Posted on 07/31/2004 2:47:30 PM PDT by Chuck N
CONGRESS ACTION: August 1, 2004
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FOUNDATION OF LIES: The Democrat Convention opened with Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and of course ended with the anointment of John Kerry as the party’s candidate. Yet despite the happy delegates and the festive atmosphere, the overwhelming sense one takes away from the convention is of profound sadness. How sad that a major political party is so bereft of ideas that it has to build its hopes for the future on a foundation of lies. Sadness for the country, too – realizing the acute danger faced by the possibility of electing the leaders of a political party that depends on lies as it’s entrée to governing the nation.
Bill Clinton: “Their opponents will tell you to be afraid of John Kerry and John Edwards, because they won't stand up to the terrorists – don't you believe it. Strength and wisdom are not conflicting values – they go hand in hand. John Kerry has both. His first priority will be keeping America safe.” Let’s look at Kerry’s record of “keeping America safe”.
February 26, 1993: the first attack on the World Trade Center; October 3, 1993: US soldiers killed in Somalia by al Qaeda-trained militia.
February 9, 1994: Kerry introduced S.Amdt. 1452 to H.R. 3759: “Rescission Of Funds For Intelligence And Intelligence-Related Activities”, to rescind $1,000,000,000 from programs and activities of the National Foreign Intelligence Program and the Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities.
September 29, 1995: Kerry introduced S. 1290, a bill to “Reduce the Intelligence budget by $300 million in each of fiscal years 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000.”
November 13, 1995: Bombing of US barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.
February 29, 1996: Kerry introduced S. 1580: A bill to … reduce funding for the Department of Defense.
August, 1996: Osama bin Laden declares war against America.
May 1, 1997: Kerry agreed that Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s concerns be addressed (Congressional Record, Page S3891): “Now that that [Cold War] struggle is over, why is it that our vast intelligence apparatus continues to grow even as Government resources for new and essential priorities fall far short of what is necessary?”
Then, as though it was some other Senator Kerry who looked askance at our intelligence agencies, on September 23, 2001 Kerry, on CBS’s Face the Nation, said: “And the tragedy is, at the moment, that the single most important weapon for the United States of America is intelligence. … And we are weakest, frankly, in that particular area.”
On October 11, 2002, Kerry voted “Yes” on S. 45, “Authorization For Use Of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution Of 2002”; then on October 17, 2003 Kerry voted (S. 1689) to deny emergency funding for the military mission in Iraq that was authorized by S. 45 (on which he voted “Yes”).
Al Gore: Apparently still thinks he won the 2000 election: “In our Democracy, every vote has power. And never forget: that power is yours. Don't let anyone take it away or talk you into throwing it away. And let's make sure that this time every vote is counted. Let's make sure not only that the Supreme Court does not pick the next president, but also that this president is not the one who picks the next Supreme Court. … To those of you who felt disappointed or angry with the outcome in 2000, I want you to remember all of those feelings.”
Remember that much ballyhooed “media recount” following the election when, after the U.S. Supreme Court put a final halt to the endless recount madness instigated by Gore, scores of media outlets vowed to go to Florida and really count all the votes? Have you ever wondered why we barely heard any more about that? Surely, we would have been endlessly deluged by facts and figures if the media recount had proved that Gore had really won, but we haven’t seen any evidence of that. Indeed, all we’ve heard is innuendo and assertion that “Gore really won” from democrats – but no evidence. Here’s why: Even by the broadest possible standards of recounting the damaged and improperly marked ballots, standards advocated by Gore himself, Gore still lost, and lost by an even wider margin! Here’s just a sampling:
Palm Beach Post (January 14, 2001): “George W. Bush would have gained six votes more than AI Gore if all the dimples and hanging chads on 10,600 previously uncounted ballots in Miami-Dade County had been included in the totals, according to a review by The Palm Beach Post. That result would have been a hard blow to AI Gore's hopes of claiming the presidency in a recount. Before the vice president conceded last month, the Gore camp had expected to pick up as many as 600 votes from a Miami-Dade recount – barely enough to overtake Bush's razor-thin Florida lead. Instead, The Post's review indicates Gore would have lost ground.”
Miami Herald (February 26, 2001): “If Secretary of State Katherine Harris had let South Florida counties complete manual recounts before certifying the results of last November's election, George W. Bush likely would have won the presidency outright, without weeks of indecision and political warfare, a review of Miami-Dade County's ‘undervote’ ballots shows.”
PBS Online News Hour (April 3, 2001): “More than three months after Democrat AI Gore conceded the hotly contested 2000 election, an independent hand recount of Florida's ballots released today says he would have lost anyway, even if officials would have allowed the hand count he requested. In the first full study of Florida's ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled undervotes – ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through – to be counted.”
Miami Herald (April 4, 2001): “Republican George W. Bush's victory in Florida, which gave him the White House, almost certainly would have endured even if a recount stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court had been allowed to go forward. In fact, a comprehensive review of 64,248 ballots in all 67 Florida counties by The Herald and its parent company, Knight Ridder, in partnership with USA Today, found that Bush's slender margin of 537 votes would have tripled to 1,665 votes under the generous counting standards advocated by Democrat AI Gore.”
Washington Post (November 12, 2001): “In all likelihood, George W. Bush still would have won Florida and the presidency last year if either of two limited recounts – one requested by AI Gore, the other ordered by the Florida Supreme Court – had been completed, according to a study commissioned by The Washington Post and other news organizations.”
John Kerry: In his convention speech, Kerry said, “the president who sits at that desk must be guided by principle”. For John Kerry, however, principles shift with the prevailing winds of opportunism. Here is some of what Kerry said about Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction in the recent past:
“It is clear that in the 4 years since the UNSCOM inspectors were forced out, Saddam Hussein has continued his quest for weapons of mass destruction. … Evidence suggests that it has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard gas, sarin, cyclosarin, and VX. Intelligence reports show that Iraq has invested more heavily in its biological weapons programs over the 4 years, with the result that all key aspects of this program – R&D, production and weaponization – are active. … The Iraqi regime's record over the decade leaves little doubt that Saddam Hussein wants to retain his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and, obviously, as we have said, grow it. These weapons represent an unacceptable threat.” – John Kerry, Congressional Record Page S10173; October 9, 2002.
“Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime…”. – John Kerry, January 23, 2003.
Yet at the Democrat Convention we heard a different John Kerry: “I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war.” “Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so.” “I will immediately reform the intelligence system so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics.”
At the convention Kerry proclaimed: “You don't value families if you force them to take up a collection to buy body armor for a son or daughter in the service…”. Yet on October 17, 2003, John Kerry voted “No” on S.1689 for additional emergency funding for the military mission in Iraq.
The rest of Kerry’s speech was equally disingenuous. Take, for example, the tiresome refrain of the sort we hear constantly from leftists: “We value an America that controls its own destiny because it's finally and forever independent of Mideast oil.” Well, that’s fine. So can we drill for our own oil in our own country? No, Kerry’s environmental-extremist supporters won’t permit it. So can we mine our own coal to fire our power plants? No, Kerry’s environmental-extremist supporters won’t permit it. And anyway, Bill Clinton put huge deposits of our own clean-burning coal off limits inside newly created national monuments – to the applause of the same environmental-extremists who now support Kerry. Can we build more nuclear power plants to supplant fossil fuels? No, Kerry’s environmental-extremist supporters won’t permit it. They tell us we must use hydro-power. So can we build dams to harness the power of the rivers? No, Kerry’s environmental-extremist supporters won’t permit it – it might disturb some fish. They tell us we must use wind power. So can we build windmills to harness the power of the winds? No, Kerry’s environmental-extremist supporters won’t permit it – windmills kill birds, and anyway, they might clutter up the ocean view from Ted Kennedy’s estate.
But the most chilling of all was the following from John Kerry, regarding terrorism and the ongoing threats to the United States: “Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response.” This was a sop to leftists who vilify President Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive war; that is, hitting an enemy before he hits us. In an age when terrorists will very soon have – if they don’t already have – chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and have proven that they can hit us on our own soil and are plotting to do so again, John Kerry’s pledge to respond forcefully after an attack simply isn’t good enough.
Kerry ended his speech with the following: “I want to address these next words directly to President George W. Bush: In the weeks ahead, let's be optimists, not just opponents. Let's build unity in the American family, not angry division.” Right sentiment, wrong target – he should have addressed that plea to Michael Moore, George Soros, and MoveOn.org and the rest of the pack of independent organizations that are raising hatred and division to a high art. “…and let's never misuse for political purposes the most precious document in American history, the Constitution of the United States.” He should say that to his supporters who want to throw our Bill of Rights into the trash by ratifying the International Criminal Court, and who want to destroy American sovereignty by ratifying the Kyoto Climate Treaty.
Then there’s Michael Moore, who charged that republicans: “aren't patriots. They are hate-triots and they believe in the politics of hate-riotism.” “They are up at 6:00 in the morning trying to figure out which minority group they are going to screw today. The hate, they eat for breakfast. … they are going to fight and they are going to smear and they are going to lie and they are going to hate.” Further, “most Americans in their hearts are liberals and progressives. It's just a small minority of people who hate. They hate. They exist in the politics of hate.” Moore did not always have such a positive view of “most Americans”; such as when he told European audiences that Americans “are possibly the dumbest people on the planet…in thrall to conniving, thieving smug [pieces of the human anatomy]. We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing.” (Quite a commentary on the huge numbers of people who comprise Moore’s audiences.)
Scott Simon, National Public Radio host of Weekend Edition Saturday, commented in the Wall Street Journal on Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11: “A documentary film doesn't have to be fair and balanced, to coin a phrase. But it ought to make an attempt to be accurate. It can certainly be pointed and opinionated. But it should not knowingly misrepresent the truth. Much of Michael Moore's films and books, however entertaining to his fans and enraging to his critics, seems to regard facts as mere nuisances to the story he wants to tell. … Mr. Moore ignores or misrepresents the truth, prefers innuendo to fact, edits with poetic license rather than accuracy, and strips existing news footage of its context to make events and real people say what he wants, even if they don't. … I see more McCarthy than Murrow in the work of Michael Moore.” In the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote, “Viewers may come away from Moore's movie believing some things that probably aren't true”, and he “uses association and innuendo to create false impressions.” In an article subtitled “The lies of Michael Moore”, left-wing columnist Christopher Hitchens wrote, “To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental.” Later Hitchens wrote, “Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 is so distanced from the constraints of fact that his claims roam into the realms of fantasy.” After demolishing a number of Moore’s assertions, (“The film doesn't even try to keep its ‘story’ straight”) Hitchens hoped, “Yet nothing can stop even the dumbest of his fans asking a few questions.”
But are “even the dumbest of his fans” [let alone those still capable of thinking] asking questions? No. Moore is the official documentarian of a political party (DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe: “This movie raises a lot of the issues that Americans are talking about…”) and a political ideology that is totally bereft of positive ideas, a party that survives on a steady diet of lies, division, and class warfare. And despite all of the “love” demonstrated by the likes of Michael Moore and his ilk, the Democrat Party is also the party of hatred. Just look around and see from where all the hatred emanates. Even sadder – millions of our fellow Americans simply don’t care. Truth...lies, no matter. All they have left is their hate. Hatred for President Bush, certainly; but more fundamentally, hatred for everything this country stands for: personal responsibility, individual liberty, and a limited federal republic under our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
CONGRESS ACTION newsletter can be viewed on the web at: http://www.congressaction.info/
Excellent piece!
Right On!
Interestingly enough, when Ted (hiccup) Kennedy said this--
"Week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie"
--he didn't realize he was talking about the now-official Democratic Nominee, and half of his national security team (Sandy Burglar, Richard Clarke, Joe Wilson...I'm forgetting a few)
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