The Creepy Broad's Early Years
This is a useful article on Teresa Heinz' early life.

She must not become America's First Lady.

Time to Shitcan Norm Mineta
Michelle Malkin (who, not incidentally, is completely delicious) is also right: Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta should have been fired years ago.

After 19 Islamist foreign hijackers murdered 3,000 people on American soil, Mineta quickly declared that any profiling taking into account race, ethnicity, religion or nationality would be forbidden in airport security. When 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Croft asked Mineta whether he could envision any circumstance where it would make sense to use racial and ethnic profiling, he responded, "Absolutely not."

Of course, this is a stupid prohibition. It isn't that we don't know who the enemy is, it's just that we are too sensitive (i.e., cowed, whipped, correct, etc.) a society to single out the people most likely to be troublemakers and murderers and give them a good going over.

As readers of Malkin's blog know, this issue of racial profiling has been a major one with her for some time now. She even has a book out right now on this (In Defense of Internment), the thesis of which is predicated upon the example of the internment of Japanese-Americans by the Roosevelt Administration during the Second World War. Is there any doubt, in our present context, that Americans would want far greater control over our foreign-born Muslim population were another event like the atrocities of 11 September 2001 to recur?

Mineta, like most Americans, has been brainwashed into believing that the decision to evacuate the West Coast and relocate ethnic Japanese to the interior of the country was motivated solely by racism and wartime hysteria -- rather than bona fide national security concerns.

This myth has served as personal catharsis for many. But in a post-9/ 11 world, we can no longer afford the abuse of history as multicultural group therapy.

The long-hidden truth is that the internment of Japanese, German, Italian and other European enemy aliens, and the mass evacuation and relocation of ethnic Japanese from the West Coast, were not the result of irrational hatred or conspiratorial bigotry. In fact, President Roosevelt's homeland security policies were firmly justified based on the exigencies and intelligence of the time.

This is the sort of story-telling I enjoy best: re-examinations of major moments in History with an explicit ideological purpose. In theory, one can reach a higher understanding of the past and its influence on the present this way, but we also know that it can be abused if its target audience is too ignorant to know what the other facts are. This is especially so when it gets a Golden Palm or the enthusiastic approval of the leaders of the Democratic Party.

Retardo al-Sadr
Here's what our man Hammorabi has to say about the mullahs' stooge in Iraq (emphases added):

Muqtada Sadr is a good choice for Iran because he is a semi-illiterate man with unstable mentality and suffers from epilepsy. They also used the name of his family and his black turban to attract the uneducated people to fight for him (for Iran). Iran succeeded to some extent to transfer its war with the US from its land into Iraq and by the time decided by them and not the US! The Iranian involvement in Iraq became so obvious that no fool may deny it at all. It is like the sun in the mid of the day!

Heh, heh. This guy's great. Check him out.

Iran's "Alleged" Nuclear Weapons Program
Mood:  don't ask
The Guardian is worried that the United States might start some trouble with Iran, after all the wonderful efforts made by the Appeasers of Greater Eurabia:

The Bush administration is piling on the pressure over Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme. It maintains Tehran's decision to resume building uranium centrifuges wrecked a long-running EU-led dialogue and is proof of bad faith.

Ahh. Who knew that our problems with Iran and, indeed, the rest of the crazy-assed Muslim world, were epistemological? How do we know that we know Iran has a nuclear weapons program ---and not just an "alleged" one? Because they've told us so (emphases added):

Iran said yesterday that it had restarted the building of uranium enrichment centrifuges which the United States says are part of a bid to develop an atomic bomb.

American officials claim that Iran intends to enrich weapons-grade uranium, but Tehran insists it only wants to develop its ability to produce electricity. 'We have started building centrifuges,' said Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi in a press conference.

Right. One of the most oil-rich countries on Earth wants to develop nuclear-based sources of electricity. How cutting edge. It's only a guess, but I think Iran actually wants to build nuclear weapons so that they can kill Americans. Oh, and maybe some Jews:

Rafsanjani [Former Iranian president and "Expediency Council" Chairman] said that Muslims must surround colonialism and force them [the colonialists] to see whether Israel is beneficial to them or not. If one day, he said, the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel's possession [meaning nuclear weapons] - on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end. This, he said, is because the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.

No American should want to live in a world where Iran or any other Islamofascist state has possession of nuclear weapons. That's because these seekers of martyrdom and paradise are dangerous to the Earthly hopes of Mankind. They are inherently intolerable to human civilization. This is a notable irony because much of what we owe to the ancient world and the aesthetic beauty of circum-Mediterranean culture was preserved for and extended to us by Islam. And now its modern-day practitioners wish to drag us all down into a new dark age? Fuuuuck that. I got a better idea: let's kill rats like Sadr and Zarqawi and the Original Gangsters back in Afghanistan and see if that's enough of a condemnation of the mullah's homicidalism.

"This Vanity Candidacy"
Mark Steyn, at his rip-roaring best:

If you wanted to pick a candidate on the wrong side of every major defense and foreign policy question of the last two decades, you would be hard put to find anyone with judgment as comprehensively poor as Mr. Kerry: total up his votes and statements on everything from Grenada to the Gulf war, Saddam to the Sandinistas, the Cold War to missile defense to every major weapons system of the 1980s and '90s. He called them all wrong.

Damn. Read the whole thing.

The Internationalist
In today's USA Today, John Kerry releases more of his usual talking points, claiming that he has some great plans in mind for Iraq. They are:

Lead NATO to make the security of Iraq one of its global missions and to deploy a significant portion of the force needed to secure and win the peace there. NATO participation will open the door to greater international involvement from non-NATO countries.

"Lead" NATO, eh? Now, why didn't Bush think of that? Turns out, Senator, those members of NATO who wish to be involved are, and those that don't aren't. How is "leading" the uninvolved going to change that? Did you mean to use the word bribe, instead? And how will NATO's involvement "open the door" to non-NATO involvement? Will the presence of some French mess hall police persuade the Jordanians to go patrol Fallujah? And does the Iraqi government have a say in who gets involved?

Internationalize the reconstruction efforts in Iraq to end the continuing perception of a U.S. occupation and help coordinate the rebuilding.

Translation: let the French rebuild Osirak.

Launch a massive and accelerated training effort to build Iraqi security forces that can provide real security for the Iraqi people, including a major role for NATO. This is not a task for America alone; we must join as a partner with other nations.

Haven't you been paying attention to Chiraq, mon ami? He refuses to do any such thing. He won't permit any French troops to be used in training any Iraqi police forces, unless it's some PT drills on the Riviera. You know, putting your hands up and waving white flags can really give you a good workout.

Plan for Iraq's future by working with our allies to forgive Iraq's multibillion-dollar debt and involve our allies in the development of a new Iraqi constitution and the political arrangements needed to protect minority rights. At the same time, we should convene a regional conference with Iraq's neighbors to secure a pledge of respect for Iraq's borders and non-interference in Iraq's national affairs.

Pure garbage. The only card Kerry can play is the bribery card. If Russia, France, and Germany forgive any debts, they're gonna want some substantial opportunities to make their money back. Therefore, Kerry is talking major contracts for the same people who were making money off of the oil-for-food scheme that the UN was running before. What nonsense!

And why is Kerry tying debt-forgiveness to outside participation in the constitutional affairs of the Iraqi people? The countries that are owed the most never had any interest in the Iraqi peoples' civil and sovereign rights before ---as they were aiding the Saddamites in pursuing total power--- so why does Kerry think these nations are in any way qualified to have a say in those rights now? Once again, Kerry thinks that the ultimate solution to any problem is the consensus of nations that have no moral authority anyway.

This is not an instant solution. There isn't one. But it's a realistic plan to share the burden and secure the peace and bring our troops home.

Gibberish. Kerry has said nothing, which is only consistent with what he's said before ---except on those points where he has managed to speak from both sides of each. That would be all of them, depending on who he's speaking to at the time.

Duncan Black Is a Hypocrite
Earlier in the thread at Eschaton that I was contributing to, I wrote the following:



Duncan Black decided to put his wit to work and came up with this:



And after that he bans me? What the hell? He allows people to physically threaten me for mere words and won't even allow me to defend myself? It isn't right.

How Can I Respond To This?
This is what Duncan Black allows and encourages at his site, while banning people who disagree with him. Is Duncan Black a chickenshit hypocrite? You be the judge.

Oh, I Know What It Was
Maybe this is what got Black pissed at me:



But it's true. Kerry did do that. See my post of 15 July 2004 called "Keep Hoax Alive".

I Have Been Banned from Eschaton
The proprietor of the Leftist blog Eschaton has banned me from his comments section. I'm not sure why Duncan Black chose this particular moment to ban me because I have been a frequent commenter there for several weeks and have said far "worse" things than I did tonight. But it may be that the Left are getting worried about the burden they bear from Michael Moore's lies and the growing perception that John Kerry's war record is coming back to haunt him.

Or was my mention just then of Joe Wilson's lies about Iraq's pursuit of yellowcake enough for Black to ban me? I can't imagine that. I would like to imagine that I was banned because I am not the troll that they would wish for, which is an easily pissed-upon bomb-thrower, but someone who knows his facts and is getting angry about the Big Lie that the Kerrion are pushing.

As I say, John Kerry may very well be elected President this November, but it will only be because the Left are liars and hypocrites. They are unprincipled isolationists who do not know what our role in the world should and must be. They are almost criminally inconsistent and ill-informed about our foreign policy and the nature of our alliances. Kerry's victory would be a victory for Islamofascism. There is no question about that.

So enjoy your little echo chamber, Duncan: you may very well be the first ostrich to stick your head up your own ass to drown out the sound of the cowardly and deceitful gibberish in your little pen.

Not Being There
That does it! Tom Maguire's JustOneMinute must now be blogrolled. He and several other troublemakers are now asking what Kerry meant when he said the following on the floor of the United States Senate in 1986:

Mr. President, I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the President of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia.

I have that memory which is seared-seared-in me, that says to me, before we send another generation into harm's way we have a responsibility in the U.S. Senate to go the last step, to make the best effort possible in order to avoid that kind of conflict.

Kerry, of course, wasn't anywhere near Cambodia. So why was he lying about such a thing?

That's got to be worse than Gore remembering being rocked to sleep as a little boy to the sounds of the "Look For the Union Label" jingle ---of the 1970s.

Go check this stuff out. The nutjobs on the Left and Big Media don't want to tell you that these Swift Boat Veterans for Truth may just actually be telling you, uh, the truth.

Boghopper
Now Playing: "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" by Queen
I'm catching the last half of Tim Russert's CNBC program with Paul Krugman and Bill O'Reilly just now and I'm noticing that O'Reilly has a really thin skin. Ever noticed that before? It's that grudge-carrying mick hotheadedness. Of course, next to Sean Hannity, O'Reilly is Bertrand Fucking Russell.

You gotta be cool, Bill. That commie dwarf is getting under your skin.

Thinking Out Loud: Did Kerry Meet with the Communists in 1970 and 1971?
I'm still trying to piece this stuff together, but it looks like John Kerry was a freelance negotiator with the Viet Cong and the Government of North Viet Nam. How did that work? Was he some sort of spy or traitor or what?

In his opening remarks to Senator Fulbright in the famous hearing of 22 April 1971, Kerry said the following (emphases added):

My feeling, Senator, is undoubtedly this Congress, and I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but I do not believe that this Congress will, in fact, end the war as we would like to, which is immediately and unilaterally and, therefore, if I were to speak I would say we would set a date and the date obviously would be the earliest possible date. But I would like to say, in answering that, that I do not believe it is necessary to stall any longer. I have been to Paris. I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government and of all eight of Madam Binh's points it has been stated time and time again, and was stated by Senator Vance Hartke when he returned from Paris, and it has been stated by many other officials of this Government, if the United States were to set a date for withdrawal the prisoners of war would be returned.

I think this negates very clearly the argument of the President that we have to maintain a presence in Vietnam, to use as a negotiating block for the return of those prisoners. The setting of a date will accomplish that.

And check out this article at WinterSoldier.com by Jerome Corsi, co-author (with John O'Neill) of the new book Unfit to Command. Looks like Kerry was making deals with the Communists:

On June 16, 1971, the communist Daily World newspaper quoted Kerry as planning a month-long trip to South Vietnam in July to report on "what is really happening" to the American soldiers over there. Newly released FBI files on the VVAW also report that John Kerry made a second trip to Paris in the summer of 1971 to meet again with the Vietnamese communist peace delegations and try to arrange a prisoner release.

Like I say, I'm still trying to figure all of this out. It doesn't matter whether I am spreading lies and slanders because that's now been shown to be an irrelevancy this year. What matters is how well I can malign the character of a man who served his country in uniform.

That is, if it happens to Bush, it can happen to Kerry, right?

Get Some!
There has been no terrorist attack on us domestically in almost three years. To what can we attribute that? Pure luck? In some cases, probably so. But we can also credit our own vigilance and that of the Government at every level.

And you can bet your anti-war asses that our men and women in Afghanistan and Iraq are keeping those psychopaths down on the farm. In just the past 72 hours, we have exterminated at least 300 of Sadr's rats ---many of whom are surely al-Qaedists, Iranians, and other foreigners looking to kill Americans. Better they try and die over there than succeed over here.

The question, then, is why can't the anti-war Left get it through their heads that we are safer because of the proactive course that President Bush has taken? The Islamofascists are on the run and hiding out from us because we have taken the fight to them. And our brave men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan have drawn these filthy bastards out of their holes and killed many thousands of them in the past three years.

The denial of these correlations by the anti-war Left reminds me of Peter Jennings' idiotic observation earlier this year that, although our crime rates are dropping, more and more Americans are getting locked up. Well, duh.

Summer of 1971: John Kerry Meets with the VC Outside of Paris
Around June 1971, while still an officer in the United States Navy, John Kerry met privately with Madame Binh, the Viet Cong's representative at the Paris Peace talks. Why would this have even been allowed? Kerry's campaign admits it happened, but he owes my generation an explanation. Maybe we just don't understand how that's not treason.

He's a War Hero, So Let Him Prove It
Be sure to check out this link-filled post over at JustOneMinute.com about John Kerry's war record.

Sure, maybe it's chickenshit and maybe it's not, but the important thing to remember is that George Bush was a deserter who received an honorable discharge. Why, that makes sense!

A Machine Gunner's Account of the Scariest Day of His Life
Mood:  special
As Greyhawk over at The Mudville Gazette says, you won't read anything else like this all day long.

What can a civilian say? Just get some, friend. I am in awe of what you went through. Thank you.

Cigar Store Indian
Here's something to chew on: yesterday, Kerry said that he would have excused himself immediately had he been in George W. Bush's chair there in that classroom when word came that we were under attack on 11 September 2001. And, of course, his audience approved. (See, those seven minutes the President wasted would have made all the difference in the world.)

But where was John Kerry that morning? As we learn from RedState.org, he was unable to think:

"...And as I came in [to a meeting in Sen. Daschle's office], Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid were standing there, and we watched the second plane come in to the building. And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think, and then boom, right behind us, we saw the cloud of explosion at the Pentagon..."

Senator, if you're going to chew on the America-hater Michael Moore's chocolate, I'm not going to listen to your chickenshit anymore, okay?

UPDATE: Mayor Giuliani thinks Kerry is a Moore-on, too:

"John Kerry must be frustrated in his campaign if he is armchair quarterbacking based on cues from Michael Moore." Mr. Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" chides the president for remaining with the students instead of leaving immediately upon hearing of the second attack.

Was Kerry a War Criminal?
A reader of this blog suggests a rather scurrilous article at CounterPunch.org that details John Kerry's combat actions. I don't know how much of it is true, but does that even matter much anymore? As I say, this election is all about emotions and impressions. Whichever side's propaganda machine is the most effective is going to get the prize, so have at it:

A former assistant secretary of defense and Fletcher School of Diplomacy professor, W. Scott Thompson, recalled a conversation with the late Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. that clearly had a slightly different take on Kerry's recollection of their discussions: "[T]he fabled and distinguished chief of naval operations,Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, told me --30 years ago when he was still CNO [chief naval officer in Vietnam] that during his own command of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam, just prior to his anointment as CNO, young Kerry had created great problems for him and the other top brass, by killing so many non-combatant civilians and going after other non-military targets. "We had virtually to straitjacket him to keep him under control," the admiral said. "Bud" Zumwalt got it right when he assessed Kerry as having large ambitions --but promised that his career in Vietnam would haunt him if he were ever on the national stage."

(Hat tip to DeepBlade.)

Question
Why do Leftists support military intervention in places where there is no strategic or economic value to our country, but oppose such intervention in places where we do have strong interests? Is America's access to the flow of Middle Eastern oil not something worth fighting for? Are the untapped consumer markets in the Arab/Muslim world not our first and best entree to begin the changes there that we all know are necessary to the liberation of those regions?

The Left have an extremely ignorant and hypocritical view of our place in the world and in History. Their idealism often runs ashore on the reality of our own economic imperialism.

After all, what else (besides religious liberty) motivated the exploration and colonization of our own hemisphere? America began as a commercial enterprise. That doesn't make us less valid as a civilization; indeed, our economic power and our liberties and democratic values go hand in hand. They are exportable and influential in ways that not even Rome could have known.

The long journey that George W. Bush has begun is, I believe, one of the most important ones our country will ever take. At the end of it, if any such journey can be said to have an end, is the secularization and incorporation of Muslim civilization into the modern world that we Americans have done so much to create.

The Left may be revolt at the notion of an American-ordered world, but it's one that affords as many opportunities as responsibilities. We cannot avoid our role or misunderstand it.