The Right State

Happy Birthday America!  May God grant you many, many more years to come.  For 232 you have endured and even prospered while other nations have become a footnote in history.  America was founded on the idea that all men (and women) were created equal.  For 232 years men and women have fought to protect some same values.  Today our brave soldiers are fighting and dying to preserve those same values this country was built on.

For people like me who are proud of their country, we can not adequately express our feelings towards America without a thank you towards those who protect us.  And so with pride in my heart for this great country and the freedoms I enjoy, I say thank you to the men and women who wear the uniform protecting our freedoms around the world.

One of the greatest speeches of all time was written by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.  During the speech he expresses pride in America, the reason he is continuing the fight, and expresses a heartfelt pride for those fighting and dying for those freedoms.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Wow! Even today this speech gives me chills.  As an American patriot I have read this speech dozens of times.  As a history teacher I read this great speech…more times than I can count.  Each time I read it, it fills me with pride for my country and fills me with gratitude towards the American soldier.

Happy 232^nd Birthday America.

Tags: History by Chuck
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Both sides are doing it, so it is okay.  This kind of thinking always blows me away.

So, both are tacking away from their party’s ideological ends to appeal to this unpredictable swath in between.

McCain is moving away from the unpopular President Bush if not from the Republican Party itself. He emphasizes bipartisanship while pressing two issues that resonate strongly with voters of all stripes.

He “stood up to the president and sounded the alarm on global warming,” one McCain commercial says. Another promotes a “bipartisan plan to lower prices at the pump, reduce dependence on foreign oil through domestic drilling and champion energy alternatives.”

Barak Obama’s talking points have moved swiftly to the middle and away from the hard left since he won the Democrat nomination for President.  He moved so fast, his hair would be blowing if it were long enough.  The reaction of the left is predictable: the hard left is criticizing his move to the center while his apologists contend that both sides are doing it so it is okay.  But both sides are not doing it.  Most of the time, in most elections, Democrats appeal to their base in the primaries and then converge on the middle when the nomination is won.  For Democrats this means a lot of movement.  As John Hawkins pointed out in Right Wing News, Democrats have to lie about who they are to get people to vote for them.  Republicans, believing we are a center-right country politically, do not feel they need to reinvent themselves after a primary battle.  Therefore, Republicans move very little, if any, after a primary battles.

Barak Obama has moved drastically and dramatically to the right in order to appeal to moderate voters.  The problem is not that he moved to the center, but he moved so fast and so far.  Even liberal bloggers are asking what issue will he cave in on next (google ‘Obama moves right’ and see what comes up).  Polls asking that very question are rampant.   USA Today sums it up this way:

Barack Obama is facing a rebellion from the liberal blogosphere that helped him lock up the Democratic presidential nomination.

In recent days, Obama has criticized the Supreme Court for saying that child rapists cannot be executed and refused to oppose a decision knocking down a handgun ban. He announced a plan to support “faith-based” social work and said he would vote for a bill giving immunity to telephone companies that allowed warrantless wiretapping of their customers.

Barak Obama’s move to the center has been swift.  Going with so many of the issue important to conservatives has angered the hard left.  Despite their anger, the far left will put on their happy faces once the two candidates begin their campaigns fro real.  Moderates on the other hand may need to take a hard look at who they have been supporting.  McCain as the moderate espouses liberal stands on some issues and conservative ones on others.  Obama has just recently moved right making a McCain presidency more appealing to moderates.

John McCain, despite the APs equivocations, has not moved to the center.  He is the center on a lot of issues.  That is one of the reasons he does not have the solid backing of conservatives.  John McCain has justly earned the title of Maverick by poking his finger in the eyes of Republicans and conservatives.  He voted against drilling in ANWR before running for President.  He supported the global warming nonsense before he won his nomination.  He has always distanced himself from President Bush.  He was critical of the war in Iraq from the start when he advocated the sending of additional troops.  The Maverick has always crossed party lines much to the chagrin of his fellow Republicans (remember the Gang of 14 on selecting federal judges).  The Maverick has crossed party lines on numerous occasions much to the chagrin of his fellow Republicans and conservatives.  On and on I could go.  John McCain is and will always be a constant thorn in the flesh of Conservatives.

John McCain is and will always be who he says he is.  He does not change.  Barak Obama is who he says he is right now…, unless of course he misspeaks.  Or… his wife, Michelle misspeaks.  Or…  And then he is who he says he is now, after the redefinition.  For Obama redefining himself is a constant theme. 

Everybody does it is a poor excuse (my mom did not buy it when I was a kid either).  Besides, everybody doesn’t do it.  Obama is constantly shifting positions, while McCain has been fairly constant.  There is a huge difference between John McCain and Barak Obama.  At least there is right now.  Who knows?  There is still plenty of time for Obama to reinvent himself yet again into a new, younger John McCain.

Tags: Democrats, National Elections, Iraq, Sports by Chuck
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The New York Times is using swift boat veterans to ‘swift boat’ veterans who told the truth about John Kerry’s military past.  Obviously the NYT is still lamenting the fact that John Kerry did not defeat George Bush in the 2004 election.

“Swift boat” has become the synonym for the nastiest of campaign smears, a shadow that hangs over the presidential race as pundits wait to proclaim that the Swiftboating has begun and candidates declare that they will not be Swiftboated.

Swift boat veterans — especially those who had nothing to do with the group that attacked Senator John Kerry’s military record in the 2004 election — want their good name back, and the good names of the men not lucky enough to come home alive.

Either the Times does not understand what a smear is or they consider a smear anything negative that is said about one of ‘their’ candidates.  The liberal NYT has not endorsed a Republican for president in decades.  That in itself should say something.  For me it says the Times has a dog in this fight.  They are not the nonpartisan paper of record they pretend to be.

The writer of the article, Kate Zernike, takes a side swipe at the veterans who outed John Kerry, Republicans in general, and George Bush while making Kerry look like an abused victim.

Who can argue against men who have served their country?  I am sure these vets served their country with honor and distinction.  Their job titles while in the military have been used to denigrate others.  These veterans have a right to a good name, but they should be careful.  They are being used.  Used by people who are willing to do whatever it takes to advance their agenda, even if it means throwing a few veterans under the bus.  In the end, these highly ambitions people will dispense with the swift boat vets as they did anti-war activists like Cindy Sheehan.  Who ever hears of her now?  To liberals, vets are a useful tool when used temporarily.  To them veterans are an expendable item.

“It’s completely inappropriate,” said Michael Bernique, a highly regarded Swift boat driver who led missions up a canal that became known as Bernique’s Creek. “The word should connote service with honor, which is what was conducted. Anything that demeans that honor is shameful.”

In an April column in Proceedings magazine of the United States Naval Institute, Harlan Ullman, a Swift boat driver in Vietnam and a Pentagon consultant known as a creator of the “shock and awe” concept, wrote: “It is time to ban a word that is at once offensive, demeaning and obscene both to and for anyone serving in the naval profession. That word is ‘Swiftboating.’ ”

Kate has forgotten one obvious point, Democrats coined the term, “swiftboating.”  The vets who were against John Kerry becoming president were content with being called, Swiftboat Veterans for Truth.  Democrats coined the new word in order to demean the swift boat veterans in an attempt to label their ads as smear tactics.  Obviously Kate (and the rest of the MSM) completely bought into the idea—hook, line and sinker. 

Denis Keohane of the American Thinker simplifies what and where the term “swiftboating” came from.

Since the 2004 Presidential election the Democrat left and their auxiliaries in the MSM have used the term swiftboating to mean something in the order of a politically motivated and top-down well coordinated character assassination of an innocent party based on lies.

John Kerry does not fit into this definition.  The SBVT documented all of their assertions.  They raised questions concerning John Kerry’s fitness to be president, they told of his associations with the ‘Winter Soldier’ Investigations, the group Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and his false testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Since all of these accusations were true, the ‘swiftboating’ term was coined to give John Kerry some political cover.  The Times should do their homework. 

Does Kate and the New York Times need to besmirch the character of the veterans who told the truth about John Kerry?  Of course not.  But then the Times can not just come out for the troops without bashing them at the same time.  Liberalism on display.

A word of caution to the swifties—‘beware of Greeks bearing gifts.’  (the Trojan horse)  Liberals do not want to help you recover your good name.  They are the ones who gave it to you in the first place.  You are just a temporary expendable tool for the left to be used, exploited and then discarded.  The left has never supported our military and they will not start now.  Theirs is an alliance of expedience.  Once they are done with you, they will dump you like a hot potato. 

The New York Times may act like they support you and they seem like they are concerned with restoring your honor, but they are complicit in this deceit.  Do not be deceived.  They will be one of the first to dump you and every other veteran.

Tags: Bias by Chuck
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