The American Spectator

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Credit Where It's Due

9.12.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 2 of 5)

Why? Ask yourself this: which political party -- and its presidential standard-bearer -- does the unfiltered horror of that day damage most? Which party has consistently put its own interests ahead of national security?

People jumping off buildings from eighty stories up, streets littered with body parts and all the other gruesome details don't jibe with those who believe the war on Islamo-fascist terror is a "law enforcement problem," that 9/11 was an "American foreign policy failure," or that the worst actors on the planet are merely a clever phrase or two away from abandoning jihad.
-- Arnold Ahlert
Boca Raton, Florida

By chance, I caught some of the "mainstream media" reportage of the 9 / 11 memorial services. To hear some of it, you would not know that evil men did evil deeds. You might be forgiven if you thought some horrible accident had happened. And you might not learn what some who govern this country stood up and did in response.
-- Robert Nowall
Cape Coral, Florida

CULTURAL GAMECHANGER
Re: W. James Antle III's Up from Murphy Brown:

Let's all apply our investigative skills to find out if Mr. Obama has ever used the "lipstick on a pig" idiomatic expression before this instance. If he uses it frequently, then he might plausibly defend this recent use at his partisan rally.

However...

My instinct says he's never used this during his campaign -- primary or otherwise. I doubt it is an expression he's really ever used. As a Midwestern, I know it to be a common phrase, but we all know Mr. Obama is far too meticulous, calculating, purposeful and clever with his partisan prepared statements to choose this particular phrase to describe his thoughts on Sen. McCain's economic policy and feign innocence when confronted.

In other words, the junior Senator from Illinois (let's call him "JSFI") knew what he was doing when he chose to use this expression and deliver it with the cadence that allowed his partisan crowd to "eat the red meat", but he also knew he could rely on technicalities to maintain a preponderance of innocence.

...just like trying to understand what the meaning of "is" is, when deposed. We'll only see a new, constructive political discourse from the liberal left when lipsticked pigs start to fly.
-- Bill Attinger
Carlsbad, California

W. James Antle III is wrong. The culture wars haven't been turned "upside down." All that's happened is conservative women have a feminist icon who breaks the traditional mold. Liberals, who believed they owned the franchise on feminism, can't fathom how their supremacy is being challenged. Such a challenge bears remarkable similarity to the rise of alternative media sources which took on the MSM.

In short, leftists, who've had it their own way for a long time in both arenas, don't like competition--and it shows.
-- Arnold Ahlert
Boca Raton, Florida

W. James Antle writes:

To Slate's Jacob Weisberg, however, it reeks of a scary absolutism. Bristol Palin's example ranks ahead of Hollywood and the welfare state as a threat to the two-parent family. "By vaunting their pro-life agenda over everything else," he writes, "conservatives are abandoning one of their most valuable insights: that intact, two-parent families are best for children and for the foundation of a healthy society."

Uh, Jake...Bristol Palin is bringing her child into an intact two-parent family in a healthy society!

Look, for as many generations as there have existed both people and the concept of marriage there have been teen-age pregnancies to unwed mothers. My own father's mother was an example back right after the turn of the century...no, not this one, the previous one, Obama's mother was another.

And since the human female body was designed by, ah, evolution, to be able to produce babies at a very young age, whereas marriage is an artificial construction deliberately limited in its application to much older humans, we're going to continue to have unmarried teen-age pregnancies. Count on it.

The big, big difference then becomes as a result of what happens next.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, Trade, John McCain, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, Mainstream Media, Television, Business, Islam, Abortion, Hollywood, Law, Military, Iraq, Russia, NATO, Africa, Alaska, Oil