"Will the Real Hanoi John Kerry Please Stand Up" Dept.

We at Rerum Novarum are pleased to offer to you two important videos on the junior senator from MA which anyone who is from the "Anybody But Bush" camp should consider before casting their votes. The first is the film Stolen Honour which Hanoi John's laaaaawyerrrrs are trying to prevent from being seen by the public. The second is from the Swiftboat Vets and POW's For Truth where the real heros give their assessments of the measure of John Kerry's character.

To see both short films, go HERE. As far as We are concerned, there is no more fitting way for the real heroes to be vindicated for the manner whereby Hanoi John and his "friends" sought to strip them of their honour than for this worthless excuse for a "public servant" and "war hero" to go down in flames on Tuesday. And that is the bottom line really.

"Election Update" Dept.

I came to the office to do some work and found the door open. My boss had turned the office into a calling center for the upcoming election. There is an interesting group of people here from various age groups who are calling registered Republicans to get remind them to vote, etc. The state representative for the Republican Party was here about a half an hour ago and he did a TV interview about ten feet from where I am typing this text about the election and the party's efforts to do more of the crucial legwork which four years ago probably cost them a number of votes in close contests.

Say what you will about the Democrats, this is nonetheless an area where they have been good at over the years and the Republicans have not been. Nonetheless, it is nice to be in the midst of people who are both passionate about this election and who also have a sense of purpose in it. I frankly wish I could share in the enthusiasm that is all around me but I do not. Or maybe another way of saying it is this: I support either directly or (in the case of President Bush) indirectly most of the key people they are calling about here. But I am not enthusiastic about it, I want this election to get over soon and for Hanoi John Kerry to be defeated. That way (i) the president can ratchet up the war effort in Iraq and not have to worry about the election any longer (ii) I can get back to being critical of President Bush for his stupid illegal alien amnesty program and (iii) I can take solace in the fact that we are a lot less likely to see another 9-11 with a Bush victory than a Bush defeat.

Someone on the radio this morning when I was coming to work commented on the fact that terrorists in recent years have taken advantage of the ambiguity that exists in the transition of new presidents to launch attacks. I dismissed the idea out of hand as polemics but then again, if you think about it, there is some truth to it. For example, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 took place within weeks of President Clinton's inauguration. The 9-11 attack in 2001 took place within a week of President Bush getting his head of the FBI confirmed by the Senate.{1} Now then, if Kerry wins the presidency, there will be a lame-duck period from about November until January at least -even more if the election is contested. That means we could see a two to three month lame duck period where we would be more vulnerable to a major attack than we would be if President Bush is re-elected on Tuesday.

Think about it: this actually means that there is a logical argument for Vice President Dick Cheney's comments a couple weeks ago about a Kerry presidency making us more vulnerable to a terrorist attack!!! I note this because it is an important thing to consider in these final days before a decision on who will lead this country for the next four years will be made. In light of other things I noted in some very recent Rerum Novarum weblog entries,{2} this is yet another point to consider before voting this coming Tuesday.

Notes:

{1} The delay here was primarily because of the election mess of 2000: it caused the incoming administration to have to delay many important transition details which left us vulnerable to attack on 9-11.

{2} Three really recent examples of these threads are as follows:

Miscellaneous Threads Worth a Read (circa 10/26/04)

"Anybody But Bush" Dept" (circa 10/27/04)

A Brief Rerum Novarum Commentary on the Notion That a Kerry-Edwards Presidency Would Really Result in the "Stronger America" That They Claim on Their Campaign Signs (circa 10/27/04)

A Brief Rerum Novarum Commentary on the Notion That a Kerry-Edwards Presidency Would Really Result in the "Stronger America" That They Claim on Their Campaign Signs:

"Anybody But Bush" Dept.

I have long surmized that one of the best arguments for re-electing President Bush was that America's enemies are pretty solidly against such a proposition. It is particularly worth noting here by the terrorists themselves who have been getting their clocks cleaned the past two years by the US military. It is pretty difficult to plot another massive attack on America when you are kept offbalance and have to relocate constantly. (Not to mention having one of your allies in these endeavours -Iraq- being out of control of those you previously aligned yourself with.)

Indeed, with the final week to go in the presidential race, I actually took my Independent self down to the Republican precinct looking for a specific bumpersticker to put on my vehicle that read "10 out of 10 Terrorists Agree: Anybody But Bush!!!" They did not even know about the existence of such a sticker but I saw a couple of them the other day on vehicles and thought it would be a good one to have. I settled for a Dino Rossi (GOP) for governor postcard which I stuck in the back window instead but the subject of the terrorists and whom they would like in the Oval Office is a good topic to consider in these final days before elections.

Apparently, your humble servant is not the only one to have been thinking along these lines in recent weeks. Indeed, here are a few articles I found on the subject after entering some key search terms into Google earlier today when taking a break from work:

Terrorists' Candidates? (Charles Krauthammer)

Chuck Krauthammer (not a conservative by any stretch of the definition) is probably right that the terrorists are not necessarily big fans of Senator Kerry as they are supporters of anyone who opposed President Bush. But notice that that proposition only mirrors the theory I have been mulling over for the past month or so.

Iconoclast, or just foolish? (Diana West)

Diana West basically argues the same premise by noting what the media in countries hostile to American interests (i.e. Iran's Tehran Times, North Korea's Radio Pyongyang, Syria's Syria Times, etc.) Those who are considering voting for Senator Kerry need to explain why the latter would be a better national security president in light of those kinds of "endorsements."

Of course, even if you want to claim that the above articles by Krauthammer and West are somewhat derivative in their interpolations on this theme (not an unreasonable presupposition admittedly), at the same time, there are more direct evidences to consider in support of this theory. For example, the following articles give direct evidence in support of this theory:

Terrorists hope To Defeat Bush Through Iraq Violence (Borzou Daragahi)

Yasser Arafat Endorses Kerry (Aaron Klein)

Putin: Terrorists Support "Anybody But Bush (Michelle Malkin)

What is the remedy for this kind of "support" for Senator Kerry??? Simple: send these folks a message as Joseph Farah suggests in the next link:

Send Terrorists a Message (Joseph Farah)

Farah's criticisms of President Bush mirror many which I have made in the past two years.{1} However, he sees the wider picture here and it is this: when those who want America to fall rally around a particular presidential candidate, one should be very leery of aligning their votes with such people.


Note:

{1} It seems appropriate to list here in order (from oldest to newest) some of the threads from this weblog (and one thread predating it) whereby the reader can see a progression downward in my esteem by President Bush -whom I with a fair amount of enthusiasiasm voted for in 2000.

On Stem Cell Research

This commentary was written in August of 2001. The decision of President Bush on the stem cell issue was to me the first significant indicator that Bush was not a great leader. (Potentially good but not great: a distinction which was made in the aforementioned commentary.)

Final Installment of "Bastiat's Corner."

Basically, in the above link, Bush is unambiguously inferred as the "lessor evil" because his programs will plunder us all less than the alternatives offered by the Democrats: hardly a complement by any stretch of the imagination.

"Lie to Me" Dept.

Though targeted at Democrat hypocrisy about truth telling, the acknowledgment that Bush "could be doing better in many areas" is made in the post.

Miscellaneous Mutterings

Essentially this post includes a vindication of my hypothesis that Bush is no Reagan pace the contrary position as taken by a friend of this weblog. The basic criticisms of the Republican party chairman not understanding what limited government actually is are also applied here by logical extension to President Bush.

Predictions for 2004

Two predictions in the above thread deal with President Bush. The first has to do with his first Supreme Court nominee being a Hispanic, the second was that President Bush will continue to play a two card monte game of "war of terror" and "recovering economy" and disillusion former Republicans (and long-time Independents) like your humble servant. (And his latest pandering is frankly almost enough to make me vote Democrat in the 2004 election.)

The Problems With Bush's "Mass Amnesty" Proposal

This monumentally stupid policy -the "latest pandering" that was noted in the predictions thread- was gauged to attempt to curry political favour with Hispanics. It was almost the final straw for me viz. supporting President Bush for reelection.

On President Bush, the Upcoming Primaries, the Upcoming Election, and Standing on Principles

The above comments apply even more so to this post by which I was at the end of my rope in supporting (in any way) President Bush.

On the 2004 Election

Basically, I did not make a solid decision to support the reelection of President Bush until late February of 2004. Any support prior to that time was tenuous at best for a number of reasons -many of which were blogged on prior to that point. I note these threads to put the axe to the notion some may have that I am some "uncritical Bush lackey." Not by any stretch of the imagination can this theory be viably advanced; however, some undoubtedly will try to nonetheless -the above threads notwithstanding. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa September 11, 2004)]

"Tolerance For Me But Not For Thee" Dept.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

Miscellaneous Musings on the Election

Points to Ponder:

Last night we get a report on NBC news that the explosives were already missing when U.S. troops arrived at the storage location on April 10, 2003. The last time the IAEA saw the explosives was three months earlier in January of 2003. There is no way to know just when the explosives were removed. Sometime after the IAEA saw them in January and before American troops got there in April. Obviously this isn't a case of Bush failing to "guard" the explosives. By the time our troops got there they weren't there to guard. In other words, nobody failed to guard anything and there was nothing we could have done about it. They were gone when we got there.

Well .. .hold on. There is something we could have done about it. We could have invaded earlier! Get in there before the Iraqis had a chance to hide the explosives! Is that what the Kerry supporters are saying we should have done?

This was a "get Bush" story from the beginning. There have been some problems between the Bush White House and the head of the IAEA. This was supposed to be the "October Surprise." Drudge is reporting this morning that CBS was hoping to run with this story on Sunday's 60 Minutes ... two days before the election. The New York Times beat them to the punch ... and, unfortunately for the designs of the leftist press, in time for the truth to come out.

The Democrats and the media sure seem awfully concerned about this missing 380 tons of conventional explosives. While that's a lot of bombs, it pales in comparison when you're talking about nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. The WMD could kill millions of people. And those weapons are also missing.

Yet for some reason, the media and the left don't want those weapons to ever be found. They know it advances their anti-Bush agenda for it to continue to look like "Bush lied" when he said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Just as always, the safety and security of the United States comes in dead last when liberals want to win elections. We're told that 380 tons of missing explosives is the biggest disaster of the entire Iraq war. Missing chemical and biological weapons aren't that troubling, at least not to the left. According to the Democrats, they don't exist. Bush lied, you know. Never mind the fact that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, used weapons of mass destruction and we found weapons of mass destruction. It's also important to note that Iraq never accounted for missing quantities of biological and chemical agents.

But that 380 tons of explosives that's been missing for over a year and half.....that's the end of civilization as we know it. [Neil Boortz (c. 10/26/04)]

Miscellaneous Threads Worth a Read:

Some of these threads are a month old or more; however, the election is not far off now. With that in mind, it is my opinion that people tend to need reminding at times of older articles in this era of 24/7 news coverage. That is what will be done here by listing the links in order from newest to oldest.

The reason some of these are on Kerry's Senate record is because someone running for office will say whatever they need to say to get elected: it is the nature of the political beast. Therefore, one best judges a potential candidate who has a career in public office not so much by what they say now as much as how they have voted when the chips were down. As far as voting fraud, well it helps to remind people that an election was almost stolen four years ago and we do not want to see that kind of schenanigans again. Without further ado, onto the threads. (More will be posted later tonight and in the coming days when I have time to do so.)

60 MINS PLANNED BUSH MISSING EXPLOSIVES STORY FOR ELECTION EVE (Matt Drudge)

And we are supposed to believe the mainstream media (MSM) are unbiased and objective in their reporting???

It's Workhorse vs. Showhorse (Robert Novak)

The above thread is one comparing Sen. Richard Lugar (supposedly a "Kerry supporter") and Sen. John Kerry.

Bubba to the Rescue (Dick Morris)

Did anyone else notice that Clinton is appearing in states where Kerry should have already had the edge (such as Pennsylvania) and not in states where Gore lost in 2000??? If you know how to read the tea leaves, this is not a sign of campaign strength my friends but instead of campaign weakness.

Vietnam Veterans in 'Stolen Honor' Deserve To Be Heard (Dawson Bell)

Astute observers are aware that the MSM has no interest in this story much as they did not in the case of the Swift Boat Veterans. Such issues only hurt Hanoi John in this election which is (of course) why they will be buried by the MSM (to be promoted by the alternative media outlets like the blogosphere, Drudge, etc). It stands to reason that the more the MSM is derelict in their duties, the more credibility they will lose. (And of course they will only empower further the blogosphere and various other alternative media who do cover these stories.)

Kerry's Senate Record Is a 78 Played at 33 RPM (James Lileks)

A link on Senator Kerry's voting record: the true barometer of how to judge him, not by his election rhetoric. As We at Rerum Novarum have already dealt with his voting record on most of the significant issues, the above link only adds to what this writer has already pointed out.

Stop Voter Fraud: Require ID (Michelle Malkin)

A sound suggestion certainly. Care to guess which group does not have an interest in cutting down on voter fraud my friends??? I will give you a hint: they tried (and failed) to steal the last presidential election.

The 10 Biggest Lies of John Kerry (Barbara Stock)

It must have been difficult for Barbara to limit herself to only ten of them.

Dan Rather's Suspicious Alliance With the Kerry Campaign (Doug Schmitz)

It is important for readers to remember the first major ox that the blogosphere and alternative media successfully gored: Dan Rather of CBS. The connections he has with the Kerry campaign are not to be underestimated.

Dems: Kerry's Senate Record Off-Limits, Too (David Limbaugh)

David Limbaugh shines a bit of light on the senate record of the junior senator from MA. Anyone who wonders why Kerry has been as silent about his senate record as an NAACP member at a Klan rally needs only review David's article for a brief tour of what Hanoi John does not want you to see.

Why You Can't Believe Polls Anymore (Dick Morris)

Few people know more about how polls work than Dick Morris. The above article from 2002 is a good primer on this subject for those who think that polls are a generally reliable gauge for tracking election events.

If It's Not Close, They Cannot Cheat (Hugh Hewitt)

I have not read the book but I do agree with the premise.

ELECTION 2000, Day 25 'Coup behind closed doors' (Kenneth R. Timmerman)

An old article (almost four years old actually) but one that bears reiterating for those who take Santayana's dictum about history seriously.

Fascism, Corruption, and My 'Democratic' Party (Bob Just)

The above article from four years ago summarizes it about as well as it can be -and from a lifelong Democrat at that!!!Those who find the idea of the "left" being "fascist" when conventional wisdom ascribes fascism to the "right" need to consider my musings on the logical fallacy of the "communist-fascist" political spectrum theory which can be read HERE.