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That must be how Tony Snow feels at every White House news conference.

For the love of God, never do that to me again. It was almost as bad as a Helen Thomas photograph. Almost.

Chinese growth potential is inherently limited by the restriction of the free flow of information necessary to initiate and sustain innovation. The authoritarian, technocratic elite running that country cannot abide freedom of thought in its truest sense—unless that thinking is harnessed to the promotion of China’s image as an unstoppable economic juggernaut. Besides, I remember the same kind of comments made when Japan was going through its boom period in the Eighties, when supposedly knowledgeable commentators talked about the inevitability of Japanese economic dominance and the certainty of American decline.

In show business, buzz is generated by paid mouthpieces putting out the word on this or that celebrity: spreading gossip, doing promotional campaigns and publicity stunts, conducting photo ops orchestrated not to look like photo ops. These mouthpieces are paid by the studio or the record label or the talent agency representing that particular star.

Same thing here. Follow the money.

Well written post. Personally, I can almost pity Zinn and his fellow travelers: what to do when the socialist dream is dashed upon the rocks? Without the dream, there can only be self-loathing, the usual bitterness and recriminations, and the occasional well-paying book tour and speaking engagements.

Men like Zinn and Chomsky remind me of the Alec Guinness character in the movie, ‘Bridge Over the River Kwai’, who realizes in the last moments of his life the treason of his actions, although with Zinn, Chomsky, and others, the truth is that they will probably never have such a moment of self-revelation—and unlike the Guinness character—any chance at redemption.

As an aside, Dante reserved the hottest part of his Inferno for the false counselors, men just like Zinn.

I’m not saying Vitter should wear sackcloth and ashes or engage in any kind of public self-flagellation. That kind of abasement is unseemly (witness the Jimmy Swaggart ‘I have sinned’ spectacle years ago). I’m saying that his personal problems go beyond his family. Because of his position and because of the fairly recent nature of this disclosure, he should fall on his sword and resign for the sake of the party.

And yes, knowing of President Bush’s prior struggle with alcoholism, of course I voted for him. Given my own hard-won sobriety, I could definitely empathize. From my own experience, I know transformation of character and change in thinking is possible over time. But that’s the key, isn’t it—time? I am not the man I once was and neither—given all evidence—is the President, whom I support and respect and admire.

Issues of personal transformation aside, it simply isn’t too much to ask of GOP elected officials that they follow a higher standard than their Democratic Party counterparts. I mean, just how difficult can it be to hold the high moral ground on people like Barney Frank, who essentially had a male prostitute doing business out of his home?

You wrote, “It really is different and refreshing, don’t you think?”

Not so different—and given the context—not so refreshing, either. Remember: the evidence against Vitter was immediate and undeniable, while Clinton squirmed on that particular hook for awhile—and would’ve gotten away with it, too, had he not inadvertently left behind DNA evidence on a dress.

Again: it isn’t enough for someone like Vitter, an elected official, to simply apologize when he commits a corrupt act, no harm no foul. ‘Taking full responsibility’ only has meaning if taking that responsibility implies accepting the public and legal consequences of that act. When he publicly admitted to buying the services of a prostitute, he confessed to a crime, thus ‘taking full responsibility’ means he gets arrested, gets processed, gets a court date set, and appears before a judge or pleads out. That’s what happens if you or I commit a relatively minor misdemeanor and admit to it in public. Sins are private, crimes are public.

Sanctimonious? Nope. I don’t concern myself overmuch with the moral shortcomings of others. We all fall short at one point or another and should, as a general rule, tend our own garden and mind our own business. So no, I don’t want to see the man ‘kneeling in a soccer stadium’ et al, or otherwise further humiliated. I just want to see him out of office. If he can’t be faithful to his wife, then he can’t be trusted in any other aspect of his life, either.

But it is bigger than that. Vitter didn’t just fail his wife, he failed his constituents and his country. While supposedly representing their interests, he placed himself in a position where he could be compromised and blackmailed—presumably even by a hostile foreign power, but more likely by one of the many powerful interest groups active in the Beltway who make it their business to gather dirt on public officials. Knowledge is power, after all.

As an aside, emotional confessions occurring after being caught red-handed are usually not acts of conscience. The term we are looking for here, I think, is ‘damage control’.

You wrote, “Good for Vitter. Confession is a cleansing thing, and this is the best way to handle something like this.”

‘Good for Vitter’? What would be really good is if he resigns right now, right away, the sooner the better. Most men go their entire lives working hard, telling the truth, raising their children, and staying faithful to their wives. If the GOP truly stands for traditional values, then those GOP politicians caught with their pants down need to get out of public life. Let him do what the rest of us do if we should fail our marriage and destroy our reputations: focus on rebuilding that marriage and re-earning that reputation. He has no standing to do either on the taxpayer’s dime.

Further, it isn’t good enough to point to a Democratic Party sociopath like Bill Clinton and decry MSM double standards. The moral bar should be higher for GOP politicians. Why? Because character does count: bad human beings make bad political decisions. Another thing, too: the way Vitter referred to his transgression as a ‘sin’. I’m pretty sure frequenting a prostitute is a crime, even in D.C. By calling it a ‘sin’, he immediately took his actions from the political to the personal, as if it is solely a private matter of no public consequence.

The Democrats are keen on ‘re-framing’ various issues, as if wrong can be made right by some semantic sleight-of-hand. Sorry, no. That cannot be our way, or there truly is no difference between us and those we oppose. Such an action by an elected official is tantamount to a freezer filled with cash. It’s corrupt, illegal, and equally worthy of contempt and reprobation.

I’m not throwing stones from some sanctimonious high ground here. I’m a recovering drunk and addict, and I’ve plumbed moral depths no one should ever experience, but evidently unlike Vitter and those like him, I’m willing to own up to those moral lapses without advice from a bevy of image consultants and spin doctors.

19NOV80-19NOV84, SGT/E-5, 11B2P, Weapons Squad, 1st Platoon, B Company, 1/508th Battalion (INF), 3rd Brigade, 82nd Division (ABN).

No sky too high, no blast too fast, you call we fall.

You wrote, “Didn’t mean to bait anklebiters from the Lost Cause caucus.”

LOL. My great grandfather, a German immigrant, fought for the Union during the Civil War, and according to family lore, felt no great personal animosity towards the men who shot at him. None of his descendants were instilled with a bitter hatred of all things Southern. And me? I served with a whole slew of Southern boys who, like me, had a family tradition of military service, and I remain friends with several of my rebel buddies 25 years later. Yet the Lost Cause caucus, as you call them, just can’t let it go. The truth is Lincoln out-thought and out-fought the lot of them—Lee and Davis and Jackson and all the rest. A good thing, too, and so pathetically bizarre those CSA lovers still—to this day—go on about ‘the war of Northern Aggression’.

Was Lee a traitor? Given the tenor of the times, the loyalties involved, I (personally) would have to say no, and the same would hold true for all of the CSA’s leadership. They were, for the most part, men guided by firm principle and iron conviction. No, the traitors were the copperheads, Southern supporters in the Northern states too chicken to actually fight for the Cause they so vociferously espoused, along with quisling, peace-at-any-price politicians like Valandingham. Had I lived in those times, I would’ve advocated hanging them all. Suspension of habeas corpus would’ve been the least of their worries.

You wrote, referring to the President, “why in Gods name he would conspire with socialists to grant amnesty to illegal Mexicans at this time...”

Just guessing, but I think the President has a number of reasons for supporting this legislation, even at the risk of alienating the Republican Party base:

1. President Bush genuinely believes what he says publicly; i.e., that the country is strengthened by a nonrestrictive immigration policy—no doubt his more historically minded advisors pointed out the longterm gains accrued by the various waves of Irish, German, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants. Problem: a solid core of Mexican immigrants are (and will not be) readily assimilated, partly because idiotic multicultural ideas such as bilingual education discourage assimilation and partly because a very substantial bloc of Mexican immigrants have reconquista on their minds. People in the US are generally blissfully and foolishly unaware of the animosity and resentment many Mexicans feel toward America and Americans. Picture the resentment felt by hardcore neo-confederates about the outcome of ‘The War of Northern Aggression’ otherwise known as the American Civil War. Now imagine a whole country feeling pretty much the same way regarding the Mexican-American War. It’s a curious thing that history books cite the British interception and disclosure of the Zimmermann Telegram as a causus belli for American involvement in WWI—the message from the Imperial German foreign ministry offering Mexico return of California, Texas, and New Mexico if it (Mexico) allied itself with the Central Powers—yet never mention Mexico’s response to that offer.

2. President Bush believes a substantial portion of those 30 million new voters will view the Republican Party with a certain amount of gratitude if the party engineers this massive boondoggle of an amnesty plan, thus offsetting some of the Democratic Party’s electoral gains within this minority. This is, of course, nonsense. Any gratitude felt by our suddenly amnestied fellow citizens toward the Republican Party will be washed away by the entitlements the Democrats are sure to dangle in front of them. History tells: it was the Republican Party that emancipated the slaves and then—a century later—pushed through the Civil Rights Act, yet African-American Republicans are still so rare as to be worthy of remark whenever they assume any kind of public office.

3. The President is simply following the standard policy of his predecessors. The US government is incapable of dealing with the Mexican government in any meaningful way on this issue because it is in our longterm interest to ensure the stability of the Mexican government. The corrupt, moribund, oligarchical Mexican government is stable only because (a) potential troublemakers and risk-takers—usually the voices of dissent and revolution—are heading north to seek their fortunes, and (b) billions of dollars go south once they get here. It’s win-win for Mexico. Both they and we know that the US cannot afford another string of bloody, disruptive Mexican revolutions. Or at least that’s the logic. Personally, I think Mexico should be coerced into adopting a quid pro quo regarding its own immigration and foreign investment policies. Imagine the effect of an army of unhindered American entrepreneurs crossing their border.

4. The President is worried about his damnable legacy, as Clinton was. How this disaster of an immigration policy enhances his legacy is beyond me. Truly, the thinking behind all of this eludes just about every conservative I know.

I’ve supported this President through thick and thin, staunchly, sometimes vociferously, but he’s lost me on this one. An amnesty-based immigration plan is a huge self-inflicted wound at the worst of all possible times, hurtful to the country in general and the Republican Party in particular. Why would he willfully alienate people like me? It makes no sense.

Prior to WWII, there was an influential cadre of military thinkers in virtually all countries, Allied and Axis, who thought air power—and air power alone—would be the determiner, and the fallacy of this thinking continues to this day among various Air Force brass throughout the world in spite of all evidence to the contrary. In WWII, the seemingly unstoppable German U-boat campaigns were successfully countered by improved screening techniques and detection strategies. Why think any future war would be any different? Overemphasis upon any given arm of one’s force array gives the enemy a singular focus for the development of countermeasures.

You wrote, “I have no doubts about Buchanan’s integrity.”

I have all sorts of doubts about Buchanan’s integrity. Integrity implies transparency of motives, but Buchanan has his own agenda and hides it behind double-talk and euphemisms. Even now, with Iranian-supplied (and very sophisticated) IEDs in our hands, Buchanan employs words like ‘allegedly’ when referring to Iranian support of the Iraq insurgency and acts as if our own somewhat feeble covert efforts to undermine the mullahs somehow justify Iranian perfidy throughout the region.

Someone already brought it up on this thread. Those of us who follow the news should follow the money. We grossly underestimate Saudi influence. Buchanan, like Baker, Carter, and others, has no doubt been bought and paid for. However, I don’t think it’s all about the money with Buchanan. His particular brand of ‘anti-Zionism’ is flatly, plainly antisemitism, that ancient malignancy, and Buchanan is fairly saturated with it. Paying Buchanan to sway public opinion against Israel would be like paying me to go fishing.

As I see it, the way to beat Obama is to force him to address questions and issues in concrete, specific terms because his specialty is the vague, warm-fuzzy-feeling platitude. Another weakness is his lack of substance and experience. People invoke JFK whenever these Obama weaknesses are brought up, and point to his (JFK’s) televised debate victory over Nixon as some kind of proof that image triumphs over achievement in a mass media age, but most modern candidates—not least Thompson, Romney, and Guiliani—are equally comfortable in front of the cameras and are certainly more accomplished than Obama, thus negating any perceived image projection advantage.

That’s my take on things, anyway.

The article read, “Let’s face it, Obama probably won’t be a hit south of Chicago, west of New York and east of California and that’s the area where people actually still vote.” The author also (suspiciously) uses the term ‘ghetto talk’.

‘Ghetto talk’? Who uses that term, anymore? As an aside, ‘squares’ is prison parlance, for those not familiar with jail.

Analysis of Thompson’s chances against any given challenger in the primaries—and assuming he wins the nomination—against the Democratic candidate in the general election is a topic for serious study and discussion, but not by this guy. The author grossly underestimates the efficiency of Hillary’s campaign machine, and the remarks about Obama make broad-brush assumptions about both the candidate and the electorate that don’t hold up intuitively and certainly aren’t supported by any poll data—or even anecdotal evidence. But that’s the thing: breezy little opinion pieces like this are flooding the blogosphere and detract attention from more substantiative argument.

Given the thinly veiled racism, sloppy thinking, and shoddy logic, I’m almost tempted to believe this piece was written by a Democratic operative pretending to be a Thompson supporter. It’s almost too amateurish.

Neverdem, I was referring to the author of the article, not you. The short bio after the author’s name states he is a student of Buddhism and an attorney from Carmel, Indiana.

The article read, “Hence, we get addle-brained protesters picketing to save the lives of serial killers on death row or human shields willing to give up their lives to protect suicide bomber cults and Islamic terrorists. Since all killing is bad, it must be bad to kill Islamic terrorists or convicted murderers.”

The logic doesn’t follow. While I support capital punishment, I respect the point-of-view of those who do not. The last time I debated an opponent of capital punishment, her reasoning was solid and her argument compelling--and had nothing whatsoever to do with 'since all killing is bad, it must be bad to kill Islamic terrorists or convicted murderers'. The author created a straw man when he wrote that, and--since he is an attorney as well as a 'student of Buddhism'--knew he was committing a fallacy. Further, I don’t view opponents of capital punishment as ‘addle-brained protesters’, nor do I lump them in with human shields vacuously unable to draw even the most rudimentary moral distinctions. The author, it seems, is as guilty of lack of discernment as those he so roundly condemns. Didn't the Buddha preach 'Right Thinking'? Doesn't law school teach the fundamentals of reasoned argument?

You wrote, “Without our intervention and support in the European theater, are you both of the belief that an unfettered Germany would have eventually been defeated by the Soviet regime and European forces?”

You’re talking alternate universe stuff here. I’m simply saying we didn’t ‘save the bacon’ of the Russians during WWII. The expression you employed doesn’t sum up the reality of the situation very well. It isn’t that cut-and-dried—unlike, say, the case of the French or the Belgians or the Dutch—whose bacon, brisket, ribs and hocks we did save, outright, directly, without dispute.

The US and the USSR were allies during WWII. The entire premise of a wartime alliance is to hang together rather than hang separately. So again, no, we didn’t save the Russians. We saved each other, quid pro quo.

You wrote, “... and to think we saved their bacon in WW2.”

While no closet Stalinist, I think I’m safe in making the claim that Soviet Russians bore the brunt of German military might in WWII to the tune of 30 million civilian and military casualties. If anything, Field Marshal Zhukov’s ‘Always Attack’ dictum kept the heat off the Western Front, saving countless Allied lives. Your statement has no historical validity. The Russians are not the French.

Insofar as Putin’s aggressive, anti-American agitprop is concerned, Putin knows that even the finished American missile defense shield is not intended to ward off an all-out ICBM strike by a first-rate (or even second-rate) military power. He’s making nationalistic noise to divert the Russian people from a corrupt, increasingly authoritarian domestic policy. Another Russian journalist thrown from a balcony or shot in the head? Kasparov and other anti-Putin activists thrown in jail? Rattle the saber at the Americans.

You wrote, “For his firm stance on the federal government abiding by the Constitution, he remains one of the few decent politicians in my opinion. What is it exactly about the Constitution that you don’t support?”

A does not lead to B here, and is representative of the tack you’ve taken throughout. Any attempt to follow the logic of that statement takes one to an immediate dead end.

Ron Paul is a 9-11 Truther. A ‘decent politician’ is not one who believes the attacks on our country by Islamic extremists were part of a vast US governmental conspiracy. By doing so, he immediately discredits himself and all those who support him, in whole or in part. The BNP in Britain is a bastion of neo-facists. The author of the article you posted wouldn’t know a conservative from a carrot. Endorse the author’s views and you make yourself suspect as a fellow-traveler, in the very least.

I won’t go tit-for-tat with a conspiracy theorist. It’s like arguing with a neo-confederate about ‘The War of Northern Aggression’. What I will do, as I have done, is call you and others like you out and force you to defend your position with something approaching rational discourse. Admittedly, it is difficult to remain emotionally detached when dealing with someone holding paranoid, deranged, and/or repugnant ideas, but I don’t apologize for that, either. One should get angry when dealing with defenders of 9-11 conspiracy theories, for example. One should make such people objects of unbridled ridicule and sarcasm. Such people should know the derisive laughter they hear when leaving a room is at them, not with them.

It’s been fun.