All I can say is it is time for those of us who voted GOP to let the party know that we are leaving if they continue to allow the party to be overrun by evangelicals of all religions who hate gays.  I'm not voting anymore for a party that cares little about human rights or the environment.  Barry Goldwater, a true Republican, is rolling over in his grave, as is, I suspect, Ronald Reagan, both of whom were at their best when they understood that pragmatism, not ideology, helped win the day. 

So, I, my husband, and our sons are voting for Sen. Obama, along with many former Bush voters who are doing so because Sen. McCain is an empty suit who is still running on his war record.  It didn't help Sen. Dole, a much more accomplished war hero (with all due respect, Sen. McCain, getting shot down and then being strong is not the same as what Sen. Dole did in Italy in WW2), it won't help Sen. McCain.  And last time I checked, Sen. Dole had not dumped his first, disabled wife to marry his much younger affair partner as Sen. McCain did.  Nor was Liddy Dole a drug addict and admitted thief like Cindy. 

Our taxes will go up, and who knows what else might happen.  No one knew 9/11 would happen on GW Bush's watch, because, if that were what people were thinking, Al Gore would be our president now.  Barack Obama is a pragmatist who will lead with new ideas, even if it means I'm paying more taxes.  He'll have good advisors, that's all we can hope for in a president.  Our first lady will also have class, she won't be a former other woman who used drugs.  We need positive role models.

Westsider.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/142650
check out the entire article...but here you go, some tidbits, folks. 


Cindy has sometimes likened herself to a single mother; now 54, she has often been far away from her husband during difficult moments, including two of three miscarriages she suffered in the 1980s. Years later, her husband did not notice when she became addicted to painkillers, a habit, she says, brought on in part by the stress of politics. In 2004, he was on the other side of the country when she suffered a stroke that left her partly debilitated. On her own, she learned to walk again. Cindy says she doesn't resent the time she has spent without her husband. It was her choice to stay in Arizona while he rose in Washington, and she says she knew when she married him that he was always going to "put country first."

In the spring of 1979, Cindy joined her parents on a trip to Hawaii. At a Navy cocktail party, a cocky captain came up and introduced himself. John McCain was the Navy's chief liaison to the Senate in Washington. He was 41, but told her he was 37. Cindy was 24, but told him she was 27. By both accounts, it was love at first sight—though for McCain, it was far more complicated. He was a married father of three. His relationship with his first wife, Carol Shepp, was coming apart, and the two were separating, though he didn't divulge any of that to Cindy that first night.

"I monopolized her attention the entire time," McCain writes in "Worth the Fighting For." Afterward, he persuaded her to join him for drinks at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. At first, Cindy had no idea that her date was a celebrated war hero who'd endured years of torture in a Vietnamese prison. Her parents had to tell her his story. In his book, McCain writes, "they were more welcoming of my attentions to their daughter than I had a right to expect. I doubt I could match their graciousness should I find one of my daughters attracted to someone who reminded me of me."

Over the next few months, John and Cindy traveled between Washington and Arizona to see each other. On one of Cindy's visits to the capital, McCain proposed over drinks. They had known each other less than a year, but Cindy accepted immediately.

First, McCain had to deal with his current marriage. He had met Shepp, a former fashion model, before he went to Vietnam. He had adopted her two sons from an earlier marriage and together they'd had a daughter, Sidney. In 1969, while McCain was a POW, Shepp was nearly killed in a car accident. The wreck left her with permanent injuries. When he returned home in 1973, the two tried to make the marriage work, but they had little in common after six years apart. McCain has said he is responsible for the breakup. In February 1980, he filed for divorce. Little more than a month after the divorce was final, Cindy and John married in a glitzy ceremony at the Arizona Biltmore.

Under stress and still in pain after surgery, she began taking more of the pain pills doctors had prescribed. Soon she was addicted, taking up to 20 Percocets and Vicodins a day.

Initially, her doctors simply refilled her prescriptions. But as her appetite for pills increased, she began stealing drugs from her own nonprofit, asking doctors who worked for the group to obtain the pills for her trips overseas. She worked hard to conceal her habit. If anyone saw her downing a pill, she said it was a vitamin. Her husband, away in Washington most of the time, suspected nothing.

Her mother was the first to notice something was wrong. Cindy looked terrible and had lost weight. "What's the matter with you?" she asked Cindy one night in 1992. Cindy confessed, and says she quit the pills cold turkey that day. But she didn't tell John. "I was scared," she told NEWSWEEK. "I didn't want to disappoint him." The secret didn't keep. A little more than a year later, an employee who had been fired from Cindy's nonprofit went to the Drug Enforcement Administration and reported that pills had gone missing. When the DEA called Cindy to ask questions, she broke down and confessed. But first, she called McCain from her lawyer's office to tell him the news. The senator rushed home. "I should have known that it was happening," he told NBC News later. "Maybe I was wrapped up too much in Washington and my ambitions to pay as much attention as I should have." Cindy paid restitution, did community service and attended counseling sessions.

I'm sick and tired of hearing about Obama's 'guilt by association', the challenges to his judgment and character, all of which are total right wing nonsense.  I'm tired of hearing rumors about Obama being a Muslim, of Michelle Obama calling people 'whitey' like she's Fred Sanford the tv garbageman from1978.

Let's talk about the candidate without character or judgment, and his thieving, drug-addict wife:  John and Cindy McCain. Read this week's Newsweek.  Sen. McCain, shot down over N. Vietnam, was a brave, apparently selfless POW.  That is not the end of his 'narrative', and I can only hope the rest of his narrative is given as much focus as his years as a POW. 

I dare anyone reading this to justify how he treated his first wife, how he cheated on her with a woman almost 20 years his junior, a woman who was only 24.  I dare anyone reading this to justify how a 'brave' man of 'character' leaves his wife, a woman who stood by him while he was a POW, raising his kids alone, after she had a terrible car accident.  I dare anyone reading this justify how he has any character when he failed to leave before commencing his relationship with Cindy.

Where are the family values folks when Cindy's drug addiction is discussed?  She wasn't just an addict, she was someone who stole from a charitable foundation to feed her drug habit.   Where was John McCain when all this was going on?  In DC, shining up his resume.  Self-centered narcissist.  He left his wife alone in Arizona with their kids, while he 'served' his country as a legislator.

Sorry, character is how you treat those near and dear to you.  He fails.  Character is not stealing because you can.  She fails.

I only hope some folks have the guts to remind the electorate just how morally deficient John and Cindy McCain are.   It is more likely that the 'character counts' crowd, the 'Book of Virtues' types, will harp on Rev. Wright and one dinner party with Bill Ayres in 1995.  We all know that those things are much more important than how John and Cindy McCain act in real life.

Rush and Laura and Sean and all the others who think they speak for conservatives in this country need to take a 'time out' (yes, Laura, you need one bigtime after you dissed Sen. Dole this morning).  Maybe the demise of Air America is the best model for rightwing talk radio now, time for those who cannot see beyond their own petulant little worlds to the bigger needs of our country.

Even Hugh Hewitt was starting to get into that wacky territory, until he took Gov. Romney's lead and started to recognize that Hillary and Barack will nominate judges who do not do what even moderates would like.   Thanks for some  rationality, Hugh.

It is time to take back the debate.  Assume that Hillary or Barack are elected this year.  Are we going to have 4 or 8 years of Hillary or Barack derangement syndrome, the way we've had 8 years of Bush derangement syndrome, and Clinton before that?  What is the friggin' point, besides helping these blowhards sell more books?  Laura, if you care so much about the culture, stop dissing gays.  You do more harm to our souls with your rants about same sex marriage than Snoop Dogg could do with 20 albums that sell mostly to suburban white boys.  Rush, you are a drug addict and self-righteous fool.  Why anyone gives you serious consideration after you allowed an employee to buy you illegal drugs, risking that person's very liberty, is beyond me. 

We need to discuss the issues, folks.  We don't need to call names.  We hated it when they dissed W, so let's stop it here, and now.  There are a lot more important fights to fight.

Westsider

I know that Hugh and Laura and Rush are all really just entertainers, interested mostly in getting ratings and sponsors.  But when they start to demean and character assassinate John McCain, a man who has done more for our freedom than any of us us, let along Hugh, Laura and Rush, have ever done, it makes my blood boil.

Every word that these tantrum-throwing, self-centered, self-proclaimed manipulators of public opinion say that is  negative about Sen. McCain will be used against him in the general election.   Do I agree with Sen. McCain on illegal immigration issues?  No.  Do I agree with him on abortion choice?  No.  But I have to put my differences aside and vote for the person who can beat Hillary Clinton.  Romney has had his chance this year, and he's lost, again and again and again.  Huckabee is not qualified to be president--no one who says he does not believe in evolution is qualified to be president of my country.  I want a smart, rational person.

I'm tired of the far right and far left pushing their totally ridiculous agendas.  Most of us are in the middle.  Most of us have complex belief systems.  Most of us are moral, but we don't have to tell everyone how moral we are.  Most of us swear, and often (sorry, Dr. Dobson, I'm an educated middle aged woman who swears, guess I'm disqualified from important positions, eh?).

Rise up against the talk show hosts who want their way or the highway.  Let's remember that if Hillary or Obama are in the White House, along with the likely Congress held by Dems, we are totally and absolutely screwed on many fronts, esp. on the Supreme Court.  I'd have said a stronger word than screwed but I don't want Dr. Dobson to have the vapors.

Westsider

 So, 'The Donald' infuses money into the mainstream Mexican economy by holding the Miss Universe contest in Mexico City.  He stacks the judging panel with telenovela stars.  And what do those wonderful, warm, welcoming Mexicanos do?  They boo Miss USA because of the pending amnesty bill.  We're going to make millions of their least wanted citizens legal in our country, after they broke and entered and trashed our infrastructure, and they boo Miss USA?  Shouldn't they be putting her on a pedestal and parading her around small Mexican villages as an additional lure for more illegals to run here immediately?

The Mexican power elite is more racist than the KKK ever was.  They despise their brown skinned breathren.  Go to fancy US ski resorts, or Las Vegas to the Bellagio, and see how rich white Mexican elites vacation.  They bring their slaves, oops, I mean 'nannies', who hover around and watch the children, but are not even allowed to sit at the same dinner table in a restaurant.  These are the fools telling us how to run our country, and the cretins who booed Miss USA because our latest amnesty plan isn't loose enough? 

To this I say, and hope all of you say, ENOUGH. 

The ONLY way to get their attention, and the attention of the Wall St. Journal and business types who want to flood our country with cheaper labor to keep wages lower and CEO salaries high (and I'm a high income GOP member), is to boycott Mexico.  Sure, Hawaii and Florida and other spots are more expensive vacation spots, but so what?  Time to hurt them where it hurts the most, in the income base.   Tourism is not small change to Mexico, and remittances would have to increase many fold to make up for the loss of American tourist dollars.

The time is now, folks.  BOYCOTT MEXICO, NOW.

Join me.

The only way to stop this immigration bill is to starve the GOP of campaign contributions.  Now.  Put all the contribution solicitations back in their return envelopes, and ship them back, with your point of view written all over the form.  When they call, tell them that you'll send money when they close the border and enforce Simpson Mazzoli.  Tell this to even those politicians you like.

Let's start a groundswell and starve every one of the presidential candidates who don't oppose this new proposal.

NOW! 

 
Having just spent a week at a ski resort in Northern California, I am pleased to report that while thousands of the best and brightest of our citizens are being used for target practice by insurgents all over the world, especially in Iraq, quite a few of those who do not serve are dressed in Desert Storm styled snowboard outfits, even to the point of wearing military looking helmets.  There they are, literally careening down the slopes in the Sierra, in garb that Norman Schwartzkofph (sp?) would approve. 

Are they thinking of their sisters and brothers out there fighting so they can continue to 'ski free or die'? Of course not.  They are doing what we are all doing, anything we feel like, because this Administration has failed to make this our war.  Other than their parents and families, our troops are out there on their own, on some undefined mission that may soon lead to the deployment of even more troops, and for what reason, exactly?  To free a nation that could care less about being free?  To democratize a group of people who historically have been drawn to strong men who subjugate those who have literally minor differences with them?

Sorry, folks, but unless and until we put this war on the front burner, not the rhetorical burner of whether we have a troop 'surge' (is that like the surge that can destroy our computer if we don't have a surge protector?), but the front burner that involves us all, not just a few, we have no focus, we have no goal.  I do not favor a draft, but at least imposing a draft would finally force us, as a nation, as we did during Vietnam, to decide what is best for us, for our country, for the world.  It would force those 20 somethings on the slope to worry for just a brief moment that the uniform they wear so frivolously on the slopes might become a real uniform, imposing a real duty on them. 

And while I'm posting, time to recruit in Dearborn, Michigan.  Why did we have to see dancing Iraqi-American teenagers after Hussein was executed when they should be the first on the lines to help their native land?  I'm tired of non-Iraqi origin Americans dying for a fight that is theirs to sustain.  Let them take up arms to free their relatives from the insurgency, rather than looking like wannabe rappers and homies on the streets of Michigan. 

 

Is losing the House AND Senate enough to force  the far right of the GOP to step out of their talk radio/right wing blogger echo chamber?  Until the GOP learns to be less like Frist, less like Bush, and more like Arnold or Rudy, the presidency will be denied them.  I also wonder if they can ever regain the House or Senate.

I'm not in despair.  I frankly am glad to see Sens. Santorum and Allen gone.  They were freaks, out of touch with the electorate.  Rick Santorum speaks for no one I know in Pennsylvania.  He may be a nice, moral guy, but his stands against abortion rights and gay marriage, while they may play well among the extreme rightwingers of our party, they don't play well on Main Street America. 

Now, I live on the Westside of LA, but my roots are in the Philly exburbs.  My sisters  still live there, are married, middle aged gals with husbands in normal jobs, with kids in public schools, with relatives and friends of all genders, religions, sexual orientations, and political philosophies.  I cannot tell you the number of times that I have heard them, and their friends, the very voters the GOP should target, will say that they are personally against abortion, but they also remember what it was like when abortion was illegal. 
They believe that the only way to stop abortion isn't by making it illegal, but by persuading young people to act more responsibly.  They know that young people have always had, and always will have, sex outside of marriage, and that 'abstinence' is just not going to happen in modern day America.

I'm not in despair, but I sure am angry.  I am angry that Allen ran such a horrible campaign, and couldn't handle any adversity that arose.  I'm angry that Allen would use words like macaca, or deny that his mother had Jewish roots.  I'm angry that Talent in Missouri did not stand up to Rush Limbaugh and make it clear that he isn't against all stem cell research, and that he would keep an open mind regarding embryonic stem cell research.  It is one thing to have strong personal beliefs, it is another thing to get elected in spite of them.

I am angry that it takes me 45 minutes to drive what used to take me 10, all because illegal immigration and overcrowding in Los Angeles have made this wonderful city a third-world cesspool in spots.  Our schools are overrun and at times dangerous.  All because President Bush chose not to enforce Simpson Mazzoli, and wants to help out his corporate buddies who want cheap Mexican labor, passing the benefits on to us taxpayers.

I'll blog more as I review the results, but we Republicans need to realize that all the values, all the foundational beliefs, all the strongly held opinions are worthless unless we are in power.

On to 2008, but let's get rid of the far right.   

Westsider 

 Time to be realists, folks.  I know that anything can happen, but for the most part, polls are not that far off.  The GOP--my party--is going to get smoked on Tuesday.  Now, it won't be a sea change, the Dems will likely have only a few seat majority in the House, and not likely any at all in the Senate.  We can't spin the loss, however.  We've got to be adults and realize why we didn't keep the people's trust. 

Why doesn't this administration insist that we citizens participate more in the war effort?  I don't know how you do it, but in the day, they sold war bonds, and held patriotic rallies.  They enlisted the aid of sympathetic film makers and made great propaganda films like "Why We Fight".  The best kind of propaganda--the kind that reminds us who we are as a people, and why we are doing what we are doing, why our men and women are being killed and maimed in a nation far away that seems so very ungrateful for our help. 

This administration, this Congress, has failed to make the war on terror real for most people.  Other than the nightly news showing us how many of our troops have died or been hurt on a given day, what more is there for us to see?  Does the Iraqi government, do the Iraqi people, realize just how fragile our support is, how little Americans care about Iraq in the long term?  What is this President doing to assure that they know that our patience as a nation is running thin, thin, thin? 

And don't get me started on illegal immigration.  We've got a 20 year old law, passed while a great American, Ronald Reagan, was president, called Simpson-Mazzoli.  Many of us took it seriously and made sure that those who we hire to work for us at our offices and homes are legally here.  However, corporations and Big Agriculture, who provide what I think Jesse Unruh called the mother's milk of politics (money), seem to own both the GOP and the Dems, and they get away with murder in hiring illegals.  Wages are driven down, welfare costs are up, schools are overcrowded, yet profits continue to rise. 

I've said it before.  The GOP deserves to lose.  Now, I live in California, and I voted for Arnold and McClintock the other day at the Central Library, so I've done my share of supporting Republicans.  But, ultimately, the failures I've noted above, among others, are why many people will not vote for the GOP, if they vote at all.  Religious conservatives (and many of us) are appalled by the cover given to Congressman Foley by the rest of the House leadership.  How ridiculous is it that Foley headed a committee about child abuse?   Do you all think we are stupid?

So, when we lose on the seventh, I assume this will just mean gridlock for the next two years.  Of course the President will veto more because he'll have to.  I don't think gridlock, nothing getting done, is a bad thing, do you?

And, out of the ashes of 2006, will come 2008.  Michael Steele may not be elected in Maryland, but what a fresh attitude and he will bring to the ticket in 2008.  I can see it now, John McCain and Michael Steele!  Winners in a landslide. 

 
    I am so tired of hearing that only those who served have the right to speak out about what is going on in Iraq or elsewhere.  Sen. Kerry, covering his own butt, spinning his Freudian slip into overdrive, implies that because VP Cheney and others did not serve, while he did, that they have no right to speak out about our war effort.

    Well, I'm a 54 year old woman who clearly never served in the military.  My father and uncles served in WW2, but no one was a career soldier.  They served because they either enlisted or were drafted after Pearl Harbor.  Ironically, when these men spoke out in favor of Vietnam, men like John Kerry and his anti-war cohorts (most of whom never served) told those honorable men that they were wrong, that they shouldn't speak, because "Vietnam wasn't like WW2".  

    Now, Kerry and his ilk want to make Iraq into Vietnam, when they are nothing alike.  But, like way too many of my 'boomer' generation, they want to stamp their collective feet and throw another massive tantrum, led by Pelosi and others, forcing us to come home before we have accomplished our goals.  They seek to undermine President Bush the way they undermined Presidents Johnson and Nixon, and in all instances, undermine our nation's security and honor.
    
    Thank God for those young men and women who are smarter and braver than most of my generation ever was.  Senator Kerry should shut the hell up and go back to clipping coupons with Teresa.

     Hugh says that Rasmussen has the race 'neck and neck', but the most recent poll from Monday says it is 13 points.  

    Maybe Santorum is losing because he is an out of touch ideologue?  My family lives in PA, and they think he is out of touch.  He and his wife brought home their stillborn child?  Does it ever cross the GOP's collective mind that social conservatives, while they may be an important part of the constituency, many of us vote Republican for fiscal reasons.  We don't like abortions, but we don't want to go back to back alley deaths either.  We don't think it is right to force young women to go to another state to have an abortion.  We don't think that abstinence is reasonable.  Many of us have family and friends who are gay and lesbian, and we see no reason why civil unions cannot be approved (for everyone; if you want a 'marriage', go to your house of worship).  

    If the GOP nominates someone like Santorum in any position in 2008, might as well put a fork in the party right now.  Use the Arnold paradigm, not the Dole.  Be inclusive, be compassionate, and stop pushing us apart.  Hilary will be president unless the GOP wakes up and sees that the majority of this country wants a fiscally responsible government, closed borders, enforcement of Simpson-Mazzoli before any new laws are passed, Roe to be the law (dependent on viability), no partial birth abortions, tax cuts, and civil unions.  They want a government that defends us and makes sure that we are united in our defense.  We all want a government that doesn't let the opposition dictate the direction of the country (meaning, if we are supposed to be in Iraq, be clear about our goals and our timeline).     Instead of acting like the world ended when Mark Foley was outed, stand up against child harassment, but also be clear that Foley didn't do ANYTHING other than talk with underage kids.

    I'm wandering with this, but Hugh, tell us the truth.  Don't say stuff like neck and neck when anyone who can go to RCP can see the truth. 

Westsider  

 
What is wrong with the GOP this year?  GOP leaders know that the media are largely  biased in favor of the left, yet they do so little to grab the spotlight, the momentum. 

Our economy is in good shape, low unemployment, lowered gasoline prices, but what is in the headlines?  Some not-so-closeted gay Congressman from Florida who not only hit on underage male pages, he was head of a committee that promulgated legislation against child predators?  Are you kidding me?  Why would the GOP leadership let this man, who EVERYONE knew was gay, sit on such an important commission, especially when he was known to look at the young male pages, even if he did not touch?  Are you capping for the Leno/Letterman writers?

We are clearly at war with jihadist terrorists, yet we send every contradictory signal we can.  Why would Americans think they are at war?  Even with 3000 dead military in Iraq, we have, according to the latest trend story, 300 million US residents!  How many know anyone in the military, let alone someone who has been hurt, maimed or killed in Iraq?  We spend more time on the Foley story, or on Madonna adopting a baby she picked out of a photo book, or Angelina and Brad, or Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan's latest exploits, than we do worrying about being attacked by terrorists.  Our parents and grandparents lived through the Depression and WW2; they knew what sacrifice and actual fear was.  We, boomers through boomer kiddies, worry more about what size plasma screen to buy for the kitchen than we do about whether North Korea has the ability to nuke Seattle.  What is wrong with us?

What is wrong with us is we have leaders without voices, at least on the right.  They only sporadically talk about terror, and do so often as a reaction, not proactively.  They play right into the hands of those who say that terror and fear are being used for political purposes, to manipulate voters.  I know that we are at war, but so long as I we continue to play nice-nice with the Saudis, and never, ever show how brutal our opponents are, well, most Americans will simply not awaken again until we are hit here on our own shores.   We need to tell the Saudis and other Arab/Islamic nations to stop funding the evil, and if they don't stop, then we need to be prepared, as a nation, to pay higher costs to other sources for fuel.

We need to stop pandering to the Chinese, and we need to take the little evil creep out in NK.  Now. Not with UN resolution after resolution.  Now.  We tell China.  We tell Russia.  We don't use nukes.  We simply bomb at the NK/SK border north, so the troops can't flood into SK.  We tell the SK that their appeasement efforts have put them in jeopardy and tell them they are no longer in charge, at least not until the NK situation is stable.

That won't happen because we have a President who seems more interested in free trade and making business more profitable than he does about his own citizens.  And an 'opposition party' that wants the same kinds of things.  So sad.

Then, on the left, we have leaders, especially those charged with providing us with information (the media)  who apparently have no restraining device between their brains and mouths, or brains and word processors.  Today, the LA Times had a story about how a nuclear facility here at home is not adequately protected.  Now, I think that is definitely news, but why is it in the newspaper?  Why do those who run the media nowadays have no sense of what should be published, who do not understand that even 'news' should be censored if publishing it would help our enemy.  Can you imagine if secret war plans during WW2 were as commonly 'leaked' to the press in 1943?  I fully expect that few editors would publish such leaks in that day, but any who did would have found themselves in a heap of trouble. Yet, the Republicans today do not even make any effort to go after those who leak admittedly CLASSIFIED information.

Oh, and another thing.  We need to stop pandering to the conservative evangelical right.  How the dimbulb Santorum got elected in my former home state is a puzzle to me.  No one, not one person, in my multi-ethnic and religious neighborhood in NE Philly when I was growing up, would find Santorum appealing.  We had neighbor girls who had illegal abortions in the 1960's; one girl even died.  But the neighbors didn't sit there and worry about the law, they worried about the girls.  Ethnic Philadelphians are not doctrinaire; they are hard-scrabble folks who see things in many colors, not just black and white. As a party, we need to look to the Arnold model of victory for future national victories; most of us are not evangelicals hoping that Christ returns and takes us to heaven. 

Most of us are pragmatic, of many religions and cultural/ethnic/racial backgrounds who like a pragmatic politicians.  Here in California, you will see Republicans and Dems voting not just for Arnold but for Jerry Brown because abortion rights and Christmas decorations and school prayer are NOT the pivotal issues for most Americans.  Nominate those who cannot get elected nationally like Bob Dole or even Mitt Romney and you'll get Hillary.  Nominate those who are more like the rest of us, like McCain or Guiliani, and you'll win. 

Yes, the GOP deserves to lose.  We need a couple of years of the Dems and their appeasement mentality to maybe underscore the need for us to get serious in our nation's defense.  We need to withdraw from Iraq and watch the bloodshed and recriminations between our two parties, like a mud fight.  And, unfortunately and I pray that this never happens, we may need another 9/11 type of attack before our country wakes up to the evil of the world.  We saw Britain and France and China all under attack in 1941, but could not bring ourselves to get directly involved.  We had to be attacked first.  Woe to us if that is the case again.  

 
John McCain was tortured in North Vietnam.  Many of our Greatest Generation were tortured by the Japanese during World War 2.   Very few things that were done at Al Gharib were torture by those standards.  I'm sorry that Sen. McCain has lost his perspective, but the more we allow the left to define 'torture', the more we trivialize the real thing, and the more we lose what little respect our enemies have for us.

I'm not suggesting we become like them, not at all.  I am suggesting that putting panties on someone's head, having him sit for the equivalent of a $200 lap dance, or having him don a doggie collar and pose with a female soldier is NOT torture.  Not now, not ever, and particularly not to someone whose cohorts will gladly slice a civilian's throat on camera (Danny Pearl) or burn the bodies of civilian contractors and dangle their bodies over that bridge in Fallujah. 

Don't Sen. McCain and his collegues understand that words mean something.  When you let the left in this country define the terms, the terms lose meaning.  Sexual harassment comes to mind.  It used to mean something, something horrible, using language to a female coworker, or harassing her with sexual innuendo and such.  Now, it can mean something like having a photo of your wife in a bikini on your desk; if it offends your female co-worker who happens to walk by your desk once, harassment.  

They want to do the same to torture.  If we start thinking of panties on the head as torture, then when kids learn about the Bataan death march, and that is called 'torture', well, they'll think 'what's the big deal?'  And why wouldn't they? 

When you have the same people who advocate partial  birth abortions cringing at the idea someone in Guantanamo is being shown a naked woman's picture to make him feel uncomfortable, has the world gone nuts, or what?  Just because some people in this world are living in the 7th Century, should we not show them movies because they will think witchcraft is involved? 

If we continue to worry so much about their sensitivities, and not enough about our survival, we don't have long for this world.  They, in turn, laugh as we contort ourselves trying to stop panties on the head and sleep deprivation, while their 'soldiers' wouldn't blink before cutting off your head for saying something they think disrespects Allah.

We're doomed unless we take control of our language again, and fight our enemy, if not at 'their level', at least in a way that doesn't require we use a knife while they have an AK-47 aimed at our heads.

Westsider/9-20-2006