Dreamland - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Dreamland
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SEEING THINGS
Re: William Tucker’s The Kerry Nightmare:

It’s not a nightmare — Mr. Tucker is prescient. I’ve been having the same vision since February.

If Kerry were elected, both Iraq and Afghanistan would fall to totalitarians. The Baby Boomer generation, having helped lose one war in their youth, would lose one more. And millions would die.

And the people who killed them would be coming for us.
Michael Ubaldi

Excellent article. Another civil was has begun here, with the left, it seems to me, pulling out all stops to create the chaos from which it believes it will reclaim power.

I do believe America lives or dies with the next election.
Mark Wolin
Disgusted in Michigan

Tucker’s article is no “nightmare.” It’s what’s likely to happen if Kerry wins.
Ted Harwood, Ph.D.

This is crap. I can’t wait for Kerry to win the election and prove you wrong.
Thomas Woods

Permit me to finish your dream.

The American people wise that they are, hedged their bets in voting Kerry. They delivered super majorities in both houses of Congress. The Republicans had effective control of the Congress.

Two weeks into the Baghdad riots, suddenly without warning a low yield nuclear device is detonated in Denver. Effectively the city is wiped out. Causalities were low as the explosion occurred on a Saturday. Still 250,000 are dead either directly or through exposure. Pandemonium ensued. There were calls for all out war. Riots broke out against peace demonstrators from International ANSWER.

The FBI and Homeland Security in an intense sweep of the ‘crime scene’ (Kerry’s words) and follow on investigations discover the plot having been hatched by a splinter group of Zarqawi located in Iran, smuggled in via rail cars from Mexico City. Congress acting on the Bush Doctrine in 425-110 party line vote officially declares war against Iran. Congress directs the Commander-in-Chief with no uncertain terms to prosecute the war to it’s fullest conclusion whenever and wherever necessary. $250b appropriation bill is attached to the declaration.

Unsure but coerced, Kerry places General Sanchez head of Middle East operations. First Armored division penetrates Iranian space 2 weeks later following an all out air barrage. Riots break out in the Northern Iranian provinces. In a surprise move Israel with support from Kurdish sympathizers invades Syria. Jordan and Egypt go on alert. Kerry appeals to the U.N. but is rebuffed. Arafat, stricken by a stroke, is flown to France where he dies on the operating table. Follow on investigation by the French indicate the anesthesiologist was an Israeli sympathizer under the employ of the Russians.

In week 8 of operations elements of the 101 Airborne reach the outskirts of Tehran. Streams of civilians are heading for American lines. The Saudi kingdom falls after a coup attempt kills most of the ruling family. British and Australian forces assume control of the Saudi capital and effective control of the country. In the Pacific theater, the Chinese seeing an opening prepare operations against Taiwan. Satellite imagery provides sufficient warning. In the ensuing skirmish in the strait, 2 cruisers and 1 destroyer are lost by the Chinese to only 1 destroyer and minor damage to the carrier Ronald Reagan.

Congress defunds the U.N. citing differences in the role of that body. Earmarks the funds for continuing operations of “Clean Sweep.” The Iraqi Council elects an interim President. Approves Kurdish succession.

By midterm elections, Iran has been occupied, though counter insurgency operations continue. Zarqawi has been killed by a Global Hawk. The Chinese old guard has been toppled. Insurgents in East Timor are being eliminated by elements of the Australian SAS. On the domestic front, Democrats suffer the worst defeat in their history, the electorate having turn out every candidate on the ballot. Surprisingly the Libertarian party, not the Republicans gain many of the vacated seats in both houses; running on a pro intervention, anti-immigration party platform.

Epilogue:

History records that John F. Kerry is the last Democrat to be a sitting President. The Democrat Party teeters on for 2 more election cycles then collapses, unable to pay debts and dissolves.

A fair dream, I might add, if somewhat frightening.
John McGinnis
Arlington, Texas

To: William Tucker
From: Readers Like Me
Subject: Noted Above

Holy Mackeral!!!!

Respectfully Submitted:
Colin McCauley

How I pray you are wrong with your dream. Let’s hope that that’s all it is, just a bad dream.
Sue Schumacher
Mesa, Arizona

So, it’s not just me having that dream.
Michael Harvey

HUMANE SOCIETY
Re: P. David Hornik’s Animal Rights: A Question of Humanity:

I was glad to see the article on animal rights by David Hornik. I, too, am a devout conservative (though less so on the environment as I believe there can be a good balance between development and growth and environmental care), but when it comes to how we treat animals and that too many conservatives aren’t concerned by it really bothers me.

While humans are at the top on Earth, I don’t believe for a moment that God wants us to abuse animals nor make them extinct. I believe he wants us to take care of them because they are His creatures too. I am not a vegetarian, but the treatment of cows, pids, chickens and turkeys by industrial farms is inhumane and unacceptable — and perhaps even criminal.

Anyway, I appreciate you putting this article on your website. It shows that many conservatives can be just as “concerned” as liberals and that when it comes to publishing diverse thought, liberals truly are lacking compared to conservatives.
John Dyslin
Streamwood, Illinois

I want to thank David Hornik for his great article on conservatism and animal rights! I have been a vegetarian since I was 12 years old; I am also very much a political Conservative. I agree that the decent treatment of animals should not be an issue for the left or the right. I would love to see Conservatives embrace and promote reform in this area.
Jennifer Rector
Arcadia, Indiana

What a pleasure to read (at last) the thoughts of a conservative friend of the animals! I cannot bear to see harm come to animals – the suffering of horses alone in the history of humanity disturbs me deeply.

What a relief to hear a conservative say he does not eat meat!! I do occasionally eat some meat but mostly I buy those very tasty veggie burgers that come in so many varieties now.

The issue (like that of the environment) has become ridiculous. If I tell a liberals I am vegetarian, they assume I am one of their own (which I am definitely not); if I tell conservatives I am vegetarian, they assume I ‘m a closet liberal.

This article made my day. Thank you from a tofu-loving conservative!
Judith Hakimian

I must be dreaming. Or else Bob “Vegetarian-bashing” Tyrrell is asleep and this article passed by his veto.

Understand, I’ve loved what Tyrrell has written and his magazine for years, putting up with his CW “witty” put-downs of vegans like me as the price of his “free” writings.

So, it’s a thrill to read a cogent piece defending the most humane way of transforming earth into body for humans. Let me add a simple fact that meat eaters ought to be aware of.

I forget the exact numbers, but when it comes to the amount of grain and water needed to produce even one factory-farmed pound of any meat, it’s some humongous numbers — maybe a hundred pounds of grain, and you can just imagine how many gallons are needed to grow just one pound of grain. In short, besides the inhumane treatment of animals, it is very inefficient and costly for mother Earth, and if truth be told, a self indulgence that may come back to — excuse the word — BITE mankind.

As water-beings — 70% water — humans need to drink and eat a lot of it, and pay attention to making sure it is secure. Anyone who’s awake and knows what’s happening has to be aware that water IS a problem, worldwide. Water levels are dropping, due to the intensive overuse of it to indulge meat eaters.

Personally, I’ve been a strict vegan for seven years and a health food NUT for almost 39 years. Having fine-tuned my bodily intake, I have created a spreadsheet of over 100 foods, which I’ve tracked for about ten years. As of today, by only buying bulk unprocessed foods, except for oils and miso and a few other things, I am spending around $50.00 a month to survive. I consider right eating to be the best HEALTH INSURANCE.

One of my recent choices was to make my own soy milk — discovered when trying to make tofu, which was too hard and too much work. Once a week I use ten quarts of water and 275 grams of soy beans to create soy milk and ogara, the left over solids. This gives me six days worth of soy milk — about a cup a day — for 35 cents! I use the solids in a bran bread of my own creation, which also lasts about five or six days.

Not bragging, just saying how it can be done. As a 62 year-old, 5′ 11” and 140 pound body, blood pressure is around 100 over 60, and has been so for many years.
James Crystal

What a terrific article by Hornik! Thank you for speaking for conservatives who believe in protecting ALL of God’s Creatures.
Chris Holbein
Newton, Massachusetts

TEAMWORK
Re: Chris Reed’s Team Ebert’s Political Police:

I for one enjoyed Team America. I thought the puking and the puppet sex went a little to far. But how they portrayed the stars and the left is how I see them. Anything for peace! Joining someone who is know to not be for Freedom, and violence to get their way. Look at what is happening to people Bush-Cheney stickers.

I was glad to see Hollywood portrayed as I see them and it gave me a good laugh and filled my heart with warmth. Most people will see it because it is from the guys who do South Park, but hopefully it will change there minds a little bit and see Michael Moore and all of them for who they truly are. Liars! and loonies!
Janis
Miami, Florida
Pray 4 more years of W!

Roger Ebert has always politicized his so-called reviews. He hates any movie that portrays the goodness of the United States, religion or compassion.

He gives rave reviews to all depravity regardless of how bad the movie may be.

Note to all producers in the world: you want a huge American box office hit that gets great reviews by the likes of Ebert & Roeper? Create dysfunctional characters that spew forth long diatribes about the coping of simple acts in daily life that any normal person can easily deal with; make one or more character gay; set it in a trendy, left-wing city like New York, Chicago or Paris; make the protagonist a believer of God or a self-made businessman or a member of the military (or all three); find the most untalented but lauded hack actors to take the parts; build a trophy case for your Oscars.
Greg Barnard
Franklin, Tennessee

INSOURCING
Re: Patrick O’Hannigan’s If the Democrats Lose:

Like many viewers, apparently including Patrick O’Hannigan, I was struck that Foreign Minister Kerry and his sidekick Little Johnny, were able to assert in four different debates that the U.S. “outsourced” the capture of Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora. Why, I kept wondering, didn’t the President or Vice President respond? At all?

But during a conversation with a fellow New Redneck, I realized what probably happened at Tora Bora. My friend observed, with the typical patriotic vitriol the Intelligentsia finds so irritating, that when we catch whoever is beheading innocents in Iraq, they should be “skinned alive.”

And suddenly it occurred to me that, in the Arab world, “skinned alive” might be too lenient a treatment for such a pig. Where our fine Western sensibilities about things like “due process” and a “trial by his peers” interfere with both swiftness and justice, our Middle Eastern counterparts are burdened by no such prohibitions.

In the context of our “capture” of Saddam Hussein, and his subsequent internment and interrogation, we have undeniably treated a butcher with the respect and dignity only available from a Western democracy. Mr. Hussein is, as we might expect, using the very legal process he disdains to delay and erode the nature of the justice he receives.

If our own forces had captured Osama bin Laden, we would have been duty bound to provide him with all of the comforts of an arrested suspect, including, one would conclude, “a lawyer, should (he) not be able to afford one (him)self.” (Miranda rights for implacable enemies. How novel.) We would have found ourselves in a cycle of arraignments and hearings, each of which offered an opportunity for bin Laden, his lawyers, followers, and almost certainly our media geniuses to appeal to the “international community” on his behalf, as a revolutionary hero, of course. Eventually, he would probably have ended up in a sham court proceeding, from which he might very well have been declared innocent and escaped unscathed!

The Afghan warlords would have filleted him.

That would have provided (and perhaps did) a swift and just ending to bin Laden’s days, and a perfect justification for “outsourcing” the operation. But the President and VP can’t say that, can they.
Todd Wieland
Naples, Florida

UNDECIDED VOTER
Re: Reader Mail’s Bush Walks the Walk:

Well for a fleeting moment there, when I saw the nameAmerican Spectator, I thought that might finally refer to an unbiased and objective information source of some sort. But alas, it was not to be so! Upon reading the comments of your readers in Reader Mail it quickly became apparent that American Spectator is not really a “spectator” at all. It’s merely one more active participant in the brain dead rantings of the auto-deluding neocons of the political right. Then as I paged down I was implored to “subscribe”…. subscribe to what, I asked myself? You mean I should actually pay money for a more amateurish version of Fox Network? I can get all the brainless neo-con crappola that I could possibly want for free in at least a dozen less obvious sources. One of your respondees had it right about G.W. Bush’s Kersey MBTI type though, I noticed. Bush is an ESTP! However, your “reader” (in the typically mindless neo-con fashion of the day) fulminated on, singing out the praises of old “Dubya” for being an “Extroverted,” “Sensory,” “Thinking,” “Perceiving” type. Of course your “reader,” like his object of adulation would doubtless not ever actually read a book, like Kersey’s which gives an actual description of this type. The ESTP is the quintessential con man of the personality types.

And doesn’t that fit well upon examination. Bush, the P.T. Barnum of U.S. presidential politics, has found in all of his adoring right-wing [bleep]-for-brains “a sucker born every minute.” And like the carny sideshow master manipulator he is, he’s played them for all they’re worth. Which, incidentally, to anyone with only the rudiments of genuine intelligence is nearly zero. Rave on [bleep] in your innocence while you can, because the smart money is betting that “Dubya” is going down and probably much sooner than later. And that means the worst nightmare of the new conservatives is rapidly approaching. They’re actually going to have to listen to facts and truths, instead of their familiar comfortable lies and namby-pamby disinformation.
C. J. Cassell
Silver Spring, Maryland

STEMMED IN BOSTON
Re: Timothy P. Carney’s Go Back to Ballet:

Tell me, is Timothy Carney cold-hearted, or is it that he simply lacks any understanding of embryonic stem cell research? In “Go Back to Ballet,” (July 28, 2004) aside from his arrogant and pompous tone, Carney does not seem to understand what embryonic stem cell research is. He begins the discussion on embryonic stem cell research saying that ESC research holds very little assurance for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. On the contrary, scientists believe very strongly that embryonic stem cells will eventually hold the cure to diseases like Alzheimer’s. Based on testing scientists have done on mouse cells, researchers have determined that embryonic stem cells may have the ability to explain how Alzheimer’s disease develops. However, the only way to know if embryonic stem cells can save lives is to lift all restrictions and limitations placed upon ESC research and allow scientists to fully explore and investigate the world of embryonic stem cells. What I would like to know is how can scientists offer full assurance that embryonic stem cell treatment can work when they receive next to no federal funding? How can scientists offer full assurance that embryonic stem cell treatment can work when the only ESC cells they are allowed to use are those contaminated with mouse cells?

Carney further displays his ignorance when he describes the role that embryonic stem cells hope to play. He describes their role as the “replacement of corrupted cells in different parts of the body.” However, this description also reveals a misconception: The truly amazing quality that embryonic stem cells possess, as opposed to adult stem cells is their ability to transform themselves into different tissues of the body. This could mean an end to debilitating and fatal diseases such as cancer, paralysis, muscular dystrophy, diabetes, and yes, Alzheimer’s disease.

Carney does not stop there. In the article, Ron Reagan discusses why critics oppose embryonic stem cell research. Carney’s response to Reagan demonstrates that he seems to overlook the fact that fertility clinics discard millions of unused, human embryos everyday. Which is worse, using human embryos in hope of finding cures to many fatal diseases or simply chucking them in the can?

Please do not misconstrue the purpose of this response. It is not my intention to bash Carney. However, I do believe that despite one’s political beliefs, there is never a justifiable reason for being belligerent and mean. The world of embryonic stem cell research holds the potential to save many innocent lives and unfortunate deaths. And before the media’s propaganda influences many American minds, it would probably be wise to get the facts straight. That’s the least that you can do.
Danny Turken
Boston, Massachusetts, October 19, 2004

CARLIN SPRINGS
Re: Nick J.’s letter (“The Daily Showboat”) in Reader Mail’s Loser Lineup:

I take issue with Nick J. grouping George Carlin with Bill Maher, and to a lesser extent, Jon Stewart. Anyone who has followed Carlin’s career will agree that he does not have an agenda, either overt or hidden, unless it is to point out some of our human frailties with humor.

Maher, on the other hand, so blatantly pursued his liberal bias on his early program on the broadcast media (which show’s name I have thankfully forgotten) that his advertisers boycotted him and he was dropped. He surfaced again on cable TV with the same agenda, and I don’t know if he’s still there or not, nor do I much care.

As for Stewart, he’s smart, clever, and young, and hasn’t yet learned his lesson, so there’s still hope for him. But it’s very true, as Nick J. points out, that The Daily Show‘s success has more to do with the writers and supporting cast than Stewart’s comedic skills. After the election is over, I wonder if The Daily Show will survive.
Bob Johnson
Bedford, Texas

WINNERS
Re: Rich Renken’s and A.A. Reynolds’ letters (under “Losing Big”) in Reader Mail’s Loser Lineup:

Re Rich Renken’s letter: if Hillary is “tired of the grind” by the year 2116, I, for one, won’t blame her.
Bob Fitzgibbon
Rome

If I’m ever asked to sum up what’s wrong with liberalism today I would hand them a copy of A. A. Reynolds’ letter — which I’m thinking of framing.
John Nelson
Hebron, Connecticut

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