Jeremayakovka

Barack Obama Hijacked Our Hope And Flew It Over Ground Zero

Last Friday evening the AP originally posted a story about the resignation of White House staffer Michael Caldera in the wake of President Obama's low-altitude fly-over of Manhattan in Air Force One, with an F-16 in tow. Purportedly a photo-op, the deliberate aerial maneuver caused panic on a scale unheard of since Ronald Reagan's inadvertently on-air microphone quip The bombing (of the USSR) begins in five minutes. By posting the story around 8:00PM, the AP did its part to help the public ignore the Obama Administration's embarrassment. But should it be ignored?

Like many Americans, I too have wondered just what contributed to this questionable and, to many, offensive (even outrageous) presidential decision. To wit, some speculations:

10. After a non-stop First Hundred Days of Honey, I Shrunk the Economy!, Obama ordered Air Force One's in-flight movie switched to United 93.

9. Obama was displaying a deap-seated weakness for believing that he possesses Superman-like powers. Unfortunately, he ended up being the cause -- for the second time in recent memory -- of New Yorkers shouting, Look! Up in the sky ... it's a bird! It's a plane!! It's ... It's a plane!!!

8. Whatever panic New Yorkers felt was nothing compared to what gripped Michelle Obama -- because never before has a man so blantantly hinted to his wife that he's on the down-low.

7. The White House says the fly-over's purpose was to take photographs of New York City for official use, which is only partly true. What it won't say is that Obama's gathering material for another feel-good memoir about the tribulations of completing half of one term in high office, this one to be called The Audacity of Fear.

6. Lending credence to right-wing suspicion that Obama truly believes -- as much of the world does -- that America is an evil empire that deserves to be humiliated violently on the way to being defeated utterly, The Audacity of Fear will feature a special chapter, "Thirty Seconds Over New York."

5. In a controversial development, the official investigation now underway will show that the Air Force One crew did not unanimously support the fly-over decision. Testimony purportedly will show that Obama was heard knocking on the door to the cockpit, while saying, Don't make me get out the box-cutters....

4. Testimony may also show that once the fly-over was complete, Obama knuckle-bumped Michelle and gave David Axelrod a high-five while boasting Mission Accomplished!

3. Consistent with what some perceive as his deferential posturing before Muslim and/or Arab interests, Obama was trying to demonstrate what sharia-compliant air travel might look like in the United States.

2. For some Muslims, however, the lower Manhattan fly-over doesn't count as "sharia-compliant." Some Muslim leaders say that if Obama is serious about showing respect to Islam, he'll fly over lower Manhattan again -- this time in the direction of Mecca.

1. Let's face it: on a scale of 1 to 10, Obama's presidential fly-over of lower Manhattan rates a Ground Zero.

(Directly inspired by Fausta's recent post, "Priceless," and a certain anti-Bush banner from c. 2004)

September 11th Is A Date Which Will Live In Infamy

Partisan liberals are gearing up for their "stop Rudy" campaign. I can feel it.

Here are some choppily edited video clips, found at Dana Goldstein's blog (who found it at Talking Points Memo), of Rudy Giuliani's frequent invocations of September 11th during interviews, debates, and campaign appearances. Dana calls this a tick (as in, a nervous tick), whereas I would say it's a tack -- a strategy to remind Americans of his own leadership, certainly, and by extension of the leadership of many other Americans on that awful and awe-inspiring day.

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People who take issue with a leading presidential candidate, one who oversaw the most intense locus of that day's crisis -- oversaw it more directly than either the president or vice president -- should have to answer the following:

"September 11th is a date which will live in infamy."
Do you agree , or disagree, with that statement? (Yes or No.)

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If recalling September 11th really is distasteful to the good folks at TPM, I guess I could placate them by trying to convince Giuliani to invoke some other date. Say ... February 26th? That day in 1993, on the watch of then-President Bill Clinton and then-Mayor David Dinkins (both Democrats), saw the first attempt by Islamic terrorists to blow up the World Trade Center. The savages' spectacular plan included the intended release of cyanide gas into the tower's ventilation systems -- plus the wishful thinking that the tower's collapse would bring down its twin. So one good that conceivably could come out of a ticky-tacky discussion of whether to invoke or to not invoke September 11th would be to connect it back to February 26th.

February 26th turned out, as a matter of luck, not to be catastrophic -- loss of life and property were minimal -- though it was a precursor to September 11th. For Khalil Sheik Mohammed, an uncle and adviser of one of the plotters, went on to become the chief coordinator of the September 11th attacks. The lessons KSM learned from February 26th were: Never send a fanatical homicide bomber to do a fanatical suicide bomber's job and America might send in spooks and prosecutors, but she won't send in the Marines. What was for the civilized world, at the end of the day on February 26th, effectively a reprieve from catastrophic terror should in hindsight have been a clarion call. Whereas for Islamic fanatics it was a casting call.

Something often omitted from remembrances of September 11th is that, like February 26th, only strokes of fate and luck made that day somewhat less catastrophic than it otherwise would have been. The desperate courage and determined outrage of a few dozen passengers successfully (if tragically) diverted United Flight 93, which had been piloted (targeted) at the Capitol or the White House. That many WTC employees hadn't yet arrived to work when the first planes struck (and that many who had also had time to evacuate) drastically reduced the number of human casualties on that day.

All this is to acknowledge (and perhaps the Talking Points Memo crowd will find common ground with me here) that Giuliani's leadership should not be permitted to eclipse the near unimaginable bravery and stoicism of the many thousands gone on September 11th. Where we diverge is that I believe Giuliani is within his rights -- moreso, his duties -- to invoke our national memory of it. Actually I welcome the kind and gentle, but firm manner by which he speaks for all of us -- he exhibits a fundamental remembrance and pride, plus the littlest hint of grief and a whiff of defiance. And of grapeshot.

I have to wonder, what would partisan liberals prefer Rudy Giuliani do than revive memories of September 11th? Do they wish that he discuss Ms. Rodham Clinton's unreliable mentions of her daughter Chelsea's whereabouts in lower Manhattan on that morning? If that is the case, there may yet be an occasion for Giuliani to do so.

IX-XI

What had been special ground is now sacred ground.
The line in the sand cut -- not drawn.
By force -- not by choice.

I'm off to a freeway overpass to wave my oversize American flag above rush-hour traffic for a few hours. When you hear horns honking out of the west, you'll know where they're coming from.

* Update 10:20 AM * Back from the overpass, was out there for two hours. A continuous breeze kept Old Glory flapping pretty much non-stop. Truckers and contractors -- i.e., our builders, movers, doers -- they're the greatest, the most generous and unrepressed when it comes to honking and waving. Lots of waves, some thumbs up, some #1's. One lady took her hands off the steering wheel to applaud.

Word of caution: one guy gave me finger and shouted some thing about Bin Laden. The jihad has landed....

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Print and read this at the dinner table tonight: If it is hard for Americans to forget September 11, it seems just as hard for Americans to remember that terrible Tuesday.

Here's my less summary, more reflective report from last year. (Note the animated comments.)

Gerard Van Der Leun reposts his across-the-harbor recollections of September 11, 2001 at American Digest.

Got a 9/11 story to tell? What are you doing to get your counterjihad on? Email me or leave it in the comments.

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The last pic is from Spiritual Oasis whose  Bill Williams volunteered as a chaplain in the aftermath. See his uplifting post, "From Ground Zero."

The Untold Story of Delta Flight 1824

Two "credible security risks" discovered on Delta flights last week. Any word about it in the news? (H/T Degree of Madness) According to the Northeast Intelligence Network:

Based on a thorough inspection of all the luggage belonging to these Middle Eastern passengers, authorities also found multiple strands of electrical wire with the ends stripped of the insulation, thus exposing the copper wire, small eyeglass screw drivers, clocks, cocoa butter, 2 tubs of butter, batteries of various sizes and types, a computer laptop, and multiple bottles of hydrogen peroxide – 144 ounces in all.

Even more disconcerting, TSA and security officials observed that two of the Middle Eastern men intended for the flight had smeared Vaseline on their arms and neck areas – a common tactic among hand-to-hand fighters who want the advantage in the event someone tries to grab them or put them in a headlock. Covered by the greasy agent, they are better able to extricate themselves during close-quarters, hand-to-hand fighting.

A closer inspection of the identification possessed by the Middle Eastern passengers determined that three-(3) of the men possessed false or fraudulent credentials. In fact, one of the Middle Eastern men possessed 2 passports with his picture on both, but the passport information was different on each one.

According to reports from officials speaking on condition of anonymity, a similar incident occurred at the Orlando airport at approximately 1:00 p.m. on the same day – at the same security checkpoint. On this occasion, it was a female who reportedly possessed some of the same items in her luggage as the previous passengers. In fact, she was a member of the same family, added this source.

Jihadists Parade in NYC, Protected by Police, On Eve Of 9/11; Counterjihadists Out In Force

Summary, video, pics from the counterjihad's diva bravissima .
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Time to get your "counterjihad face" on: .

Russian Revolutionary Suicide

Truth ... I love much.
-- final words attributed to a dying Christian pacifist and aristocrat,
Count Leo Tolstoy (1910)
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* Update (8/23) * Comments on and from Fausta's podcast with Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and with "Siggy" of Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred.

* Update (8/24) * We are interested in knowing the thoughts of the suicide murderer just before he detonates the explosive belt.
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The tactic of suicide (homicide) bombing is not exclusively Islamic. Nearly all of us are familiar with Japanese kamikazes from World War II and, some of us, with other contemporary practitioners like the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka who in 1999 famously assassinated Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by this tactic.

More obscure and, because it grew out of Western values and Western philosophy, more haunting (therefore more familiar) and more tragic (because the character flaws leading to it are our own, are our inheritance), is that suicide bombing, or an impulse to it, made at least one appearance among anti-Tsarist militants in pre-Bolshevik Russia. Whatever the totalitarian theories that arose in modern history -- about underground parties, managerial distinctions between agitation and propaganda, "the art of insurrection," etc. -- there was also in the Western tradition, as product or by-product, an impulse to suicide on behalf of (even intrinsic to the adherence to) a cause.

Fortunately (if that is the proper adjective for it), when the taking of no other life is at issue, suicide as a soul's clarion call to a wayward society enjoys (if that's the proper verb for it) status as one of the most passionate, ultimate statements possible. Consider the examples of Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk setting himself ablaze in the 1960s, of Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima committing seppuku in 1970, and of vicar Roland Weisselberg setting himself afire last year to lament loudly Europe's spiritual capitulation to secularism and Islamization.

Scarcely known is that an impulse to suicide bombing revealed itself in Russia in 1907. As Whittaker Chambers relates to William F. Buckley in a letter dated August 30, 1954:

One night, a fashionably dressed young woman called at the Central Prison in Petersburg and asked to speak with the commandant, Maximovsky. This was Ragozinikova, who had come to protest the government's policy [as Chambers mentions elsewhere, "systematically beating its political prisoners" (whatever "systematically" means, exactly)]. Inside the bodice of her dress were sewed thirteen pounds of dynamite and a detonator. When Maximovsky appeared, she shot him with her revolver and killed him. The dynamite was for another purpose. After the murder of Maximovsky, Ragozinikova asked the police to interrogate her at the headquarters of the Okhrana. She meant to blow it up together with herself; she had not known any other way to penetrate it. But she was searched and the dynamite discovered. She was sentenced to be hanged [an appropriate sentence, btw]. Awaiting execution, she wrote her family: Death itself is nothing.... Frightful only is the thought of dying without having achieved what I could have done.... How good it is to love people. How much strength one gains from such love. When she was hanged, Ragozinikovka was twenty years old.
-- from Odyssey of a Friend, published privately by The National Review, 1969, p. 77.

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* Updates *

Fausta's recent podcast with Robert Spencer, author of Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't, makes a point to not confuse the values of Judeo-Christianity with those of Islam. More precisely, to not confuse their ability (or inability) to proffer values, and for a civilization, as a consequence of those values, to develop, to innovate, to progress. In terms of that Russian revolutionary lore quoted above, consider that the impulse to sacrifice other's lives and, if necessary, one's life for a cause -- to presume to become, as Camus phrased it, one of "the just" -- has different sources, impulses, motivations than those which compel jihadist shahid ("martyrs") to their deeds and their ends.

Writes "Siggy": Robert Spencer also reiterates another unequivocal truth. It is the evolution of religion and the evolution of a believers relationship (or non relationship) with his or her faith that has powered human development. It is an absolute truth that modern society cannot exist alongside backward religious expressions. That is why nations predicated on a free and democratic Judeo-Christian ethics are producing nations and why virtually all of the Arab world are only capable of consumption. It is also an unequivocal truth that producing nations and societies are very different than consuming nations.

UPO Sighting in SF

This unidentified patriotic object was spotted recently hovering luminously in a window in the Aces Bar in San Francisco's Tenderloin District.

Newt on Gwot

Must see video of Gingrich's remarks at the National Press Club. H/T Mick.

Eight Theses On Being Jeremayakovka

for Casey Sheehan and Cindy Sheehan, especially

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Fausta tagged me last week in the "8-ball meme" for eight more previously unknown personal facts. The first eight, it seems, only whetted her appetite. So here are eight, not just facts about, but theses[*] on being Jeremayakovka. [Note: It took a week to tweak #1-#4, and it'll be a piece of work to finish #5-#8. Please bear with me....]:
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1. My parents' ages are 19 years apart, with my mother being the older partner. Their coming together defied custom and practicality, even morality. Not surprisingly, it was also short-lived. Each was also (in effect) an only child, which is what I am, unmistakably. When coming of age as a radical leftwing activist, "family values" were something I rejected categorically and conspiratorially (in pride), and ignorantly and jealously (in shame). Despite reexamining leftwing values for some time now, for me to opine from the vantage point of "family values" would be, still, an imposture. "Family values" remain something to be observed rather than experienced, to be understood (if at all) a posteriori, not a priori.

2. Women usually react with visceral enthusiasm when I inform them that, yes, in fact my mother brought her first, her only healthy child to term at age 45. This is true especially of younger, unmarried, childless women. Standout exclamations include Whoa! and Way go to, mom!. Their enthusiasm smacks of ignorant solidarity, bordering on idolatry, and elicits from me mostly dismay. These daughters (so to speak) of "third wave feminism" -- educated to believe that just about anything subverting "traditional gender roles" (while also trafficking in the mainstream) is curious, virtuous, imperative -- know nothing of the tender travails and miserable dignities that attend a domestic situation such as the one my mother and I knew. These "peers," along with their baby boomer parents (here I include my other, baby boomer parent), often seem to me (as they must have seemed to my mother) to some extent, and in the worst sense, mere children.

3. When very young, about 5 or 6, I inadvertently plunged into the Sailboat Pond in New York's Central Park. I was racing to the opposite side to recover my model boat when the jingle of a far-off ice cream truck distracted me. So much so that, my head craning in one direction and my body running in another, I strode right over the pond's raised cement edge and into its artificial shallows. I forget how I got out -- whether anyone reached for or jumped in after me, or whether if even I pulled myself out. I do remember my father carrying me, soaking and sobbing, not home but to where he lived.

4. When a little less young, about 9 or 10, I nearly got myself swept away into the Gulf of Mexico. A hurricane off the coast of Texas was sending successions of waves -- about twice as tall, fast, and frequent as usual -- into the west Florida beach where my mother and I were vacationing. This monstrous aggregation of briny sights, blustery sounds, salty smells was so enthralling that, with nobody else around, I decided I would test their bounties of touch and taste.... A few minutes later my feet, I suddenly realized, no longer could touch sand. With waves rolling in one upon another, my strokes rectified nothing. The waves lifted me and surged past, leaving me in their hollows where still I could not touch bottom.

In terror, time and language collapse. What remains in the mind (if anything) is the will -- yet even that is often displaced. Bobbing in that excited surf, my body became a constricted concert of heart, lungs, throat, nostrils, a concert bellowing in stark, perfect, physiognomic pitch (which only now I can translate into words): Confront terror with every fiber of your being. If you don't, it will seize you and make off with you. Fight it NOW or succumb forever. My thin, little-boy limbs stroked and kicked in a frantic unison through roller coaster swells. Ignoring whatever lay beneath me, I aimed directly for the line of shore (no longer just a beach). Watching it within reach, and even sensing its approach, brought no consolation until at last all four limbs, surf-slackened, scraped through lapping wavelets the rough but familiar blanket of sand.

Just how long it took to get back I could not measure in time, only distance. Relieved and morose, elated and enervated, I had to concede that I'd washed up hundreds of yards away from the point to which I'd struggled to return. My curiosity had nearly destroyed me. And while my best efforts, I saw, could deliver me, they also could not quite restore me.

On the wobbly walk up the beach, as if obeying an unfamiliar oath in a language yet to be identified (let alone acquired, let alone mastered), I calculated that it would be best never to tell anyone what I'd just come through. Least of all tell either parent. Others would receive my report only as shore-dwellers whereas I would transmit it as both shore-dweller and tempter of the deep. This unsettled purpose made me neither proud nor happy nor secure. It left me only with the sharp sense that, as the poem goes, "East is East, and West is West ..." -- and never the twain shall meet.

All in all it didn't feel like victory against the terror that had gripped me, but merely a draw.
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[*]: Proclaiming "Theses on [a *very important* subject]" is the boldest public undertaking any leftwing intellectual can ever realize (except for the seizure of state power). V.I. Lenin's "April Theses" of 1917 declared openly the Bolsheviks' intention to destabilize Russia's Provisional (reformist) Government. Walter Benjamin followed suit in 1940 with his oft-imitated "Theses on History." It seems to me high time that someone compose Theses for "our brave new, 'neoconservative' 21st Century." --JMK

Jeffersonian Thought For Independence Day

* Update * Freedom Isn't Free -- the "dead, rich, white men" who signed the Declaration of Independence were principled, brave, honorable men, as the enormous sacrifices many of them made during the American Revolution attest.
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I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality.... Both of our political parties, at least the honest part of them, agree conscientiously in the same object—the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good.... Which is right, time and experience will prove.
-- Thomas Jefferson, found (precise source unattributed) here

Don't know about you, Gentle Reader, but I can't "do" July 4th without remembering September 11. For a personal flag-waving story, here's my post from last September 11.

Here's video of a brief interview of Christopher Hitchens by Pajamas Media's Richard Miniter about Thomas Jefferson's importance to America -- in his day and in ours.

Edwards Eye For the Straight Guy

* Updated *

The current issue of Barron's shows John Edwards combing his coif most admiringly while gazing into a handheld mirror.

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Note, Gentle Reader, that all the presidential candidates on the Barron's cover are looking at you -- except Edwards who is looking at himself. Everyone looks the part of a candidate -- except Edwards who, if anything, is looking at the part in his hair (let alone a part in the election). There's no crescent-and-star bling on Barack (Hussein) Obama, no dour 1984-imagery draped over Big Sister Hillary, no flip-flops making flippy floppy around "Mitt Happens" Romney. More than those flung at any other candidate, the Rightosphere's select epithets for this presidential pretender from North Carolina -- insinuations of "Breck girl" and even "silky pony" -- are gaining traction in the MSM. It's time for the Rightosphere to take a bow.

Also implied in this Barron's cover is the value that remains to be teased out of Ann Coulter's four-month old faggot "rehab" joke. In keeping with my commentary (from day one here and last week here), despite some ugly suggestiveness of the word "faggot," the joke's manifest value has very little to do with whether John Edwards has, ever has had, or ever will have sex with men. Nor should it -- unless, as we learned from Jim McGreevey (scroll down in link), it can compromise something as private as national security. The joke's value has nothing to do with liberals' haste to impute to Coulter status as the GOP's "bigoted id," as if she had a glaring intent to bully gays (scroll through here), nor with conservatives' haste to enumerate an almost sublime sense of their accepting nature -- while repudiating one of their own. As if the force of contemporary conservatism can (or ought) to be reckoned apart from Coulter's sophisticated satire....

Previous: "Boo Frickin' Hoo, Liz"

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As the 2008 primary season gets into high gear (a 2007 fundraising season, mostly), let's recall the first close-up look most of us ever had of John Edwards, as reflected in the comments (and rebuttals) of Dick Cheney. From their 2004 vice-presidential debate:

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EDWARDS: There is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11th -- period....

CHENEY: I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there's clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror. And the point is that that's the place where you're most likely to see the terrorists come together with weapons of mass destruction, the deadly technologies that Saddam Hussein had developed and used over the years.

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EDWARDS (at one point): The president and the vice president have not done the work to build the coalition that we need.

EDWARDS (at another): [If John Kerry and I are elected,] we will not outsource our responsibility to keep this country safe.

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EDWARDS: We've taken 90 percent of the coalition casualties. American taxpayers have borne 90 percent of the costs of the effort in Iraq. And we see the result of there not being a coalition: The first Gulf war cost America $5 billion. We're at $200 billion and counting....

CHENEY: When you include the Iraqi security forces that have suffered casualties, as well as the allies, they've taken almost 50 percent of the casualties in operations in Iraq, which leaves the U.S. with 50 percent, not 90 percent. With respect to the cost, it wasn't $200 billion. You probably weren't there to vote for that. But $120 billion is, in fact, what has been allocated to Iraq. The rest of it's for Afghanistan and the global war on terror. The allies have stepped forward and agreed to reduce and forgive Iraqi debt to the tune of nearly $80 billion by one estimate. That, plus $14 billion they promised in terms of direct aid, puts the overall allied contribution financially at about $95 billion, not to the $120 billion we've got, but, you know, better than 40 percent.

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CHENEY: Senator, frankly, you have a record in the Senate that's not very distinguished. You've missed 33 out of 36 meetings in the Judiciary Committee, almost 70 percent of the meetings of the Intelligence Committee. You've missed a lot of key votes: on tax policy, on energy, on Medicare reform. Your hometown newspaper has taken to calling you "Senator Gone." You've got one of the worst attendance records in the United States Senate. Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.

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MODERATOR: The next question goes to you, Mr. Vice President. I want to read something you said four years ago at this very setting: "Freedom means freedom for everybody." You said it again recently when you were asked about legalizing same-sex unions. And you used your family's experience as a context for your remarks. Can you describe then your administration's support for a constitutional ban on same-sex unions?

CHENEY: Gwen, you're right, four years ago in this debate, the subject came up. And I said then and I believe today that freedom does mean freedom for everybody. People ought to be free to choose any arrangement they want. It's really no one else's business. That's a separate question from the issue of whether or not government should sanction or approve or give some sort of authorization, if you will, to these relationships. Traditionally, that's been an issue for the states. States have regulated marriage, if you will. That would be my preference.

In effect, what's happened is that in recent months, especially in Massachusetts, but also in California, but in Massachusetts we had the Massachusetts Supreme Court direct the state of -- the legislature of Massachusetts to modify their constitution to allow gay marriage. And the fact is that the president felt that it was important to make it clear that that's the wrong way to go, as far as he's concerned. Now, he sets the policy for this administration, and I support the president.

MODERATOR: Senator Edwards, 90 seconds.

EDWARDS: Yes. Let me say first, on an issue that the vice president said in his last answer before we got to this question, talking about tax policy, the country needs to know that under what they have put in place and want to put in place, a millionaire sitting by their swimming pool, collecting their statements to see how much money they're making, make their money from dividends, pays a lower tax rate than the men and women who are receiving paychecks for serving on the ground in Iraq.

Now, they may think that's right. John Kerry and I do not. We don't just value wealth, which they do. We value work in this country. And it is a fundamental value difference between them and us. Now, as to this question, let me say first that I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy.

And I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, and so does John Kerry. I also believe that there should be partnership benefits for gay and lesbian couples in long-term, committed relationships. But we should not use the Constitution to divide this country. No state for the last 200 years has ever had to recognize another state's marriage. This is using the Constitution as a political tool, and it's wrong.

MODERATOR: New question, but same subject. As the vice president mentioned, John Kerry comes from the state of Massachusetts, which has taken as big a step as any state in the union to legalize gay marriage. Yet both you and Senator Kerry say you oppose it. Are you trying to have it both ways?

EDWARDS: No. I think we've both said the same thing all along. We both believe that -- and this goes onto the end of what I just talked about -- we both believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. But we also believe that gay and lesbians and gay and lesbian couples, those who have been in long-term relationships, deserve to be treated respectfully, they deserve to have benefits.

For example, a gay couple now has a very difficult time, one, visiting the other when they're in the hospital, or, for example, if, heaven forbid, one of them were to pass away, they have trouble even arranging the funeral. I mean, those are not the kind of things that John Kerry and I believe in. I suspect the vice president himself does not believe in that. But we don't -- we do believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

And I want to go back, if I can, to the question you just asked, which is this constitutional amendment. I want to make sure people understand that the president is proposing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage that is completely unnecessary. Under the law of this country for the last 200 years, no state has been required to recognize another state's marriage.

Let me just be simple about this. My state of North Carolina would not be required to recognize a marriage from Massachusetts, which you just asked about. There is absolutely no purpose in the law and in reality for this amendment. It's nothing but a political tool. And it's being used in an effort to divide this country on an issue that we should not be dividing America on. We ought to be talking about issues like health care and jobs and what's happening in Iraq, not using an issue to divide this country in a way that's solely for political purposes. It's wrong.

MODERATOR: Mr. Vice President, you have 90 seconds.

CHENEY: Well, Gwen, let me simply thank the senator for the kind words he said about my family and our daughter. I appreciate that very much.

MODERATOR: That's it?

CHENEY: That's it.

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MODERATOR: [The next question] goes to you, Senator Edwards, and you have two minutes. Ten men and women have been nominees of their parties since 1976 to be vice president. Out of those ten, you have the least governmental experience of any of them. What qualifies you to be a heartbeat away?

EDWARDS: The American people want in their president and in their vice president basically three things: They want to know that their president and their vice president will keep them safe. They want to know that they have good judgment. And they want to know that you'll tell them the truth. John Kerry and I will tell the American people the truth....

MODERATOR: Mr. Vice President, you have 90 seconds.

CHENEY: You want me to answer a question about his qualifications?

MODERATOR: That was the question.

CHENEY: I see. Well, I think the important thing in picking a vice president probably varies from president to president. Different presidents approach it in different ways. When George Bush asked me to sign on, it obviously wasn't because he was worried about carrying Wyoming. We got 70 percent of the vote in Wyoming, although those three electoral votes turned out to be pretty important last time around.

What he said he wanted me to do was to sign on because of my experience to be a member of the team, to help him govern, and that's exactly the way he's used me. And I think from the perspective of the nation, it's worked in our relationship, in this administration. I think it's worked in part because I made it clear that I don't have any further political aspirations myself. And I think that's been an advantage. I think it allows the president to know that my only agenda is his agenda. I'm not worried about what some precinct committeemen in Iowa were thinking of me with respect to the next round of caucuses of 2008.

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MODERATOR: Mr. Vice President, picking up on that, you both just sang the praises of the tops of your ticket. Without mentioning them by name at all, explain to us why you are different from your opponent, starting with you, Mr. Vice President.

CHENEY: Why I am different from John Edwards. Well, in some respects, I think, probably there are more similarities than there are differences in our personal story.

I don't talk about myself very much, but I've heard Senator Edwards, and as I listen to him, I find some similarities. I come from relatively modest circumstances. My grandfather never even went to high school. I'm the first in my family to graduate from college. I carried a ticket in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers for six years. I've been laid off, been hospitalized without health insurance. So I have some idea of the problems that people encounter. So I think the personal stories are, in some respects, surprisingly similar.

With respect to how we've spent our careers, I obviously made a choice for public service. And I've been at it for a good long time now, except for those periods when we lost elections. And that goes with the turf, as well, too.

I'm absolutely convinced that the threat we face now, the idea of a terrorist in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon, is very real and that we have to use extraordinary measures to deal with it. I feel very strongly that the significance of 9/11 cannot be underestimated. It forces us to think in new ways about strategy, about national security, about how we structure our forces and about how we use U.S. military power.

Some people say we should wait until we are attacked before we use force. I would argue we've already been attacked. We lost more people on 9/11 than we lost at Pearl Harbor. And I'm a very strong advocate of a very aggressive policy of going after the terrorists and those who support terror.

MODERATOR: Senator Edwards, you have 90 seconds.

EDWARDS: Mr. Vice President, we were attacked. But we weren't attacked by Saddam Hussein. And one thing that John Kerry and I would agree with you about is that it is....

MODERATOR: You just used John Kerry's name.

EDWARDS: Oh, I'm sorry. I broke the rule.

One thing that we agree about is the need to be offensive in going after terrorists. The reality is that the best defense is a good offense, which means leading -- America returning to its proud tradition of the last 75 years, of once again leading strong coalitions so we can get at these terrorist cells where they are, before they can do damage to us and to the American people. John Kerry made clear on Thursday night that -- I'm sorry, I broke the rules. We made clear -- we made clear on Thursday night that we will do that, and we will do it aggressively.

But there are things that need to be done to keep this country safe that have not yet been done. For example, three years after 9/11, we find out that the administration still does not have a unified terrorist watch list. It's amazing. Three years. What are we waiting for? You know, we still don't have one list that everyone can work off of to see if terrorists are entering this country. We're screening our passengers going onto airplanes, but we don't screen the cargo. There are so many things that could be done to keep this country safe. You have to be strong, and you have to be aggressive. But we also have to be smart. And there are things that have not been done that need to be done to keep the American people safe.

MODERATOR: Would you like to respond? Thirty seconds.

CHENEY: No.

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MODERATOR: As previously agreed, we'll go to closing statements now, two minutes each. Coin toss, Senator Edwards, you begin.

EDWARDS: Thank you. Thank you, Gwen. Thank you, Mr. Vice President, for being here.

You know, when I was young and growing up, I remember coming down the steps into the kitchen, early in the morning, and I would see the glow of the television. And I'd see my father sitting at a table. He wasn't paying bills, and he wasn't doing paperwork from work. What he was doing was learning math on television. Now, he didn't have a college education, but he was doing what he could do to get a better job in the mill where he worked. I was proud of him. I'm still proud of him. And I was also hopeful, because I knew that I lived in a country where I could get a college education.

Here's the truth: I have grown up in the bright light of America. But that light is flickering today. Now, I know that the vice president and the president don't see it, but you do. You see it when your incomes are going down and the cost of everything -- college tuition, health care -- is going through the roof. You see it when you sit at your table each night and there's an empty chair because a loved one is serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. What they're going to give you is four more years of the same.

John Kerry and I believe that we can do better. We believe in a strong middle-class in this country. That's why we have a plan to create jobs, getting rid of tax cuts for companies outsourcing your jobs; give tax cuts to companies that'll keep jobs here in America. That's why we have a health care plan. That's why we have a plan to keep you safe and to fix this mess in Iraq. The truth is that every four years you get to decide. You have the ability to decide where America's going to go. John Kerry and I are asking you to give us the power to fight for you, to fight to keep that dream in America, that I saw as a young man, alive for every parent sitting at that kitchen table.

MODERATOR: Vice President Cheney?

CHENEY: Gwen, I want to thank you.

It's been a privilege to serve as your vice president these last four years and to work alongside President Bush to put our economy on an upward path. We've cut taxes, added 1.7 million new jobs in the last year, and we'll continue to provide opportunities for business and for workers. We won't be happy until every American who wants to work can find a job. We believe that all Americans ought to have access to available -- to medical care and that they ought to have access to the finest schools in the world. We'll do everything we can to preserve Social Security and to make certain that it's there for future generations.

I've worked for four presidents and watched two others up close, and I know that there's no such thing as a routine day in the Oval Office. We saw on 9/11 that the next president -- next decision a president has to make can affect the lives of all of us. Now we find ourselves in the midst of a conflict unlike any we've ever known, faced with the possibility that terrorists could smuggle a deadly biological agent or a nuclear weapon into the middle of one of our own cities.

That threat -- and the presidential leadership needed to deal with it -- is placing a special responsibility on all of you who will decide on November 2nd who will be our commander in chief. The only viable option for winning the war on terrorism is the one the president has chosen, to use the power of the United States to aggressively go after the terrorists wherever we find them and also to hold to account states that sponsor terror. Now that we've captured or killed thousands of Al Qaida and taken down the regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, it's important that we stand up democratically elected governments as the only guarantee that they'll never again revert to terrorism or the production of deadly weapons.

This is the task of our generation. And I know firsthand the strength the president brings to it. The overall outcome will depend upon the ability of the American people and the strong leadership of the president to meet all the challenges that we'll face in the days and years ahead. I'm confident we can do it.

Rolling Out The 9/11 Neocons Logo

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What does it mean? you might ask.
Don't just stand there -- Guess!
If that doesn't do it, just go to the left column and scroll down a ways.

And thanks to George for the 411 on uploading the 911!

Must Listen: NPR Guest Says Antiwar Americans Are Pampered Whiners, Irrational Bush-Haters

Someone at NPR must be about to be shitcanned, because Batman artist/movie director Frank Miller carefully and sensitively makes the case for cherishing America, for waging war against Islamic terrorists, and for identifying a major Bush failure. Read about it here; audio here:
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Mighty cultures are almost never conquered, they crumble from within. A lot of Americans are acting like spoiled brats because everything isn't working out perfectly every time....

Let's finally talk about the enemy [and] the 6th Century barbarism they represent.... I'm speaking into a microphone that never could have been the product of their culture and I'm living in a city where 3,000 of  my neighbors were killed by thieves of airplanes they never could have built....

Where I would fault President Bush the most is that in the wake of 9/11 he motivated the military but he didn't call the nation into a state of war and he didn't explain that this would take a communal effort against a common foe....

Blogger Wins Asylum Case

Blogger Isaac Schrödinger, who offers one of the best free-thinking personalized perspectives on Muslim society, was recently awarded refugee status in Canada. Long known as an ex-Muslim, he now is one step closer to being an ex-Pakistani.

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Please read his four-part series on his chosen Muslim apostasy which was a direct consequence of 9/11. Congratulations, Isaac, on prevailing in your immigration case! Clearly this is Pakistan's loss and Canada's gain.

Previous:
"Keep Isaac Schrödinger Free! - Update"
"Help a Blogga!"
"Support an Ex-Muslim on 9/11"

Rabbi Ginsburg Goes to Washington During the Days of Awe

Power Line's Scott Johnson performs a mitzvah by reposting a detailed account of a meeting of 16 leading rabbis with President Bush during the Days of Awe in the first weeks after the September 11 attacks.

I was just stunned to be sitting across the table from the most powerful person in the world, a man of true humility and belief in one God, who spent much of this hour and a quarter, speaking from the depth of his heart about his concern about anti-Semitism and his understanding of Israel's predicament. I know many disagree with policies of his. I'm sure every rabbi there had some disagreements. But there was no denying the moment, the genuineness, the power of the experience. It felt surreal.
-- Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg

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May G-d continue to bless America ...
and to damn the blinker-blinded Bush-bashers and Israel-bashers, of whatever religion, party, nationality, stripe, or brand.

(H/T: Cinnamon Stillwell)

War Poetry

The Wall Street Journal asked its readers to submits poems on behalf of the war effort and received hundreds of submissions, several of which they just recently published.  If you are like me and was raised on your parents' early Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger albums, and the only "war poetry" you were introduced to in high school was Wilfred Owen's (and by a black-beret-wearing  English teacher who couldn't speak Spanish but in solidarity with the departed Allende government took pains to pronounce Chile, "Chil-lay"), then James Taranto's WSJ piece, "A Day of Poetry for the War," is for you.

The poems run the gamut in structure and subject matter, yet all are animated by this generation's uniquely American zeitgeist: "NO! to terrorism and YES! to those who have given, are giving, and/or will give all to fight it."

Here's one goodie:

The Soldiers

There they go, off to war,
Leaving loved ones, whose hearts are sore.
Children weep in their mothers' keep,
As they hear their fathers' leaving feet.
Wives and mothers cannot speak,
Watching them leave makes them feel weak.
But, they know they must be strong,
For they might hear the bells toll,
Dong, dong, dong, dong,
And sincerely hope that they are wrong,
That their beloveds, whose love they've won,
Will return to them when all is done.

--Amy Allison (12 years old)
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Way to go, Amy! JMK thanks you and every one else who contributed to "A Day of Poetry for the War."

When in Rome Do As a Christian

Here's an engaging and accessible article, "Theology for an Age of Terror," on Christian thinkers during the late, barbarian-beseiged Roman empire and during World War II. For example, C. S. Lewis is quoted at length from an address he gave at Oxford in October, 1939:

It may seem odd for us to carry on classes, to go about our academic routine in the midst of a great war. What is the use of beginning when there is so little chance of finishing? How can we study Latin, geography, algebra in a time like this? Aren't we just fiddling while Rome burns?

This impending war has taught us some important things. Life is short. The world is fragile. All of us are vulnerable, but we are here because this is our calling. Our lives are rooted not only in time, but also in eternity, and the life of learning, humbly offered to God, is its own reward. It is one of the appointed approaches to the divine reality and the divine beauty, which we shall hereafter enjoy in heaven and which we are called to display even now amidst the brokenness all around us.
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(Found over at A New Dark Age is Dawning, run by Mark Alexander, author of The Dawning of a New Dark Age: A Collection of Essays on Islam.)

Why We Write

Journalist Steven Vincent was murdered one year ago today in Basra, Iraq. Arriving of late to blogosphere and the war on terror effort, I still have a lot to learn about him. Freedom-loving people everywhere owe his memory, and those of all journalists killed in these wars, profound thanks.  Yehudit is making sure the blogosphere pays him full honors today in a three four-part post at Kesher Talk.

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Steven Vincent, 1955-2005

Oliver Stone Says "Uncle (Sam)"

Just watched the World Trade Center trailer, via Expose the Left.  It's by a director I view with great reservations, starring an actor whose forte is intelligent romantic comedy.  But I must say that the trailer got to me. Maybe Andrea Berloff's script (Who?) is worth its salt. I didn't expect to be moved by the work of an Oscar-laden, anti-establishmentarian, multi-millionaire who a few years ago -- projecting on to al-Qaeda his own rage against the big studio machine -- bloviated:

I think the revolt on September 11 was about order.  It was about f**k you, f**k your order.... It was an eruption of rage about this. And it is time perhaps to reconsider the world order. 

When opinion-makers (which A-list Hollywood directors certainly are) flaunt opinions like that, they need to be monitored very closely. Well, I've changed a lot since that awful day; this summer it'll be time to see if Stone has changed at all.  Of course something tells me that I shouldn't hold my breath, that I'd do better rooting for Nick Cage's character and that of his co-star Michael Pena.  Because the chances of Oliver Stone changing from paranoiac Left-wing conspiracy-theorist into a reliably patriotic filmmaker may be less than the chances of two transit cops surviving the collapse of one of the world's tallest buildings.  My stern suspicion is that by taking on World Trade Center Stone is trying to pull a sleight of hand: politically dumbing down our memory of that day's terrorist attack while nevertheless attempting to not go down in Hollywood history as "Oscar bin Laden."

But enough about Stone, Cage, Pena, and relative newcomer Berloff.  What's moving about this trailer are the no-name actors who, because they really are just like most of the rest of us, drive the misery and the heroism home that much more convincingly, like in United 93. I suspect that if World Trade Center feeds our American hunger for big stories about 9/11, it will be because it'll be feeding us big stories about little people, stories that no matter how craftily scripted really can't be made up.

If you're up for it, see what you think:

"Totally sick, but completely sane."

In her latest op-ed Michelle Malkin lights into the current sentencing hearings for "the little hijacker who couldn't," precarious Zacarias Moussaoui. With a flick of the keyboard Malkin dismisses testimony submitted on his behalf by a social worker, a psychologist, and his kin -- testimony which even Moussaoui dismissed as "a lot of American B.S."  As she tells it:

Totally sick, but completely sane. . . . Playing the mental illness card allows the blind to continue deluding themselves about . . . Islamic imperialis. . . . Yet the bleeding hearts foolishly and suicidally persist with their Poor Little Jihadist propaganda and call for sympathy and understanding for the Root Causes that fueled the 9/11 hijackers.

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Malkin doesn't need a psychologist to know which way the wind blows. Neither should we.

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This man hates you, Gentle Reader.

He hates you and he is at war with you.
He does not feel your pain.  Do not feel his.

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Update: Legal eagle Alan Dershowitz, in "The Abuse Excuse: Moussaoui's Lawyers Float the Impoverished French Muslim Syndrome", calls attention to what should be obvious:

Moussaoui's only expressed regret is that more innocents did not die on Sept. 11th. Moussaoui has called victims and their survivors "disgusting" and has said that he hopes they "will suffer more pain." In reponse to one of his own character witnesses, a Jewish man who befriended him, Moussaoui shouted "Death to the Jew!"