Best of the Web Today - September 8, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
A Party Against America
This Saturday is Sept. 11, the third anniversary of, well, Sept. 11. A political organization holding a meeting that day urges its members to show up "wearing some clothing article colored black to mourn the deaths of the thousands of people who have died as a result of U.S. government policies."
That's right, this outfit thinks the anniversary of an attack on America is an appropriate day for a Blame America First-fest. Ah well, we've come to expect such things from moonbat Muslims and commie peaceniks. There's no point in getting upset.
Only this group of ideological extremists consists neither of Islamists nor commies. It's the Libertarian Party and its "presidential candidate," Michael Badnarik. They are, of course, perfectly entitled to exercise their right to freedom of speech. But really, what a bunch of sickos.
Gov. Pot vs. Sen. Kettle
Former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter "is accusing fellow Georgia Democrat Zell Miller of 'unprecedented disloyalty' for the senator's speech at the Republican convention," reports the Associated Press. Josh Marshall has the full text of the Carter letter, in which he praises the segregationist former governor Lester Maddox as "a loyal Democrat." Here's a sample:
Everyone knows that you were chosen to speak at the Republican Convention because of your being a "Democrat," and it's quite possible that your rabid and mean-spirited speech damaged our party and paid the Republicans some transient dividends.
Let's set aside for the moment the question of whether Miller showed "disloyalty" to his party. What he did was hardly unprecedented. In December 2002, Jimmy Carter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, even though, as The Weekly Standard noted when the award was announced in October, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said the award " 'should be interpreted' as a 'kick in the leg' to current President George W. Bush's 'belligerent' foreign policy."
In other words, everyone knows that Carter was chosen to deliver the Nobel Lecture because of his being an American who opposes American foreign policy. To be fair, Carter's Nobel Lecture was pretty tepid, but at this year's Democratic National Convention, he delivered a rabid and mean-spirited speech attacking current U.S. foreign policy. A sample:
After 9/11, America stood proud, wounded but determined and united. . . . But in just 34 months, we have watched with deep concern as all this goodwill has been squandered by a virtually unbroken series of mistakes and miscalculations. Unilateral acts and demands have isolated the United States from the very nations we need to join us in combating terrorism. . . .
Recent policies have cost our nation its reputation as the world's most admired champion of freedom and justice. What a difference these few months of extremism have made!
The United States has alienated its allies, dismayed its friends, and inadvertently gratified its enemies by proclaiming a confused and disturbing strategy of "preemptive" war. With our allies disunited, the world resenting us, and the Middle East ablaze, we need John Kerry to restore life to the global war against terrorism.
Now, in our view this is all horribly misguided. But citizens in a democracy are free to dissent. Carter and his defenders would no doubt tell us that he spoke as a patriotic American who is troubled by the direction in which his country's leaders have taken it of late. Which of course is exactly what Zell Miller says about the Democratic Party.
So, did Zell Miller betray his party? Well, first things first: Did Jimmy Carter betray his country?
Clinton vs. Kerry?
The conservative Newsmax.com site has some intriguing speculation about the report, which we noted yesterday, about Bill Clinton's advice to John Kerry, who by the way served in Vietnam:
Panicked presidential candidate John Kerry had every reason to believe that the conversation he had with ex-president Bill Clinton on Saturday--[in which] the two discussed how to rescue his flagging campaign--would be kept confidential.
But that expectation went up in smoke on Monday when Kerry and his campaign aides found explicit details from the Clinton strategy session splashed all over the New York Times and other media.
Among the most damaging details to surface: Clinton's strong recommendation that Kerry abandon the crown jewel of his presidential campaign--his service in Vietnam.
Kerry himself was plainly mortified over the leak, desperately trying to downplay the significance of the Clinton call by describing the ensuing press coverage as "the most overblown thing."
We tracked down a fuller version of the Kerry quote on the Australian Broadcast Corp. Web site:
This is the most overblown thing. I've talked to President Clinton many times over the last months and people are frankly creating fiction out of something that doesn't exist. Our campaign, I think, is very much on track.
Newsmax speculates that Clinton is trying to "sabotage" the Kerry campaign so as to bolster wife Hillary's 2008 White House prospects. This seems like a stretch, given that Kerry is doing a fine job of sabotaging his own campaign, and given that, on the whole, Clinton's advice to Kerry is pretty good--though it may explain Clinton's apparent failure to advise Kerry to tone down the Vietnam vanity back when it might have made a difference (that is, when it was first clear that Kerry was assured of the nomination).
Two more likely motives suggest themselves to us. The first is Clinton's own vanity. If Kerry takes Clinton's advice and manages to win the election, Clinton gets credit; and if he refuses (as seems to be the case) and loses, Clinton can say I told you so (or have others say it on his behalf). Also, as we argued yesterday, if one assumes Kerry's defeat is a foregone conclusion, following Clinton's advice is probably the best way to minimize the down-ballot damage. Thus Clinton may actually be trying to do his party a service.
Or Maybe It Spells Something Else Entirely
"Clinton Absence Spells Either Boost or Bust for Kerry"--headline, Reuters, Sept. 7
Dems: Terror Debate Is Unfair!
Vice President Dick Cheney says the Bush administration's approach to terror is superior to the Democrats':
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting in this Iowa city.
If Kerry were elected, Cheney said the nation risks falling back into a "pre-9/11 mind-set" that terrorist attacks are criminal acts that require a reactive approach. Instead, he said Bush's offensive approach works to root out terrorists where they plan and train, and pressure countries that harbor terrorists.
In response, Kedwards are crying foul:
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards issued a statement, saying, "Dick Cheney's scare tactics crossed the line today, showing once again that he and George Bush will do anything and say anything to save their jobs. Protecting America from vicious terrorists is not a Democratic or Republican issue and Dick Cheney and George Bush should know that."
Now come on. Democrats have been arguing all year, among other things, that the Bush administration has made the country less safe by liberating Iraq. These aren't "scare tactics"; they're differing opinions on how best to avert a terror attack.
Edwards also said that he and Kerry "will keep America safe, and we will not divide the American people to do it." Isn't this the same guy who keeps talking about "two Americas"?
Wrong War, Right War, 'Catastrophe'!
"Democrat John Kerry accused President Bush on Monday of sending U.S. troops to the 'wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time,' " the Associated Press reports. But yesterday, upon hearing the news that the death toll among U.S. servicemen in Iraq has reached 1,000 (a figure inflated by the inclusion of noncombat deaths), Kerry had this to say, the Associated Press reports:
''Today marks a tragic milestone in the war in Iraq; more than 1,000 of America's sons and daughters have now given their lives on behalf of their country, on behalf of freedom, the war on terror."
After flopping yesterday, Kerry flipped again today. The Washington Post reports he "accused the Bush administration of pursuing a 'catastrophic' course in Iraq":
The war, Kerry said, has cost the country "$200 billion and counting" in part because of Bush's failure to enlist the support of a broad array of allies. . . .
"And today even the Pentagon has admitted this very reality," Kerry said, "that entire regions of Iraq are controlled by insurgents and terrorists. I call this course a catastrophic course that has cost us $200 billion because we went it alone, and we've paid an even more unbearable price in young American lives and the risks our soldiers take."
That's "$200 billion that we're not investing in education and health care, job creation here at home; $200 billion for going it alone in Iraq."
Making things even more confusing, as National Review Online's Jim Geraghty notes, Kerry voted against the Gulf War, for which other countries paid most of the tab, and for the liberation of Iraq, for which they didn't. Maybe John Edwards could file a class-action suit on behalf of all Americans who've suffered whiplash watching Kerry switch from one side to the other and back again.
Frank and Freud
Yesterday we noted that the New York Times' former theater critic Frank Rich had called President Bush a "sissy" because Bush flew fighter jets in his youth. We hadn't read all the way through Rich's article, but reader Ruth Papazian calls our attention to several odd passages in it:
. . . the special Madison Square Garden runway for Mr. Bush's acceptance speech, a giant phallus thrusting him into the nation's lap, or whatever. . . . The real point was less to soften the president's Draconian image on abortion than to harden his manly bona fides. . . . It's not enough to stuff socks in the president's flight suit.
Papazian remarks: "As a woman who's never experienced this emotion--or ever met another woman who has experienced it either--I always ridiculed the concept of 'penis envy.' Until I read Rich's piece."
Kerry's Running Joke
Upon being presented with a gift of a shotgun, as we noted yesterday, John Kerry "joked" about shooting the president: "I thank you for the gift, but I can't take it to the debate with me." It turns out this isn't the first such Kerry gibe. Here's an Associated Press dispatch from Nov. 16, 1988, that we found on Factiva:
LYNN, Mass.--Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., apologized Wednesday for telling a joke about Dan Quayle.
At a business breakfast Tuesday, Kerry responded to a question about the vice president-elect's qualifications by saying: ''The Secret Service is under orders that if Bush is shot, to shoot Quayle,'' The Boston Herald reported.
Kerry said in a statement Wednesday: ''I shouldn't have repeated the story. It was inappropriate, and I apologize for doing so.''
At least that time he apologized. But as blogger Rich Galen observed when he reprised this story in December 2002, "Imagine the knee-slapping hilarity which would have accompanied a remark by a Republican Senator--ANY Republican Senator--if he had suggested that the Secret Service take out Al Gore in 1992."
Green Mountain Cliffhanger
John Kerry has retaken the lead in Vermont in America Online's "straw poll." At this writing, Kerry has 261 votes from the Green Mountain state, to 259 for President Bush. That gives Kerry a 532-6 lead in the Electoral College, or 529-9 if Colorado's proportional-allocation initiative passes.
But the voting is far from over, and this promises to be one of the most exciting political races of the year. Stay tuned.
Speaking of the Colorado initiative, Homer nods: Two weeks ago, we calculated that if, in the 2000 election, all states' electoral votes had been divided proportionately (as proposed in Colorado), Al Gore would have edged out George W. Bush, 268-264. We heard from the folks at George Will's office, who informed us they'd come up with slightly different results. We double-checked and found we'd made an error in Bush's favor in California, so that Gore's margin would have been 269-263, one short of a majority (with 6 votes for Ralph Nader). An editorial in The Wall Street Journal today discusses the implications of such an outcome.
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The GOP's Salad Days
The Daily Oklahoman has published one of the oddest letters to the editor we've ever read, from Currie Ballard, historian in residence in Oklahoma's historically black Langston University. Ballard sings the praises of various black Republicans (last letter):
It's OK to have pineapples and raisins in your salad. Just a few years ago, the trend in the culinary community was different--complex and unsophisticated. The idea of serving vegetables that weren't in season in a salad was a no-no. But as our palate has grown, so have the recipes for more exotic morsels.
Children naturally do not like vegetables, but the Republican Party has matured from hamburger to uncooked broccoli. The ingredients in the Republican salad have more texture, color and flavor. J.C. Watts is the okra, which is Bantu for gumbo. Lt. Gov. Michael Steele of Maryland is the banana that came from Africa by way of the slave trade. Alan Keyes is the cumin, the spice that Africa gave the world. And let us not forget Secretary of State Colin Powell, who brought the watermelon to the party.
This fruit was used in Africa in times of drought because 90 percent of it consists of water. Chefs like state GOP Chairman Gary Jones created a new salad bar. Whether it's garden salad or fruit salad, the GOP is preparing a healthy feast for everybody.
Since John Kerry and John Edwards are both persons of pallor, perhaps their campaign slogan should be "Democrats: the other white meat."
Metaphor Alert
From a New York Times story on Donald Trump:
As the P.T. Barnum of the business world, Mr. Trump is a showman who has emerged as television's most popular guru for aspiring entrepreneurs and has managed to burnish a gilded reputation.
"He's got a very fertile and creative imagination about how to spin issues, and he's brilliant at turning lemons into lemonade," said Alan Marcus, a business and political consultant who oversaw Mr. Trump's public relations from 1994 to 2000. . . .
However mixed his record as an entrepreneur, Mr. Trump has retained center stage, Trump-watchers say, by deftly massaging the news media, distracting attention from his business setbacks and doing just about anything to keep himself in the spotlight.
Noah Way Out
"The European Space Agency's chief scientist has said that there should be a Noah's Ark on the Moon, in case the Earth is destroyed by an asteroid or nuclear holocaust," reports the BBC:
Speaking exclusively to BBC News at the British Association Science Festival, Dr Bernard Foing said that the ark should be a repository for the DNA of every single species of plant and animal.
Dr Foing is head of Europe's Moon missions, so his thoughts on matters lunar should be taken seriously.
They should, should they? Can someone remind us how many Europeans have been to the moon?
Every Felo-de-Se Has His Day
"The World Health Organization says suicide is a huge but largely preventable public health problem," reports the Voice of America. "To mark World Suicide Day, which falls on Friday, WHO is calling for global action to prevent these needless and tragic deaths."
Well, happy Suicide Day, everyone. Maybe the folks at Fox News Channel should start a move to declare Saturday World Homicide Day. |
