Monday, September 06, 2004

Fleas

You really have to wonder about some people.

Steven Den Beste, one of the half-dozen most incisive and popular Internet commentator-analysts, has announced that he’s decided to hang up the microphone, at least for the present. He’s worn out, a feeling we all get now and then, and which could strike any of us at any time. But this, ah, gentleman, whose major expertise appears to be about guitars, has to leap onto Den Beste’s weary back for it?

This fellow’s posts on anything other than guitars are vapid, dogmatic, and crude. Even his invective is cliched and trivial. His readership is probably a hundredth of what Den Beste earned with his intelligence and painstaking labor. But he feels he has the stature to lay waste to Den Beste? Are there no puppies to kick in his neighborhood?

Well, a flea has to bite someone, I suppose.

There are some people running loose out there who have nothing to offer but envy of others who are brighter, better educated, more articulate, and more accomplished. This fellow is an example of the species. Don’t become one of them.

Whatever you do, try to do it well, and without concern for those who do it better.
Whatever you say, say it with humility, for however strongly you hold to your convictions, you could well be wrong.

Sunday, September 05, 2004

Custardheads

[UPDATE: To those visiting from Dean Esmay’s site, please go here after finishing this article.]

A certain “Joe” (feel free to E-mail him at ), who took issue with this tirade, inferred from it that I wanted to herd Muslims into crematoria, and suggested further that, if I were a Christian, I must have missed the part about loving my enemies.

Joe is typical of a particular species: the custardhead, who wills away that which must be done because it grates on his tender sensibilities. To a custardhead, the unpleasantness involved in shunning those who intend the rest of us harm is too disturbing to be borne. He’d much rather close his eyes and hope things will get better all by themselves.

When a militant movement that believes it has the right to rule all others is on the march, things will not “get better” by themselves. Only persons of low mentality could fail to see that.

If ostracizing those who believe vile and demented things is too unpleasant to contemplate, then what of the step that would be necessary after they’ve grown numerous enough and strong enough to act on their beliefs?

Too much for your refined nature to bear, Joe? Perhaps you’d like to lie down with a cold cloth over your forehead until it all goes away.

This is not a matter of doctrinal differences among religions. It’s about the nature of religion itself, and when it shades over into something less benign.

Every religion comprises a mythos and an ethos. The mythos is the supernatural story that delineates the nature of God and the history of His interactions with Man. The ethos is the code of prescriptions and proscriptions the religion imposes on its adherents: the mandatory code of conduct to which the believer must cleave to gain God’s good opinion and admission to a pleasant afterlife.

In the ultimate sense, a religion’s mythos is irrelevant to this world. How could it be otherwise? Being a story of supernatural powers and the deeds of Beings infinitely above Man, one must “take it on faith” or dismiss it on the same basis. Consider as an example the Christian assertion that Jesus of Nazareth is / was the Son of God. Can this be either proved or disproved by any exertion of human effort? What powers and attributes would Smith the skeptic have to possess to be able to prove or disprove it? If he possessed them, would he be a man?

The religion’s ethos is where the rubber meets the road. Since it commands certain behaviors and forbids others, the consequences of those things as Kantian categorical imperatives will determine whether the religion will flourish in this world. The ethos will also determine the religion’s competitive status in relation to other religions, or to other philosophical guides to right action and proper conduct.

A religion’s ethos is tolerable exactly insofar as it is voluntary. Voluntarism is the line of demarcation between religious belief and political power. True religion must be voluntary, for God would award no man His favor on the basis of something he’d bowed to under threat of punishment.

Islam’s ethos is a violent, barbaric, life-denying code that sprang directly from the desire of its founder for temporal conquests and aggrandizement. It transgresses the proper boundaries of a religion by claiming the right to impose itself on others against their will. No true religion would do such a thing.

I’ve tabulated Islam’s many villainies too many times already, but for Joe and his ilk, one can never repeat oneself too often:

• Islam commands its believers to convert the entire world to Islam by any means expedient, including force and subterfuge. This worldwide jihad will end only when all men everywhere are subject to the authority of the Islamic Khalifah or Caliph, and when the shari’a, the Islamic law code, is the only law code recognized for all humanity.
• Islam does not recognize any source of authority apart from itself. It regards secular governments as inherently illegitimate. Thus, there can be no separation of Church from State in Islam’s view.
• Islam demands that a Muslim who abandons the faith be put to death. Islam also demands the death of anyone who criticizes Islam or Muhammad.
• Islam demands that all “infidels”—i.e., non-Muslims—be subjugated into dhimmi status. Dhimmis must pay a special tax, must show subservience before all Muslims, are forbidden to build places of worship, and must wear special clothes to exhibit their second-class status.
• Islam sanctifies the killing of prisoners, whether enemy soldiers or unfortunate civilians, taken in jihad.
• Islam sanctifies the taking of slaves. Indeed, the Islamic world is the last place on Earth where slavery is still practiced.
• Islam considers women to be the chattels of men. A woman in Islamic society is forbidden to leave her home without a male relative as chaperon, and is never permitted to be in the company of a male non-relative unless similarly chaperoned.
• Islam gives women no rights over the marital bond. A Muslim man can divorce his wife at will, whereas a woman cannot free herself of her Muslim husband without his cooperation.
• Islam sets women’s rights of inheritance and their acceptability as witnesses in court at far less than those of men.
• Islam requires a woman who has been raped to produce four male Muslim witnesses to the act if she wants to prosecute it. If she cannot but complains of it anyway, she may be put to death for fornication on the strength of her complaint itself.
• A Muslim woman who marries an “infidel” is considered to have committed apostasy, and must be put to death. However, a Muslim man may marry an “infidel” woman without penalty.
• Islam regards Arabs as the Master Race, and all other peoples as their inferiors.
• Islam specifically identifies the Jews as the enemies of God, who must all be killed in the final stages of the worldwide ascendancy of the Caliphate.
• Islam teaches that Muslims have no duty of fidelity toward any “infidel.” It is perfectly acceptable for a Muslim to deceive, defraud, betray or brutalize an “infidel” if it serves the interests of Islam or Muslims. By corollary, in any dispute between a Muslim and an “infidel,” it is obligatory for all other Muslims to take the Muslim’s side, regardless of the merits.
• Islam encourages its members to seek death in jihad, fighting for the extension of Dar al-Islam—the “House of Islam”—by promising such “martyrs” an afterlife of orgiastic pleasures.
• Islam’s shari’a law code punishes homosexuality, adultery, fornication, blasphemy, heresy, and several other “offenses” with death. Islam punishes lesser crimes, such as murdering a female relative who has “dishonored her family,” with a slap on the wrist.
• Speaking of wrists, shari’a punishes several offenses with the amputation of a hand or a foot.

Need I go further? Is it not clear that if Islam’s tenets were widely known, if it were not to present itself to the world as a “religion,” it would receive exactly the same reception as Nazism did? Is it not clear that it would deserve that reception? Is it not clear that anyone, regardless of his upbringing or his station in life, who accepts the above as a proper set of rules for men to live by is either evil, mentally subnormal, or seriously disturbed?

If Islam’s effects could be confined solely to those who voluntarily imposed it on themselves, perhaps we could avoid what is now forced upon us. But reality has not been kind to those cultures that have adopted this postulate.

We cannot truly know what awaits us in the next world. It is possible that all religions are false, though, as a Roman Catholic, I believe otherwise. It doesn’t matter. We the living must share this world—and given its strictures, the most acceptance we can grant to those who have adopted a creed such as Islam is not to kill them until they first raise their hands to us.

Sorry, Joe. Enjoy the company of your fellow custardheads. I’ll have none of that here.

Welcome To The Roll

There have been a slew of additions to the Eternity Road blogroll recently. I add sites to the ‘roll for one or more of the following reasons:

• They’re important guides to what’s happening on the Web (e.g., InstaPundit);
• They’re important guides to what’s happening in the wider world (e.g., The Brothers Judd);
• They feature exceptional writing (e.g., Belmont Club, BabyTrollBlog, Personal Effects);
• They feature exceptional thinking (e.g., Belmont Club, USS Clueless, Caerdroia);
• They specialize in important subjects (e.g., The Smallest Minority, Little Green Footballs);
• They highlight under-covered aspects to important stories that have become cliched (e.g., Michael Williams);
• Their proprietors swear really well (e.g., Kim Du Toit, The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler);
• I like their proprietors personally (e.g., Baldilocks, Binary Road Trip, Exit Zero, Live From The Guillotine, NeanderPundit), which should not be taken to exclude any of the other virtues.

Anyway, please welcome all the following blogroll additions:

• Armies Of Liberation
• Bad Hair Blog
• Beyond Salvage
• Bunker Mulligan
• Mostly Cajun
• The Fat Guy
• The Laughing Wolf
• The Middle Ground

Capitalism In The Country

One can’t sit at a keyboard all the time, or so the C.S.O. tells me, so yesterday morning we saddled up and drove north into Dutchess County, specifically to Stormville, NY, whose airport is hosting a giant open-air flea market this weekend.

If you don’t know New York’s Hudson Valley, Dutchess is along the river’s eastern bank, north of Putnam County, which is north of Westchester. It combines low-density exurbs with farm communities and other sorts of pastoral regions, yet offers every convenience one might find deep in New York Metro. I did part of my growing up there, and am always pleased to return for a visit.

Stormville Airport, on Route 216, is a modest-sized field, but it’s the best place to hold this regularly recurring flea market, which now attracts about 1200 vendors every time it’s held. I estimate that by the close of business today, the flea market will have had over 100,000 visitors and will have generated between $2 million and $5 million in sales.

Flea markets are mostly a sheltered sort of affair in NY Metro: they tend to be permanent, held indoors, with a cadre of “regular” vendors whose offerings vary little over time. There are few surprises, and few visitors from out-of-town. Outside Metro, things are different. My oh my, how different they are.

The vendors come from all over the continental United States. Locals use the flea market as an away-from-home yard sale: they bring the sorts of things one would find displayed on people’s lawns prior to selling their homes, in fantastic varieties of taste, function, age, and decrepitude. Some don’t sell much, but they appear to enjoy the experience anyway; it’s a way of getting together with their neighbors out in the summer sun, with the added potential of making a few bucks. However much or little they might reap, it’s all the same. What they don’t sell is often cheerfully discarded.

The professional vendors are another breed. They come in giant motorhomes and RVs loaded with all manner of odd-lots, overstocks, and general bric-a-brac to be offered for sale. Much of it is first quality; one can find much wonderful and unusual food, beautiful clothing, jewelry, shoes, toys, entertainment, and tools of all kinds there. These vendors do a brisk business; they often leave entirely empty.

And if you watch, and listen, you can observe something that’s not always perceptible to the private citizen: the mechanics of capitalism in action.

It’s not all about selling, though that’s the most conspicuous component. I overheard several of the vendors talking among themselves about buying opportunities, inventory management, regional trends, planning their itineraries, and the ludicrous amount so-and-so across the field was charging for his widgets. I watched one of them repositioning his stock on his tables, after a flurry of purchases of an item that had been obscurely placed. (The best advertising for anything is that it’s selling well.) I even participated a little myself, after a most enjoyable encounter with a young lady selling Chocolate-Covered Key Lime Pie On A Stick.

Say what?

Yes, you read that correctly. There’s a new snack food in town. It’s not ice cream, it’s not cake—well, not really—and it’s not a candy bar. It’s a wedge of fresh, tangy, chilled Key Lime Pie, coated with a thin chocolate shell, and mounted on a stick. A piesicle!

This delightful confection literally bowled me over. Delicious, convenient, and even a bit virtuous, at least in comparison to other junk foods. If it has any drawback, it would be that one can’t carry a lot of them tightly packed together.

The promoters are taking exactly the right approach, too: low-key, straight to the consumer, marshaling the grass-roots boredom with the traditional snack foods. When this hits, it will hit big. I hope to be able to invest in it before it becomes truly huge.

At all such affairs, there will be a profusion of food vendors in a variety of styles. The C.S.O. and I spotted a place selling Barbecued Pulled Pork sandwiches on soft buns and headed straight for it. Few things in this life are better, even when eaten from waxed paper amid a noisy throng, with barbecue sauce dripping onto your fingers and chin.

What else did we buy? Well, the C.S.O. scored a white summer skirt and a long red-and-black ruched dress, some Christmas socks, a variety of semi-exotic snack foods, and a lovely polished-muhkite pendant on a leather thong. I bought three ViseGrip self-locking pliers in various sizes and jaw configurations, two heavy-duty tape measures, two light sweatshirts decorated in patriotic themes, and a fleece-lined bed for the cats. Between us we spent about $160, including food and gas, and it was money well spent.

All taken with all, it was a near-perfect day in the sun.

If there’s a rural open-air flea market within two or three hours’ drive of you, why not exploit the opportunity? Practice a little capitalism, and watch others do the same. Find your local vendor of Key Lime Pie On A Stick. Get out and enjoy the country air. Get out and enjoy your country.

It is your country, after all.

A Passing Thought

In assessing the character of Smith, to whose evaluations should we give the most credence?

• People who’ve worked alongside Smith for years?
• People who’ve never met Smith?
• People who have a material stake in Smith’s success regardless of whether he’s a saint or a villain?

Why yes, I was thinking about Senator John Kerry. How on Earth did you know?

Oh, My!

Noel at Sharp Knife has been doing some fine work lately. Consider the following neat evisceration of a pompous blowhard:

A desperate John “Fanny Rice” Kerry came out flailing at his Midnight Madness rally:

“I’m not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and by those who have misled the nation into Iraq.”

You ARE going to have your commitment to defend this country questioned, sir, whether you permit it or not. It’s called “Free Speech”; look it up. And your ‘commitment’ IS very much an open question, and by your own actions.

“The Vice President even called me unfit for office last night. I guess I’ll leave it up to the voters whether five deferments makes someone more qualified to defend this nation than two tours of duty.”

If deferments are the issue, Kerry sought one in order to study in Paris. His draft board refused. If there is one lesson we can take from Vietnam, it’s this: when a Frenchman seeks to return to France, let him go.

Excellent.

Saturday, September 04, 2004

The Butcher’s Bill

It appears that we now know the approximate scope of the carnage in Beslan, Russia. The totals are not complete, as there are still Chechen Muslim terrorists struggling to resist capture by the Russian troopers who stormed the school. Undoubtedly a few more bodies will be added to the pyres before the day is done.

Would anyone care to argue that the Chechen Muslims who perpetrated this horror were just acting on their legitimate nationalistic aspirations? Come closer, please. My arms aren’t that long.

There is simply no defense for the use of civilians as military targets, or hostages, or bargaining chips, or anything else in pursuit of some political or religious goal. There’s a special circle reserved in Hell for those who use children in this way.

Meanwhile:

• the Islamic ethno-religious genocide continues in Sudan,
• Palestinian Muslims continue their intifada against Israel,
• Islamic terrorists continue to ravage the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia,
• Acts of Islam-powered violence are multiplying in India,
• The Taliban is regrouping its fragments in Pakistan and hopes to return to power in Afghanistan,
• An Islamic theocracy pursues the construction of nuclear weapons in Iran,
• Muslim vandals perpetrate scores of anti-Semitic and anti-Christian acts throughout Europe and Australia,
• Muslim activists strain to establish parallel, shari’a-based systems of justice in Australia, Britain and Canada,
• Wahhabi mosques and madrassas teach hatred of America and its secular republic right here in America,
• Saudi Arabia sends money and men to them all.

Before Black Tuesday, Americans knew little of Islam or the horrors committed in its name. They thought it was just one more monotheistic faith, perhaps a little more passionate than the others, whose adherents just happened to dress oddly, for being mostly from a single part of the world. Our awakening, despite the warm-up acts at the World Trade Center, the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole and other places, was slow and reluctant. I’m not criticizing; I was one of them.

Our excuses are gone. Our hour of decision is upon us.

Except for Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, the world has done nothing. Americans can be proud of that, I suppose. But it’s not enough. As much as we’ve already done, as much as it’s cost us in money, men, and national will, it’s far short of being enough.

I have struggled with this for three years now, and I still can’t see another way out. Islam is arguably the most evil creed ever to be unleashed on this planet. Don’t take my word for it; read the Qur’an and the hadith yourself. Opposing individual excrescences of the creed is simply not enough; we must oppose the creed itself.

If Islam were merely a demented belief that confined its depredations to its voluntary adherents, like the self-mortification cults of Christianity during the Middle Ages, we could relax about it. But this is emphatically not the case. It is a doctrinal pillar of Islam that Muslims have an obligation to convert the entire world, by any means expedient, including force if necessary. Islam’s medieval code of “law,” the shari’a, must be imposed on the entire human race.

Thus, Islam is incapable of being civilized. By “civilized,” I mean capable of confining its brutalities to those who’ve freely chosen to live under them, which is not a particularly high standard. Some ten percent of Muslims—about 150 million of them—are estimated to be either active participants in Islam’s worldwide jihad or enthusiastic supporters thereof. This demonic tenth shelters easily among the others, using them as human shields while they mass to strike.

How high must the butcher’s bill rise before we go on an all-out offensive? What will it take to armor our consciences sufficiently to address the ever more evident need to wipe this vicious totalitarian ideology cleanly out of human memory?

The Nazis killed about ten million before we decided to expunge them. The Russian Communists racked up nearly thirty million before they stumbled into the dustbin of history. The Chinese Communists have killed far more, yet they retain their grip on power, and even enjoy the favor of large parts of the Western world.

Those are not comforting numbers. They speak of fantasies of “peaceful coexistence” resolutely retained in the face of evidence that should convince any sentient being of its impossibility.

How many deaths can be attributed to Islamic fury and ambition already? How many more will it tot up before we resolve to put an end to the tally?

We have hoped for an outpouring of condemnation of Islamic barbarism and good will toward non-Muslims from the “moderates” of that faith. We have hoped and waited in vain. No such expression of civilized anger at their demonic co-religionists has arrived, and none will. “Moderate” Muslims, however many there are and wherever they hide, are more afraid of the vengeance of their terrorist brethren than they are of anything else in this world.

It’s time to raise the sword of freedom, not against specific regimes, but against the whole ideology of Islam. Free speech? Freedom of religion? Of course. Those are the standards of all decent men. But they do not oblige us to support evil in any way. No decent man anywhere should have even the least little thing to do with any Muslim, and I mean anything at all, including employing him, working for him, buying from him or selling to him, unless and until he publicly recants his so-called faith.

No, I’m not interested in hearing about your nice Muslim neighbors. Muslims are taught that it’s perfectly acceptable to lie to “infidels” about their beliefs and intentions, as long as some benefit accrues to Islam thereby. Muslims are also taught that in any controversy between a Muslim and an “infidel,” all Muslims must take the Muslim’s side regardless of the merits. These are doctrines of their creed. Again, don’t take my word for it; read their scriptures and the statements of their leading clerics, and satisfy yourself.

Islam is the greatest obscenity in motion in the world today. It must be effaced before it can do any more harm. Our own concepts of justice deny us a pogrom against them—that would lower us to their level—so Islam must be marginalized and made non-viable by exclusion, ostracism, and unceasing public pronouncements against it. That’s the method of freedom. It’s the only tool by which we can draw a line under the Islamic butchers’ bill.

Do you care enough about the future of human life and liberty to join in this effort?

Friday, September 03, 2004

A House United Cannot Long Stand.

Yes, yes, I know that’s not what Lincoln said. But it’s what I’ve said, and I have my reasons.

Just now, things are looking good for the Republican Party. President Bush appears very likely to win a second term; as the saying goes, to lose it he’d have to be caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. Atop that, a gain of two or three senatorial seats looks good, as does a fattening of the GOP margin in the House of Representatives. Overall, it appears to confirm the soundness of this year’s “Big Tent” approach: its emphasis on internal harmony and concentration on reaping the available electoral prizes for the party.

As the man said as he passed the tenth floor of the Empire State Building, “Well I’ve fallen ninety stories and I’m all right so far.”

(Some smart people appear to agree. Radio personality Hugh Hewitt, in his book If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat, urges exactly this approach, on the theory that in the American political system, only majorities matter. Hewitt’s attitude is almost explicitly anti-ideological. He sees one paramount issue—national security—and argues that, as Republicans are more trustworthy than Democrats on this issue, then Republicans it must be, regardless of how one might feel about their characters, their records of achievement or non-achievement, or their stances on “domestic” issues. With all due respect—have you ever considered just how slippery a phrase that is? Just how much respect is “due”? Is it up to the hearer to decide?—for Mr. Hewitt, he’s managed to ignore a lot of history, a number of current GOP defectors from the hard national-security line, the importance of the character of office-holders to the retention of a majority once achieved, and the slightly inconvenient fact that there is no such thing as a domestic issue that doesn’t affect national defense and national security matters in some way. But this is properly a subject for its own tirade.)

The “Big Tent” is a political tactic: mask differences on issues to create an insuperable majority for electoral purposes. Promise what you must to get the necessary allegiances and work out all the niggling policy details later. It does work, in the short term. In the long term, it breeds its own assassins.

The key question to be asked is this: If the GOP were to sweep in all the independent voters and all the Reagan Democrats of yore, giving it a 60% to 65% majority among registered voters, and were thus to completely expel the Democrats from Washington, what would happen next? Would that mighty engine hold together once the new President were inaugurated and the new Congress were seated? Or would the differences in policy and priority so meticulously papered over assert themselves? Would we not see the fissioning of the Republican Party into two groups at the very least—and the creation of a new party from at least one of them?

Sectional and special interests alone would guarantee it. The various regions of the country have significantly divergent desires and priorities. The various economic sectors do as well. Finally, there are important sociocultural groups that would want very different things from one another. They might unite on national defense, just as the parties were essentially united on it in the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties, but they would diverge on nearly everything else.

This isn’t a prediction of disaster. It’s a reminder that differences are differences, that simply drawing persons of contrasting views in under one roof doesn’t make the differences go away.

There’s also this: Success breeds its own competition. Electoral success is no exception. There are no strategies or tactics available to the Republicans that are not available to the Democrats as well. If the GOP somehow avoided fissioning due to the “Big Tent,” they would still be vulnerable to the Democrats’ fervent attempts to “steal their voters back.” There is no reason to believe, given the number and magnitude of the differences among Americans on substantial puiblic-policy issues, that the Democrats would not rise from ignominy and become competitive once again.

Even at times such as these, when one issue dwarfs all others in importance, the other issues don’t go away. Everyone has a second priority...and a third, and a fourth, and so on. Everyone wants to have his way, not merely on the primary matter, but on the lesser matters as well. As long as there’s popular disagreement on anything generally considered important, there will be parties and closely fought contests between them.

Now for a few specifics:

• Elephantine federal spending and deficits.
• Tax policy and its implications for income redistribution.
• Race, sex, and ethnicity-based preferences in hiring and college admissions.
• Social Security and Medicare.
• Government subsidies for various “necessities,” such as housing and health insurance.
• Federal involvement in primary and secondary education.
• School choice.
• Fiscal policy.
• Immigration policy and border control.
• Whether there should be a national industrial policy, and the related matters of “outsourcing” and “offshoring.”

I could go on, but surely the point has been made. Moreover, each of the above issues, plus whatever policy choices are applied to it, bears to some degree upon national defense and national security, whether in the near term or in the foreseeable future.

Divisions exist among us. We’re going to have to learn to confront them frankly, win what battles we can, concede gracefully on others, and hammer out compromises on the rest.

I have strong preferences, as you’d expect from one who styles himself a libertarian. But I try to be realistic. The realist does not demand that reality reconfigure itself to his preferences, but rather does what he can to satisfy those preferences by working within reality’s constraints. A political party, arguably the world’s most pragmatically oriented device, can do no more.

When Your Banjo Has Only One String, That’s What You Play.

Senator—Senator? Aren’t those guys supposed to show up at the Capitol Building now and then?—John Kerry simply couldn’t control himself last night:

NEWARK, Ohio — In a scathing attack, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (search) accused Republicans of hiding President Bush’s “record of failure” behind insults and promised a new direction for the country under a Kerry-Edwards administration.

Kerry, speaking to a midnight rally as Bush closed the GOP convention in New York with his acceptance speech, said the president was “unfit to lead this nation” because of the war in Iraq and his record on jobs, health care and energy prices.

He lashed out at the commander in chief and Vice President Dick Cheney (search) for not serving in Vietnam during the war and for comments made during the convention about Kerry’s fitness to occupy the Oval Office.

“I will not have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and who misled America into Iraq,” he told a crowd of thousands in Springfield.

Sigh. Back to Vietnam, Senator? Do you really want to face the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth again, or are you ready to sign Standard Form 180?

As for Dubya’s achievements on those other matters, are you ready to confront the record:

• 50 million people liberated in two highly successful wars;
• Two murderous totalitarian regimes put out of business for good;
• Steadily increasing accommodation by Middle Eastern regimes to the War On Terror;
• Libya ceding its WMD program and all its materials to get on our good side;
• The Axis of Weasels nations spanked and sent to bed without supper;
• 2.4 million new jobs created since January 2001;
• An unemployment rate of 5.5%, which labor economists consider the bedrock level.

...or is innuendo all you’re good for? Given that you’ve condemned the Swifties so stridently, while having nothing to say about the slanders being perpetrated by MoveOn.org and other 527s in your corner, you might be better off not answering that one. Especially since, while you and yours have implied everything vicious you possibly could about Dubya’s Air National Guard service, the president himself has defended your service record. That might be the best endorsement you’ll ever get.

Another reason for the Kerry-Edwards campaign to hope there really are “two Americas”: Kerry hopes to hide from the inconveniences of reality in the “other one.”

What Was That About Liberal Media Bias Again?

Courtesy of the Associated Press, via ABC News:

Bush Glosses Over Complex Facts In Speech

President Bush glossed over some complicating realities in Iraq, Afghanistan and the home front in arguing the case Americans are safer and his opponent cannot deliver.

On Iraq, Bush talked of a 30-member alliance standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States, masking the fact that U.S. troops are pulling by far most of the weight. On Afghanistan and its neighbors, he gave an accounting of captured or killed terrorists, but did not address the replenishment of their ranks or the still-missing Osama bin Laden....

On Iraq, Bush derided Kerry for devaluing the alliance that drove out Saddam Hussein and is trying to rebuild the country. “Our allies also know the historic importance of our work,” Bush said. “About 40 nations stand beside us in Afghanistan, and some 30 in Iraq.”

But the United States has more than five times the number of troops in Iraq than all the other countries put together. And, with 976 killed, Americans have suffered nearly eight times more deaths than the other allies combined.

Bush aggressively defended progress in Afghanistan, too. “Today, the government of a free Afghanistan is fighting terror, Pakistan is capturing terrorist leaders ... and more than three-quarters of al-Qaida’s key members and associates have been detained or killed. We have led, many have joined, and America and the world are safer.”

Nowhere did Bush mention bin Laden, nor did he account for the replacement of killed and captured al al-Qaida leaders by others.

Does it sound to you as if the writer of this piece holds an anti-Bush sentiment, or a bin Laden fetish?

Hey, how about this as a novel angle for a news story: provide a few facts! You know, what the lawyers call “evidence”?

• Prove that Osama bin Laden is still alive, instead of harping on how he hasn’t been “captured.”
• Prove that al-Qaeda’s ranks really are being replenished, instead of simply implying it.
• Prove that Iraq, a country whose tyrant killed approximately 30,000 people each year, is no better off than it was before Operation Iraqi Freedom.
• Prove that Afghanistan, whose womenfolk are now free to work and attend school and 90% of whose people are now registered to vote in their first free election in history, isn’t better off than it was before Operation Enduring Freedom.

Failing that, have a nice cup of shut the hell up.