Infinite Monkeys: Hugh's Blog Book

Infinite Monkeys tells why Hugh's Blog Book is so important:

"I think many Americans believe blogs are a hot trend, but a temporary one, like CB radios. And, yes, for many bloggers the thrill of BlogSpot wears off quicker than you can say 'Breaker One-Nine, good buddy.' However, Hugh understands that there is something much deeper and more powerful going on here, and rightly compares it to Gutenberg and the Reformation. The way we communicate is fundamentally being changed, and while the New York Times, CBS and the political process are closest to the epicenter, the shaking will soon be felt in pop culture, religion, the arts and other unexpected corners of the world.
Hugh's book is a great survey: it moves briskly for those familiar with blogs, but wisely Hugh puts some of the meat in the middle where a casual reader looking in an airport bookstore will be drawn in (and this is the perfect book for reading on a flight, although the reader will be itching to get back to his computer to check out some of the blogs, especially the ones listed at the bottom of page XII). He clearly lays out the history of blogs, then goes further into the longer term implications. It really is essential reading."

In Iraq, a clear-cut bin Laden-Zarqawi alliance | csmonitor.com

In Iraq, a clear-cut bin Laden-Zarqawi alliance | csmonitor.com: "But now, the US and its allies face a grave and growing threat: an alliance of mutual interests and convenience between the group that carried out the 9/11 attacks in the United States and the one that has contributed so much to Iraq's chaos.
'There were certainly some differences between bin Laden and Zarqawi,'' says Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies. 'But these differences were minor compared to the biggest things they have in common - their desire to hit at the US.'"


And I'm sure this alliance started after the U.S. attacked Iraq. After all, both parties were in love with the U.S. before the impudent President Bush "rushed to war". Isn't it odd that the left can clearly see a "vast right wing conspiracy" but Islamofacists are all independent operators.

Tsunami Disaster Relief Part 2

If you would like a trusted means of giving to alleve the suffering of those devastated by the Tsunami in Asia you can give to CCC's Tidal Wave Relief Fund by clicking here.

Blogging on Blogging

Hugh Hewitt has a new book that helps quantify what the blog is going on around here. Instapundit thinks it pretty good and I suspect it is though I haven't yet read it.

The following quote illustrates the power of the internet with respect to niche markets and niche tastes. Blogs are just the niche markets of opinion media and the tail is apparently very long.

Wired 12.10: The Long Tail: "To get a sense of our true taste, unfiltered by the economics of scarcity, look at Rhapsody, a subscription-based streaming music service (owned by RealNetworks) that currently offers more than 735,000 tracks.
Chart Rhapsody's monthly statistics and you get a 'power law' demand curve that looks much like any record store's, with huge appeal for the top tracks, tailing off quickly for less popular ones. But a really interesting thing happens once you dig below the top 40,000 tracks, which is about the amount of the fluid inventory (the albums carried that will eventually be sold) of the average real-world record store. Here, the Wal-Marts of the world go to zero - either they don't carry any more CDs, or the few potential local takers for such fringy fare never find it or never even enter the store.
The Rhapsody demand, however, keeps going. Not only is every one of Rhapsody's top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just a few people a month, somewhere in the country.

This is the Long Tail.

You can find everything out there on the Long Tail. There's the back catalog, older albums still fondly remembered by longtime fans or rediscovered by new ones. There are live tracks, B-sides, remixes, even (gasp) covers. There are niches by the thousands, genre within genre within genre: Imagine an entire Tower Records devoted to '80s hair bands or ambient dub. There are foreign bands, once priced out of reach in the Import aisle, and obscure bands on even more obscure labels, many of which don't have the distribution clout to get into Tower at all."

Truly this is a new Reformation. I wonder what the implications of the long tail will be in the realm of religion. It seems likely that this kind of media reformation will be very challenging to oppressive regimes like Radical Islamist and the Communist Chinese. On the other hand for Christiam Culture which has already undergone a famous reformation, there seems to be a move back to unity and authority. Christian Blogs will be interesting to me because of the tension between this move back to authority and the inherenent democracy of the blogosphere.

Tsunami Disaster Relief

Amazon.com has a one-click donation process set up to give to Red Cross relief efforts if you would like to quickly aid victims of the recent Tsunami.

Fathers and Sons at Christmas

Sand in the Gears reminds us of what Christmas is all about (or maybe just for boys):

"Target? Target! Their logo is a bloody bulls-eye, for crying out loud. Surely they would have cowboy guns, yes? Don't believe the hype.

And so it was with every destination. Time dragged on and the roads began to fill with grim-faced shoppers. In desperation I wheeled into the local mall. There was one place left, one final hope for a man intent on arming his children, in fine American fashion, for Christmas. The hobby shop.

I was greeted by a gruff bearded man. He could smell the panic on me, like a grizzled sergeant can smell it on a soldier in his first battle. "Something I can do for you, son?"

"Yes. Please. Please, for the love of all that remains good about America, tell me that you carry toy cowboy guns. Just a couple of cowboy guns is all I'm asking for. Toys R Us doesn't have them, Wal-Mart doesn't have them . . ." My voice trailed off.

He sized me up, perhaps to see if I was one of those pansy do-gooder Public Citizen types just looking to make trouble. Fortunately I hadn't shaved, and I was wearing flannel. "C'mon," he said with a gleam in his eye, "we just got in a shipment."

They just got in a shipment.

He led me to the back, where he had assembled -- and I am not making this up -- gun racks to hold all the toy armaments. If Santa ever needed to assemble a commando strike force, this could be his armory."

If you love what boyhood used to be, you'll love reading the whole thing. Merry Christmas to all, especially little boys and their Dads.

Bigotry on Campus

The Chronicle: Career Network: 12/15/2004: "After class, I asked one of the students for his read on what had happened. How could the response be so heated but the question left unengaged? He replied: 'You know how it is. Students don't want to disagree with their professors. Most of the students around here are pretty conservative, but they get the strong sense that their professors are liberal. And on issues like these, they're afraid to disagree.' They had made assumptions about how I would think and were reluctant to contradict me.
A couple of days later, during the Republican National Convention, I ate lunch with several colleagues. The discussion turned, inevitably, to politics. The anti-Republican tenor at the table remained unbroken, but reached its zenith with this vehement comment from one colleague, 'I'm not even going to watch [the convention]. I can't stand it.'
I could no longer blame the students for shying away from hot-button issues like Iraq: For them, the academy does not foster thoughtful discussion of thorny issues, but harbors the potential at any time to unleash the visceral reactions of their superiors to what students think are their own reasoned political positions. For students, the risk of speaking up is much the same as it is for me: They risk losing the respect of professors and perhaps endangering their long-term aspirations. "

Just another example.

More from a converted Atheist...

Biola > Page 1 : Biola News & Communications: "During a couple telephone discussions shortly after their last dialogue, Flew explained to Habermas that he was considering becoming a theist. While Flew did not change his position at that time, he concluded that certain philosophical and scientific considerations were causing him to do some serious rethinking. He characterized his position as that of atheism standing in tension with several huge question marks. "

This is a compelling interview between flew and a long time philosphical opponent. It's riveting. It's the equivalent of Steve Jobs suddenly becoming CEO of Microsoft. Or something like that.

America's One Party State

Economist.com: "Bias in universities is hard to correct because it is usually not overt: it has to do with prejudice about which topics are worth studying and what values are worth holding. Stephen Balch, the president of the conservative National Association of Scholars, argues that university faculties suffer from the same political problems as the "small republics" described in Federalist 10: a motivated majority within the faculty finds it easy to monopolies decision-making and squeeze out minorities."

It is interesting and ironic that conservatives would learn the meaning of institutional bigotry by being on the wrong end of it. For many years I've observed that liberals make too much of Institutional Racism and conservatives make too little of it. Perhaps turnabout is fair play.

Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / A left-wing monopoly on campuses

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / A left-wing monopoly on campuses: "'If this were a survey of students reporting widespread sexual harassment,' says ACTA's president, Anne Neal, 'there would be an uproar.' That is because universities take sexual harassment seriously. Intellectual harassment, on the other hand -- like the one-party conformity it flows from -- they ignore. Until that changes, the scandal of the campuses will only grow worse."

I'm so glad that this kind of thing keeps getting attention.

Leading Atheist Philosopher Concludes God's Real

Follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Leading Atheist Philosopher Concludes God's Real.

NEW YORK — A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism (search) for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God — more or less — based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.

At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew (search) has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.

Flew said he's best labeled a deist like Thomas Jefferson (search), whose God was not actively involved in people's lives.

"I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins," he said. "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose."

Flew first made his mark with the 1950 article "Theology and Falsification," based on a paper for the Socratic Club (search), a weekly Oxford religious forum led by writer and Christian thinker C.S. Lewis.

Over the years, Flew proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele, and Reading universities in Britain, in visits to numerous U.S. and Canadian campuses and in books, articles, lectures and debates.

There was no one moment of change but a gradual conclusion over recent months for Flew, a spry man who still does not believe in an afterlife.

Yet biologists' investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved," Flew says in the new video, "Has Science Discovered God?"

The video draws from a New York discussion last May organized by author Roy Abraham Varghese's Institute for Metascientific Research in Garland, Texas. Participants were Flew; Varghese; Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder, an Orthodox Jew; and Roman Catholic philosopher John Haldane of Scotland's University of St. Andrews.

The first hint of Flew's turn was a letter to the August-September issue of Britain's Philosophy Now magazine. "It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism," he wrote.

The letter commended arguments in Schroeder's "The Hidden Face of God" and "The Wonder of the World" by Varghese, an Eastern Rite Catholic layman.

This week, Flew finished writing the first formal account of his new outlook for the introduction to a new edition of his "God and Philosophy," scheduled for release next year by Prometheus Books.

Prometheus specializes in skeptical thought, but if his belief upsets people, well "that's too bad," Flew said. "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads."

God is Alive... in Philosophy Departments!

I believe that this could signal the rebirth of the University as the center of the Judeo-Christian tradition (I'll explain more at the end). Consider the following information sent to me by my wizened friend Steve Hays:

http://www.philoonline.org/about.htm

Philo
is the only professional philosophy journal devoted exclusively to criticisms of
theism and defenses or developments of
naturalism.

***************************************************

Consider
the experience of its founding editor:

www.philoonline.org/library/parsons_4_1.htm

My
experience editing Philo was bittersweet. Philo was born out of
discussions between myself and Timothy J. Madigan, Executive Director of the
Society of Humanist Philosophers. I was concerned that recent work in the
philosophy of religion had been dominated by theists, with few replies and
critiques by atheist or humanist philosophers. Worse, a very conservative
strain of apologetic, heretofore relegated to the periphery of academic
discussion, had begun to enter the mainstream. I was, and am, convinced
that the vast majority of professional philosophers are nontheists who endorse
secular aims and values, yet, while theist philosophers energetically pursued
their agenda, the secular voice was mute.

Philo was
founded to provide the forum for the best and most sophisticated expression of
atheist and humanist philosophy, while still being open to the publication of
articles by theists. With much trepidation, I agreed to edit Philo, a job
for which I had no experience. While I have been proud to serve as the
founding editor, I have been disappointed by the response of the philosophical
community. For any journal to thrive, it must have a generous number of
high-quality submissions from top scholars. While I feel that the pieces
we did publish were generally very good, we often had to make issues slimmer
than I would have liked because we had too few top-notch submissions. I do
sincerely hope that humanist philosophers will support Philo by submitting some
of their best work and not leave the field to an increasingly strident and
aggressive religious
apologetic.

************************************************************************

Let
us follow this up with the admission of his editorial successor.

http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm

THE
DESECULARIZATION OF ACADEMIA THAT EVOLVED IN PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENTS SINCE THE
LATE 1960s

By the second half of the twentieth century,
universities and colleges had been become in the main secularized. The standard
(if not exceptionless) position in each field, from physics to psychology,
assumed or involved arguments for a naturalist world-view; departments of
theology or religion aimed to understand the meaning and origins of religious
writings, not to develop arguments against naturalism. Analytic philosophers (in
the mainstream of analytic
philosophy) treated theism as an antirealist or
non-cognitivist world-view, requiring the reality, not of a deity, but merely of
emotive expressions or certain “forms of life” (of course there were a few
exceptions, e.g., Ewing, Ross, Hartshorne, etc., but I am discussing the
mainstream view).

This is not to say that none of the
scholars in the various academic fields were realist theists in their “private
lives”; but realist theists, for the most part, excluded their theism from their
publications and teaching, in large part because theism (at least in its realist
variety) was mainly considered to have such a low epistemic status that it did
not meet the standards of an “academically respectable” position to hold. The
secularization of mainstream academia began to quickly unravel upon the
publication of Plantinga’s influential book on realist theism, God and Other
Minds, in 1967. It became apparent to the philosophical profession that this
book displayed that realist theists were not outmatched by naturalists in terms
of the most valued standards of analytic philosophy: conceptual precision, rigor
of argumentation, technical erudition, and an in-depth defense of an original
world-view. This book, followed seven years later by Plantinga’s even more
impressive book, The Nature of Necessity, made it manifest that a realist theist
was writing at the highest qualitative level of analytic philosophy, on the same
playing field as Carnap, Russell, Moore, Grünbaum, and other naturalists.
Realist theists, whom hitherto had segregated their academic lives from their
private lives, increasingly came to believe (and came to be increasingly
accepted or respected for believing) that arguing for realist theism in
scholarly publications could no longer be justifiably regarded as engaging in an
“academically unrespectable” scholarly pursuit.

Naturalists
passively watched as realist versions of theism, most influenced by Plantinga’s
writings, began to sweep through the philosophical community, until today
perhaps one-quarter or one-third of philosophy professors are theists, with most
being orthodox Christians. Although many theists do not work in the area of the
philosophy of religion, so many of them do work in this area that there are now
over five philosophy journals devoted to theism or the philosophy of religion,
such as Faith and Philosophy, Religious Studies, International Journal of the
Philosophy of Religion, Sophia, Philosophia Christi, etc.
Philosophia
Christi began in the late 1990s and already is overflowing with submissions from
leading philosophers. Can you imagine a sizeable portion of the articles in
contemporary physics journals suddenly presenting arguments that space and time
are God’s sensorium (Newton’s view) or biology journals becoming filled with
theories defending élan vital or a guiding intelligence? Of course, some
professors in these other, non-philosophical, fields are theists; for example, a
recent study indicated that seven percent of the top scientists are theists.1
However, theists in other fields tend to compartmentalize their theistic beliefs
from their scholarly work; they rarely assume and never argue for theism in
their scholarly work. If they did, they would be committing academic suicide or,
more exactly, their articles would quickly be rejected, requiring them to write
secular articles if they wanted to be published. If a scientist did argue for
theism in professional academic journals, such as Michael Behe in biology, the
arguments are not published in scholarly journals in his field (e.g., biology),
but in philosophy journals (e.g., Philosophy of Science and Philo, in Behe’s
case). But in philosophy, it became, almost overnight, “academically
respectable” to argue for theism, making philosophy a favored field of entry for
the most intelligent and talented theists entering academia today. A count would
show that in Oxford University Press’ 2000–2001 catalogue, there are 96 recently
published books on the philosophy of religion (94 advancing theism and 2
presenting “both sides”). By contrast, there are 28 books in this catalogue on
the philosophy of language, 23 on epistemology (including religious
epistemology, such as Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief), 14 on
metaphysics, 61 books on the philosophy of mind, and 51 books on the philosophy
of science.

And how have naturalist philosophers reacted to what
some committed naturalists might consider as “the embarrassment” of belonging to
the only academic field that has allowed itself to lose the secularization it
once had? Some naturalists wish to leave the field, considering themselves as no
longer doing “philosophy of mind,” for example, but instead “cognitive
science.” But the great majority of naturalist philosophers react by
publicly ignoring the increasing desecularizing of philosophy (while privately
disparaging theism, without really knowing anything about contemporary analytic
philosophy of religion) and proceeding to work in their own area of
specialization as if theism, the view of approximately one-quarter or one-third
of their field, did not exist. (The numbers “one-quarter” and “one-third” are
not the result of any poll, but rather are the exceptionless, educated guesses
of every atheist and theist philosophy professor I have asked [the answers
varied between “one-quarter” and “one-third”]). Quickly, naturalists found
themselves a mere bare majority, with many of the leading thinkers in the
various disciplines of philosophy, ranging from philosophy of science (e.g., Van
Fraassen) to epistemology (e.g., Moser), being theists. The predicament of
naturalist philosophers is not just due to the influx of talented theists, but
is due to the lack of counter-activity of naturalist philosophers themselves.
God is not “dead” in academia; he returned to life in the late 1960s and is now
alive and well in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments.

Remember, this evaluation was penned by an atheist. What encourages me most about these developments is that philosophy is at the root of the academic enterprise. One can be a professor without being a biologist, but one cannot be a human being without having a philosophy. If the most rigorous philosophical inquiry leads to belief in God, then I expect that in 50 years the academic world will reject the fad of secularism and return to it's roots in theology as the queen of the sciences.

Long Time No Blog

I don't know whether it's fatigue after the election or just too many appointments and kids activities but the blog has been silent for too long. I've had many many things I wanted to blog about but just haven't. I'm going to try to get back into the swing of things now though.

Redundant: Liberal College Campus

George Will writes a great article on the state of diversity in Academia:

"OH, well, if studies say so. The great secret is out: liberals dominate campuses. Coming soon: 'Moon Implicated in Tides, Studies Find.'
One study of 1,000 professors finds that Democrats outnumber Republicans at least seven to one in the humanities and social sciences. That imbalance, more than double what it was three decades ago, is intensifying because younger professors are more uniformly liberal than the older cohort that is retiring.
Another study, of voter-registration records, including those of professors in engineering and the hard sciences, found nine Democrats for every Republican at Berkeley and Stanford. Among younger profs, there were 183 Democrats, six Republicans.
But we essentially knew this even before The American Enterprise magazine reported in 2002 of examinations of voting records in various college communities. Some findings about professors registered with the two major parties or with liberal or conservative minor parties:
Cornell: 166 liberals, 6 conservatives.
Stanford: 151 liberals, 17 conservatives.
Colorado: 116 liberals, 5 conservatives. "

Oh the diversity! Vive la difference!

Perspective on the Marine shooting in Iraq.

Read this.

Oliver Stone gives props to Christianity

Not intentionally of course but Stone admits that sexuality was more unrestrained before Christianity influenced the world.

New York Post Online Edition: entertainment: "'Alexander lived in a more honest time,' Stone told Playboy magazine.
'We go into his bisexuality. It may offend some people, but sexuality in those days was a different thing. Pre-Christian morality. Young boys were with boys when they wanted to be.' "

Of course old men were with young boys too when they wanted to be but Christianity changed all that. But ours is not a particularly honest time.

Fish are People too!

Yahoo! News - PETA Campaign Pitches Fish As Having Feelings.

Maybe we can begin prosecuting fish for eating one another.

The Scopes Monkey Trial: Racism vs. Religion

The Volokh Conspiracy - overturns my entire perception of the Scopes Monkey Trial by reminding us of the primary sources, not just what we have been told happened.

"A New Scopes Trial Atmosphere?--In David Brooks' latest editorial in the New York Times, he rightly dismisses the conventional wisdom about the election, noting that evangelical turnout this time was about the same percentage of the vote as last time (tip Instapundit). He also notes:

It's ridiculous to say, as some liberals have this week, that we are perpetually refighting the Scopes trial, with the metro forces of enlightenment and reason arrayed against the retro forces of dogma and reaction.

This jumped out at me, both because of my recent posts on William Jennings Bryan and because most people understand very little about what was really going on at the Scopes trial. The book that Scopes was teaching was a popular biology book of the day--George Hunter's Civic Biology (1914). Bryan was not just disturbed by the teaching of evolution but more broadly by the whole social Darwinist agenda, including both capitalism and genetic superiority. Civic Biology was a vicious social Darwinist tract. Here are some excerpts from the book, courtesy of Eugenics Watch:

Hunter's Civic Biology, p. 195-196

The Races of Man. — At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; The American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.

Hunter's Civic Biology, p. 261-265

Improvement of Man. — If the stock of domesticated animals can be improved, it is not unfair to ask if the health and vigor of the future generations of men and women on the earth might not be improved by applying to them the laws of selection. This improvement of the future race has a number of factors in which we as individuals may play a part. These are personal hygiene, selection of healthy mates, and the betterment of the environment.

Eugenics. — When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand. The most important of these is freedom from germ diseases which might be handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, syphilis, that dread disease which cripples and kills hundreds of thousands of innocent children, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity. The science of being well born is called eugenics."

Please read the whole thing

Why not?

Times Online - Britain: "COUPLES will be able to choose donated sperm or eggs to create their designer child, under proposals published by the fertility watchdog. "

Surely this is not a sign of religous and ethical reflection.

BUSH HAS ROBBED US AGAIN!

So last night, me and the McWife where at the Mercury Cafe, learning how to swing dance. The Lindy Hop is tough, man (luckily we're both natural athletes so we only looked moderately uncoordinated).

After the 6 pm class, I went over to the registration table where they had fliers for other swing-related events. And lo, there on the table was this announcement flier:

Dear Friends,

The internet is abuzz with convincing information telling us that the Bush election was rigged and stolen; that cheating and falsifying was rampant in Ohio and New Mexico, perhaps elsewhere, and the Kerry conceded much too quickly and should have demanded investigations.

Although we have no trouble believing that another election ahs been stolen, I've heard of no plan for doing anything about it. So far we have no person in our midst with enough visibility and clout to make this a national issue, to rally the people, to demand a full bi-partisan investigation. So we grumble among ourselves, seethe at the thought that we've been screwed again and hope that some Galahad will take up the cause and demand satisfaction.

How about coming together and discussing this issue with an aim to take action, to look for our Galahad, to keep the pot stirred up? The older this issue becomes the less heat it generates. Time is not on our side. Let me hear from you and let's meet on Monday, November 8, at 7:00 p.m. in the Red Room at the Mercury Café.

I look forward to seeing you. Peace.
Ken Seaman

I do wish that I could have Tivo'd that meeting. Now I hate to throw cold water on the 'heat' and let the pot sit unstirred until a gooey film develops on the surface, BUT...

Instapundit has these posts (from that conservative rag Salon.com no less) that pop the balloon filled by Michael Moore, Air America and of course our own local hero, Ken Seaman. Air America has been awash with conspiracy theories about Diebolt Inc. and the electronic voting machines. Michael Moore used the language of a 'hacked' election. I guess we know who Ken Seaman is taking his cues from.

The Soxblog post has this from the Boston Globe:

The Globe's front page today has a treatment of the "internet buzz on vote fraud." To the Globe's credit, the fifth paragraph of its story bears the following disclaimer: "Much of the traffic is little more than Internet-fueled conspiracy theories, and none of the vote-counting problems and anomalies that have emerged are sufficiently widespread to have affected the election's ultimate result." Indeed, the general thrust of the Globe story is that this whole story is a steaming pile of liberal fever swamp crap.

If the Boston Globe is scoffing the left, then the left has problems.

Personally, I would love this controversy to lead to mandatory picture ID requirements to vote. This would be one benefit that would greatly improve the quality of our elections. Other than that, this "internet buzz" seems to be the left wing equivalent to the right wing buzz about Mena, Arkansas and drugs during the Clinton Administration. Both are wild accusations that end up draining money, time and energy from serious political purposes. I guess both sides have their silliness and bitterness, but now the role of minority party has been reversed. Given the prominence (in the Democratic Party) of those pushing the Bush "hacked" the election meme, I suspect that the minority party will remain so for quite some time to come.

Theocrats at Harvard!!!

Boston Globe Magazine: "New England's liberal college campuses have become fertile ground for the evangelical movement, which is attracting students in record numbers."

And to think this is happening in Blue States, right under the noses of the Liberal Elite. What's next, "In God We Trust" imprinted on every coin?!

Reports of the demise of Christianity in the academy have been greatly exaggerated.

Welcome to MichaelMoore.com

From MichaelMoore.com:

"The only age group in which the majority voted for Kerry was young adults (Kerry: 54%, Bush: 44%), proving once again that your parents are always wrong and you should never listen to them."

This sounds like a good slogan for the Hillary 2008 campaign.

The question is of course whether political poison like Moore will be ejected from the seats of honor in the Democratic party or whether he will lead them to more bitter defeats (or should I say Moore bitter defeats).

Update: Moore seems to have moved this quote above. I assure you it was there.

He's got articles there now about how Kerry really won and the computers were hacked to give Bush the victory.

Now word yet on the theory that Terry McAuliffe is a cyborg programmed by Karl Rove.

Instapundit notes:

"And several readers note that Michael Moore doesn't have anything on his website about the assassination of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by Islamic extremists, just more Bush-bashing."

Moore did have time to post a mosaic of war dead in the image of GW Bush. Apparently Moore only finds death noteworthy when it is at the direction of democratically elected governments. When fellow filmmakers are slaughtered in broad daylight, Moore cares not who the perps or victims are.

He is moore concerned with school kids protesting Bush than the murder of a fellow documentarian who had the temerity to make a film that condemns the horrid treatment of women in radical Islam. If Bush didn't do it, Moore doesn't care. It's not evil unless Bush did it. This kind of moral idiocy did not help Kerry, nor will it help the democratic party in the future.

Tolerance

Read this divide and see if it resonates. Have Christians been shooting at Kerry campaign headquarters and damaging property in the name of their candidate? I think not.

The Values-Vote Myth

David Brooks The Values-Vote Myth:

"Much of the misinterpretation of this election derives from a poorly worded question in the exit polls. When asked about the issue that most influenced their vote, voters were given the option of saying 'moral values.' But that phrase can mean anything - or nothing. Who doesn't vote on moral values? If you ask an inept question, you get a misleading result.
The reality is that this was a broad victory for the president. Bush did better this year than he did in 2000 in 45 out of the 50 states. He did better in New York, Connecticut and, amazingly, Massachusetts. That's hardly the Bible Belt. Bush, on the other hand, did not gain significantly in the 11 states with gay marriage referendums.
He won because 53 percent of voters approved of his performance as president. Fifty-eight percent of them trust Bush to fight terrorism. They had roughly equal confidence in Bush and Kerry to handle the economy. Most approved of the decision to go to war in Iraq. Most see it as part of the war on terror.
The fact is that if you think we are safer now, you probably voted for Bush. If you think we are less safe, you probably voted for Kerry. That's policy, not fundamentalism. The upsurge in voters was an upsurge of people with conservative policy views, whether they are religious or not."

This is bad news for those who want to blame Kerry's loss on "Theocrats", "Dominionists" and the "Faith Based Community". Turns out Kerry lost because of "Americans".

Don't Bork Specter

Hugh Hewitt offers a minority view (at this point) but perhaps a sober perspective on the controversy surrounding Arlen Specter and his comments about Bush and judicial appointees.

Kerry actually Won!

Daily Kos :: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.:

"Thus, the election is already over, even though I personally think that Kerry won, not only Ohio, but states like Florida, and may even have won the popular vote, so deep is the fraud, led by the electronic voting machines--not just those people actually use to vote, but far more significantly those used to tally the votes, carefully placed in key districts, carefully managed behind the scenes, vote totals manipulated with no way for an audit or verification. "

I'm glad to see the Left is doing some sober soul searching about the political folly of their own positions. Oh no, wait. It was the voting machines... to the tune of 53 million Americans. And the dish ran away with the spoon. Read the whole thing. The rest of it is even more far fetched and hysterical, if you can believe it. (Hat Tip: Ken Miller [get your own blog, it's free for crying out loud]).

We're at War then...

Little Green Footballs reminds us that it's a global war against Islamist Radical hate and terror.

Filmaker critical of Islam is murdered...

My Way News reports the story.

Michael Moore is safe.

October 31st, 1517

It is altogether fitting to remember Martin Luther and the Wittenburg Door, on a blog.

Here's to you Marty. CBS will never be the same!

October 31st, 1517: "It was October 31st, 1517 in Wittenburg, Germany.
Martin grasped a hammer and a long piece of paper covered with his writing. He walked out into the street and straight over to the castle church door. It was here that community messages were often posted.
Martin nailed his 95 points of discussion on the door. He only wanted to lay out his newly discovered views of the Bible to other church leaders in the Medieval Catholic church. He thought he was free to do so even though his thoughts were radical. After all, he was an Augustinian monk and a professor of theology.

Without his knowledge someone printed his words on the newly invented Gutenburg press, distributing it all over Germany. Within a very few days, Martin found that he was the subject of everyone's thoughts. In the cathedrals and great stone castles of his homeland, the pubs and peasant's cottages; everyone was talking about the views of Luther. Without a signal to announce it, the Protestant Reformation had begun!"

American Digest: Fifty Reasons Why

American Digest (who has never voted for a Republican Presidential Candidate) gives 50 of the most powerful reasons that I've ever seen to vote for George W. Bush.

In his own words:

"Before this, I voted Democrat right down the line. But I was asleep and I was foolish. Now, at least I can say I'm awake."

The End is Near!

Look for the other 6 signs of the Apocalypse!

Concerning Hobbits...

Technology News: Science: 'Hobbit' Skeleton Could Rewrite Prehistory.

Time for second breakfast.

Remember

As Mr. Spock said, "remember."

This is why Bush will be remembered in the same honored tones as Reagan.

Bin Laden: Let's call the whole thing off.

Belmont Club shows how Bin Laden has changed his tune. The question is, will the U.S.?

Meltdown

You can follow the meltdown of the "missing explosives" story with Instapundit, Drudge and Hugh Hewitt.

Just keep scrolling.

The UN fumbled the Weapons!

Instapundit.com - has the story.

So the MSM blames Bush for missing explosives that were moved in Iraq before we "rushed" to war; Weapons that the UN could have and should have destroyed.

Through the looking glass...

Vodkapundit - The Religious Divide

Vodkapundit covers another example of this age's similarity to the Reformation. It all comes down to a question of authority. In the Reformation it was the authority of the Pope and Church Councils over and against the bare authority of scripture (sola scriptura). In our day it's secular thought vs. Religious thought. One excludes the supernatural and the other includes it. Which party do you think is more uncomfortable with the "One Nation under God" language in the Pledge of Allegiance? That gives you an idea of the underlying view of authority embedded in the philosophy of the parties.

The Wrong Facts on the Wrong Weapons at the Wrong Time

The Belmont Club: does the homework to show that the UN and the New York times are both incompetent and trying to use slander to influence the outcome of an American election.

"The UN inspectors conduct their final inspection before OIF without actually having seen the RDX. The 3ID reach the site on April 4, 2003, know they are looking at an IAEA site and find thousands of white boxes which they suspect may be chemical weapons. The boxes are labeled with chemical warfare instructions. On April 10, the Second Brigade of 101st Airborne arrives with press embeds. They look around but press on with their main combat mission. From this the NYT comes to the conclusion that the RDX was lost after the US assumed custody of the site. It is worthwhile to reiterate the NYT's key assertions. In their article of October 25, the Times said:
The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.
It turned out that White House and Pentagon officials had acknowledged no such thing. The next day, the NYT reported:
White House officials reasserted yesterday that 380 tons of powerful explosives may have disappeared from a vast Iraqi military complex while Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq, saying a brigade of American soldiers did not find the explosives when they visited the complex on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell. But the unit's commander said in an interview yesterday that his troops had not searched the facility and had merely stopped there for the night on their way to Baghdad. The commander, Col. Joseph Anderson, of the Second Brigade of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, said he did not learn until this week that the site, known as Al Qaqaa, was considered highly sensitive, or that international inspectors had visited there shortly before the war began in 2003 to inspect explosives that they had tagged during a decade of monitoring.

In the light of the unearthed contemporaneous CBS report, the NYT's use of an interview with the Col. Anderson is totally worthless. They interviewed the wrong unit commander. It was a 3ID outfit that searched the place with the intent of discovering dangerous materials nearly six days before. The 101st had no such mission. Moreover, the NYT's innuendo that "the huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years ..." suggests a well-manicured facility that had been run to seed by knuckle-dragging American incompetence after faithful care by the IAEA. It totally ignores the disorderly condition in which 3ID found it, where, if the NYT correspondents had been present, they might have taken home their own boxes "with three vials of white powder, together with documents in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare" -- surely a sign it was untampered with, unless the NYT wishes to assert the contrary and thereby destroy their own case.

Incidentally, the condition of Al Qa Qaa is yet more indirect proof of the redeployment of war materiel which took place under the cover of UN obstruction, most notably by barring 4ID from attacking south through Turkey into the Sunni Triangle, which was the subject of Belmont Club's War Plan Orange."

Read the whole thing. The Reformation is in full swing.

Missing Credibility for NYT on Missing Weapons Fable

Captain's Quarters has an update that shows more facts that send the MSM down the credibility toilet.

More Fallout On NYT "Missing Weapons" Ploy

DRUDGE has details on the battle for the Whitehouse between Bush and KerryNYTCBS60MINAPMSNBCCNNUNIAEAETC. If only the NYT could make documentaries, then we'd really know the Truth.

The Curse Has Been Reversed

I want to go on record that I believe the curse of the Bambino has been reversed.

It was money that caused the curse, when the owner of the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth for money for his girlfriends play. It was money that angered the Baseball Gods. Money chosen over baseball moved the Baseball Gods to smite the Red Sox and visit these years of wrath upon them.

But now the curse is reversed.

It is money again that has angered Baseball's Gods. The New York Yankees have ruined baseball by buying up the best players every year from a storehouse of selfish lucre. They have set the pace for creating a league of haves and have nots. They have put money over baseball. The league has become a boring patchwork of competitive teams beating up on small-market teams.

And now the Gods have weighed the Yankees in the balance, and the Yankees have been found wanting.

Now the curse is on the Yankees.

Never before has any team come from an 0-3 deficit in a 7 game series. Yet the arch-rival Red Sox achieved this historic feat. They did not achieve it against the Milwaukee Brewers. Nay it was against the Pinstripes with the league's highest payroll.

Yes Virginia, there is a curse, but now the curse is on the root of all kinds of evil: the money of the New York Yankees.

I predict the Yankees will never again win a World Series until a revenue sharing agreement allows greater parody in MLB.

Do not trifle with the Gods of Baseball. Their wrath is not easily assuaged.

Another Front Page Fumble for the NYT

The Kerry Spot reports on Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News who humbled and embarrassed the New York Times. Does anyone read newspapers anymore?

The Reason the Polls are so Unreliable

Company News On Call is a Harris Poll publication which tells why the Harris Poll (and probably all others) swing so wildly and were so wrong in 2002.

Terrorism and the Mob

TCS: Tech Central Station - Terrorism and the Mob: "When Kerry was a prosecutor in the late 1970s and early 1980s, 'organized crime' meant the Mob. Gambling and prostitution were among the many ways Mafia families and similar organizations made money. Prosecutions for those crimes could take down leading crime bosses. That tradition goes all the way back to the 1930s, when then-District Attorney Tom Dewey made a national name for himself by nailing Lucky Luciano on prostitution charges.

The point of those prosecutions was never to stamp out gambling or prostitution. Gambling is hardly a scourge; most states run lotteries. Prostitution is widely tolerated. To prosecutors like Dewey and Kerry, those crimes were pretexts -- tools for convicting and punishing people like Luciano. Just like prosecuting Al Capone for tax evasion. The focus was on nailing the criminal, not stopping the crime.

Why not prosecute people like Capone and Luciano for more serious crimes? Mobsters used violence to take over legitimate businesses and labor unions, then looted them. The result was economic strangulation and fear. Why not convict and punish Mafiosi for that? Sometimes, we did. But only sometimes, because proving racketeering and extortion is and always has been both hard and expensive. Local prosecutors like Kerry couldn't afford to do it -- if they had tried, they would have had no time or manpower to go after ordinary street crime. Gambling and prostitution cases were the next best thing

Enter terrorism. Prosecutors would like to nail would-be mass murderers for planning to blow up buildings or spread nerve gas or otherwise slaughter innocent men and women. But that is even harder than prosecuting Mafia bosses for racketeering. Proving that Mohamed Atta is guilty of mass murder is easy -- but he's already dead. Proving it ahead of time, before September 11, proving it beyond a reasonable doubt, proving it without disclosing sources the government will need in other investigations -- those things are nearly impossible.

That is why, when the Justice Department prosecutes would-be terrorists, it usually prosecutes them for something other than terrorism: immigration fraud, lying to government agents, money laundering, and the like. At least in this respect, Al Qaida is like the Mob. Pretext prosecutions are a practical necessity."

This is why the Patriot Act is such a crucial part of the domestic war on terror. But killing terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere is still the best way of preventing them from attacking American interests here and abroad.

Why Bush Will Win Going Away

My Mom, a lifelong Republican, is anxious because she thinks George W. Bush will lose on Nov. 2. She's kind of a pessimist about politics any way but in the interest of calming her nerves I have been giving her weekly pep talks about Bush's chances.

I've become convinced that current polling techniques fail to register the change in the electorate since 9-11. Many others have made this point but the following article is the best illustration to date:

I'm a Democrat for Bush

"So here I am in deep Kerry territory, surrounded by designer Democrats who are far wealthier than me, harbouring a secret and deeply untrendy thought.

Darn them all, despite being a registered Democrat and in my London days a staunch Labour supporter I am going to vote for George Dubya.

When the metrosexual chap standing next to me confides that urban sophisticates prefer Kerry because you have to have a low IQ to appreciate Bush, I know I am making the right decision.

The guy is an idiot, he continued snobbishly. I don't know what the rest of the country is thinking.

Perhaps I can enlighten him. I will be one of the millions voting for Bush because I trust the president's judgment on the war on terror more than Kerry's. In this election, I am a single-issue voter. It is that simple. Even in the New York metropolis, there are more of us out there than he imagines...

My decision is based on a straightforward proposition: I do not want the global jihadists and women-hating fundamentalists to be celebrating Bush's defeat. They do not deserve to win, even if Bush deserves to lose, a position I am not quite willing to concede.

But, if Bush is ousted, there will be victory celebrations across the undemocratic Arab world. More martyrs will step forward, eager to play their part in the decline of the West...

I was standing next to the World Trade Center, gazing in horror at the torment above, when the towers collapsed. I was showered with pulverised masonry and the ashes of nearly 3,000 people. I decided fairly quickly that America was a beacon of freedom that needed defending against the anti-western, freedom-hating religious bigots and death cultists. I am determined my children will grow up in a world of increasing democracy where terrorists are captured, tyrants overthrown.



When Bush said in last week's debate: "We can be safe and secure if we go on the offence against terrorism and if we spread liberty around the world," I felt he spoke with conviction. When Kerry said he was going to "hunt and kill" the terrorists, I heard a politician's soundbite...

I did manage to tempt one person out of the closet at last week's awards ceremony. Alexandra Wolfe, 24, the daughter of Bonfire of Vanities novelist Tom Wolfe, confessed she was intending to vote Republican.

"If I say it out loud, it's death," (emphasis mine) she whispered. "In a place like this, people look at you like you are a freak. I believe in abortion and I totally believe Kerry is right on some social issues, but I just don't trust him on terrorism.

"I feel that Bush has the character to say, 'They did us wrong, and I'm going to get them back." Kerry can talk the talk, but that's all he's good at..."

Christopher Hitchens, the left-wing British writer who lives in America, said he first understood the uncompromising nature of Islamic fundamentalism when Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced a sentence of death on his friend Salman Rushdie in 1989. The ultra-liberal Rushdie's only offence was to write a novel, The Satanic Verses.

Although the penny did not fully drop at the time, the fatwa helped Hitchens later to make sense of the attacks on America. To the fury of his old comrades, (emphasis mine) he too will be voting for Bush in November...

I'm bitterly disappointed by the way Bush has botched the post-war situation. The neoconservatives with the ear of the president wilfully underestimated Iraqi nationalist sentiments. I feel horribly ashamed about the degrading behaviour of American guards at Abu Ghraib prison.

I am not alone, however, in both hating the mess and preferring Bush over Kerry as president.

Ron Radosh, a friend of Bob Dylan in the 1960s, voted for Bill Clinton in the 1990s. For him, the deteriorating conditions in Iraq have been a source of anguish even though he has some sympathy for the neocons. "Bush has totally mishandled the situation," he said. "The administration was unable to listen to people who thought the aftermath of the war wouldn't be a piece of cake."

Like me, he would rather vote for Blair than Bush. "You think, Jeez, why can't Bush make speeches like him?", but he is going to hold his nose and cast his ballot for Dubya (emphasis mine). When he read last week that Kerry thought terrorism could be reduced to a 'nuisance', like prostitution and gambling, he decided: "That's it. I don't care what Kerry says, he cannot be trusted. We're in a sustained war. It's a serious matter."

A few days ago Radosh sent a round-robin e-mail to his friends announcing his intentions. "I've had scores of e-mails back attacking me as a traitor," (emphasis mine) he said. One well-known historian replied: "How anybody with a mind can say they'll vote for Bush is beyond me. He is the most extremist president in history." Another old friend said: "Don't you want to leave your grandchildren the legacy of a better world?"...

Here's why this article supports the proposition that Bush's 3-4 point lead today will be a blowout on Nov. 2: Otherwise died in the wool liberals are will vote for not just a Republican but a conservative Republican; and they know they will be vilified by their liberal comrades. This means that there is likely a significant number of liberals who can't say they will vote for Bush because they are in earshot of a liberal partner or relative when the phone rings and the pollster asks who they will vote for.

Nevertheless, people are not without common sense. Those who work in high rises in liberal cities like New York and San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles know full well that the evil doers who are beheading hostages in Iraq would love to be decapitating buildings like they saw their theological brethren do on Sept. 11. These same liberals know that George Bush is serious about killing these fanatic terrorists before they can train, raise money, find recruits and safe haven. They also know that John Kerry is not serious about doing what is necessary to take the fight to the terrorists.

And that's why Bush will likely win 40 states, and another election.

Bumperstickers in Boulder, Conservative Edition

Lo and behold! They say Boulder is concerned with endagered species and by golly I found one.
 

Heinz Kerry Separates Self From Mrs. Bush

"I don't know that she's ever had a real job — I mean, since she's been grown up," Teresa Heinz told USA Today.

I wonder how many will vote for Bush just to avoid having this woman as first lady. (hat tip Reaganesque)

Man oh man. You think Kerry's handlers would never let him go near an athletic field. I assume there are similar pictures like this of Bush but the sheer volume of embarrasing Kerry sports photos is astonishing. Don't believe me? Click here.

The Wrong Vote on the Right War at the Right Time

Hugh Hewitt has asked for submissions on why one might vote for George W. Bush and not John Kerry. I thought about this all day today and I've settled on a titular reason to explain my decision regarding this election.

In 1991 Saddam Hussein tried to wipe the country of Kuwait off the map. Then President George H. W. Bush led the largest coalition ever assembled with the permission of the U.N. in an effort to forcibly remove Saddam's forces from Kuwait.

John Kerry voted against this effort to save a helpless country from a brutal aggressive dictator.

This effort clearly passed the "global test" and yet John Kerry failed to support this defining foreign policy decision.

I believe Kerry voted this way because the first Gulf War was the first "hot" war this country has faced since Viet Nam. Back then it was much more fashionable to be "anti-war". I remember the week the war started because it was my honeymoon. We were driving into San Francisco and couldn't cross the Golden Gate Bridge because an anti-war protest had closed down the bridge. This kind of sizable protest was common back then. This created tremendous political pressure on a Senator from Massachusetts to reflect this anti-war sentiment. So John Kerry voted, I believe, with his heart and with his constituency.

This was morally and politically wrong. Voting against the first Gulf War was a cruel neglect of Kuwait and the interest of most Persian Gulf countries. It also was in defiance of the International community and the will of the American People. John Kerry failed this test of moral and political credibility.

But it gets worse. John Kerry supported using force in the current Iraq war. How could he do this given his track record on the first Gulf War, a war that had much more moral and political clarity? I believe John Kerry did not have the political courage to oppose the current Iraq war. Why? Because of 9-11.

9-11 changed the attitude of the country toward war in general. Viet Nam soured the country on war in general. 9-11 reminded us that war is sometimes a necessary means to secure peace, protect the nation and bring justice to evil doers, particularly when they murder 3000 people on our own soil.

John Kerry could read the change in the mood of the country. So he abandoned his anti-war track record (and I believe, his heart) and supported the war (at least for a time).

I cannot trust a candidate for President who does not have the moral and political courage to remain consistent on the major moral and political questions of our time.

One thing we have learned in the last two decades is that it is impossible to predict the foreign policy issues a Commander In Chief will face. No one knew the Berlin Wall would fall as soon as it did. No one knew that Saddam Hussein would invade Kuwait. No one knew that Al-Qaeda would try to decapitate our economic, military and political institutions.

I don't believe anyone knows what John Kerry will do in the face of unknown crises this nation faces in the future. I don't believe he knows.

A while back my then 8 year old son found himself playing ultimate Frisbee with a group of patient college students. My son was allowed to play on my team so he could participate. A funny thing happened when the other team took the lead. My son took off his shirt and joined the 'skins' team because they were winning. Then when they fell behind he put his shirt back on and rejoined the 'shirts'. I was not thrilled with this 'fair weather' loyalty to the winning side. This kind of wavering loyalty in the face of adversity is a sure sign of immaturity.

This is excusable in an 8 year old, but not in a U.S. Senator,

or a potential President.

Bumperstickers in Boulder #3:

This is another gem.

First there is the flat admission that President Bill Clinton lied (which of course is painful to many in Boulder).

Then there is the implication (apparently) that the current administration "lied". The Duelfer Report finishes a long history of refutations of this silly point (So Tony Blair lied too, huh?; If the CIA tells you there's a threat you just ignore it right?).

Third it completely absolves President Clinton of any responsibility for Sept. 11. I don't mean to lay the blame at Clinton's feet but just what was Osama Bin Laden doing while Clinton was falsely testifying about whether he had ever had sex with someone who worked for him? He was training hundreds of terrorists who would end up in Bali, Beslan, Israel, and of course, slamming into the World Trade Center. Seems to me the right could make mean-spirited bumper stickers that say:

"Osama and Clinton, they did it because they could."
Or "Osama planned his kill while Monica stained her dress with Bill.

Come to think of it, except for the NRA, you just don't see many right wing political bumper stickers.
They must be too busy listening to talk radio.

Or blogging.

Can You Liveblog a Movie

Well maybe a DVD anyway. I'm watching The Decalogue. It's very thought provoking. I'm halfway through the first one. It's hard to blog with subtitles so I need to pay attention...

Dennis Prager: What would Zarqawi be doing if he weren't in Iraq

Good Question.

Kerry and Lesbians

One critical fact seems to be under reported in the controversy surrounding Senator Kerry (and Edwards) public and uninvited use of Mary Cheney as an example of the inflexibility of sexual orientation. Senator Kerry says that lesbians and apparently all people have no choice in their sexual orientation. But many who engage in homosexual activity report in their own words that they have a choice.

Lets review the context:

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, let's get back to economic issues. But let's shift to some other questions here.

Both of you are opposed to gay marriage. But to understand how you have come to that conclusion, I want to ask you a more basic question. Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?

BUSH: You know, Bob, I don't know. I just don't know. (emphasis mine) I do know that we have a choice to make in America and that is to treat people with tolerance and respect and dignity. It's important that we do that.

And I also know in a free society people, consenting adults can live the way they want to live.

And that's to be honored.

But as we respect someone's rights, and as we profess tolerance, we shouldn't change — or have to change — our basic views on the sanctity of marriage. I believe in the sanctity of marriage. I think it's very important that we protect marriage as an institution, between a man and a woman.

I proposed a constitutional amendment. The reason I did so was because I was worried that activist judges are actually defining the definition of marriage, and the surest way to protect marriage between a man and woman is to amend the Constitution.

It has also the benefit of allowing citizens to participate in the process. After all, when you amend the Constitution, state legislatures must participate in the ratification of the Constitution.

I'm deeply concerned that judges are making those decisions and not the citizenry of the United States. You know, Congress passed a law called DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act.

My opponent was against it. It basically protected states from the action of one state to another. It also defined marriage as between a man and woman.

But I'm concerned that that will get overturned. And if it gets overturned, then we'll end up with marriage being defined by courts, and I don't think that's in our nation's interests.

SCHIEFFER: Senator Kerry?

KERRY: We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.

I think if you talk to anybody, it's not choice. (emphasis mine) I've met people who struggled with this for years, people who were in a marriage because they were living a sort of convention, and they struggled with it.

And I've met wives who are supportive of their husbands or vice versa when they finally sort of broke out and allowed themselves to live who they were, who they felt God had made them.

I think we have to respect that.

The president and I share the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. I believe that. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman.

But I also believe that because we are the United States of America, we're a country with a great, unbelievable Constitution, with rights that we afford people, that you can't discriminate in the workplace. You can't discriminate in the rights that you afford people.

You can't disallow someone the right to visit their partner in a hospital. You have to allow people to transfer property, which is why I'm for partnership rights and so forth.

Now, with respect to DOMA and the marriage laws, the states have always been able to manage those laws. And they're proving today, every state, that they can manage them adequately.

Apparently Senator Kerry can speak with confidence about all lesbians, even the daughter of his opponents. He must be painfully unaware however that young women are far less certain about their sexual orientation than He is. Perhaps Kerry missed this article in the Washington Post:

Social scientists say that 5 percent to 7 percent of young people are gay or lesbian, and that teenagers are starting at younger ages to have same-sex sexual experiences: 13 for boys, 15 for girls.

But those figures don't begin to tell the full story about today's girls because girls, more often than boys, experiment with their sexuality and resist being placed in any particular group.

Chanda Harris, a junior at High Road Upper School in Beltsville, is one of these girls. She's standing outside Union Station on a cold Friday night, waiting for her girlfriend and holding three giant helium balloons in celebration of her friend's birthday.

The girls around her from various high schools -- Bladensburg in Maryland, Anacostia, Ballou, Cardozo and Coolidge in the District -- converge to hear what she has to say.

She started going out with girls when she was 14, following a breakup with her boyfriend.

"At first I thought going out with a girl was nasty," she says. "Then I went to a club and did a big flip-flop. I've been off and on with girls and guys since then."

Another girl, a junior at Anacostia High, says her first love was a guy now in the Marines and stationed in North Carolina. She dated Kenny for two years and his picture adorns her bedroom wall.

But now she's dating a female high school basketball player. "Whoever likes me, I like them," she says matter-of-factly.

A world away, on the campus of Brown University, Chloe Root, a sophomore with a penchant for bright-colored, funky skirts from secondhand stores, also prefers to keep her options open.

She had her first crush on a girl at age 12 but dated guys, including one with whom she thought she was in love, until her senior year in high school in Ann Arbor, Mich. Then she fell in love with a girl a year behind her in school and has been going out with her ever since.

"If something happened to my relationship with Julie, I could see myself with a boy again," Root says. "There are some days I notice I'm thinking girls are pretty, and other days I'm thinking there are a lot of good-looking guys at this school."

So are these girls bisexual? Perhaps. But they prefer descriptions like "gayish," questioning, even "queer" -- an umbrella description so broad, according to Root, that it encompasses straights as well as gays.

Try this on, Mr. and Mrs. America: These girls say they don't know what they are and don't need to know. Adolescence and young adulthood is a time for exploration and they should feel free to love a same-sex partner without assuming that is how they'll spend the rest of their lives.

"I like women only right now," says Cary Trainor, also a Brown sophomore and a self-defined lesbian since high school. "But who knows where I'll be in 25 years?"

Kerry must only know lesbians who say they have no choice in their orientation. He apparently doesn't know Mary Cheney but he's free to speak for her on the matter. Kerry doesn't seem to know or take seriously the "nuanced' reality of young people making choices about their sexuality. Perhaps this isn't about understanding homosexuality at all but (as some have suggested: Kaus and Fineman) a shameless attempt to foment anti-gay bigotry against the Bush campaign. Whatever the motivation, Kerry seems to have a very unscientific view of sexuality (while claiming to let science reign), preferring selective anecdotes (even inappropriate ones) to anything resembling hard data.

Edwards Outrages a Brilliant Man in Wheelchair (washingtonpost.com)

Krauthammer, a victim of spinal cord injury and an MD himself, on using stem cell research as a wedge issue:

"Edwards and Kerry constantly talk of a Bush 'ban' on stem cell research. This is false. There is no ban. You want to study stem cells? You get them from the companies that have the cells and apply to the National Institutes of Health for the federal funding.
In his Aug. 7 radio address to the nation, Kerry referred not once but four times to the 'ban' on stem cell research instituted by Bush. At the time, Reeve was alive, so not available for posthumous exploitation. But Ronald Reagan was available, having recently died of Alzheimer's.
So what does Kerry do? He begins his radio address with the disgraceful claim that the stem cell 'ban' is standing in the way of an Alzheimer's cure.
This is an outright lie. The President's Council on Bioethics, on which I sit, had one of the world's foremost experts on Alzheimer's, Dennis Selkoe from Harvard, give us a lecture on the newest and most promising approaches to solving the Alzheimer's mystery. Selkoe reported remarkable progress in using biochemicals to clear the 'plaque' deposits in the brain that lead to Alzheimer's. He ended his presentation without the phrase 'stem cells' having passed his lips.
So much for the miracle cure. Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at NIH, has admitted publicly that stem cells as an Alzheimer's cure are a fiction, but that 'people need a fairy tale.' Kerry and Edwards certainly do. They are shamelessly exploiting this fairy tale, having no doubt been told by their pollsters that stem cells play well politically for them.
Politicians have long promised a chicken in every pot. It is part of the game. It is one thing to promise ethanol subsidies here, dairy price controls there. But to exploit the desperate hopes of desperate people with the promise of Christ-like cure."

HATEFUL DEMOCRATIC BIGOTRY...AGAIN

Michelle Malkin rebukes the mighty Atrios.

More Bumperstickers in Boulder

One of my favorites. Being in love means not having to live in reality. 

Bush Wins with College Students

The Daily Beacon Online - Bush wins mock election:

"President George Bush won by almost 400 votes when University of Tennessee students took to the online polls Oct. 7 and 8 in the Student Government Association-sponsored mock elections.
The Bush/Cheney ticket received 1,015 votes to the Kerry/Edwards ticket receiving 643 votes. Students had the opportunity to vote for all candidates that will appear on the Tennessee ballot in the November elections.
A total of 1,721 students - 6.6 percent of the student body - voted in the election. SGA had hoped that 8,000 students would cast votes, Kristi Bogle, SGA government affairs assistant director, said last week. "

Tennessee is not Boulder but still it's suprising to see college students voting Republican. It at least coincides with this story. What's the old saying? If you're not a liberal when your 20 you have no heart. If you're still a liberal when you're 40 your have no brain.

Reeve doubted the promise of stem cell research...

Reeve doubted the promise of stem cell research in this interview from Reader's Digest:

Readers Digest: What's your position on embryonic stem cell research?

Reeve: I advocate it because I think scientists should be free to pursue every possible avenue. It appears though, at the moment, that embryonic stem cells are effective in treating acute injuries and are not able to do much about chronic injuries.

Horror and Christianity

Steve H. blogs on the Horror genre and Christianity. Interesting, especially if you like vampires.

Tribalism Meets Democracy

"Democracy, if you can call it that, collides in strange ways with the tribal system of Afghan village life. Dehnow is a mostly Pashtun village, and Hamid Karzai is a Pashtun. Even without the instruction of the leader of the village council, Dehnow would probably come out for Karzai. In Dehnow, like many villages across this remote and isolated country, decisions are made collectively, bubbling up from the 3,000 families that live here, and trickling down from the elders who are village council members.

"As the voting began, it became clear that for many, especially the least educated, simply making their own decisions about political matters is a new and uncertain thing. When handed a ballot, with pictures and symbols to help identify the candidates, an elderly man looked at the long, 18-name list with confusion. So he asked the advice of the polling station staff and was told make a mark here, in this box. The one next to Karzai's name. It wasn't clear how often this happened throughout the day."

I'm not sure what I think about this, but it's fascinating. I have long heard that tribal peoples are rather like children when viewed from Western eyes. This seems to flow in that vein.

Conservative TV Group to Air Anti-Kerry Film

Here's a money quote: "'It's not the American way for powerful corporations to strong-arm local broadcasters to air lies promoting a political agenda,' said David Wade, a spokesman for the Democratic nominee's campaign."

I wonder if he's referring to CBS and ABC?

Well I can dream can't I.

Of course the Kerry documentary will not have the words "Evening News" in the title.

Both Sides Not Equally Accountable

ABC joins CBS in the credibility toilet. Finally the myth of MSM 'objectivity' is irreparably damaged. Thankfully someone at ABC is interested in holding both sides accountable: ABC exposes Kerry lie about General Shinseki.

Musical youth fault today's political music as long on Bush-bashing

KR Washington Bureau | 10/07/2004 | : "'A lot of musicians bash the current administration rather than forwarding a specific agenda,' said Shawn Wilson, 19, an English major at the University of North Carolina who calls himself socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

'I find it slightly offensive that they're going out of their way to influence young people's politics.' "

Looks like Gen Y doesn't want to be told who to vote for.

Headlines we'd like to see...

Bremer Criticises Kerry's record on Iraq, his Quotes

Paul Bremer writes in the New York Times:

"Our victory also depends on devoting the resources necessary to win this war. So last year, President Bush asked the American people to make available $87 billion for military and reconstruction operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military commanders and I strongly agreed on the importance of these funds, which is why we stood together before Congress to make the case for their approval. The overwhelming majority of Congress understood and provided the funds needed to fight the war and win the peace in Iraq and Afghanistan. These were vital resources that Senator John Kerry voted to deny our troops.

"Mr. Kerry is free to quote my comments about Iraq. But for the sake of honesty he should also point out that I have repeatedly said, including in all my speeches in recent weeks, that President Bush made a correct and courageous decision to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein's brutality, and that the president is correct to see the war in Iraq as a central front in the war on terrorism.

"A year and a half ago, President Bush asked me to come to the Oval Office to discuss my going to Iraq to head the coalition authority. He asked me bluntly, "Why would you want to leave private life and take on such a difficult, dangerous and probably thankless job?" Without hesitation, I answered, "Because I believe in your vision for Iraq and would be honored to help you make it a reality." Today America and the coalition are making steady progress toward that vision."

Saddam buys off France, Russia etc.

Let's see, Bush is a crook because he supposedly helped Halliburton make money from rebuilding a free Iraq. But John Kerry wants his foreign policy to pass a "global test" given by countries that profited from Saddam's torture/terror regime. No wonder the French opposed the war. Mass graves were much more profitable.

I wonder who Saddam would be bribing on the U.N. Security Council today if Saddam was still in power.

Will John Kerry claim that the U.N. misled us away from war? Why is it that only Republicans are accused of being greedy and never effete French diplomats.

Finally, I see this scandal (via Drudge) somewhere other than on Hugh Hewitt's web site. Honestly! Wake up MSM!

St. Louis Catholic Bishop puts the heat on John Kerry.

EWTN News Story: "'There is no element of the common good, no morally good practice, that a candidate may promote and to which a voter may be dedicated, which could justify voting for a candidate who also endorses and supports the deliberate killing of the innocent,' he continued."

An interesting predicament for a Catholic Democrat in St. Louis. I wonder if Kerry will comment directly.

Here I Blog, I Can Do No Other

Doug Kern writes on the similarities between the blogosphere and the Protestant Reformation (via Instapundit).

File this under articles I wished I had written.

"Then as now, professional intermediaries -- be they priests or editors -- complain that morlocks in pajamas couldn't be trusted to get 'the story' right. And, then as now, morlocks in pajamas apply their intelligence and life experiences to undermine the authority of the intermediary class. When Martin Luther posted his blog on the Wittenberg door, he fact-checked Catholic theology against the text of scripture. He proved to the satisfaction of many that the typeface of the Purgatory doctrine was suspect, and that the kerning of faith vs. works was clearly a product of PopeSoft 1500's default settings.

"It just goes to show: when assessing the truth of anything, you must be sure to check the Kern of it.

"During Rathergate and Purgatorygate, the MSM excommunicated the heretics for the crime of out-interpreting the interpreters. The blogosphere accomplished more check-the-facts, feet-on-the-ground, hit-the-books journalism during Rathergate than did any other media outlet. The CBS definition of fact-checking consisted of 1) the ambiguous assessments of four ludicrously under-qualified 'experts;' 2) the assurances of two dishonest partisan nutballs, and 3) the journalistic instincts of one doddering news anchor whose world view is locked in his own private Groundhog Day, circa 1974. By contrast, the blogosphere consulted hordes of typeface experts, former Texas National Guard clerks, and professional document assessors in a matter of hours. Similarly, the first Protestants invoked the authority of scripture itself in refuting Roman theology -- disdaining the tortuous logic and unproven facts of the symbol-wielding class in favor of direct interpretation of the truth. Then as now, God helped those who helped themselves."

I wonder if someday someone will submit a document called MSM and Bloggers Together.

Moore: I Was Offered Memogate Documents

Maybe Micheal Moore can "clean up" the bias at CBS?

I 'd like to start a new feature called Bumperstickers in Boulder. Not many Bush/Cheney stickers as you might imagine. 

The Art of Losing Friends

From Charles Krauthammer. In case you missed it.

"Americans Overseas for Kerry is the Kerry operation for winning the crucial votes of Americans living abroad (remember the Florida recount?), including more than 100,000 who live in Australia. Its leader was interviewed Sept. 16 by The Australian's Washington correspondent, Roy Eccleston. Asked if she believed the terrorist threat to Australians was now greater because of the support for President Bush, she replied: "I would have to say that," noting that "[t]he most recent attack was on the Australian embassy in Jakarta."
She said this of her country (and of the war that Australia is helping us with in Iraq): "[W]e are endangering the Australians now by this wanton disregard for international law and multilateral channels." Mark Latham could not have said it better. Nor could Jemaah Islamiah, the al Qaeda affiliate that killed nine people in the Jakarta bombing.
This Kerry spokesman, undermining a key ally on the eve of a critical election, is no rogue political operative. She is the head of Americans Overseas for Kerry -- Diana Kerry, sister to John.
She is, of course, merely echoing her brother, who, at a time when allies have shown great political courage in facing down both terrorists and domestic opposition for their assistance to the United States in Iraq, calls these allies the "coalition of the coerced and the bribed."

I guess Australia doesn't pass the "Global Test" either.

Did Kerry Cheat during the debate?

At the very least he broke the rules. Also I was stuck by how Kerry seemed to always be busily taking notes while Bush was talking but his pen moved wildly in a fashion that made me think he was only pretending to actually be writing. Perhaps he was pretending to write, while he was reading, in order to respond to Bush's remarks.

The real question is whether the media will question him and whether this kind of irregularity will be tied to other irregularities in his past.

Jonah Goldberg: Iran at the tipping point

"Tehran, the nation's capital, as well as several other cities have been wracked in recent days with widespread anti-government protests and violent crackdowns by government forces. Buildings have been set ablaze, and exiles are calling for revolution. According to reports on Activistchat.com, a Web site dedicated to freeing Iran from the oppressive rule of the mullahs, numerous protestors have been killed. Ledeen - who has many sources inside Iran and out - reports that the roundups and executions of young men have picked up at a terrific pace. Iran has staged 120 public hangings since March alone, according to the government's own news agency."

"The unpopularity of the mullahs, primarily with the younger, Western-oriented generation, is causing panic inside the regime. The appeal of revolutionary theocracy has been bled dry. The Christian Science Monitor reported - some would say "reluctantly reported" - that discontent with the regime and a desire for "change" according to various "polls" equals 90 percent. And we all remember those famous soccer games where Iranian fans chanted "USA! USA!"

I found this story on Instapundit. Instapundit wonders why (facetiously I assume) this isn't getting more attention.

The answer comes later in Jonah's article.

"When the rebels attacked the Death Star in "Star Wars," there was a reason they attacked at the battle station's weakest point. Iraq was the Axis of Evil's weakest point. The hope for many of us was that toppling Saddam would set off a chain reaction that would bring the whole thing down.

That can still happen. Critics who lament "instability" in the Middle East miss the point entirely. Instability - the right kind of instability - is exactly what we want. The signs are that the Iranian regime is coming apart. Whether it's inches or miles from the tipping point is impossible to tell. But what is obvious is that without the West's active pressure on the mullahs, and even more active support of the freedom fighters, the tipping point may never come."

The MSM doesn't want to give light to any more instability in the world because it will discourage changing Presidents, which they want. But more to the point, the war in Iraq is just what Bush said it was in the debate the other night, a ray of freedom in an otherwise dark Middle Eastern world.

"A free Iraq will be an ally in the war on terror, and that's essential. A free Iraq will set a powerful example in the part of the world that is desperate for freedom. A free Iraq will help secure Israel. A free Iraq will enforce the hopes and aspirations of the reformers in places like Iran. A free Iraq is essential for the security of this country."

The turmoil in Iran is congruent with the newly experienced freedom in Iraq in the same way that turmoil in Romania followed the success of the Polish solidarity movement. Acknowledging this would enshrine Bush as a President as great as REAGAN! And the MSM would rather ignore that direction. Maybe at Bush's funeral he'll get the same acknowledgment as Reagan.

I hope a pro-American Democratic movement survives to rise to power in Iran so Kerry's campaign can call it's leader a puppet.

Jonah asks that we pay more attention to Iran.

A New Position for John Kerry.

Usually I don't go in for this kind of cheap shot but the text made me laugh until I cried. And you couldn't pose the picture if you tried.

...I'm still laughing.

Powerline points to facts that show Kerry "won" the debate but lost the war.

"Gallup's respondents said that Kerry "did the better job in the debate" by a decisive 53% to 37% margin. But if you look at the internal numbers, they give Kerry very little comfort. The only area where people actually say Kerry did better was in "expressing himself more clearly," by 60% to 32%. The candidates were tied in having a good understanding of the issues. By 49% to 46%, respondents said Bush "agrees with them on the issues they care about." By 50% to 45%, Bush was more believable; by 48% to 41%, Bush was more likeable; and by a whopping 54% to 37%, Bush demonstrated he was "tough enough for the job."

Equally important, the Gallup poll indicates that watching the debate had almost no effect on respondents' assessment of who can best handle the situation in Iraq (Bush, by 54% to 43% post-debate) or who would be the better commander in chief (Bush, by 54% to 44% post-debate).

So unless the media succeed in spinning the "Kerry won" story so that it takes on a life of its own, it looks like the debate advanced Kerry's cause little, if at all."

Ahem. As I was saying...

ArabNews: Kerry More Impressive Than Bush in TV Debate

. Well I guess that settles it.
I've waited to post on the debate, mainly because I've been too busy. However the time I've had to reflect has allowed for enlightenment. The Arab News writes:

"Three post-debate polls suggested Kerry impressed voters more; the majority of those surveyed said the senator gave a better performance, and was more convincing than Bush."

I don't doubt it. Kerry is a competent debater and George Bush is inarticulate and clearly tired as the debate wore on. Add to that the fact that Kerry's campaign has been so filled with blunders that I believe many observers had very low expectations of his style. Add to that the fact that if you're a Bush supporter, you were probably frustrated with Bush's inability to forcefully rebut many of Kerry's claims and ideas. He chose to repeat simple lines of his own policy rather than rebut Kerry on each point. All of this seems to add up to a Kerry win in the debate.

Or does it...

Kerry was more convincing than Bush. He was convincing about wanting to unilaterally disarm the Unites States from protecting itself with nuclear weapons. He was convincing about how in a Kerry administration, foreign policy decision's will have to pass a "global test". He was very convincing about how the war was a mistake but not a mistake that he would ask soldiers to die fork, in fact not a mistake, but an error in Bush's action, but not an error that soldiers should die for, but an error that a Kerry administration will pursue faster, with more success, but... (you get the point).

What stands out on the day after the debate is that the sound bytes clearly favor Bush. It is the repetition of key phrases that will cement in the minds of voters. It seems increasingly clear that the one sound byte that will linger from Kerry was the "Global Test" comment. This is death to his candidacy. The more this quote is repeated (by the Bush campaign) and analyzed (by the pundits), Kerry will slowly savor the bitterness of this error. By saying less, and only what Bush knows is a winner, he managed the clock better; the mental clock of collective memory.

Also the fatigue that Bush clearly underwent as the debate wore on is quickly forgotten. What's repeated again and again is the quote of Bush calling Kerry on trying to lead our allies in the war on terror while constantly changing his mind because of politics in America. Americans seem to agree with Bush on this point. Kerry continued to charge Bush with misleading us into war and diverting the war on terror. These claims haven't been believed by a majority of Americans for two years and the debate will not change that.

At the end of the day, Kerry is still on the wrong side of this war. He is a better debater, but he's defending a side that Americans, in their hearts, know is wrong. "Summit's" will not win the war on terror. Americans know this. Kerry may have "won" the debate, but he lost the war. Americans, a day later, are beginning to know this too.