"Only America Does the Heavy Lifting" was released Friday, 31 December 2004.
"At
three-thirty Wednesday morning, the tsunami body count was 63,000; at three
o’clock Wednesday afternoon it was 77,000; at eight o’clock Thursday night,
117,000 and threatening to increase a few times once hunger and disease take
their appalling tolls. Perhaps
paying close attention to the number of dead is too morose, even more so to
recollect that, at its current rate of human devastation, the tsunami that
ravaged Southern Asia stands as only the 38th worst natural disaster since 1900,
according to the Disaster Center. (The
D.C. provides a chart, which I pause to mention only because it lists the Soviet
famine of 1932 as the second worst, at 5,000,000 dead, without mentioning it was
a forced famine.)
"My Fellow Conservatives, Striving to Kill the Off Color Joke" was released Friday, 19 November 2004.
"When Janet Jackson flopped out of her top, the popular question asked by many of my fellow conservatives – to anyone who refused to believe that a 40-year-old woman exposing herself for half-a-second meant the end of civilization – was, What would you say to your child if he asked you about the Awful Incident? This seemed to suggest that because a few parents would stumble over the question, everyone would stumble over the question … it was the first time in a very long time I’d seen the Republican party talk down to the same people it claimed to implicitly trust." READ
"Yasser Arafat: Still Dead (And Other Observations)" was released Tuesday, 16 November 2004.
"When news of Yasser Arafat’s death broke, I smiled and applauded. Then I went to bed. While most opinion columnists were rushing to wedge the event as best they could between their agendas and their general thoughts on the Jewish people, there seemed no point in my repeating the things reasonable people have been saying for the last four decades. (Or, for that matter, the New York Post, which put it brilliantly on its front page: “Arafat Dead / And He Won’t Be Missed.”) Mankind is better because the evil old bastard finally died, but stretching the point out to 750 words seemed a less productive use of time than making sure I was well rested for breakfast." READ
"Even California Has Rednecks!" was released Tuesday, 09 November 2004.
"Daily Mirror readers were invited to share their thoughts on President Bush’s re-election on a message board, from which I reprint a few gems. The first is from Jeff, who writes from San Francisco, and who pleads, “Europe, please invade us. We need a regime change.” (Hilarious. I’d have e-mailed this guy if his address were listed: Goddammit Jeff, you live in San Francisco! Your city couldn’t go any further Left if it raised the Soviet flag over city hall. Butch up, stupid – Republicanism only touches you in San Francisco if you send it invitations.)" READ
"Post-Election Notes" was released Friday, 05 November 2004.
"At the exact moment Senator Kerry was calling President Bush and conceding the election, CNN (hereafter known as F.E.S., because it’s the Flat Earth Society of the American Left) still had the electoral count as Bush 254, Kerry 252. This means the simple mathematics Senator Kerry’s campaign was relying upon for its decision making were utterly baffling F.E.S. The Bitter Enders from Atlanta chose the path of least intellectual resistance, the journalistic equivalent of balling up on a couch and muttering to itself about how what it was seeing just couldn’t be possible. Minutes later, news of Senator Kerry’s concession broke; by noon Eastern, F.E.S. was consumed in ideological flames, heartbroken again." READ
"Ariel Dorfman is Not Smart" was released Tuesday, 26 October 2004.
"Is Senator Kerry too smart to be president?
After meeting him for the first time at the World Economics Forum in
1998, Dorfman the Intellectual thought so.
'He was subtle, full of cultural and historical references, elaborating
each fine argument at length, with perception and nuance.
I commented to one of his aides afterward that I regrettably thought his
brains could turn out to be the biggest impediment to a man like him ever
occupying the White House. Later, I
slid my hand up the senator’s leg. Sensing
his hesitation, I told him everything was going to be okay and to just relax.' (Oh, sorry. Those
last two sentences were just my continuing the dream Dorfman was having when he
wrote this abortion of a column.)" READ
"A Few Notes on the NY Times Endorsement of Senator Kerry" was released Tuesday, 19 October 2004.
"In this year’s most anti-climactic journalistic development, the New York Times has endorsed Senator Kerry for president. (A nation bolts upright: 'What?! NO WAY!!')" READ
"Why Senator Kerry is Wrong on Terrorism" was released Friday, 15 October 2004.
"If tonight I am cornered and commanded to explain the Left’s failure to understand, and in so many cases endorse, terrorism and its cousins (totalitarianism, socialism, et cetera), I’m not sure I could. But the Kerry campaign’s ongoing efforts to quickly shift focus from Iraq to domestic policy and back masks what it knows is an uncomfortable truth about his willingness to combat terrorism. You combat terrorism by isolating terrorists / terrorist organizations and whipping their asses until their noses bleed buttermilk; anything less than that is lip service." READ
"What Bush Could Have Said" was released Tuesday, 12 October 2004.
"President Bush honestly believes he is better for the country than Senator Kerry, but can only say so in the most oblique terms; Kerry is soft on terrorism and defense, Kerry is a tax-and-spend liberal, Saddam Hussein would still be in power if Kerry were president, et cetera. Senator Kerry goes into a similar routine except he goes to the left, both men are criticized by the other’s campaign and the whole next week is dominated by campaign spokesmen explaining why the other guy is … dishonest and untrustworthy." READ
"John Kerry, Unserious Man" was released Tuesday, 05 October 2004.
"So what is Senator Kerry suggesting? That Iran, even though it has an advanced nuclear weapons program of its own and a history of totalitarian dishonesty, is … trustworthy? The old axiom about those ignorant of history being doomed to repeat it is an old axiom for a reason; namely that those ignorant of history really are doomed to repeat it. But there’s quite a difference between being ignorant of history and not caring about it. No serious man suggests giving nuclear fuel to an unstable, ideologically backwards Arab regime in hopes it will suddenly marvel at our kindness and see the light." READ
"Brief Thoughts on the Political Popular Culture" was released Friday, 01 October.
"It
occurred to me to say that people whose political beliefs are reinforced by
something as meek and pointless as popular music ought to frequently throw
themselves down long flights of stairs, as punishment for being 1) so dumb, and
2) so easily lead." READ
"Election Fatigue (A Voter's Lament)" was released Friday, 24 September 2004.
"You’ll forgive me, then, if the closer we get to election day, the more I start writing about how much I’m looking to the Spongebob Squarepants movie (and so help me, I am) instead getting around to endorsing someone. There’s absolutely no danger of my endorsing Kerry, but the president’s wonderful anti-terrorism and tax cut stances may only be enough to justify the column, 'Bush, I Guess.' " READ
"CBS News, Again" was released Tuesday, 21 September 2004.
"This was no mistake; 'mistake' implies innocent error. You forget to pull your parking break and coast into another car – that’s a mistake. What CBS News did was take a desperate swing at something it wanted so badly to be great it balanced an entire five year investigation (if indeed there ever was one) on the word of one zealot and the four pages he pulled out of thin air." READ
"Dan Rather and the Chalk Outline" was released Friday, 17 September 2004.
"CBS News is continuing to deny absolute truth about Memogate in the name of keeping up appearances, and its stubbornness is killing what was once a proud, mighty news organization. Every logical voice outside CBS News concedes the four documents cited by 60 Minutes II – produced last week as further proof on President Bush’s alleged skid through the National Guard – are bald forgeries, yet the best CBS News has done is acknowledge there are “questions” about them." READ
"On Zell Miller's 'Tone'" was released Tuesday, 14 September 2004.
"James Carville opened his
appearance on Don Imus’ show last Wednesday morning by saying Senator
Miller’s speech was a perfect example of what happens when Republicans take
advantage of a man on the downside of his career, and that the senator was
basically talked into reading whatever was put in front of him by Right-wing
hatchet-swingers. (Carville wanted
to say Senator Miller is much too old and senile to know what he’s doing, but
apparently Carville slipped in a puddle of decorum on the way to the phone.)
Carville went on to announce Paul Begala wrote the firebrand speech
Senator Miller delivered at the Democratic convention in 1992, but gave no word
on whether Miller was lead to perform as directed by Left-wing hatchet-swingers,
or if blindly following others is a brand new character defect.
"The So-Whatness of Senator Kerry's Vietnam" was released Tuesday, 24 August 2004.
"At least Matthews has taken some heat off Tom Harkin who, following the vice president’s tut-tutting Senator Kerry’s call for a “more sensitive war on terror,” got off this blast: "When I hear this coming from Dick Cheney, who was a coward, who would not serve during the Vietnam War, it makes my blood boil. He'll be tough, but he'll be tough with someone else's kid's blood." Tough talk coming from a man who has repeatedly boasted of his Vietnam service, never mind that the Vietcong would have had to fly to Japan in order to fight Harkin face to face." READ
"Alan Keyes Isn't Making Sense" was released Friday, 13 August 2004.
"From the second his name was dropped, a quiet debate began within grass roots Republicanism: Alan Keyes is a fine conservative but, um, didn’t he scream to the top of his journalistic voice about Hillary Clinton’s carpetbagging in New York State four years ago? Keyes’ attempt to slide into the Illinois senate seat is dissimilar from Clinton’s only in the fact he was handed the nomination, while Clinton won hers. That the difference is this slight should give pause; that is, it should give pause if all that complaining we (Republicans) did about Hillary was legitimate and not because she was Bill’s liberal wife." READ
"Seven Minutes" was released on Tuesday, 10 August 2004.
"Apart from the president, sixty-five minutes
passed between the time American Airlines 77 flew into the Pentagon (9.45am) and
the forced evacuation of Washington DC’s federal buildings took place; one
hour and fifty-one minutes between the strike at the second tower and the
postponement of New York’s primary elections.
(The polls could have been targets, after all; why wasn’t it done
sooner, President-elect Giuliani?) Why
are those acceptable lengths of time between incident and reaction but the
president’s seven minutes are wholly unreasonable?
"Senator Kerry, Will You Fight For Taiwan's Constitution?" was released Tuesday, 03 August 2004.
"Take Senator Kerry’s convention speech (please!). Strip away the populist tripe and empty feelgoodism; ignore the functionally impossible and the irretrievably pointless. What you have left are two points of interest. The first was his assertion that, as president, he would never allow “another nation or institution a veto over American safety.” Republicans find this curious. Was the senator saying he would ignore the whining and pseudo-threats from, say, Russia, France, Germany, and the United Nations if he thought doing so was in America’s best interests? Because that sounds like a certain Republican president we all know, whom the Left is continually vilifying for making such decisions." READ
"Answering Michael Moore" was released Friday, 30 July 2004.
"First of all, something like 910 American
soldiers have died in Iraq since the march to Baghdad began 16 months ago, and
that is a terrible number. In a
perfect world, not one American (in or out of the military) would have died in
the commission of the Iraqi War, but this isn’t a perfect world.
For their general ineptitude and lack of preparedness, the enemy was
going to fight back to one degree or another, and terrorists were going to hit
our soldiers. There were stretches
of time in Vietnam where more Americans were killed per day than have died thus
far in Iraq. (We trust Senator Kerry could speak definitively on this, if only
we could get him to open up and talk about it a little.)
It’s an unfortunate perspective but fair to consider: For the distress
there, the enemy has been surprisingly ineffective at making substantive dents
in the American force compared to, say, the North Vietnamese.
"Linda Ronstadt is Not Smart" was released Friday, 23 July 2004.
"The First Amendment! (It must happen, but I can’t recall the last time I heard a Republican say something unbelievably stupid and claim the First Amendment as his defense.) Everyone values the First Amendment, especially Michael Moore – it’s what allows him to release a movie that, in lesser countries, would get him paraded into either a courtroom or an insane asylum, during which he attempts to manipulate people in a way not seen since Riefenstahl filmed the S.S. (I pause here to repeat comedian Greg Giraldo’s brilliant observation about Moore, that there’s something very wrong with someone “weighing 450 pounds” going on and on about America’s excesses.)" READ
"John Edwards and a Gallon of Milk" was released Tuesday, 20 July 2004.
"Let’s suppose Senators Kerry and Edwards make seven to ten campaign stops per work week. The idea that either of them should have at their disposal a handler whose job is to say, “By the way, Senators, the price of a gallon of milk here in Albuquerque is $4.19” is just as ludicrous as it sounds. Sorry, gang. Senator Edwards gets a pass on this one – it’s a pointless datum." READ
"Gwynne Dyer is Not Smart" was released Tuesday, 13 July 2004.
"Though nearly three years removed from the Tragedies, there remains an open question (in some minds) as to the motivations behind the attacks, as though if we arrive at an agreeable answer the Twin Towers will somehow stand again." READ
"On John Edwards as Candidate" was released Friday, 09 July 2004.
"But whatever positive energy Edwards brings to the campaign, he also
brings a few large, elephant-in-the-room type problems.
The same party that so readily questioned Candidate Bush’s intellectual
curiosity and interest in the world outside the United States will never ask why
Edwards rarely voted before running for office, why he has barely traveled
outside the country, why he should be taken seriously despite having no real
foreign policy experience, et cetera.
"Bill Clinton Makes Me Tired" was released Friday, 25 June 2004.
"[The opinion columnist] is left wondering how to cram an essay’s worth of analysis into a 750 word piece. I thought about an entire column made of quick observations – e.g., “Not to shine an indelicate light on it, but you’d think someone who watched his step-father repeatedly beat his mother would have dedicated himself to not mistreating women” – but all anyone wants to talk about is the intern." READ
"Boycott Gasoline?" was released Tuesday, 18 May 2004.
"What so often motivates the American people to protest would represent untold luxuries elsewhere, even in other industrialized nations. The average Brit would club a baby seal to death on television for gasoline that costs $2.12 a gallon (what I paid last Friday). I make that point only because, even in 2004, Americans still aren’t comfortable with how good we’ve got it in relation to the rest of the world." READ
"Between Abu Ghraib and Nick Berg" was released Tuesday, 11 May 2004.
"We have developed a difficulty in saying what bothers us most about the
prisoner photos. Why?
Because to utter this truth lends credence to the idea of Ugly
Americanism, and too many of us fear that label more than are willing to accept
and speak the truth. But the fact
of the matter is, the sorts of humiliations forced onto the prisoners aren’t
expected to come from our side of the Iraqi conflict because we are morally
superior to our enemies, and are expected to act morally superior when it comes
to the treatment of prisoners. Nick Berg’s beheading, so tragic and horrible, is par for
the course. And nothing new.
Daniel Pearl was beheaded; others have been beheaded; still more will be
beheaded."
"Let Allah Sort Them Out" was released Friday, 23 April 2004.
"How else should an occupying nation deal with homegrown insurgents? Once you realize there is a greater humanity at stake than that of the terrorists, the answer becomes clear (it was first advanced here last July 18th): “[Even though] recent sweeps have proven productive, not nearly enough uppity Iraqis are being killed to make a difference in the ultimate safety of our soldiers.” In other words, there is nothing so wrong in the Sunni Triangle that it cannot be helped along by a U.S. soldier standing on a tank holding al-Sadr’s head in his hand." READ
"The Misery Index?!" was released Tuesday, 13 April 2004.
"The mere mention of the misery index brings a glint to conservative eyes. Devised at a time when people found themselves so miserable, and so lacking in relief, the misery index seemed a logical recourse for economists to attach some sort of number to the discomfort. Even if Americans hate being miserable, they love knowing their misery can be quantified and passed around like the new girlfriend at a biker gang initiation." READ
"Kurt Cobain: Still Dead (And Other Observations)" was released Tuesday, 06 April 2006.
"We understand some
journalistic liberties are taken when it comes to writing tribute pieces about
popular figures, but come on. If
you’re going to say no other chapter in pop music history has so much darkness
at its center (which at least ignores Syd Barrett, the former Pink Floyd lead
singer who went bat-shit crazy and stayed there, a different consideration from
being addicted, depressed and ending it all), you’re implying that not since
“Rock Around the Clock” has there has been anything as tragic as Cobain,
which is more than a little silly." READ
"What Did Paul Hornung Say?" was released Friday, 02 April 2004.
"For thoughtful people, the Paul Hornung story brings to mind a few questions, one being the obvious – whether Hornung is a racist for saying the University of Notre Dame’s academic standards should be lowered to allow “more black athletes” into the program – with the other being not-so-obvious, namely: Why the hell would any large, relevant division 1A college football program even look at white athletes if it wants to win national championships?" READ
"9/11 in Retrospect, Again" was released Friday, 26 March 2004.
"[The] Taliban had not committed Afghanistan to a
war with America, hadn’t fired on American planes, hadn’t flipped the
civilized world (and other United Nations members) the bird.
It did leave al Qaeda to its own devices and it did house Osama bin
Laden, but the Taliban was removed from power because it refused to deal with
bin Laden and the boys properly following the Tragedies, not because it housed
bin Laden in the first place. If merely housing a killer is now thought to be a proper
rationale for unilateral attack, than the Iraqi war was justified by virtue of
the fact Saddam Hussein had housed Abu Abbas, who masterminded the Achille Lauro
hijacking and murder of Leon Klinghoffer, an American Jew.
Right?" READ
"Jon Voight is Not Smart" was released Friday, 12 March 2004.
"Joe Scarborough’s sole objection to Voight’s rant was “Wow.” Well, Scarborough has to fill an hour a night, and certainly he doesn’t want to go out of his way to alienate a celebrity guest (even if it’s a low level celebrity guest). But that doesn’t make him much of a Witness, which leaves it up to non-Witnesses like myself to say the important things: Jon Voight has thrust onto The Passion of the Christ an anti-Semitism that simply doesn’t exist, period." READ
"Okay, Let's Talk About Jobs" was released Tuesday, 09 March 2004.
"Among Senator Edwards’ parting remarks: “I see the men and women at Page Belting in Concord, New Hampshire who wonder if anyone understands the struggles that they face and most Americans face in their lives.” Right. If we’ve learned nothing from modern Democratism, it’s that the fabulously wealthy (i.e., Republicans like Bush and Cheney) have lost touch with the common man by virtue of being fabulously wealthy. Which says nothing of Senator Edwards, whose net worth tips the scales at something close to $40 million, and Senator Kerry, who married into $600 million and change, but had a few bucks of his own laying around in the first place." READ
"On Violence and The Passion of the Christ" was released Tuesday, 02 March 2004.
"There are people
who despise Christianity outright; too few of them actually have the courage to
say they think the crucifixion means nothing, so instead they fall back onto
whatever seems safe: the film is much too violent, and no one should be
subjected to that sort of brutality when they go to the movies.
"Howard Dean is Not 'Nuts,' But ..." was released Friday, 27 February 2004.
"“Nuts” is an accusation we take far less
seriously than we would have in years past; if someone in McEntee’s position
had come out in 1992 to say Ross Perot was nuts – something closer to the
truth than in Dean’s case – it would have meant the lead segment on most
reputable news and talk shows, e.g., Meet the Press.
(You’ll recall the pure vitriol that came from Dan Burton’s calling
Bill Clinton a scumbag in 1998, never mind that the former president’s
behavior seemed to substantiate the point.)
"What to Say About WMD" was released Friday, 13 February 2004.
"More than Iran and North Korea, Iraq had most openly defied “the will of the world.” It was the will of the world that removed Saddam Hussein’s troops from Kuwait and passed nearly 20 United Nations resolutions making plain the conditions of Iraq’s surrender weren’t suggestions, but demands. And … well, we knew Hussein had weapons of mass destruction because we still had the receipts." READ
"On Senator Kerry and Vietnam" was released Tuesday, 27 January 2004.
"In the meantime we have watched an odd struggle between General Clark and Senator Kerry (perpetrated by Clark) concerning who managed the most valuable service while stationed in Vietnam, odd because Lyndon Johnson was the last Democrat to really care about what happened to non-Communists there." READ
"Ah, Iowa" was released Tuesday, 20 January 2004.
"Someone can show up and decide not to vote at all, which is just fine. Or if a participant happens to be rooting for a candidate who hasn’t garnered 15 percent of the total house vote, he can change his vote and throw his support behind a second, or third, preference. Keeping this in mind, the Kucinich campaign let its Iowa supporters (all 27 of them) know that if all else fails, it’s okay to turn their votes over to Golden Boy John Edwards. All in all, it’s a process positively rife with frivolity." READ
"Michael Jackson: Once, and That's All" was released Sunday, 18 January 2004.
"If, when walking past the Dr. Phil table at the local Barnes and Noble, you find yourself with a greater and greater urge to push that bald fraud down a flight of stairs, you’ve got the right idea when it comes to the popular culture. It was with this eye I viewed the continuing (and continuing, and continuing) coverage of Michael Jackson’s hearing last Friday. Surely this isn’t the biggest thing going on in the world? Isn’t the United States still knee deep in an ongoing war against Islamic terrorists?" READ
"So, How Many Jews Have YOU Killed Today?" was released Friday, 16 January 2004.
"Someone please explain: Is President Bush actually Hitler, or are the president, Vice President Cheney, Stud Rumsfeld the First, Tom Ridge, John Ashcroft and Paul Wolfowitz Nazis in the same camp (as it were), or is it that all conservatives are Nazis by nature of a far flung ideological connection to Goldwater and Buckley? Could it be, now stay with me, could it be that the Bush administration represents the upper echelon of the new Nazism and the rest of us are simply SS? Because, see, I’ve been checking the mail, looking for my Death’s Head, and have become concerned it hasn’t arrived. (The disconcerting thing is that now someone, somewhere, will take it upon themselves to break away from the text in order to fire off an electronic mail explaining just who is and who isn’t a Nazi in the Republican party, and why. Save it, you jackass.)" READ
"Iraq, Over Dinner and Drinks" was released Wednesday, 14 January 2004.
"No matter what we do, it’ll help breed new terrorists. If we uniformly kill terrorists, subsequent anger will lead to the direct creation of replacements. If we ignore them, their bravado will prove too intoxicating for potential recruits to resist; America and its interests will be seen more as punching bags than is actually the case, and new terrorists will start swinging. If we stay in Iraq just long enough to see a stable government elected, it will be seen by militants as too moderate, which will lead to an anger that produces new terrorists, who will take their frustrations out on Iraq. See, terrorists don’t need opportunities to breed more foot soldiers, because any circumstance can be twisted to fit recruitment." READ
"Immigration Q and A" was released Tuesday, 13 January 2004.
"Democrats are upset because they prefer blanket amnesty for all illegals, no strings attached. In other words, if someone forces them – though no one and nothing is actually forcing them, but that’s beside the point – to earn their keep as a condition of residency, well, that makes Democrats queasy. They would rather be willing to say, “Bush wanted to force you to work, and we got you a free pass,” because it will help them win elections. Republicans are upset because they realize exactly what this will become, an amnesty. A statement that says: So long as you’re contributing to the tax base, it doesn’t matter what laws you’ve broken …" READ
"Howard Dean is Not Smart" was released Friday, 09 January 2004.
"Here’s a fun mental exercise: Imagine the tables are turned and we are
now entering the fourth year of the Gore administration.
Now imagine that in the middle of running his own campaign (let’s pick
a random Republican and call him frontrunner), Rudolph Guiliani suggests Osama
bin Laden, of all people, is entitled to the same presumption of innocence we
would afford a presumed pickpocket. Or
that, according to a popular rumor going around, President Gore had
foreknowledge of the Tragedies and did nothing to prevent them.
Or that America isn’t safer with Saddam Hussein in captivity, and for
that matter his removal may only be of tangential benefit to the Iraqi people.
These were, of course, all recent
Deanisms." READ