Quotes of the day - Mark Steyn

They support them as victims, as children, as potential welfare recipients, but they don't support them as warriors and they don't support the mission.

. . . . .

So their "support" is objectively worthless. The indignant protest that "of course" "we support our troops" isn't support, it's a straddle, and one that emphasizes the Democrats' frivolousness in the post-9/11 world.

. . . . .

Bill Clinton bombed more countries in a little more than six months than the Zionist neocon warmonger Bush has in six years but, unless you happened to be in that Sudanese aspirin factory, it was as desultory and uncommitted as his sex life and characterized by the same inability to reach (in Ken Starr's word) "completion."

. . . . .

To be sure, like Kerry in 2004 deciding that the murderers and rapists were now his brave "band of brothers," the left often discover a sudden enthusiasm for the previous war once a new one's come along. Since Iraq, they've been all in favor of Afghanistan, though back in the fall of 2001 they were convinced it was a quagmire, graveyard of empire, unwinnable, another Vietnam, etc. Oh, and they also discovered a belated enthusiasm for the first President Bush's shrewd conduct of the 1991 Gulf War, though at the time Kerry and most other Democrats voted against that one, too. In this tedious shell game, no matter how frantically the left shuffles the cups, you never find the one shriveled pea of The Military Intervention We're Willing To Support When it Matters.


Mark Steyn - 11-5-06

Kerry distanced from Dems only in tight races; Casey; McCaskill, Ford

The MSM/DNC would like to put John Kerry's remarks behind us, as it attempts to refocus the nation's attention back to Mark Foley.

MSM/DNC outlets are quick to point out that numerous Democrats have repudiated Kerry's insult, while also insisting that it was nothing but a joke. The Democrats that called for Kerry to apologize include McCaskill, Ford and Hillary Clinton. A campaign appearance with Bob Casey in Pennsylvania has been cancelled. See also Michelle Malkin.

In fact, McCaskill, Ford and Casey are locked in tight races with incumbent Republicans or for open seats. Hillary, of course, retains Presidential ambitions.

Those Democrats who are safe have not repudiated Kerry. They have not repudiated him because they agree with him. The Democrats have not dropped their anti-troop animus. They merely hide it when they have to. Kerry is less skilled at hiding it than most of his party.

Bob Casey, while cancelling a campaign appearance with Kerry this week, has nevertheless appeared with Kerry earlier in this campaign. Yesterday he continued to defend Kerry notwithstanding the canceled appearance. Casey dismissed the comments as a mere joke. If the comments were only a joke, then why cancel the joint campaign appearance? Casey wants to have it both ways. He wants to defend Kerry as much as he can get away with while pretending to distance himself from the slur on the campaign trail.

The Democrats who are trying to keep Kerry in the closet remind me of Bill Clinton's faux conservatism during the campaign of 1992, promising a middle class tax cut, running as a southern Democrat with a southern Democrat running mate, putting his wife in front of the cameras with a fake southern drawl, etc. Only after the election did we discover that the tax cut promise was nothing but a head fake, as our taxes were raised almost immediately. We still haven't discovered the full extent of Clinton's sellout to China.

If we allow the country to let down its guard and elect faux moderate Democrats because they joined in the criticism of Kerry, we will discover too late that the Democrats will undermine our defense and leave Iraq at the mercy of Al Qaeda.
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update
count Jon Tester of Montana among the tight race hypocrites:

"Senator Kerry's remarks were poorly worded and just plain stupid," said Democrat Jon Tester, in a tight Senate race in Montana.

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John Kerry on Bob Casey:
“You and I can actually make this an outstanding day in Bob Casey’s Senate campaign to defeat Santorum”

John Kerry wrote an email on June 14, 2005, asking Pennsylvanians to make donations to the Bob Casey for Senate campaign. Kerry writes, “Bob Casey was there for us and Pennsylvania Democrats in 2004. Let’s do it for him in 2006.” (Email, John Kerry, June 14, 2005) He also writes “Join the johnkerry.com community in Pennsylvania as we kick off a special one-day campaign to give Bob Casey a strong grassroots boost.”
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Also - Casey refers to Kerry as a "great leader . . . patriot" - Allentown Morning Call - November 1, 2006.


"I'm Bob Casey and John Kerry has approved this message."

Quote of the day - John Kerry slams the troops again

Here is the transcript so that we can read it when Youtube kills the video (H/T Michelle Malkin reader):

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well."

If you don’t, you may get lost in Vietnam and think you're in Cambodia during Christmas on a super-secret CIA-evil-Republician mission.

There is a reason that the terrorists supported Kerry in 2004.

Jack Higgins; Haditha; UK Times smear; Fifth columnists never stop - they simply switch tactics.

Even though the UK Guardian has retracted the slanderous photo that sought to blame the Marines for a massacre that Al Qaeda insurgents committed, the American branch of the MSM/DNC fifth column has picked up the fallen banner and continues to run with it.





Jack Higgins of the Chicago Sun-Times has reproduced the photo as a cartoon, implying that the Marinese were responsible for the deaths of the civilians in the picture.

Michelle Malkin provides e-mail addresses to which we can write in protest. Those who praised the UK Times for correcting its "mistake" will now find some other excuse to exonerate Higgins and the Sun-Times.

Whenever I identify a cartoon as perpretating a lie, someone always points out that it is "only a cartoon." Cartoons can contain lies, as this one does. What is the punch line?

I repeat my questions (with a few new ones) from several days ago - Does Higgins want our troops to be withdrawn? Does he want Al Qaeda to control Iraq, its geography, its people and its oil? If so, is he prepared to face the consequences? Is he prepared to live in a world that features a much stronger Al Qaeda in terms of manpower, money, bases of operation and power? Is he prepared to draw cartoons featuring massive American civilian casualties resulting from additional Al Qaeda attacks on U.S. soil? If so, will he attribute those massacres to the Marines also?

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update Thursday June 8th.
The Chicago Sun-Times and Jack Higgins have apologized (yesterday) for the cartoon. H/T Michelle Malkin

An Apology
A cartoon by Jack Higgins in Tuesday's Chicago Sun-Times incorporated inaccurate imagery to make a statement about the allegations that U.S. Marines killed Iraqi civilians in Haditha. Jack Higgins and the Sun-Times deeply regret the mistake and apologize to the U.S. servicemen, especially those in the Marine Corps, and to our readers who were understandably offended by the cartoon. Higgins, in doing Web research on the Haditha story, searched the Internet for images. A Yahoo search engine displayed a number of photos, one of which was labeled "IraqBodi...rd.jpg." Clicking on that image took Higgins to the MSNBC/Newsweek site. On his screen then was the original Yahoo search preview image and under it a Newsweek page with a small image of the magazine's current cover with the headline "The Haditha Question." Higgins made the erroneous assumption that the image in the photo preview was a photograph of victims of the killings that unproven allegations say were committed by U.S. Marines. Further scrolling down the page would have produced another image of this photo with a caption that clearly identities the dead as victims of Iraqi insurgents. The caption reads, "Insurgents in Haditha executed 19 Shiite fishermen and National Guardsmen in a sports stadium." Again, Higgins and the editors of the Sun-Times apologize for this egregious error.

Whether we accept as genuine the apology, this episode might provide some insight into the way the MSM/DNC operates. If we assume that the Sun-Times is now telling the truth, the cartoonist made an innocent mistake in relying on the photo he found in a Yahoo search.

Maybe this is how so many MSM/DNC employees got to the point where they have no understanding of what conservatism or America or Western Civilization is all about. Maybe many of the MSM/DNC columnists, reporters, cartoonists etc. have relied on lies for many years and have no idea that there is more to conservatism and America than racism, Halliburton, warmongering, "homophobia" etc. The MSM/DNC not only lies to Americans, it lies to those who work for or in the MSM/DNC. That is often how discipline and doctrinal purity are maintained within any mass totalitarian movement, of which the MSM/DNC is a good example.

While Ann Coulter refers to "liberalism" as a religion, MSM/DNC would more properly be described as a cult, like the one in Jonestown or the followers of El Ron Hubbard, except that the MSM/DNC seems to follow no one person in particular.

My point is [and I will continue to try to define the MSM/DNC in future posts], blogbursts that expose lies might have the effect of opening the eyes of some of the MSM/DNC employees who until now have mindlessly repeated the lies of the MSM/DNC. We can only guess as to how hardened some leftists have become over the years because they had access only to MSM/DNC lies without the opportunity for responsive blogbursts like the one that exposed this lie.

My advice to Jack Higgins (if his apology is genuine) is that he must learn to be as suspicious as the paranoid conservatives are when he seeks information from MSM/DNC sources. " . . . [W]e can't be sure of anything we do . . . anything we see."

Haditha, John Murtha, John Kerry, Ramadi

I found a post of mine from November 7, 2004, which reported (quoting several blogs) that the Islamic terrorists were planning to booby trap schools in Ramadi so that the coalition would be blamed for the death of children:

Dave at Cold Beverage has posted a centcom link that reveals the muslim insurgents' plans to rig schools with explosives and detonate them once the Coalition's final assault begins. One school in Ramadi was rigged with explosives with the detonation wire running to a nearby mosque.

The left and their allies in the MSM will see to it that the U.S. gets the blame. Hat tip also to Digital Brown Pajamas.

The left seems to follow the same script every time. The Ramadi booby traps never materialized, but the left, the MSM/DNC and the terrorists kept their scripts and their ammunition ready until another opportunity presented itself.

Down the memory hole will go Ramadi and Beslan as the MSM/DNC will hasten to label our troops "baby killers" while ignoring the possibility that the muslims killed their own people in order to provide propoganda ammunitition to their allies in the MSM/DNC.

It is no longer surprising that Congressman Murtha will hasten to condemn the Marines as liars and murderers, even though he undoubtedly accepted John Kerry's version of events from Vietnam without questioning how a soldier could earn 3 purple hearts without shedding a drop of blood. The left no longer makes a pretense at consistency. Murtha can count on the MSM/DNC to protect his own status as the "Democratic-hawk" and "war hero" no matter how badly he smears our troops.

Michelle Malkin provides more information on Islamic terrorist policy of using their own children as cannon fodder.

USS Iowa shunned by San Francisco.

The San Francisco board of supervisors has vetoed plans to place the USS Iowa on display in San Francisco bay. The decision was made on ideological grounds.

This is old news. The decision was made a month ago (and discussed on the internet at that time). I don't know why Yahoo, Rush Limbaugh and Hannity were discussing this item today. I must have missed some angle that makes the subject news today instead of last month.

near Pearl Harbor 1952

The Iowa was in the center of the battle to homosexualize the military in 1989 when an explosion tore through one of its main gun turrets, killing 47 sailors. The Navy's original report attributed the explosion to sabotage by a homosexual sailor upset over a jilted lover (I believe both men served on board at the time). The report was quickly rebuffed and attacked by the MSM/DNC and was quickly retracted by the Navy. The original report continues to generate MSM/DNC hate pieces online and elsewhere.

The official line today is that we don't know what caused the explosion, but the only cause we can rule out is homosexual sabotage. The affair reminds me of numerous airplane crashes in the 1990's (TWA 800, Egypt Air, etc.). The cause of the crashes remains a mystery, but the federal government quickly ruled out terrorism. Maybe if four different battleships had suffered from simultaneous similar explosions, the official story would not be so benign.

The latest leftist meme and what lies behind it.

Leftist anti-war protesters have become quick, like trained seals, to respond to any logical argument about the war with one response: "Why don't you (or your children, or George Bush' children) join the Army if you are so pro-war?"

- Leftists are quick to say this even though they called Pat Tillman a "sucker" for doing just that.

- Leftists are quick to say this even though they will make every effort to prevent military recruiters from talking to you or your children (or, presumably, George Bush' children).

- Leftists are quick to say this even though most of the people who have joined the military are in favor of the President's decisions in defending this country.

- Leftists are quick to say this even though they voted for the man (Kerry) who opposed additional armor and equipment for our troops.

- Leftists are quick to say this even though they believe that the only good U.S. soldier is a dead U.S. soldier (and even better if the deceased soldier's mother has no shame).

Remember where the protesters' hearts really lie when they accuse real Americans of shirking military duty.

Katherine Baker Knoll

I was as outraged as the rest of you at the comments of Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor Katherine Baker Knoll at a recent military funeral. But I can't help thinking that there is more here than meets the eye.

While Ms. Baker-Knoll has long had a reputation as a dim bulb, she also has all the right enemies. Ms. Baker-Knoll serves as the Democratic Lt. Governor in the Rendell administration. Leftists in Pennsylvania have been trying to marginalize Baker-Knoll since the beginning of the administration. She gives them plenty of ammunitiion (as we have seen with recent events), but that doesn't explain why the left hates her. The left usually rushes to join with idiots, lunatics and other assorted no-class jerks. But they are making an exception in this case.

The fact is, she is one of the few prominent Democrats anywhere that is pro-life. Had those statements been made by a more consistent leftist, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette would not have mentioned it.

I suspect that the publicity surrounding this event is part of a run-up to dumping Knoll from the ticket for next year's gubernatorial elections. Rendell's choice in the 2002 primary was a more liberal candidate, but Knoll won the primary because she was the only woman on the ballot in the Democratic primary. [That is a good example of gender-politics chickens coming home to roost.] Unlike some other states, in Pennsylvania the governor and lieutenant governor are nominated separately in the primary election.

Look for the Dems to trot out a new, more reliably leftist candidate next spring for Lt. Governor. Assuming that Rendell wins in the fall, that new candidate will then be groomed to replace Rendell or Arlen Specter in 2010.

I am not going to blog any more about Knoll because I don't want to help the Dems do their dirty work. Let them clean up their own house. Knoll will continue to give her opponents more ammunition and her opponents will continue to attack her using their friends at the Post-Gazette and other papers.

For all the anger I feel at this latest event, I feel much more outrage at Governor Rendell's attempt to prevent our soldiers' votes from counting during the Presidential election last fall. Incoherent rambling from an idiot is far less offensive than the denial of our soldiers' basic rights as citizens.