today’s Boston Globe:
The Globe has a big story about the low quality of Big Dig construction and how this issue had been documented internally for years. Funny, for years the politician and media blovations about the Big Dig have focused almost completely on its ever-expanding cost, not its quality. Now when the walls spring leaks, the same folks suddenly have gotten religion about construction quality. How like a child, this behavior.

The most interesting story in today Globe is one about gay marriage (which I personally don’t care much to talk about). It’s a pretty long story without any occasion mentioned for it except that today is (apparently) 1 year after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that gay marriage is a right implicit in the Massachusetts constitution.

Mary Bonauto, the civil rights director for Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (aka GLAD…how about that; not 1 but 2 ampersands in the title!) is quoted as saying that despite going 0-11 in state ballot measures in the November election “the worst thing to do right now is to stop the public conversation.”

In order to keep the conversation going:

“In August, GLAD filed another lawsuit, on behalf of seven gay and lesbian couples seeking the right to marry in Connecticut.

Other activists are also arguing the issue in the courts. Cases seeking marriage rights for gays and lesbians are still pending in New Jersey and California courts. In several states, advocates plan challenges to bans on same-sex marriage approved by voters on Election Day, though activists remain divided about whether those efforts might backfire, speeding passage of a Federal Marriage Amendment.”

For Mary and her like-minds apparently, a “public conversation” is conducted through litigation.

A Marine Writes Home

Power Line has a letter from a US Marine in Iraq. It is just common sense, conditioned by the experience of war, but that is more than the media can manage to put out most of the time. It begins:

"This is one story of many that people normally don't hear, and one that everyone does. "

Read the whole thing.

Therapy for Depressed Demos

No JibJab, but this Guide To Recovery 11/10/04 is pretty funny.

Kuttner succumbs to hysteria

There is a fair amount of interesting reading in today’s Boston Globe. More actually than I have time to write about at the moment.

First, Kuttner succumbs to hysteria over Bush having 4 more years and envisions theocracy. Here are the choicest bits:

In the United States, meanwhile, reason is on the defensive as we head backward toward creationism and religious absolutism. This is one of those moments when people all over the world, threatened by cultural and economic assaults far beyond their local control, are turning to fundamentalisms. Author Ben Barber sums it up in three words: Jihad vs. McWorld.

What is uniquely alarming in the United States today, among all the democracies and in our own history, is that a president of the United States is explicitly on the side of antimodernism. Never before has an American chief executive worked deliberately to foment a fundamentalist absolutism that is ultimately tribal, theocratic, antiscientific, and incompatible with pluralist democracy.

Scott Lehigh has an amusing story of bureaucratic suppression of speech at UNH which has a happy ending, at least for the “perp”.

Even Eileen McNamara has an interesting bash of Channel 5 refusing to broadcast “Saving Private Ryan”.

Finally, a sad story about a Beacon Hill hack (sorry…state legislator) who is being asked to give up her high-visibility service in her local Catholic church due to her voting record on Beacon Hill.

Again, I would like to say more about all these stories, but time does not permit. I recommend Kuttner’s piece the most as an example of liberal-academic panic. I wonder if Bobby K has ever heard of Martin Luther? He says:

"For millennia, faith and reason have co-existed uneasily. They skirmished as far back as the Middle Ages, when Christian theologians nervously contemplated the rediscovery of Aristotle, and later when Galileo was condemned as a heretic. But in most of the West, reason won."

Speaking of "root causes"...

Deacon comments aptly on the predicament of the Democratic Party:

"...this suggests that leading Democrats don't hold the public in contempt because they are now the minority party; rather they are now the minority party because they hold the public in contempt."

Action speaks louder than words

Today’s Boston Globe is pretty much a wasteland of words. On the OpEd page Oliphant bloviates about opportunities for MidEast peace that have been squandered by Bush (that’s right, not Arafat or maybe Clinton, but Bush). Joan Vennochi bashes the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston and old whats-his-name, (I remember now…McGrory) the Globe’s house illiterate bashes Romney on the metro page. You can pick up this level of talk in a Dorchester Dunkin Donuts outlet without buying the Globe.

What cuts through the clutter is an account of Marines in Fallujah confronting the bodies of their enemies.

"Insurgents playing possum claimed the life of a US soldier late last week, when he was clearing a house and came upon fighters inside who had pretended to be asleep. The human rights group Amnesty International has condemned fighters for waving white flags and then attacking; it has also criticized the US military for not taking more precautions to avoid harming civilians.

In a few places, troops found larger bombs rigged by insurgents. One body was found with a homemade detonator attacked to two 144mm artillery shells buried near a road. Lieutenant Eric Gregory said his Bradley Fighting Vehicle had destroyed two 500-pound bombs that were stored at a mosque."

Aside: This morning the BBC was all over egg about a tape showing a US Marine killing a captured insurgent who he thought might be playing dead. The Globe account puts this in a little perspective, which the Beebe lacked. If the BBC had been involved, Britain would have lost the FIRST World War in 1914. They are somehow surprised and shocked to find out that war involves a great deal of killing and that a way to make sure that your enemy cannot kill you is to assure yourself beyond a doubt that your enemy is dead. The Beebe remains a disgrace to the British nation. Sad.

Much Ado About Silence

Back from a lovely time in Ann Arbor, I’m “reporting for duty” concerning the Boston Globe.

Over the weekend there was quite a bit of crowing in Lucianne.com and some blogs about this article in Sunday’s Globe which covered part of the Kerry campaign fairly chronologically. It is not much news, IMHO.

What I did find interesting in the story is its coverage of the Swift Boat Veterans campaign in August. In early August the Boston Globe, the NY Times, and the Washington Post effectively kept “radio silence” concerning the Swifties. From August 4 to Aug 21 (at least that is what it looks like to me from my blog entries at the time). Why? “Not newsworthy”, Oliphant haughtily responded later, but in a Globe OpEd column, not a story. Based on the account below, one could conclude that these papers were treating the story exactly the way that the Kerry campaign organization asked; giving it no ink. To do this must have gone against all journalistic impulses. That’s what happens when reporters forsake journalistic responsibilities in service of some higher cause.

In retrospect, their candidate might have been better served had these liberal papers kept their proper distance from the campaign and had the cojones to ask some discomforting questions right away about the Swifties, rather than denigrating their papers to service as house print organs of the Kerry campaign. Doubtless the credibility of their publications would not have suffered, either. What will future historians think when they put together the history of this campaign and find absolutely NOTHING in these papers covering the critical days of a critical story? The “paper of record” left no record at all. Howell Raines lives, in spirit at least. Here is the Sunday Globe’s retrospective:

"By August 14, Kerry was mad -- and aides could feel it. Ten days earlier, an inflammatory book by his Nixon-era foe, O'Neill, had topped a national best-seller list. 'Unfit for Command' used mostly unsupported allegations to label Kerry a liar who didn't deserve some or all of his combat medals. At the same time, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began airing ads, mostly in swing states, quoting men who said Kerry 'has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam,' 'lied' to get his medals, 'is no war hero,' and 'betrayed all his shipmates.'

Kerry wanted to fight back right away, but Shrum and other media advisers cautioned against it, concerned about fanning the flames. 'We watched as the story jumped from the Internet, to Fox News, to the other cable networks,' said Cahill. 'Our concern was we didn't want to help it along by our reaction.' The campaign hoped that the episode would blow over with minimal damage, as it had the previous spring. But this time, there was no prison scandal, or anything else, to swallow the swift boat veterans' crusade. 'The August echo chamber was a difficult environment because nothing else was going on,' said Thorne.

'The campaign collectively underestimated the effect of the swift boats. It was a collective mistake,' recalled Michael Whouley, a longtime Kerry operative. 'I think the candidate was probably the most concerned about it. It pissed him off, people attacking his Vietnam service.'

Kerry wanted to know what impact the ads were having. Shrum recalled that for days the polls indicated nothing. Then the damage began to show. 'As soon as we saw it, we moved,' Shrum said. By then, the damage had been done. "

Go Blue: No Blog

We're headed for THE BIG HOUSE

Thanks for visiting.

My oldest son and I will be in Ann Arbor this weekend with family to tailgate, watch the Michigan-Northwestern football game, and listen to two of our favorite musical groups:

The 250 member University of Michigan Marching Band and...

The Michigan Men's Glee Club

A perfect weekend! Blogging will be non-existent until Monday. See you then.

11/11

Playing the Last Post at the Menin Gate in Ypres

Today is the 11th day of the 11th month. Armistice Day 86 years ago, now Veterans Day. While the Mainstream Media (and especially the BBC World Service) today swoon over the death of a murderous terrorist and kleptocrat, let's remember to thank the many who for many years and to this very day fight the totalitarians and the terrorists of this world.

Thank you, vets.

The Scotsman has a story of the Menin Gate ceremony, and the Boston Globe has a fine column by Jon Soltz marking this day.

Dolf and Uncle Joe, make some room in the 7th circle

Arafat is dead.

Arafat's Bedroom Farce

Daniel Pipes has a superb summation of the Arafat farce here complete with links to the relevant sources.

It has been a too long run for such a poor show.

Our Former Peace Partner

Today the NY Times writes:

"As Yasir Arafat lies dying in Paris, the battle over his legacy involves an unstated but widely acknowledged concern: he personally controls several billion dollars, and no one else knows where it all is."

Better late than never, but these articles would be more important had they been published earlier when the publicity might have done some good. Read the whole thing.

Suha Goes Phishing

Another wealthy woman needs help. I WISH that I had thought of this.

Arafat Unplugged?

Today, Tuesday November 9, maybe the day when Palestinian authority dictator Yasser Arafat will have his life support systems unplugged and will likely journey shortly after to whatever fate awaits him in the next world. So speculates a story in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Don't count on this for certain, however. The ongoing Parisian soap opera may run for a few days yet. According to a story in the New York Times which ran on November 8, Arafat's suddenly protective wife, Suha, controls decisions concerning his medical treatment. Other reports state that Suha also controls the information released from the hospital to the world press. Thus the high level of consistency and detail.

There are profiles of Suha in the Washington Post of November 9 and the New York Times of November 8. Both are unflattering. The profiles make interesting reading especially in the light of all the mystery that has surrounded the diagnosis (or lack thereof) of Arafat's soon to be fatal disease. First-hand information is nonexistent at least at this point. The Jerusalem Post in a story on 7 November speculates that the confusion and conflicting stories are the results of many conflicting interests at work. It does repeat, however, a story from the gay site 365gay.com which speculated that Arafat was suffering from acute HIV/AIDS.

Needless to say such a fate would be a publicity nightmare for both Suha and the PA (which while fawned on by leftist circles in the West is decidedly retro concerning its acceptance of alternative lifestyles). Besides the Jerusalem Post and Israeli site called Israeli National News mentions the likelihood of AIDS, as does CNS which also pegs Suha's Parisian allowance at about $100,000 per month. If she really did conceive a child by Arafat, then no matter how much of a gold-digger, she has earned every penny.

The CNS story also refers to a book written by a top aide to Nicolae Ceausescu. This aide defected to the West before Ceausescu’s overthrow and execution. His book alleges that Arafat had a roaring homosexual appetite which he assuaged with his bodyguards while staying in Ceausescu’s compounds during the Cold War. The book alleges that both Ceausescu and later Western intelligence agencies had audiotapes in their possession documenting the PA chairman's proclivities. Of course one problem with any evidence provided by a top aide to Ceausescu is that in order to reach such a position he is likely as guilty of untruth, murder, conspiracy, and mayhem as most members of the PLO.

Anyway, we will have to wait and see if today is the day when planet Earth becomes an Arafat-free zone. “That's one small step for man…”

Here are the referenced stories:
Washington Post
New York Times
Haaretz
Jerusalem Post
Israeli National News
CNS
Amazon (the Romanian’s book)
Gay365.com

Looking for a Piece of the Peace Prize winner

Candor from the Jerusalem Post:

"For all the public concern over Arafat's welfare, those around [his wife] Suha, a source in the Fatah Central Committee claimed Saturday night, are working to scoop up his various bank accounts. The intrigue is such, it is being said, that when Arafat's key money man, Muhammad Rashid, arrived in Paris, he was deliberately directed to the wrong hospital. Suha, runs this story, was still hoping for a few precious moments alone with a semi-coherent Arafat. It is said that Arafat has squirreled away billions, and that even Rashid is not privy to all the accounts. "

Covering up for Arafat

The headline in today's front page story in the Boston Globe concerning the Palestinian authority reads “Palestinian Authority faces financial crisis”. The few paragraphs on page 1 report that the authority has only $19 million cash on hand to meet its payroll expenses for the remainder of the year. Going beyond the fold, to the continuation of the story on page 16 however, we find the damning details.

The reason that the Palestinian authority is short of cash is that Arafat has personal discretion over vast amounts of PA assets, funds which he has placed in secret numbered bank accounts abroad and which he personally controls. With Arafat now in a coma and with the mob-like structure of the PA government, that relies on personality rather than institutions, there is no one who can move the funds, and they are likely to be a source of conflict between Arafat’s would-be successors. The Authority has over 100,000 employees, but their personal loyalty to the Authority rather than Arafat's rivals is unlikely to survive a few missed payrolls.

The interesting story reveals that Arafat may be worth billions, all of which of course came originally as aid payments to his impoverished Palestinian followers. Connecting the dots, Arafat is in fact a Middle Eastern version of a kleptocratic dictator, the type of which no liberal or conservative worth his salt could or would stomach. The Globe reporters do a fine job in reporting the gory details of Arafat's corruption. Would that the headline writer had equal courage. Instead, in a classic headline half-truth he writes “Palestinian authority faces financial crisis”.

Here are some choice excerpts. Credit to the Liberal Media for this story, headline excepted. Please read the whole thing.

Arafat has personal discretion over a large portion of Palestinian public funds and is believed to have placed hundreds of millions of dollars in secret, numbered bank accounts abroad. His heirs and possible political successors are angling for control of the money…

Arafat has habitually kept large deposits of Palestinian funds in secret bank accounts, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials and Arab journalists. An International Monetary Fund report last year found that hundreds of millions of dollars are under the sole discretion of Arafat. The Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera this week estimated his fortune at $4.2 billion to $6.5 billion -- which would make Arafat one of the richest political leaders in the world…

Several Arab media outlets reported that Arafat has written a will transferring control of his assets to the family of his wife, Suha, who has recently been investigated by French authorities examining whether large transfers of funds to her accounts from Arafat included money from French aid payments to the Palestinians.

Al-Jazeera has reported that senior Palestinian officials, including the Palestine Liberation Organization's secretary general, Mahmoud Abbas, assert that Arafat's fortune is part of the public treasury and should be transferred back to the Palestinian Authority, which runs the schools, waste system, and other public services...

The only person who knows the origin of the funds and their location apparently is Mohammed Rashid, a Kurd who is Arafat's confidant and financial adviser. Rashid, also known as Khaled Salam, has lived in the Gaza Strip for the past decade and is a member of the Palestinian delegation with Arafat in Paris…

With 108,000 employees, it is by far the largest employer in the territories, and Palestinians who had become disillusioned with Arafat were saying even before he fell ill that if the authority were unable to meet its payroll it would cease to exist, leaving a void that could lead to chaos and violence in the occupied territories…

Vultures at the Hotel Intercontinental

Belmont Club has a superb post about the impending death of Nobel Peace Prize winner Yasser Arafat. Speaking of the period after Arafat dies, he writes:

"Then the real weakness of the position, the absence of stable Palestinian institutions, will soon manifest itself with a vengeance. Once internecine struggle breaks out each faction will call for international backers in a kind of bizarre, winner-take-all casino game where human lives are chips. The prospect of striking a deal with the eventual survivor is called 'finding a partner for peace'. "

The scene sounds like a strange mixture of the Soviet Politburo at Lenin's deathbed and Don Corleone's hospital stay in 'The Godfather'. All the while the struggling successors manage to get by with accomodations at the Hotel Intercontinental in Paris, the now-chubby ex-pat trophy wife (no Mama Corleone for Yasser!) has to interrupt her Parisian shopping and social routines to attend Sugar Daddy's deathbed, and Kofi Annan's UN picks up the tab for all these thugs.

Kudos to the 'international community' and the UN for creating a scene more bizarre than American TV or films could ever conceive in their wildest imagination. I hope Tom Wolfe is in Paris taking notes for his next book.

Woe is Dem

It sure was easy to read the newspapers tonight. My favorite liberal whining piece was in the NY Times, though, not the Boston Globe. The Times has a humorous piece about New Yorkers and the little gem below about a few disaffected folks from Portland (with apologies to readers who hail from the Rose City).

"In Portland, Ore., a city so staunchly liberal that it is sometimes called the People's Republic of Portland, the outcome of the presidential race was absorbed with the levity of a mass funeral. Given the gravity of things, there was really only one thing that Wilder Schmaltz, a 25-year-old Portland artist who had refused to remove the anti-Bush button from his lapel, felt he could do. He called a friend and headed straight to the Red and Black Cafe, an all-organic, wheat-free, vegetarian coffee and food shop, which is run as a collective and is a popular hangout of the Socialist Party USA's candidate for president, Walt Brown.

'I figured that in this place we wouldn't run the risk of being around any cheering Republicans,' Mr. Schmaltz said. Upon entering the cafe, Mr. Schmaltz, who is Jewish, grabbed off the cafe's bookshelf 'A Beggar in Jerusalem,' by Elie Wiesel, and read it glumly over a bowl of vegetarian chili. 'Something Jewish will do me good right now,' he said.

At the next table, Tchula Z, 33, an artist and part-time barista at her sister's coffee shop, who uses only Z as a last name, said she woke up Wednesday, learned that Mr. Bush had won and 'smoked a cigarette and freaked out.' She added, 'You know, as Janis Joplin said, 'Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.' I think people should start using that line again.' Her friend Tracy Conklin, 45, a freelance writer and photographer, was equally dark, concluding that there was no hope and only isolation for those on the left. I am prepared to keep my head down, possibly for the rest of my life, under a totalitarian regime,"

There may be a few folks in places like North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Vietnam, and Tibet who would gladly share Mr. Conklin's suffering in the Red and Black Café under the totalitarian regime he finds in Portland.

In the Boston Globe, Joan Vennochi speculates on the possibility that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court provided ammunition for Bush when they ruled that the Massachusetts constitution required the Commonwealth to sanction gay marriage. She ends her column thus:

This year, the New England Patriots won the Super Bowl and the Boston Red Sox won the World Series. For the second time in 16 years, a son of Massachusetts tried for the White House and failed. Sharing initials with the last presidential candidate from Massachusetts to win the presidency is not enough. If the presidency is the goal, a candidate needs more in common with the rest of America.

What a sobering thought.

Not.

Mark Steyn: Nobody says it better

Steyn writes:

"The 'youth vote' is the Left's equivalent of the Rapture: it may happen one day, but not on any schedule you want to put money on.

If you had to pick a picture that summed up what went wrong for Kerry, it would be the shot of Moore and Jimmy Carter in the presidential box at the Democratic national convention. All you needed was P.Diddy, aka Puff Daddy (or vice-versa), of the Vote or Die mythical youth movement and it would have been the Democrats' equivalent of those Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin wartime summits. That picture is the Dems in a nutshell: yesterday's politicians, today's show-biz colossi. It's the other way round at the Republican Party: yesterday's show-biz colossi (well, Pat Boone) and today's politicians -- Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani. On the whole, that's a better combo. "

Read the whole thing...he has plenty of laughs at the expense of one Michael Moore.

Ahhhhhh...

It may be nasty, but I couldn’t help myself. I actually started to look forward to receiving today’s Boston Globe LAST NIGHT. Latent sadism perhaps, but the prospect of reading the Globe’s right-minded liberal pundits expressing the pain of electoral defeat in ink is delightful.

Right now I haven’t had time to blog on the Globe. I will read it fully tonight. Like a gourmet meal, reading that is this delicious needs to be savored rather than just wolfed down. Yes, these are very happy days for Republicans. But charity demands that we should keep in mind how we would feel now if those wacky exit polls had proven correct.

After I get through today’s Boston Globe, I think I’ll go down to the video store and rent a film I haven’t seen yet that is sure to make me laugh… Fahrenheit 9/11.

Apocalypse Now

"I love the smell of OHIO in the morning. It smells like...victory."

UPDATE: It IS over. Kerry concedes shortly after 11AM. A wise decision.

Moral of the work

Winnie opened his history volumes of WW II this way:

MORAL OF THE WORK

In War: Resolution
In Defeat: Defiance
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will

That was a good way to look at things in 1939-1945, and still so today. Regarding war, defeat, victory, and peace, Andrew Sullivan reminds us that:

"Our opponents at home are not our enemies. The real enemy is the Jihadist terror network that, even now, is murdering innocents and coalition soldiers in Iraq. "

Thinking About Why Bush Lost (even if he really doesn't)

As I begin this note, it is 10 minutes before 8PM on election night. On my computer a rotating Feedreader cube tells me that new posts await my reading and yet I will insulate myself from that information and from all outside information until I finish this little piece. Why? First, because pieces written in the wake of defeat are inevitably tinged with disappointment and bitterness, while pieces written in victory are just as strongly clouded by happy emotion. So for the moment, not knowing how the election will turn out, I can sit calmly and dispassionately and consider (in a state of complete sobriety) what might unfold during the next few hours. Certainly my lack of emotions will disappear, if only that...

Consider this a list of reasons that President Bush lost today's election. Even if he didn't lose, these reasons in my mind constitute major areas for concern that Bush, his advisers and his campaign did not address, and these point to weaknesses in the candidate, in the administration, and in the Republican Party.

Mission Accomplished
The scene of the president on the deck of the aircraft carrier at the “end of major hostilities” against the regime of Saddam Hussein is in hindsight clearly perceived to be inappropriate. Since that moment over 900 American servicemen and women have returned from Iraq in body bags. Both the military and the president can be forgiven for having high spirits at that point in time. After all, the bitter Iraqi winter and a Stalingrad-like siege of Baghdad proved to be figments of the wobbly liberal imagination. No, the cardinal sin here was to set expectations far too high, and to thus allow our enemies to take advantage of those overly high expectations. In retrospect it was a mistake to speak to the country from that military setting. Rather, it would've been far better to speak to the country from the chamber of the House of Representatives and save the military talk for the carrier deck. It also would have been far wiser to more soberly prepare the nation for what was to come. Churchill understandably set expectations very low in the days leading to Dunkirk. In the days that followed the evacuation he continued to remind his countrymen that wars are not won by successful retreats. No one in the Bush Cabinet or in the White House staff was advising the president to keep his emotions and rhetoric in check. Someone should have been.

Abu Gharib
The high expectations after Iraq's military defeat were quickly brought low by the unconscionable scandal of the events that took place in that prison. In those events there is enough blame to allocate a generous portion to all responsible. Certainly the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General bear significant responsibility in that they created an environment which allowed uncertainty to pervade the ranks of the military with regard to the limits in treatment of prisoners. Of course the military units involved are responsible as well, but to the Army's credit they had begun a complete investigation months before the story broke in the media. What was further inexcusable and also indicative of the problems within the administration, was the fact that the president was not aware of the situation until shortly before it became headline news. Again, someone should have told the president.

Donkey Loyalty
“Donkey Loyalty” is the delightful title of a chapter in Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. The chapter describes the curious behavior of Irish-American civil servants in New York City who prized loyalty to clan above all other values. There are few families in the United States less Irish and more Wasp than the Bush family. When it comes to loyalty however they are as Irish as any political family – Kennedys included. Besides the uninterrupted tenure in office of Cabinet members Ashcroft and Rumsfeld, another manifestation of this obsession with loyalty is the presence on the 2004 ticket of Dick Cheney. While Cheney's service has been admirable his political value on the ticket has gone from being negligible in 2000 to a net liability in 2004. The president could have easily replaced Cheney on the ticket with any number of excellent candidates. These candidates would have made it easier to win the November election rather than more difficult. A candidate who could put the states of Ohio or Florida out of reach for the Democrats would be sufficient to assure victory. One obvious candidate is national security adviser Condi Rice. It is distressing to think what a huge positive contribution Rice could have made to the ticket. She is extremely bright and extremely articulate, and while he may be bright, the president has never been called articulate. Furthermore Rice and the president have an excellent working relationship. The inclusion of such a candidate on the ticket would not only balance the temperaments of the two candidates, it would be a historic moment for the Republican party to first advance the national candidacy of an African-American woman. Rice would draw tens of thousands of votes to the Republicans in states like Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Illinois, and New Jersey. Bush was foolish not to seize such a rare opportunity to do well by doing good.

The Media
The behavior of the mainstream media during the six months prior to the November election was highly partisan, biased, and completely disgraceful. So what else is new? The mainstream media was completely in the tank for candidate Clinton in 1992. The media was deeply antagonistic towards candidate Reagan both in 1980 and in 1984. Reagan had no bloggers to help his administration un-spin the media. Instead, he relied on his superb communication skills and his ability to use sound-bite-sized moments to get his message directly to the people in spite of a hostile media. Bush’s inability to express himself well verbally does not excuse this poor performance in propogating short messages through a hostile media.

Bush
Last but not least, we can blame the work of the candidate himself. In spite of his best efforts he did not build as comprehensive a coalition to fight the second Iraq war as his father had built to fight the first one. But his chief weaknesses in this area was that he did not effectively nurture the domestic consensus for war that was reached in the wake of the September 11th attacks. The will of our citizens to fight the war is the most important weapon we possess. It needs to be sharpened and maintained in a manner worthy of its importance.

Thanks, and VOTE!

First of all, thank you for reading.

Second, please make sure to VOTE today. Of course vote according to your best judgment and your conscience, but vote.

On a much lower level of importance…the daily gem from the Boston Globe. Joan Vennochi today epitomizes the blind faith of zealous campaign finance reformers as she writes of Senator McCain (emphasis mine):

"He wins accolades as the champion of campaign finance reform even though in the end, the legislation he championed cleared the way for groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to raise unlimited amounts of money to underwrite candidate attack ads. Now that the campaign finance loophole is obvious to all, McCain is pledging to work in the courts and through legislation to regulate these outside advocacy groups."

Why mention just the Swifties when the four largest donors to 527s (such as Soros) all contributed to left-liberal ones? But after 6 straight months of nasty campaigning, is there anyone alive who thinks that our campaign finance reform has elevated the level of political debate in the country? Surprisingly, yes. People like Joan – showing all the faith of the Bolsheviks who built the worker's paradise one prison cell at a time – actually believe that if they can just close the next loophole, then big money will be walled off from our democratic processes.

Quite seriously, if US corporations as a matter of business judgment are willing to spend BILLIONS of dollars every year promoting one brand of watery beer over another, why is it so evil for groups in our country to freely choose to spend one billion dollars to promote their choice in an election that these same starry-eyed reformers proclaim is the most important in decades?

Why do they have so little faith in the wisdom of our electorate?