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Politics : THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (947)	2/14/2004 2:42:06 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 2164

Steve Young Oscar Nominees Have Bush For Lunch … O'Reilly Replaces Crystal newsandopinion.com \| In what was supposed to be the traditional Academy Awards nominees luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel turned into a rehearsal that one anonymous nominee, Renée Zellweger, said "would turn the 76th Annual Academy Awards into the mother of all Bush Love-Ins. A long list of surprises was topped by the announcement that Fox News Channel's declared Independent, Bill O'Reilly, would take over the MC reigns replacing the much shorter Billy Crystal. A nonplussed Crystal took it well, "Hey, have you ever seen the Factor? The guy is funny." The 6'4" O'Reilly said to look for some surprises, including what many hinted would include a mouth on mouth kiss with Ann Coulter. "I think a non-Arab man kissing Coulter is something America is ready for," said the beaming O'Reilly adding, "Did I mention, 'Who's Looking Out For You,' will be out in paperback just in time for the show?" For too long, we of the Hollywood community have been painted as left-wing liberal unpatriotic whiners," said Academy president Frank Pierson. "What better way to show America that they've got it all and that we can become right-wing conservative patriotic whiners at the drop of a ratings point." Sean Penn, who is up for best actor, was accompanied to the luncheon his mom, Eileen Ryan, showed some unaccustomed anger. "I get so p-oed at these so-called pundits who think that just because we live in Hollywood we can't celebrate the big guy in the elliptical office," said the normally aloof star of "Mystic River" this year's favorite to sweep the most awards. "It wasn't until I visited those sick kids in Iraq, who ended up being big fans of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High,' that I realized that just how much President Bush had meant to America." Then prompted by the film's PR man, Penn added, "My own little daughter and I can't even cry for her." "No more lies, no more secrets," pandered Penn's co-star and fellow nominee, Tim Robbins, "We can't just give John Kerry and the rest of those fact-spewing Democrats a free ride. It's time we show him that Hollywood stands behind our president no matter how he got into office." "Ditto that for me," said supporting actor nominee and "The Cooler" star Alec Baldwin. "In fact, if Kerry wins, I'm moving to Bakersfield," declared the closet dittohead." "There's a lot of us in Hollywood who feel that the President has been getting a raw deal," said Michael Moore, who won last year for Best Documentary. "I'm in the midst of filming, "Bowling For Crawford," offering the positive side of declaring war, another documentary that I'll be editing excessively to make my point." Uninvited luncheon guest, Bob Saget, allayed Internet rumors that he was out of the business with his disclosure that he will be honoring our regime change of Iraq, filming "Funniest Iraqi Invasion Home Videos...The Movie." "There'll be more pummeled crotches, botched suicide bombings and adorable babies than you can shake a WMD at," said the legendary home video voice-over quipster. Academy officials have announced a long list of first time presenters including, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, and in what promises to be the highlight of the evening, author and former satirist, Al Franken. "I'm here to straighten some things out. I find out now that the President and all the guys at Fox News were telling the truth," said Franken. "My bad." "I think it's going to be a fast, funny, and Conservative night," said Awards producer Joe Roth. "Enjoy."

To: calgal who wrote (947)	2/14/2004 2:43:10 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 2164

Charles Krauthammer The Other Shoe newsandopinion.com \| The single most puzzling — and arguably most important — question of the day is the one no one raises in public: Why have we not been attacked again? We are coming up on 21/2 years since Sept. 11, 2001. Think back: On Sept. 11, everybody was waiting for the other shoe to drop — within days or weeks, but surely within months. When nothing happened, it was said that al Qaeda works on 18-month cycles, with long planning and preparation. Well, it is now almost a year plus 18 months. And while there have been terrorist attacks against generally soft targets in other (mostly Islamic) countries, we have not had a single attack, major or minor, in the United States. It is easy to understand why nobody wants to talk about this. The administration dares not take credit for what is on its face an amazing phenomenon, but one that can reverse itself in a flash. And the opposition hardly wants to highlight a development that might shed favorable light on this administration's post-Sept. 11 stewardship. Even commentators are uneasy about bringing it up. Any analysis could instantaneously turn into embarrassment. Nonetheless, it seems odd to have a moratorium on so intriguing a question. I ask it of almost every intelligence expert I meet. Their speculations fall along two lines: The first is that al Qaeda has been so severely degraded and disrupted that it simply cannot do it. It has lost its Afghan base, lost much of its funding and is reduced to going back to where Islamic radicals were years ago: launching minor guerrilla operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and sending operatives out to hit soft targets such as synagogues in Tunisia and consulates and banks in Istanbul. A variation on this theme is the idea that as al Qaeda's international presence shrinks, terrorism is becoming more regionalized, being taken over by actors such as Jemaah Islamiah (Indonesia), Abu Sayyaf (Philippines) and Ansar al-Islam (Iraq). That may not be a terribly good development for the world, but it would be an explanation for why the United States has not been attacked. If you are an Indonesian terrorist, your objective is to destroy your government and to take it over. Hitting the Vegas Strip — no matter how spectacularly — becomes a distraction. But I remain puzzled. Let's say that al Qaeda is so badly hurt that it cannot organize another Sept. 11 with 19 hijackers, four planes and years of training. Yet how much training, how much planning can it take to pack a few trucks with explosives and blow them up in crowded shopping malls? Considering the economic and psychological havoc that would wreak, why haven't they done it? After all, Timothy McVeigh did not need a huge terror apparatus to kill 168 people in the heartland of America. It takes but a primitive level of organization to do that. It is hard to believe al Qaeda is not capable of doing the same. So why hasn't it? The other explanation is that it is a matter of pride. Having pulled off the greatest terrorist attack in the history of the world, al Qaeda does not want to sully its reputation by resorting to the cheap car bomb. Or, to put it less psychologically and more strategically: Part of the appeal of al Qaeda — what it uses to recruit people and funds — is its mystique. Superhuman feats, brilliant execution, masterful planning. That aura feeds its ideology of historical inevitability, that ultimately it will prevail over Western decadence, because the seemingly high-tech West lacks the diabolical and methodical will that Islamism brings to the war. Could that be it? For the sake of its own mythology, is al Qaeda biding its time until it can pull off the next spectacular? I don't know. I tend to favor the second theory. But I have no doubt that reorganizing homeland security, redirecting law enforcement (from locking up bad guys to preventing worse guys from attacking) and increasing vigilance at the borders have had a significant deterrent effect. Add to that a forward strategy of attacking not only the terrorists but the states that support them. Maybe al Qaeda does lack the capacity for even simple terrorism on U.S. soil. If so, it speaks well for an administration that, immediately after Sept. 11, designed and carried out a radically new strategy, both offensive and defensive, to fight the war on terror. But no one dares say it. It could prove catastrophically wrong tomorrow.

To: calgal who wrote (947)	2/14/2004 2:44:04 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2164

David Limbaugh Kerry's troubling consistencies newsandopinion.com \| While many, myself included, are pointing out the numerous inconsistencies in Senator Kerry's recent positions on the issues, I think we also ought to look at his disturbing consistencies from the Vietnam era to the present. It is true that Senator Kerry voted to authorize a military attack on Iraq and then later tried to squirm out of his vote. Senator Kerry decried Republicans for criticizing candidate Clinton for avoiding the draft but is now exploiting questions about President Bush's Air National Guard service. Kerry has conveniently retreated from his position against capital punishment for terrorists. He shamelessly attacks the Patriot Act, though he voted for it a few short years ago. And he's all over the board on the gay marriage debate. While this small sampling of Kerry's many contradictions reveals that he is a rank opportunist, it tells us little about his driving ideology. But we have other evidence from which a clearer picture emerges as to his true ideological rudder, especially with respect to his fitness as a commander in chief. President Bush is already a tried and tested commander in chief with whom the majority of the public feels secure despite valiant Democratic efforts to tarnish his credibility. Because the War on Terror is foremost on voters' minds, Democrats became desperate to find a candidate qualified to be commander in chief. What were Democrats to do? Well, a faction of them tried to draft General Wesley Clark to inject instant defense credibility into the party notorious for its softness on national defense. For a number of reasons that was a bust. At the same time, on a parallel track, Senator Kerry began to milk his Vietnam service for all it was worth, which so far has been a successful ploy. And so the logic has been established: John Kerry was a war hero 30 years ago, and George Bush saw no combat, therefore John Kerry is better equipped to lead the nation at war than George Bush. But for Democrats to get any traction here, they have to explain the lack of military experience of our other successful commanders in chief. More significantly, they have to explain how military combat experience qualifies one to lead the nation on foreign affairs and national defense. Perhaps this wouldn't be so difficult if the combat veteran in question had not demonstrated such hostility toward the military and national defense, like Senator Kerry has since he returned from Vietnam. It was then that he first propelled himself into political prominence on the backs of his fellow Vietnam veterans, accusing them of unspeakable atrocities and impugning America for engaging in an immoral war in Vietnam. He made these charges with all the public fanfare he could muster, knowing they would inevitably undermine the morale of our troops. To him, containing Communism was an ignoble cause. He cavorted with the likes of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden in decrying this "barbaric war." Adding insult to injury, Kerry said in 1970 that he would disperse our troops "through the world, only at the directive of the United Nations," and that he wanted to "almost eliminate CIA activity altogether." All of this could be more easily written off as the fulminations of an idealistic young man, but for the fact that Kerry is singing from the same hymnal today. He is still trashing our intelligence services; he is saying that we should defer to the United Nations before taking military action against known threats to the United States, and he has implied we were involved in an unjust war in Iraq. He has refused to vote for the $87 billion supplemental appropriation for rebuilding Iraq and supporting our troops there. And throughout his career he has voted against developing some of our most important military technology. So despite Kerry's many political turnabouts, we see a troubling consistency on these issues that matter the most in America today. He seems to have a visceral aversion to the military he served, a visceral affinity for the United Nations, a propensity to rush to judgment against just causes in which the United States engages and a casual disregard for undermining our troops in combat. With all due respect, all the war medals in the world shouldn't be enough to enable Kerry to overcome his consistent record as being soft on defense. It is this consistency, more than all of Kerry's political inconsistencies, that should ultimately undo his quest for the presidency, if scandal doesn't do him in first.