Sine Qua Non

Nomar is a Cub

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Its Like High School All Over Again

The real problem with John Kerry's requirement for a multilateralist approach to foreign policy isn't that the UN and France are corrupt, anti-American, and hostile to our ideas of freedom and individual responsibility. While they are both guilty of these sins these problems can, in theory at least, all be rectified. But should the UN and France accept transparency in their financial dealings with dictators, became respectful of America, and abandon statism for the rights of the individual, it would still be wrong for the United States to need their approval to act in its own interests. What John Kerry is saying is that the United States lacks the ability to decide what is right and the confidence to act on its own to see right done.

An America led by John Kerry would first want to see if all the cool kids in Europe and the self-appointed judges of what is fashionable in foreign policy at the UN approve before making any key decisions and acting to implement them -- and not just beyond our own borders! This may well be a consequence of John Kerry's apparent lack of bedrock principles. I do not believe that John Kerry hates America or that he blames America first for everything bad that happens in the world. But I do believe that he lacks confidence in the inherent goodness of America and the ability of America's elected leaders to make correct choices in foreign policy. Frankly, what I can't quite figure out is why he thinks France or the UN have any special ability in this regard, especially with respect to protecting the interests of the United States.

Because I have a daughter starting high school in three weeks I see examples of this kind of behavior all the time on a smaller, more localized scale. To torture this analogy just a little further I'd like to ask Mr. Kerry two questions:

1. If, as president, all the other nations of the world decide that the Jews and Zionism really are the impediment to peace in the Middle East, are you going to go along to get along?

2. If, as president, you learn that Iran plans to detonate a nuclear device in Israel, will it be necessary to get the approval of France and the UN before acting?

Blog

Hey cool! Now we all get to read what each other wrote.

John F. Kerry

Running commentary...

Whoa, I was starting to feel like a bad dad for awhile there thinking I would have let the hamster just go on to hamster heaven, but then Alexandra reminded us that we exist only for the greater glory of the state. Fortunately, my children aren't being taught that. I love my country and I am thankful that I was born in America, but I do not exist merely to make America greater.

Watched the movie. Not bad, but something was missing in his career... being Lieutenant Governor for Michael Dukakis.

Honestly, who ever would have thought that being proud of Vietnam and Vietnam veterans would ever be featured at a DNC Convention? I hope those returning from Afghanistan and Iraq don't have to wait 30 years to be accepted by the rank and file of the Democratic Party.

Maybe it's just the placement of the microphones, but the crowd doesn't really seem up to snuff.

I respect Max Cleland and feel for him and the injuries he suffered in Vietnam. People who note that he was injured in an accident don't appreciate that many injuries and deaths in war do not result directly from enemy fire. Mr. Cleland deserves a lot of credit for moving forward -- it's probably more than I could have done in simliar circumstances. He's earned the right to say and do just about whatever he wants, including being a strong, wrong-headed partisan. But it is a lie for Mr. Rassman to say that he has always taken the high road.

John Kerry's starting smoother, more lively, and less monotone than usual. As they scan the crowd and I notice Leonardo DiCaprio, I am reminded of something Magic Johnson once said in the L.A. Lakers' locker room after a game as he scanned the crowd of celebrities all around him, "They want to be us and we want to be them."

Paraphrasing, "I want Europe to like us." Great, just great.

John marched for women. I know a lot of people who marched for women.

Paraphrasing, "Bush is a liar." Uh huh.

John McCain gets featured a lot, because, well, swing voters like John McCain. I look forward to John McCain reminding everyone who he supports.

Paraphrasing, "John Ashcroft does not uphold the U.S. Constitution." Puhleeze.

Not paraphrasing, "This is the most important election of our lifetime." Bullshit.

Paraphrasing, "Protectionism is on it's way." And I bet he wants to pick the winners too.

Non sequitur alert -- ...can't type fast enough...

I love it when Democrats take credit for all the things that I and 100 million other Americans did to make the economy grow in the 1990's.

He accepts.

Paraphrasing, "Son of a mill worker." Son of a mill manager, close enough.

Mother Teresa. Great.

Max is a patriot, so quit questioning his patriotism!

He's delivering a good speech very well. But the substance is lacking, IMHO.

Somehow, I think we are about to hear about "squandering goodwill."

Yep.

Facts were distorted by politics?

Bush wanted to go to war!

Bush squandered American lives.

Paraphrasing, "We will never go to war without a plan to win the peace." I.e., we will never go to war.

He will not preempt, but he will respond. The delegates may be willing to wait for the next attack. I am not.

The backdoor draft of the National Guard. Bullshit.

Hello Mr. Spielberg.

Mr. Kerry doesn't have a clue about inspecting container ships. He doesn't know what he is talking about.

And how dare Bush spend money in Iraq!

And how dare Bush question my patriotism!

Dissent is patriotism! Patriotism is dissent!

Uh, how many in the crowd wore a uniform again?

He's getting worked up about the flag, but who's he fighting?

Enron! (Halliburton!) Big Drug Companies! Bush! Cheney!

Santa Claus is coming to town...

Whoa, body armor... uh, who voted against the $87B appropriation?

Will he mention Al Qaeda? North Korea? Iran? Any details on 9/11? Drugs? AIDS? Apparently not.

Here come the Luddites. Let's keep those ineffective manufacturing jobs, no matter what it costs!

Benedict Arnold CEOs!

Hair pollution cauding asthma?

"Help is on the way!" He's no Al Sharpton, that's for sure. But I mean that in a good way.

Gosh, is the rest of the world going to like the new protectionist America?

Fiscal responsibility, hey I'm on board if you really want to end corporate welfare.

"Pay as you go!" Except for Social Security.

If you want to make $200K a year, go to hell. Well, he's got his.

Teachers need to be treated like professionals. Professionals with 3.5 months off each year.

Start Start! Admit it, you know it's coming. Even if XXX Start has been shown to be not effective.

He's sweating quite a bit now.

Lots of declarative statements about how medical care will be better, faster, cheaper -- but how?

He's going to kill the pharmaceutical industry by letting drugs in from Canada.

Health Care is a right! It's right there in the uh, in the um, in the speech.

Saudi Royal family bad. True dat. But we don't get much oil from Saudi Arabia. As Otter once said, "Don't interrupt him, he's on a roll."

He's called Bush a liar, a killer of young Americans, a thief, and an abuser of the U.S. Constitution tonight. But can't we still be friends? Oh, and don't attack me.

Bush the religious extremist.

Stronger at home, respected in the world? How about stronger in the world, respected at home instead?

It might be easier to find those miracle cures if you don't kill the drug companies.

Anybody else tired of Vietnam yet?

He tried to use several old Republican phrases, with mixed success.

And now, it's Bono time.

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John Kerry delivered a first rate speech. I strongly disagree with the content, but he did well. It's going to be a good fight.

But I think I am going to be sick of John Edwards and his thumbs up pretty soon.

He spent 20 weeks in Vietnam and 20 years in the Senate, but its hard to realize that from the speech or bio. Vietnam seems to have an undue influence on him. I wonder if Oliver Wendell Holmes bored everyone to death later in life with his much longer war service in the Civil War when "[his] heart was touched by fire."

Miscellaneous Thoughts

I haven't watched a minute of the DNC Convention. First time I can remember not watching it gavel to gavel since I was in college. Funny, I don't think I've missed a thing. Alas, I will probably break down and watch John Kerry tonight -- out of respect, yea that's it, respect.

Why doesn't Anybody But Bush (ABB) include Ralph Nader?

Remember 9/12/2001 when everyone, and I mean everyone, was saying, "Thank God, the adults are in charge"? Anyone change their minds after watching Al Gore lately? And if ABB was a such a bad idea then, why is it a good idea now?

If Michael Moore was listening to John Edwards speech last night that was transformed from Two Americas to One America, do you think, "Dude, Where's My Country?" crossed his mind?

It is sad to me that Joe Lieberman is on the outside looking in this week. Almost as sad as Al Sharpton being considered acceptable in polite society.

Imagine the coup the RNC would have in getting Harold Ford or Barak Obama to break ranks and switch sides.

It's been said before, but if John F. Kennedy were alive today, he'd be a Republican.

I have a solution for the national debt. Tax clichés. A $1 excise tax should be incurred every time some pundit says any of the following tonight after John Kerry's nomination acceptance speech:
1. He hit a home run.
2. He hit a grand slam.
3. He won the World Series.
4. He scored a touchdown.
5. He won the Super Bowl.
6. It was a slam dunk.
7. GOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And to be fair, the same tax applies later in New York for George W. Bush's nomination acceptance speech. That will get us back to a surplus to make room for more tax breaks!

Hmm, maybe there's a drinking game in there.

As James Lileks noted, the elephant in Democrat's living room (pun intended) is Al Qaeda, but no one in Boston is all that anxious to talk about it, unless they are apparently blindfolded and describing just what they call feel up close and personal.

I heard John Edwards on the radio today say this November was the most important election in our lifetime. Self-serving nonsense. The most important election in my lifetime was 1980. Can you imagine Jimmy Carter saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."? Heaven help us if there's another election in my lifetime that is more important. And yes, that means we will survive if Kerry does somehow win.

Anyone else notice that Teresa Heinz Kerry's impressive language skills are limited to European languages?

Maybe the 2008 Democratic Convention will be more fun. Perhaps they'll dispense with the happy face, have a nice day approach after Kerry gets pasted this fall. That and the likelihood that Hillary won't quite be the lock that some are projecting ought to make it fun.

IMHO, John Kerry's Vietnam service is pretty much off-limits. He served in a dangerous time and at a dangerous place doing a dangerous job. I can only hope that I would have done as well in a similar situation. On the other hand, Mr. Kerry's actions after he returned and his shameless exploitation of his service since then is fair game. Millions of men served honorably in Vietnam and I've personally met hundreds of them. I think I've heard John Kerry talk more about Vietnam than all the rest of them put together. Is there anything less becoming of a real war hero than to walk around telling everyone that's what you are?

Similarly, George W. Bush's National Guard service is pretty much off-limits. He did his job and I'm certain he would have gone to battle if he had been called up. Not everyone in the military rotated through Vietnam.

Doesn't this still from John Kerry's film tonight look like a still from the Bigfoot films?

Has anyone else noticed that all former Democratic presidents and losing aspirants have to be "rehabilitated" in a future convention? With the exception of Nixon, I don't think this has been true of Republican presidents and losing contenders in my lifetime.

Is the New York Times a liberal paper? No, wait, that's already been answered.

Will John Kerry follow his own advice and start showing up for his day job if Congress takes his advice and stays in session for the next eighteen months to address the 9/11 Commission's recommendations?

On November 3, perhaps the rank and file will finally accept that Dukakis getting thrashed was not a fluke.

I put the odds at about even that both parties will have a black candidate on their respective tickets in 2008.

Anyone else find it strange that no Americans are being kidnapped in Iraq?

I can't wait for LOTR IV this Christmas.

Attention Bloggers at the DNC Convention

What flavor Kool-Aid are the Democrats serving?

In Other News...

I skipped the DNC Convention today, doing a few good deeds for some folks instead and I don't feel like I've missed a thing. But I do wish I'd kept a copy of that picture of the cage protestors were supposed to stay inside of in Boston. Don't you think that more than a few Angry Lefties look upon that cage, imagining Republicans inside of it, with a complete lack of irony and a sly little smile at how things might be if they got to be commissar for a day?

Oh, and scroll down two posts for something composed on Saturday for which I have lifted an embargo.

Best of the Web

Woo hoo! I made it on to James Taranto's Best of the Web today. There was originally another sentence in my e-mail to Mr. Taranto related to Sandy Berger's trouser troubles, but I thought it was in pretty bad taste so I deleted it before sending.

In other news, the MSNBC hyperlink and the Instapundit hyperlink combined got me an extra 35 or so readers this week. An instalanche ain't what it used to be.

Mr. Hawkins' Opus

John Hawkins has solicited entries for his latest list, this one being "Bloggers Select History's Biggest Impact Players." The release of his list has been delayed for a couple of days, but since the entry date has passed I don't think I'll be unduly influencing anyone else's choices. Therefore, I don't feel as though I am violating Mr. Hawkins' request by publishing my list now.

As I mentioned in my e-mail to Mr. Hawkins, I think there are some problems with this kind of list having to do with adequate shared criteria and a lack of sufficient historical knowledge on the part of just about everyone (myself included) to do such a list justice. My criteria for selection on this list focused on who had the longest lasting, most important influence on the world as we now find it. These are mostly observations, not value judgments -- except for the really bad guys. Here's my list with some commentary:

Moses (Mr. Old Testament, assuming, of course, that he existed)
Plato (Western Civilization 101)
Aristotle (Western Civilization 102)
Alexander the Great (Practical application of Western Civilization 101/102)
Jesus Christ (Here primarily as an inspiration to others)
Muhammad (Here primarily as an inspiration to others)
Henry II, King of England (We owe the Common Law to him)
Timojen -- Genghis Khan (A real overachiever, mostly bad though)
Martin Luther (Mr. Protestant Reformation)
William Shakespeare (The most read author in history)
Immanuel Kant (Deep thinker, for good and ill)
Abraham Lincoln (FDR and Reagan pale in comparison, Bush and Kerry? Puhleeze)
Karl Marx (Bastard, though I'm not sure he really deserves all the blame)
Henry Ford (Harnessed the industrial revolution)
Albert Einstein (Ushered in the atomic age)
Mahatma Ghandi (Delivered the death knell of colonialism)
Winston Churchill (Mr. 20th Century)
Adolf Hitler (The apex of evil)
Werner Von Braun (Made it possible for us to slip the surly bonds of earth)
W. Edwards Deming (Mr. Statistical Process, this is the way the world now works)
Michael Moore (21st century master of propaganda -- sadly, his wickedness has just begun)

Yes, I know the list is pretty heavy with DWEMs, but that's how it happened and it is silly to pretend otherwise. Less than half of my list was alive during the 20th century. I was surprised how few bad guys made the list overall, though as you can tell from my last entry, I think Michael Moore's has just started to scratch the surface of the wickedness he will unleash. With so many in what used to be thought of as polite society encouraging him and enough money to proceeed unfettered, the amount of mischeif and grief he is going to cause in the future will be immense.

I welcome your thoughts in the comment section.

DOWNDATE: Perhaps Stalin should have been on the list, and maybe Mao, but I already had more than enough on the bastard side of the ledger.

Spot the Cognitive Dissonance

From a story that Sandy Berger resigned from his position as John Kerry's campaign advisor on national security today:

Berger's home and office were searched earlier this year by FBI agents armed with warrants after the former Clinton adviser voluntarily returned some sensitive documents to the National Archives and admitted he also removed handwritten notes he had made while reviewing the sensitive documents.

However, some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration's handling of al-Qaida terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration are still missing, officials and lawyers told The Associated Press.

From a story about the never-ending DNC effort to make something out of nothing concerning the President's National Guard Service:

"At a time when national security is on the forefront of every American's mind, the American people deserve to know the truth about their president's military service," McAuliffe said.

Citing reports that some records of the president's service have been lost or destroyed, McAuliffe said, "Only one man knows about George W. Bush's military service, and he is not talking. That's why we're talking about this today."

Has Mr. McAuliffe checked Sandy Berger's pants for the missing documentation? Or is that classified information? Maybe national security has become a wedgie issue for the DNC.

DOWNDATE: Welcome Instapundit and MSNBC readers! Actually, I wonder now whether the Republicans will pull Kerry's underwear over his head on this one or if the Democrats will continue to insist on doing it themselves.

Compassionate Libertarianism

I'm thinking of starting a new political movement that is libertarian at its core but still makes room for a decent safety net. This movement will respect the liberty of the populace and ask only for minimal sacrifices to be made for the common good. Very simple tax code. Strong defense. Emphasis on pushing government down as far as possible to the local level. The politically correct will be shunned. Details to be worked out later -- after I wake up from this dream.

Anybody interested in joining?

TNR - Not a Serious Publication

Here's how the lead article I received today from The New Republic starts:

President Bush isn't an aspiring dictator, and he's not planning to rig the election. But...

Really, Jonathon Chait gets paid to write like this?

When Lord Hutton Speaks...

I don't know what Lord Hutton's given name is (was?), but his initials certainly cannot be E.F., since when Lord Hutton speaks, nobody in Big Media is listening.

Yes, I know this would have been better in January, but I just thought of it. Must have been that reference on NRO to Lord Hutton when they meant Lord Butler.

One Heartbeat Away From the Presidency

With apologies to Bobby Goldsboro (and what a strange thing that is to have to write!):

There he sits exploiting torts with a legal pad,
What a handsome lad, that's my boy.
I pull his string, he says, “Bush is bad!”,
”The economy’s sad!”, that's my boy.
You can have your Cheney and his gravitas,
And you can have your Hewitt and Limbaugh,
I'll stay here with my Little John near, Air America on the radio,
Biding my time and watching Johnny grow.

Making his fortune, he’s a sly young fox
Before a witness box, That's my boy,
”Mickey Mouse jury -- it's thirteen o'clock”,
He can sell any crock! That's my boy.

In six short years he’s gone from rich to richer,
And what he did before that I don't know,
Little John cried during nappy time, while I’m the war hero,
Shrum and Cahill chose watching Johnny grow.

Complex, young and sexy’s what Big Media said,
Well coiffed head, that's my boy.
Better bone up quickly, keep his briefings read,
Or our tickets dead, that’s my boy.

What’d you say Teresa, the country boy’s got hick charm,
The pollsters say he’ll be good for a hundred votes or so.
We’ll keep talkin’ shop ‘til the fop’s ball’s drop, flip a flop before I go,
Me and God watching Johnny grow.

Me and God watching Johnny grow.

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