This One's for YOU, Terry
Mood:  happy
I'm thinking right now of DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe's recent outburst of giddiness at the prospect of pitting his man with the "chest full of medals" against the President (a man who served his country by training to fly fighter aircraft in the Air National Guard and was honorably discharged for it ---or, have I mentioned that already?). You see, McAuliffe thinks that John Kerry's war record is enough to trump a mere veteran of the stateside Guard and that this comparison, in itself, is somehow supposed to undermine the President.

But, why would McAuliffe think that? There's two reasons. One, he is misinformed as to the record of the President's service. McAuliffe, like other atrophied sphincter muscles in the Democratic Party and the mainstream media, thought that they could make some hay out of Bush's extended absences from the Guard and the preferential treatment he received. They thought this would reflect poorly on Bush, relative to Kerry. And, so far, they've been right. But, this is only because the anti-Bush leaders rely on the ignorance of their supporters. They only bring up what they can portray as negative aspects of Bush's service, believing that this will obscure the fact that the President served bravely. Once all available information is out there, this bunch of chickenshittedness will only expose its propagators (at least to the fair-minded) for the operators they are.

The second reason McAuliffe thinks that this dream match-up is a winner is because it is in his nature as a hypocrite to think so. Here's a man who never served in uniform, but who cynically uses the record of men who did to further his own agenda. Here's a man who slanders the President by harping on what he wrongly sees as deficiencies in his (the President's) character, but who never said a word about Bill Clinton, a shameless draft-dodger.

Well, this one's for you, Terry: you want to question a man's character for your own gain? Turns out that you might just have another bimbo eruption on your hands. Enjoy your weekend, you lousy insinuator. And stand by for news.

Friday Morning
Back in 1992, John Kerry was saying he didn't think that the issue of military service during the Viet Nam era was something to be used against a candidate for the Presidency. Whether this sentiment was expressed in defense of the self-admitted draft-dodger Bill Clinton in his race against a man who bravely served his country in the Second World War I don't know. But for Kerry and those who do his dirty work to now change the standard is just the worst sort of hypocrisy. There is no contradicting this. If military service wasn't an issue 12 years ago, why should it be one now?

Retired Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska (a man who lost an arm in that war) said this morning that the President served his country honorably. Any fair-minded person should agree with that. Do those who call the President a shirker have no conscience? Do they have any reckoning of what a dangerous job it is to fly combat aircraft?

The fact (and I think it is one) that GWB was benefited by his connections in getting his placement in the Air National Guard doesn't change any of the other facts of his service. He was honorably discharged after spending years in training and administrative duties. He didn't run a game on his country's military like his predecessor; he stood and delivered.

During the Civil War, young men of means were allowed to pay a substitute several hundred dollars to go and serve in their place. Naturally, those who were poor didn't have that luxury. Can we even conceive of such an outrageously unfair and classist arrangement today? Talk about dodging the draft!

Yet, during the Viet Nam War, the young George W. Bush didn't pull strings or use his connections to avoid the military; he pulled and used them to get into the military. We can be proud of him for that. Let detractors like the rectal thermometer Terry McAuliffe make their comparisons between him and his soon-to-be opponent. Real Americans aren't going to play along.

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday to Charles and Abraham
Mood:  celebratory
Today is the 195th birthday of both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. I've always thought it was a tidy turn that two of the 19th Century's most important figures were born on the very same day.

Long live the English-speaking peoples!

"Black Propaganda"
Mood:  d'oh
I find it very interesting that Jane Fonda would call media efforts to link her to John Kerry "black propaganda." What ever could she mean? Does she deny knowing him from their days in the anti-Viet Nam War movement? She can't do that because that would be a lie. Of course they knew each other. So, why would Kerry's opponents be wrong in saying that they were at least acquainted? Does Fonda have something to be ashamed of? I thought that she and Kerry both were proud of their protests. After all, the Leftist Senator began his political career by calling his fellow veterans drug addicts and murderers ---and she began hers by being a Viet Cong starfucker--- so what's the problem? If our involvement in Viet Nam was so shameful, then why should either of them run from their association?

You want to dredge up that war, Senator Gigolo? Sounds good to me. You think that photo the media keep running of you and Hanoi Jane at an anti-war protest is the only one out there? Think again. Keep encouraging your little minions to slag the President like the goddamned hypocrites they are and it's gonna be a whole year of night terrors and cold sweat.

Powell Cleans a Loser's Clock
Mood:  happy
During the Secretary of State's testimony before a Congressional committee today, some wanker from Ohio (Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown) decided to take it upon himself to insinuate that the President was AWOL from his National Guard duties. Colin Powell then put him in his place, basically saying that he wouldn't dignify Brown's remarks with much more of a response than to say that he didn't know what he was talking about. Fantastic.

Slanderers like the anti-American truck-stop toilet Michael Moore and this chump from Ohio ought to shut their fucking mouths. Would they like to tell the families of National Guardsmen who are in Iraq tonight that their sons' and daughters' military service isn't legitimate? Even John Kerry suggested that those of his generation who went into the Guard were only trying to avoid service in Viet Nam. That may be, but the truth is that even National Guard units were called up and, despite the fact that Bush did not wish to go into the war, he would have been obligated to had it been necessary. Is he to blame because it was not? Is he to fairly be accused of dodging his duties when he trained for years as a fighter pilot? It's just wrong.

Guardsmen aren't cowards, then or now. They serve a vital role in our nation's defense. It's also true that they simultaneously pursue civilian lives of work and school and family-raising. George W. Bush worked hard to both serve his country in this way and to pursue his own ambitions in education and business. The National Guard knows this about its reservists and works to accomodate them, as is reasonable. The Guard did this for the future President, too, and it's nothing wrong or even suspect.

People need to lay off of this issue. It's a disgrace.

Over and Out
Here's a long and detailed letter from a man who served with the President in the Air National Guard. Of course, asshole liberals will ignore it, but that's because they're too busy servicing each other.

The Foundation of My Political Philosophy
Many years ago, I formulated the foundation of my political philosophy with the maxim that any action which humanely or justly reduces or restricts the number of people in the world is a benefit worth pursuing. This is why I absolutely support the rights of individuals to abortion, contraception, and euthanasia, and the rights of society to execute the irredeemable and to prosecute war against the unjust. The truth is that there are too many people in the world and, in particular, too many of the wrong kind of people.

You may see this as a kind of nihilism, but I see it as a way to human dignity. Who can deny the devastations of overpopulation in the places we live and wish to preserve? In the middle of the last century, there were fewer than 150 million people living in the United States; now, there are almost 300 million. The curve in the growth of the world's population is almost vertical. How can this not affect the dynamics of urban life where people are practically living on top of each other and exhausting the infrastructure of their communities?

In cultures where women have no real reproductive rights, or where those rights are subject to negative religious influence, poverty and disease and abject ignorance condemn all of their members to animal competition for scarce resources. Where is the dignity in that? Politicians, like the Pope and the leaders of fundamentalism, who say that life is unconditionally precious and must be allowed to multiply are, in fact, ideologues of death and despair. The fetishes that the Right makes of the unborn and the Left makes of the disease-ridden are the worst kind of misapprehension of what constitutes human dignity and value.

The Earth is a vast cradle of life expressed in countless beautiful forms, but it is a fragile and finite place, too. That is why we must turn more and more to Science to solve our problems, by which we have always advanced ourselves (Homo sapiens being a self-made animal.) Still, Nature will have its way with us, whether we wish it or not. Why must we force her hand when we potentially have the wisdom to stay it? She will not suffer fools gladly or tolerate any other gods before her. Count on that.

Kosovo Clark ist Kaput
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: theme from The Love Boat
Now that Clark is dropping out of a race he had no business ever being in, I wonder if he'll still have to answer questions about his "steam-of-consciousness" statements that the Clinton White House pressured him into wrapping up the war in Kosovo to benefit the notorious traitor Al Gore in his 2000 presidential bid. What a bunch of buttloaves.

The Democratic Party ought to be ashamed of itself for allowing posers like Clark to run under its banner. The guy is an ill-informed egotist who was simply using the party to advance himself. He was just making shit up as he went. And the Dims only countenanced him because they thought that any man on horseback who would pander to them would somehow undermine Bush, the notorious draft-dodger, on the issue of the war.

Well, they still have that in mind with Kerry, whom Clark (importantly) outranked. Who knew that the Viet Nam War would still be helping the Dumbocrats show how tough they are militarily? What, is it 1964 again already?

What There's No Contradicting
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: the bridge from "Ashes to Ashes" by David Bowie
There can really be no contradicting the fact that the greatest thing on television (besides The Simpsons when it's good) is C-SPAN's weekly coverage of Prime Minister's Questions from the British House of Commons. I wish we had something like that over here. Every week, the Prime Minister has to stand tall before the House and respond to his "right honorable friends" and other ladies and gentlemen. I have almost no understanding of probably a full third of what the MP's are beefing about, but it doesn't matter; I am compelled to razz whoever's speaking right along with them. And they're not shy about giving each other the business. It's a complete joy to watch someone like Tony Blair take it and give it right back. Thatcher and even Major were very good at that sort of thing, too. Keeps 'em honest. And keeps me in stitches. All hail Britannia.

Hypocrites
John Kerry voted for the war in Iraq. Why did he? Was he trying to get on the right side of History this time, having voted against the resolution taking us into the Gulf War? If his vote for the war in Iraq was motivated only by politics, as was his vote against the $87 billion funding package that is helping to preserve the victory there our soldiers sacrificed their lives for, then where are his principles? If Dean's supporters, who are adamantly anti-war, now turn to Kerry, where are their principles?

Kerry's answer will be that he was duped into supporting the war by faulty intelligence about the existence of WMD. But, didn't he see the exact same evidence that the President saw? If the entirety of the rationale for going to war was to keep Saddam from using those weapons, and both men were duped, then how can Kerry claim that the President's justification was different from his? The truth is that he cannot. The truth is that Kerry voted for the war because he knows that the majority of the American people support it. Therefore, his opposition now is a political contrivance aimed at attracting Leftists to his side.

Is there any reason to believe that the French or the Germans would have come into the war with troops to support us? Of course not. Chiraq and his obstructionist little friend Villepin and Schroeder and his commie-terrorist foreign minister Fischer were never going to help us militarily. Never. They were too busy capitalizing on anti-American sentiment to bolster their own domestic situations. Was Kerry expecting them or NATO or the UN to help? If he was, and were he in the Oval Office, we would still be waiting to remove Saddam and the Ba'athists.

Kerry and the liberals are big on multilateralism (i.e., waiting on cowards and losers to try "diplomacy" one more time), but there's no evidence that such an approach would have worked or is going to work any time soon. And time is what we don't have. And hopeful expectations are what we can't have.

Diplomacy only works after some ass gets kicked. That's one of the biggest open secrets of human History. The UN is shit without American might. Kofi Annan and the tin pot dictatorships and banana republics and overpopulated basket cases he represents would never admit that, but it's true. The anti-war Left needs to accept the fact that our country (with the help of our true allies) is the only reliable force for good in the world. They should shut up, honor our troops for their commitment and sacrifices, and do more to promote the ideals for which our country is known.

Al Gore Is a Sack of Shit
Mood:  on fire
Al Gore's remarks yesterday in Tennessee about how the President "betrayed this country" by taking us into the war in Iraq are just more evidence of his instability and irrelevance. What a loser he is! Yeah, he knows a lot about betraying people; just ask his former running mate from 2000.

Gore is a phony fuck, with his faux-Tennessean accent and his contrived oratorical passion. He's never going to recover from losing the election of 2000 and he's determined to go down in History as an embittered failure. And, so, he embraces others who are just as angry and frustrated as him. He feeds on their paranoiac ignorance with accusations that the President was planning 11 September while running for office.

We can be grateful that the voters of his own state denied Gore the Presidency. It was never Florida, see; it was Tennessee. If the people who supposedly know you best won't even consent to your leadership, what business do you have becoming President?

Had Gore been in charge on 11 September 2001, his first move would probably have been to dispatch some EPA inspectors to Manhattan to do an environmental impact study on asbestos particulates in the air.

You're finished, Gore, and so is the angry little twitch you endorsed.

Of Decidedly Un-Aryan Stock
Mood:  mischievious

Review
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: "Bouree" by Jethro Tull
I saw most of Tim Russert's interview with the President in the Oval Office and I don't think it came off very well. Which points up GWB's greatest weakness as a politician: ineloquence. This isn't the same as being unintelligent or uninformed, as his critics wrongly claim; after all, the man graduated from some of the finest schools in the world and has served as a state governor and President. Plus, I'll bet you anything that the stuff he reads and the conversations he has are a hell of a lot more interesting than anything us common folk get a crack at.

But, this doesn't change the fact that he usually doesn't do well with unscripted public interviews. He's a regurgitator and people are correct to hold that against him. Americans want their President to be slicker than owl shit when he comes before a camera and Bush just doesn't have it. Of course, when we did have that, in his predecessor, what we got was a shameless opportunist and a moral coward. In fact, Clinton was so good at persuading the public of his agenda that whole segments of this country still think he was some sort of miracle-worker.

Anyway, Bush is going to need to get serious about his message because he is losing the PR war with every passing hour. But, at least he's no John Kerry, who can put a playground full of kindergarteners to sleep inside a minute.

Oh, and have you heard that Kerry served in Viet Nam? Someone mentioned that to me at lunch today, but I didn't believe it until I did a little poking around.

"It was [forty] years ago today..."
Mood:  happy
Isn't that something? The Beatles first arrived in America 40 years ago today. I was just getting started in this world at the time that the lads from Liverpool were breaking up, but I have loved their music for as long as I can remember. They're the alpha and omega of pop/rock music and, although they had plenty of antecedents, they had no precedent. Sinatra and Presley fans might quibble with that, but no rock n' roll band, let's say, ever had ---or ever will again have--- the impact and influence of The Beatles.

But, really, The Beatles' accomplishment stands alone. Consider their style and sound as we Americans first saw them in 1964. Only six years later ---six!--- they had reinvented the wheel. Their music had progressed so far and exerted such influence that each album was practically a matter of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny in procession. I am fond of saying that there are certain songs on the White Album which were the geneses of whole sub-genres of pop-rock. I don't know if that's true, but I think it is and it's sounds cool anyway.

So, here's to The Beatles!

The Greatest Interplanetary Brushing Yet
Mood:  caffeinated
NASA kicks ass. That's all it does.

The Passion of the Publicity
Here's an interesting opinion piece by scholar Paula Fredriksen on the potential for an anti-Semitic reaction to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which comes out in theaters later this month.

I plan on seeing this movie, if only to find out what the big fuss is all about. But, I don't think Christians and Muslims who are already Jew-haters are going to need any further inspiration for their disease. Fredriksen (who is a hot babe, by the way) thinks that this movie might well inflame violence against Jews, especially in Europe. I doubt that, but who can say now? If it does, I will be very interested to see how Gibson responds, as he and his studio and distributors have done a once-or-twice-in-a-decade job of promoting this thing by pulling every rabbit there is out of the hat of cultural controversy. Will he denounce the violence and tell us some of his best friends are Jews? He somewhat condescendingly said the other day that he "prays for them," which I took to mean that he prays for their conversion, but maybe I'm just being perceptive.

You've got everyone from The Potato to Abe Foxman in a tizzy over this movie. It better be worth it.

Where Are You, Tim?
Mood:  quizzical
My old friend Tim Covey turned 36 yesterday, but I couldn't find him anywhere online. We don't keep in touch anymore, but I usually call or drop him a line on his birthday. It's an easy date to remember because it's also Ronald Reagan's birthday, which Tim wouldn't care to be associated with, to be sure, but they're both a couple of good Irish-American boys.

Tim has a special gift for storytelling. He's a quiet man, but he has an enormous store of interesting facts and ideas which come out of him with stealth. In fact, he lulls you into thinking that what he's telling you is maybe a little boring or rambling ---but then you start to realize that it's the best fucking story ever! It's like being told the secret of the Universe as recited through the words in a phone book. I don't know how many times he caught me off guard with one of his tales that I would only catch the significance of about a minute after he had finished. It's a true gift.

Anyway, Tim, wherever you are, I hope you're doing fine. Let me know.

Sounds Like a Plan
Mood:  don't ask
That filthy animal who kidnapped and murdered the 11 year-old girl out in Florida needs to have all of the bones in his feet and hands pulverized in a hydraulic press. Then, he needs to have several long incisions made all over his body until he's lost most of his blood. But, just before he passes out, they should force Clorox down his throat so that he will vomit up his guts. If he's still alive, they should just go ahead and douse him in gasoline and throw a match on him.

Vermin like him who have a long history of drug abuse and violence aren't worth saving. If we would simply put such burdens on society to sleep when they are still behind bars, parents wouldn't have to cry themselves to sleep, worrying for the lives of their missing and brutalized children.

Nickel slugs and landfills, jackson. That's the answer. Those who oppose the death penalty are no better than those who rape and murder our children. There's no contradicting that.

Here Comes Old Flat-Top
Mood:  on fire
Now Playing: "Come Together" by the Beatles
David Frum says that GWB is going to give his endorsement of a Constitutional Amendment which will define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, thereby precluding the very Constitutionality of gay marriage. This would clearly be the stupidest goddamned thing done to our Constitution since the Volstead Amendment. Why are "marital traditionalists" pushing for this? Because God told them to, that's why! God, of course, has no problem with loveless or abusive or dysfunctional marriages or with the near-50 percent divorce rate; He just doesn't want fags making a commitment to each other.

All you have to do is ask one of these tools why they're opposed to gay marriage and they will either have no reason or one that is religious. And, since this country is as secular as it wants to be, there really shouldn't be an Amendment based on a fundamentalist notion of how men and women commit themselves to each other.

You know what this is all about, right? The traditionalists don't want to recognize the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution in regards to marriage. They know that if gay marriage has judicial sanction in Massachusetts, it will have to have it in any state.

This is wrong. But it's safe for Bush and the Christian Right because not even John Kerry has the balls to advocate gay marriage. None of the Democratic candidates for President do. And, when the gay lobby realizes this, they will hold it against the Democrats and it will depress turn-out for them.