"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Saturday, October 16, 2004

LANTOS & W: perfect together!

Bush signs anti-Semitism act

West Palm Beach, FL, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush signed legislation Saturday requiring the State Department to monitor anti-Semitism around the world, the White House said. The Global Anti-Semitism Awareness Act was sponsored by California Democratic Representative Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor.

Under the legislation the State Department would be required to form a special office to monitor anti-Semitism, produce an annual report on anti-Semitism, rate countries annually on the treatment of Jews and make recommendations for action to correct anti-Semitism practices.

The White House announced Bush's action in Florida, where he was campaigning Saturday.


******

This is sure gonna piss off the chattering classes in Old Europe, and their Arabist fellow-travellers in the State Department. Something that Kerry WOULD NEVER DO!

HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS HEINZ

From POWERLINE:

October 16, 2004


Vincent Morris and Deborah Orin report on Teresa Heinz Kerry's 2003 income tax information released yesterday:
"Scouring Teresa's taxes."

They report: John Kerry's near-billionaire wife, Teresa, reported more than $5 million in total income last year but paid only 12.5 percent in federal taxes — less than the average middle-class family — according to documents released yesterday by his campaign.

Teresa Heinz Kerry reported a total income of $5,072,533, including nearly $2.8 million that escaped all federal taxes because it was on interest-free investments from state, city and other public bonds. She paid $628,401 in federal taxes, or a rate of 12.47 percent. The average middle-class family pays more than 20 percent.

Posted by The Big Trunk

What is even more troubling to me, is that her EFFECTIVE EARNING RATE on her wealth (estimated at between $500,000,000 and $3.5 BILLION) is evidently so paltry. If we take the low estimate of her wealth, then she earned only 1% on her wealth. That is simply not credible, and indicates to me that her holdings have been rigged in such a way as to avoid showing any income at all.

This is not illegal - but it is HYPOCRITICAL coming from the slate that promotes itself as being for fair taxes and for rich people paying their fair share.

This is PRECISELY why Mrs. Heinz Kerry refuses to release anything but the FIRST TWO pages of her taxes; the other pages would reveal how her accountants and lawyers have exploited the tax code with a maze of tax-shelters available only to the very wealthy.

The Kerrys evidently are not entirely shameless.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Saddam's Nuke Program: BURIED TWICE!

Everything by Hitchens is a must read. Here's another. A review of a new book - The Bomb In My Garden, a memoir by Saddam Hussein's chief nuclear physicist.

HITCHENS:

"Under the orders of Qusai Hussein, Dr. Obeidi had buried a huge barrel in his back garden. The barrel contained Iraq's crowning achievement in perverted physics: the components of an actual centrifuge for the enrichment of uranium."

This barrel would've NEVER been found by Inspector Blix; it was unearthed ONLY because of Bush's invasion. This alone proves that further inspections were worthless, and that the invasion was correct. WHY? Because it PROVES that Saddam's declaration - filed as part of the requirements instituted as a result of UNSCR #1441 - WAS FALSE; this alone is a casus belli. WHY" Because the UNSCR's banned any and all WMD programs, and the buried centrifuge parts prove that Saddam had a LATENT program, which - as Duelfer said under sworn testimony - Saddam intended to start up agaiun as soon as he could (also contrary to the UNSCR's.) Furthermore, it proves that inspections would have NEVER worked. WHY? Because the inspectors were sent only to audit the declaration, not to pretend to be detectives looking for a needle in a haystack the size of California! And the proves that the inspectors were NOT given unfettered access to any and all locations or all the scientists - which is another casus belli, in and of itself.

But you won't read about the buried nuclear centrifuge parts - ( or Obeidi's book ) - in the MSM. The MSM has buried the story - because it proves that Bush acted properly, and that the war was justified, and that would hurt their boy Kerry.

YUP, and that's why I say Saddam's nuke program was buried twice. Once by Obeidi, and again by the MSM. Read Hitch and Obeidi and you can un-bury the truth.

Here: RTWT ...

Bush Derangement Syndrome: EXPOSED!

Glenn Reynolds knocks out Andrew Sullivan...

HERE'S WHAT INSTAPUNDIT POSTED on 10/14/04:

STILL MORE: Andrew Sullivan writes: "The usually even-keeled Instapundit says that Kerry's 'position on gay marriage is the same as the President's.' I can't see how that's even remotely the case."

Well, it was this Kerry statement that led to my conclusion:

"The president and I have the same position, fundamentally, on gay marriage. We do. Same position."

Call me crazy, but I took that to mean that they had the same position. Since it was a Kerry statement, I should have realized that I was probably missing out on a crucial nuance. My bad. Andrew also writes: "One last gripe about Glenn: he also writes that Kerry 'dissed' Mary Cheney. How? Is calling an openly gay person gay an insult?" Of course not. It's not even an insult to call a straight person gay. But it is disrespectful to drag people into debates on sexuality on national TV. And it's disrespectful to do so as an effort to -- as Mickey Kaus suggested -- swing the votes of homophobes. I'm surprised that Andrew is so untroubled by this.

I think this illustrates that those who are expecting some special degree of sensitivity toward gay issues -- or privacy in general -- from a President Kerry are likely to be disappointed. Apparently, it's all just stuff to be manipulated for advantage.

********

As I wrote to Glenn, Sully only proved that he's twice deluded:

(1) He thinks Kerry is a hawk, and (2) he thinks Kerry is pro gay-marriage!

This type of delusion (a willing suspense of disbelief induced by BDS) is prevalent - AND NECESSARY - among Kerry supporters because Kerry has been on every side of every issue.

And, it seems to me that Kerry supporters seem to think (or want to believe) that he's winking at them whenever he expresses a view OPPOSITE of one they hold dear.

For example, Kerry's dove supporters think he will be a dove; Kerry's hawk supporters think he will be a hawk.

And so on - on every issue.

Kerry's ambivalently nuanced, wishy-washy flip-flopping and reflexive straddling - on virtually every issue - SCARES the bazeejus out of me.

What might president Kerry do in a crunch - when a president has to be decisive!?

WHO CAN SAY? Your guess is as good as mine....

I find Bush's resoluteness, decisiveness, and clarity more assuring. Kerry supporters see this and say Bush too simple.

But I wonder: If Kerry is elected, what will be his compass, his bedrock - the foundation and North-star of his administration? I fear it will be whatever is popular - at home, and with his comrades in Old Europe and the UN. And I believe that will mean we will be in for 4 years of ineffective leadership - unlike any administration since Carter.

My Dirty Dozen Debate Highlights...

FROM: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/debatereferee/debate_1013.html

1 – KERRY: "I’ll hunt them down, and we'll kill them, we'll capture them. We'll do whatever is necessary to be safe. But…"

Kerry's "BUT" exposes him as an appeaser.

2 - KERRY: "I have a plan to cover all Americans. We're going to make it affordable and accessible. We're going to let everybody buy into the same health-care plan senators and congressmen give themselves."
SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, would you like to add something?
BUSH: "I would. Thank you. I want to remind people listening tonight that a plan is not a litany of complaints, and a plan is not to lay out programs that you can't pay for. He just said he wants everybody to be able to buy in to the same plan that senators and congressmen get. That costs the government $7,700 per family. If every family in America signed up, like the senator suggested, if would cost us $5 trillion over 10 years."

BUSH EXPOSES THE KERRY HEALTHCARE SHAM.

3 - KERRY: "And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as."

Tasteless, crass demagoguery.

4 - KERRY: "My faith affects everything that I do, in truth. There's a great passage of the Bible that says, 'What does it mean, my brother, to say you have faith if there are no deeds? Faith without works is dead.'"

Kerry actually is GUILTY of that which he charges Bush; Kerry asserts he has faith, and then claims that DEEDS are worth more than faith - YET THEN, KERRY REFUSES to ACT on his own faith, on his own belief that life begins at conception - as when he refused to do the tough DEED of voting for a "Partial Birth Abortion Ban." Kerry's religiousness is PHONY; Kerry's Catholicism is a sham; Kerry's faith is "dead."

5 - KERRY: "Result [of Bush's Pharmaceutical Plan]: $139 billion windfall profit to the drug companies coming out of your pockets. That's a large part of your 17 percent increase in Medicare premiums. "

Even NBC utterly debunked this; in fact the Pharmaceutical companies will make abiout 1% LESS! IN FACT: The 17% Medicare increase in co-pays was mandated by a different law meant to keep Medicare SOLVENT!

6 - KERRY: "Eleven other presidents -- six Democrats and five Republicans -- had wars, had recessions, had great difficulties; none of them lost jobs the way this president has."

FALSE: Unemployment was higher in '84 than in '80 - yet Reagan won reelection because the electorate saw that it WAS morning in America. AND THEN, THERE'S BEEN A "JOB LOSS" ONLY OF W2-FILING PAYROLL JOBS, AND THIS HAS BEEN ONLY 600,000. WHEN ALL JOBS ARE COUNTED, THEN MORE AMERICANS ARE WORING TODAY THAN IN 2000; THAT'S RIGHT: THERE HAVE BEEN NET JOB GAINS WHEN YOU INCLUDE SELF-EMPLOYED PEOPLE.

7 - SCHIEFFER: Let's go to a new question, Mr. President. I got more e-mail this week on this question than any other question. And it is about immigration. I'm told that at least 8,000 people cross our borders illegally every day. Some people believe this is a security issue, as you know. Some believe it's an economic issue. Some see it as a human-rights issue. How do you see it? And what we need to do about it?
[... later, Kerry responded...]

KERRY: "Four thousand people a day are coming across the border."

Kerry doesn't get good grades for listening.

8 - KERRY: "Now, I've proposed adding two active-duty divisions to the Armed Forces of the United States -- one combat, one support. In addition, I'm going to double the number of Special Forces so that we can fight a more effective war on terror, with less pressure on the National Guard and Reserve. And what I would like to do is see the National Guard and Reserve be deployed differently here in our own country. There's much we can do with them with respect to homeland security. We ought to be doing that. And that would relieve an enormous amount of pressure. But the most important thing to relieve the pressure on all of the armed forces is frankly to run a foreign policy that recognizes that America is strongest when we are working with real alliances, when we are sharing the burdens of the world by working through our statesmanship at the highest levels and our diplomacy to bring other nations to our side."

THERE HE GOES, AGAIN! When it comes to defending the USA, Kerry can't keep his "BUT..." out of it! Proving he is at heart an appeasing internationalist - like Chamberlain.

KERRY: "I have never suggested a test where we turn over our security to any nation. In fact, I've said the opposite: I will never turn the security of the United States over to any nation. No nation will ever have a veto over us. But…"

THERE HE GOES AGAIN... AGAIN!

9 - KERRY: "I am a hunter. I'm a gun owner. I've been a hunter since I was a kid, 12, 13 years old. And I respect the Second Amendment and I will not tamper with the Second Amendment. But I'll tell you this...."

ANOTHER "BUT!" It seems that when it comes to self-defense - as well as national defense - Kerry CANNOT seem to commit himself to any UNEQUIVOCAL USE OF FORCE.

10 - KERRY: "This is a president who hasn't met with the Black Congressional Caucus. This is a president who has not met with the civil rights leadership of our country."

A LIE. Period.

11 - When Scheiffer asked what influence the women in their lives had had on them, Bush was sincere, and sweet - he was visibly moved when talking about Laura. Kerry unintentionally revealed himself to be a crass, ambitious, and untrustworthy man when - IN EFFECT - ALL he said about his second wife, the billionaire Teresa Heinz-Kerry - was that she's rich:

BUSH: … "I guess you would say [about his meeting Laura] it was love at first sight."
SCHIEFFER: Senator Kerry?
KERRY: "Well, I guess the president and you and I are three examples of lucky people who married up. And some would say maybe me moreso than others. But I can take it."

12- SUMMARY:

Kerry is a bad man. Kerry has ALWAYS been a dove - soft on defense, cozy to tyrants: (Ho, Fidel, Ortega, Saddam, Kim), and too much a Europhile - like his father. Kerry is an unrepentent statist and Leftist and a liberal who would expand the state's role in the economy and in our lives, and raise taxes to accomplish this. Kerry'd make a terrible president.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Statues are for Heroes

On a comment thread at POLIPUNDIT, commenter opa-opa made an OUTSTANDING comment.

opa-opa asked who will have a statue erected in their honor in Baghdad, Kerry or Bush?

I suggest that we might ask the same with regard to Afghanistan.

A Kerry statue in Iraq or Afghanistan is ABSOLUTELY impossible to imagine.

A Kerry statue in HANOI, (or one in Canada which ALSO glorifies Vietnam draft-dodgers, or one in Havana, or one in France or one in Fallujah would be much more fitting.

TONIGHT: LET THERE BE LIGHT- the same light!

At debate #1 Bush's podium had hotter white spots on it than Kerry's.

HOW DO I KNOW?

Because I reviewed a rebroadcast of it and noticed that when the candidates shook hands in the center of the proscenium they had the same skin color. BUT, when they took their places at their podiums, Kerry's skin color stayed the same, and Bush's looked whiter/paler. This could ONLY happen if the lighting was different. This "dirty trick" - putting harsher lights on Bush - made Bush look more tired than Kerry. This dirty trick made Bush look pale, and Bush's paleness hurt him as much as Nixon's five o'clock shadow hurt him.

At debate #2, this dirty trick wasn't attempted - probably because the candidates roamed the proscenium.

If you watch the debate tonight, take a look, and see if they try the dirty trick again.


Kerry, the DNC, and their 527's OUTSPEND Bush & Co.!

From Fox News:

"Last week, Bush and his party spent about $15 million on advertising, compared with about $17 million for Kerry and his party. The Democrats are slated to spend about the same amount this week; Republicans have bought about $12 million worth of TV and radio airtime for the week.

Since their party conventions, Kerry and the DNC, including the party's independent advertising operation, have spent about $80 million on advertising compared with about $70 million for Bush and the RNC. "


My question: WHY ARE BUSH AND THE GOP BEING OUT-SPENT?!
THIS SHOULD NOT BE!

When you add the MSM's bias to the spending imbalance, then it's a miracle that Bush is leading at all!

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

The Carter Doctrine and Mrs. Teresa Heinz-Kerry

"John will never send a boy or girl in a uniform anywhere in the world because of our need and greed for oil," -


Apparently, she - and her husband and the rest of the loony Left - have forgotten the CARTER DOCTRINE:

The Carter Doctrine was issued in the State of the Union Address on January 23 1980 by President Jimmy Carter. Responding to the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan that had recently taken place, the President stated:

"An attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."

Kerry was opposed to the 1991 Iraq War - when Saddam INVADED KUWAIT and threatened to takeover the Persian Gulf oil supply.

As a result of that invasion - and in order to protect the Persian Gulf from any other threatening invasion - the USA kept 10,000 troops and maintained a state-of-the-art airbase in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Ridding the Kingdom of this airbase and these troops were a MAJOR and oft stated goal of the Jihadoterrorists.

NOW... with Saddam GONE... we HAVE removed the airbase and the troops. And as a result - a direct result of the Iraq War - a major recruiting point for the Jihadoterrorists is GONE.

And the Persian Gulf oil is no longer threatened by Saddam.

But it is threatened by the Mullahs of Iran and the Jihadoterrorists.

If billionaire Mrs. Teresa Heinz-Kerry is correct about her husband, and if John Kerry would not act militarily to protect this ESSENTIAL energy supply - as Carter swore he would do, as GHW Bush DID do, and as GW Bush has done - THEN KERRY IS UNFIT FOR OFFICE.

START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT THEM

I have been pissed off about the way the MSM describes the GWOT for YEARS!

They have routinely called terrorists "militants" for years.

And lately, they call the terrorists trying to take over Iraq "insurgents."

The ongoing "Battle for Iraq" is no more an "insurgency" than the fight the Taliban are putting up in the fringes of Afghanistan are.

The real REVOLUTION is the one the USA started in 1776 - and that one has been ongoing, throughout the world ever since. The only REAL revolution is the march of freedom and self-government.

Currently, the USA - and our stalwart democratic allies - are battling the latest attempts to reinstitute an old form of tyranny: religious tyranny. This war began in 1979 - in IRAN, when the Khomeini crowd took over Iran (as Carter watched, just letting them). Khomeini was not a revolutionary, he was a reactionary and a counter-revolutionary, a tryant who led a Nativist movement to turn back the clock - no: the CALENDAR a thousand years - (a clock that the Shah had advanced, bringing Iran into the modern era).

The Left is fond of calling terrorists "insurgents" and/or "revolutionaries." They still call the overthrow of the Russian Czar a "revolution." BUT the FACT is that communism/Marxism ALWAYS only professed to be substituting the "dictatorship of the aristocracy" for a "DICTATORSHIP of the proletariat." That's what they called it, themselves!

I say: No dictatorship is a good thing. Only by instituting a democracy can the overthrow of one regime be called truly "revolutionary." When one dictatorship is replaced by another, it's merely a regime change brought on by new thugs replacing old ones.

As Bush says, the GWOT will end when all people everywhere are liberated from tyranny, ignorance and the poverty that tryanny and ignorance inevitably bring.

Kerry and the Left think that the Global WAR On Terror will be over when we stop fighting. And that then, terror will lessen to a point where it's merely a tolerable nuisance - like gambling, drug crime and prostitution. (I GUESS KERRY FEELS THAT WAY ABOUT GAMBLING, DRUG CRIME AND PROSTITUTION BECAUSE THERE'RE NO BOOKIES, DEALERS OR HOOKERS HANGING OUT WHERE HE LIVES. BUT HOW WOULD HE LIKE IT IF BOOKIES, DEALERS AND HOOKERS CAMPED OUT IN FRONT OF HIS BEACON HILL ADDRESS!? WOULD HE THINK IT'S JUST A NUISANCE, AND LEARN TO LIVE WITH IT!? I DOUBT IT, VERY MUCH.)

Getting terror down to a "nuisance level" doesn't sound real, or even like "peace" to me; at best that sounds like some sort of "deal with the devil" - and presupposes that we should accept terror as part of any future "equilibrium.

This is the same DEFEATIST attitude that permeated NYC before Giuliani. Rudy got tough on crime and criminals, and instituted a ZERO TOLERANCE for crime (from the squeegee guys and turnstile jumpers to dealers and gangs), and that's how he lowered crime EXPONENTIALLY - thereby SAVING THE CITY!

Had Kerry been mayor of NYC, the city would've probably remained racked with high crime rates; they'd just would've been "tolerated."

Kerry is FLAT OUT wrong about what REAL peace is,
and how REAL peace is achieved.

Peace will NOT come when we stop FIGHTING BACK.

Because the enemy will go on fighting - all over the world - until they achieve their goal: reestablishing the Caliphate, and instituting Wahhabist Sharia.

Peace will only come when we win.
When we DEFEAT THE ENEMY.

Peace is the fruit of VICTORY, not of appeasement or containment.

1942: CHURCHILL OUSTED; CHAMBERLAIN ELECTED

Electing Kerry now - and firing Bush - would be like if the Brits fired Churchill and hired Chamberlain in 1942, while the war was still YEARS from being over.

Kerry fails - as Chamberlain did - to see the gravity or breadth of the threat our enemy poses to us, and Kerry - like Chamberlain - has a lifelong temperamental opposition to the use of military force, and predilection for the VAGARIES of diplomacy.

Had Chamberlain stayed in power - or been returned to power - Britain might have folded, and the NAZI hold on Europe been with us to this day.

If the USA elects Kerry, he will revert to form and unilaterally stand-down (in stages) from the war that we are in: unilaterally halting R&D into the bunker-busting nukes, and unilaterally dealing with North Korea - for starters.

If and when the going in Iraq gets worse, Kerry will most likely revert to form and bail out on the fledgling democracy there - forcing the newly liberated Iraqis to fend for themelves - as he agitated the USA to do with South Vietnam from 1967 (as a student) to 1975, when the SVG fell because the Democrat controlled Congress stopped supporting them financially.

I pray that the electorate of the USA does not put an anti-defense spending dove in the Oval Office while we are at war.

The war will NOT get better if the enemy thinks we are MORE LIKELY to cave in if we are hit hard. Which is EXACTLY what Kerry promises.


Monday, October 11, 2004

Kerry's Anti-terror Policy isn't MYOPIC - IT'S KOOLAIDOSCOPIC!

According to the NY Times Sunday Magazine article, Kerry simultaneously claims that the Iraq War was a diversion from the Global Terror, and claims that there is no "real" war on terror at all - that it should be fought using law enforcement techniques.

If there is really no GWOT, then how can Kerry's charge - that "the Iraq War is a diversion" - hold any water?!
It can't. It doesn't. Kerry's "diversion charge" is a koolaidoscopic contradiction.

Kerry - by implication - MUST buy into the "Michael Moore-ish" corollary: that the GWOT is merely the means that the Bush Administration uses to create the climate of fear necessary to wage an "endless war" (the Left's term for it) which does nothing but enrich the friends of Bush (like Halliburton, according to Moore's acolytes). That's why they say the current counter-offensive is bad and wrong; in a way, Kerry would have us fight the Jihadoterrorists with Eliot Ness instead of George Patton.

Kerry wants to use the military as police to capture terrorists - after the fact/after they attack - and then only up to a point where the level of terrorism became a "mere nuisance", something we could learn to live with.

This obviously proves that Cheney was EXACTLY RIGHT when he said that after the next attack - (and there will likely be one, some time that succeeds) - and if that attack occurs during a Kerry administration, that they will respond as previous administrations responded, and in effect the US policy will be going BACKWARD.

I think Kerry is wrong on ALL COUNTS: we are at war; we MUST stay on the counter-offensive and use our military power to preemptively destroy the terrorists - ELIMINATING them and their terror.

It is a war the Jihadoterrorists declared long ago - LONG BEFORE 9/11.
It is war which we are counter-attacking only since and because of 9/11.

The Jihadoterrorists are not attacking us because of Bush, or Iraq, or our support for Israel - or because of so-called USA hegemony. They attack us because we are the nation they must destroy if they are to achieve their overall objective: reestablishing the Caliphate under Wahhabbist Sharia.

Need proof?

When the Jihadoterrorists destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan, they were NOT attacking the USA or Bush.
When the Jihadoterrorists throw bombs in Shia mosques in Pakistan they aren't attacking the USA or Bush.
When the Jihadoterrorists attack a school in Beslan they are not attacking the USA or Bush.
When they set fire to a train full of Hindu pilgrims they are not attacking the USA or Bush.

I could go on.

But I will only add this point: while listening to a news report about the recent Taba bombings I was struck by the UTTER ludicrousness of the debate about who perpetrated the attack - was it Hamas, or Hezbollah, or alQaeda - or whomever.

To me, these groups - and Tawid and JI, and the Chechens, and the Kashmiris, and the rest - are all the SAME ENEMY; they are divisions on the SAME ARMY. Debating which one is responsible for which attack is pointless - like debating whether an attack was perpetrated by the 1st Army or the 2nd; the 3rd Division or the 4th. They are just different divisions of the same enemy. An enemy we must defeat.

In a global war they declared.


Kerry doesn't get that, at all.

And you know what makes it even more absurd?

Kerry would have us fight the Global War on Terror as if it were the War on Drugs - as if that the War on Drugs was successful!

As the ginormous amounts of illegal drugs, drug use and drug crime in the USA PROVES: the War on Drugs is an abject failure.

And, Kerry's "War on Criminoterrorists" would be an abject failure, too.

And that would mean that we'd have to expect more Jihadoterrorism. and that'll always be much worse than a mere nuisance.