SwiftVets.com

[Guest]

08 September 2004
Federalist Patriot No. 04-36
Wednesday Chronicle


CONTENTS:
THE FOUNDATION
INSIGHT
UPRIGHT
EDITORIAL EXEGESIS
DEZINFORMATSIA
THE DEMO-GOGUES
VILLAGE IDIOTS
SHORT CUTS
NIGHTLINES

_____----********O********----______

THE FOUNDATION

"The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities impressed with it." --James Madison

_____----********O********----______

INSIGHT

"A man can do nothing better than to find satisfaction in his work." --King Solomon

"Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals." --Samuel Ullman

"It is for men to choose whether they will govern themselves or be governed." --Henry Ward Beecher

"Injustice is relatively easy to bear; it is justice that hurts." --H.L. Mencken

"Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true." --Demosthenes

"A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him." --Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux

"Everybody is on a trip somewhere if they work for the government. I wonder when the taxpayers take their trip." --Will Rogers

_____----********O********----______

UPRIGHT

"Unlike the present income tax system, the Fair Tax treats each and every person in this country exactly the same. This, of course, presents somewhat of a problem to politicians who like to use the tax code to foment class distrust or outright warfare." --Neal Boortz

"Freedom of choice for abortion, but no freedom of choice for children already born as to where they might best be educated -- this is a triumph of politics over common sense and a denial of the right of a child to the best possible education." --Cal Thomas

"A House-Senate conference committee is considering legislation to hand billions to tobacco producers and extend Food and Drug Administration rules to cigarettes. President Bush seems prepared to accept anything that passes. More spending and regulation together: The GOP, no less than the Democrats, is the party of big government." --Doug Bandow

"[O]ur modern culture, and the press in particular, has a total double standard: when liberal Democrats talk of God, the press has no problems, but when a conservative president talks of God, the liberal media loses its collective mind." --Paul Kengor

"I remember a couple of days after Sept. 11 writing that weepy candlelight vigils were a cop-out: the issue wasn't whether you were sad about the dead people but whether you wanted to do something about it. Three years on, the two conventions drew the same distinction. If you want passivity and wallowing in victim culture, the Dems will do. If you want to win this thing, Bush is the only guy running." --Mark Steyn

_____----********O********----______

EDITORIAL EXEGESIS

"The election coverage from Big Media has been unusually partisan this time around. ... If the big media all tilted toward one party (which was pretty clearly true) and if their influence was worth 15 points, enough to swing most any presidential election (which was plausible), then the institutional power of big media seemed to be a threat to democracy itself. But it hasn't worked out that way -- or if it has, John Kerry must be an awfully weak candidate to be neck-and-neck with President Bush despite a built-in 15-point advantage. It's probably some of both. Mr. Kerry, as even many Dems are admitting, is a weak candidate. But the big media advantage doesn't seem to have turned out to be as big as some thought. ... As blogger Ed Driscoll noted, the Kerry media strategy was geared to the media environment of 1972, where the refusal to carry the story of a few big outlets chummy with the campaign would have been enough to keep things quiet. That didn't work, as the new media were enough to neutralize the media advantage that Kerry's strategy was built around. And that's quite a feat: Unlike the blogosphere's role in toppling Trent Lott, the Cambodia revelations happened not in the face of big media laziness, but in the face of active big-media opposition. (Even now, newspapermen like the Star Tribune's Jim Boyd are criticizing bloggers for covering the story, though without admitting that the bloggers had the facts on their side.) Does this mean that blogs will work in the Bush campaign's favor? Not inevitably, and there are plenty of lefty blogs doing their best to beat Mr. Bush. But so long as the mainstream media are lazy, and biased -- and strongly in favor of a Democrat -- the fact-checking and media-bypassing power of the blogosphere is likely to disproportionately favor Republicans. That's not so much a reflection on blogs, alas, as it is a reflection on big media." --The Wall Street Journal

_____----********O********----______

DEZINFORMATSIA

Nope. No media bias here: "[The Fox News Channel has proven] that by going for the ideological, thumping-the-chest, waving-the-flag approach, that there is a huge audience to be had out there." --Ted Koppel ++ "CNN, I think, is viewed as liberal because...we don't give a slant, we don't give a corporate slant to the journalism..." --Richard Parsons, Time Warner Chairman & CEO

From the "Garbage In -- Garbage Out" Department: "What's your plan for parenting & educating all the unwanted children you people want to bring into the world? Who will pay for policing our streets & maintaining the prisons needed to contain them when you, their parents & the system fail them? Oh, sorry. All that money has been earmarked to pay off the Bush deficit. Give me a frigging break, will you?" --Reuters news service editor Todd Eastham, responding via e-mail to a National Right to Life Committee press release **"Reuters journalists do not offer their own opinions or views." --Reuters policy

This week's "Sagacity" Award: "I don't think I've seen anything as angry or as ugly as [Zell] Miller's speech." --Joe Klein, Time magazine ++ "Zell Miller's speech was a speech of hate, it was a speech of venom." --David Gergen

This week's "Geraldo-Springer Journalism" Award: "[President Bush] seems to have completely forgotten about Osama bin Laden." --CBS's John Roberts

This week's "Left Media Buster" Award: "Get out of my face. If you are going to ask me a question, step back and let me answer. I wish we lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel...don't pull that kind of stuff on me." --Zell Miller responding to "Hardball's" Chris Matthews

_____----********O********----______

THE DEMO-GOGUES

This week's "Blow Hard" Award: "I will not have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and who misled America into Iraq." --John Kerry, King of the Misleaders

From the "Clinton Presidue" Files: "Sometimes I think our friends on the other side have become the people of the Nine Commandments. It is wrong to bear false witness." --Former Prevaricator-in-Chief Bill Clinton, who admitted perjury, now accusing Republicans of distorting John Kerry's record. **Clinton was aware God handed down commandments? Who knew?

From the "Village Matriarch" Files: "Oh, I think [Mrs. Bush's defense] is unfortunate, because [the Swiftvet ads] are not only unfair, they're flat-out wrong. Even the president has regretted that they're being used in this way.... [C]ertainly people close to his campaign have been involved in them. If you find a turtle on a fence post, you know, it didn't get there by accident." --Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham

"We are going in the same direction as Nazi Germany in terms of we have a ruthless group of people who make bold decisions. They [the Bush Administration] spit on democracy." --Rep. Major Owens **Somehow we think it took more than "bold decisions" to create Nazi Germany.

This week's "Periplaneta Americana" Award: "When [the Bush administration] talk[s] about a coalition -- that's the phoniest thing I ever heard. You've got about 500 troops here, 500 troops there, and it's American troops that are 90 percent of the combat casualties, and it's American taxpayers that are paying 90 percent of the cost of the war." --John Kerry **Funny, but we've never heard Kerry object to the UN on the grounds that the U.S. is paying the largest share of its costs!

_____----********O********----______

VILLAGE IDIOTS

This week's "Chronic Villagitis" Award: "The NAACP will not allow another 2000 voter fiasco to occur. We will have observers and lawyers on the ground to assist voters and to make sure they are not intimidated. Our goal is to see that all eligible voters register and vote, and that every vote is counted." --NAACP President Kweisi Mfume **Now that you're on the case, Kweisi, we feel much better.

From the "Global Village": "[President George W. Bush is] a tyrant that puts Hitler in the shade. ... Bush's assumption of office turned a peaceful world into a pandemonium unprecedented in history as it is plagued with a vicious circle of terrorism and war. ...[Bush's supporters are] a typical gang of political gangsters." --Unidentified spokesman from North Korea's Foreign Ministry **And you thought this statement was from a Kerry campaign spokesmouth!

From the "Disingenuous Filmmaker" Files: "The only problem with my desire to get this movie in front of as many Americans as possible is that, should it air on TV, I will NOT be eligible to submit 'Fahrenheit 9/11' for Academy Award consideration for Best Documentary." --Michael Moore ++ "For me the real Oscar would be Bush's defeat on Nov. 2." --Michael Moore

RE: VILLAGE IDIOTS: "Even though I am a well-recognized liberal on many issues confronting our society today, I find it ironic that many human rights advocates and outspoken members of my own entertainment community are often on the front lines to protest repression, for which I applaud them but they are usually the first ones to oppose any use of force to take care of these horrors that they catalogue repeatedly." --Ron Silver at the GOP convention

_____----********O********----______

SHORT CUTS

"If John Kerry announced today that he was The Manchurian Candidate and that he has a chip implanted in him so that when he's President, his wife Teresa 'Sweetness' Heinz Kerry will turn over the Queen of Diamonds and he will immediately hand over control of the United States to the United Nations or, even worse, agree to make this country a colony of France -- he still will carry New York and California." --Jerry Della Femina

"I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs of this phrase, but it seems safe to say that one sure sign you are a girlie man is that when you're called one, you whine humourlessly about it." --Mark Steyn

"[L]et me take the time to do what no other pundit has been willing to do: to thank Georgia Sen. Zell Miller for being named Zell. It's been a long time since a politician occasioned such euphoria over euphony in political commentary. From the conservatives I've already heard 'Give 'em Zell!' 'Zell it like it is!' 'Zelling it Old School!' From the other side of the aisle we've had 'Zellotry' and 'Zell-out.' And who the Zell knows what else is coming down the pike -- Zello-Dolly?" --Jonah Goldberg

"Perhaps like the many and various meanings of the word 'we,' liberals use the word 'unsubstantiated' to mean 'tested repeatedly and proved true'." --Ann Coulter

"John Kerry was in Nashville Wednesday for a showdown speech to the American Legion convention. Television cameras followed him everywhere. It reminded him of his days in Vietnam, only this time he didn't have to hold his own Super Eight." --Argus Hamilton

_____----********O********----______

NIGHTLINES

David Letterman.... "Top Questions on the Osama Bin Laden Driver Application:" Can you parallel-park a camel?; If two car bombers reach a four-way intersection at the same time, who detonates first?; You know you probably won't be around to redeem your 401(K) right?; When getting the car serviced, will you demand genuine GM parts?; Do you require a separate air bag for your beard?; Do you swear you're not working for the CIA?; At a four-way intersection, would you yield to an infidel?; Do you know how to say, "Hey goats -- out of the road!" in Pashtun?; How long have you been driving a New York City taxi?

Jay Leno.... Did you see the pictures in the paper today of John Kerry windsurfing? He's at his home in Nantucket this week, doing his favorite thing, windsurfing. Even his hobby depends on which way the wind blows. .... Just before his appearance last night to pump himself up for his speech, Arnold bench pressed Michael Moore. .... Arnold is a powerful weapon for the GOP. He appeals to Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives -- everybody but film critics. .... John Kerry is keeping a low profile this week. He said he wanted to get away and go someplace where no one would expect to see him. So I guess he showed up at his old seat in the Senate. Nobody's going to look for him there. .... Last night John Kerry held a midnight rally in Ohio right after the Republican Convention...John Kerry giving a speech at midnight -- how hard was it to stay awake at that? .... I was stunned when I heard Bill Clinton was in the hospital. I just assumed Hillary finally ran over him with the Mercedes. He looked so healthy.

Lex et Libertas -- Semper Vigilo, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for the editors and staff. (Please pray on this day, and every day, for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world in defense of our liberty, and for the families awaiting their safe return.)

*Printer-friendly format
Link to -- http://FederalistPatriot.US/current2004a.asp