Duty (whatever)

It's comforting to know that, after an abbreviated naval career, a term as lieutenant governor, and 20 years in the Senate, John Kerry has finally decided to report for duty.

Only now I wonder what the concept of "duty" means to him. Or is it too complex for a simple answer?

Kerry, the Movie

The movie was good -- very good. (Some said that the "Man from Hope" was better, but I never saw that one.) I guess this was to be expected with the amount of money and Hollywood talent put to its production. And you can't go wrong with Morgan Freeman narrating, though I have already forgotten the narration.

Brit Hume remarked that it would be hard for the speech to top the movie. And sure enough, it didn't. In fact, the speech was surprisingly bad. (All those Vietnam vets who served full tours must have winced at the "Reporting for duty!" salute.)

The speechwriters should be fired. Oh, wait -- they say that John Kerry wrote the speech himself. Well then, he should hire some decent speechwriters.

About John Edwards' speech: is this a preview of the remainder of the campaign and beyond? Where were the speechwriters? Every phrase seemed to be lifted from a collection of the most boring campaign speeches from both parties from the past half-century.

If "hope is on the way," what is the current situation? Hopeless? Or is he too stupid to realize the redundancy? Or does he just think his audience is? Or was he too lazy to think of a better slogan than Cheney's of 2000? 

"Two Americas: those who don't have to work, and those have to work hard just to make ends meet." Huh? Looking at the delegates, which of these Americas are they part of? Which are you? 

Did you catch this one? "We're gonna tax defense contractors!" Big applause. What is that all about? Did a speechwriter scratch out "Halliburton" but save the line? Did defense contractors not make it to the top of his donor list? Got to find out more about that one.

And this one: "The road to the highest office in the land should not be the low road." Of course, he didn't mean to disavow his party's characterization of Bush policies as "Nazi" or "fascist", or that the administration "lied" about going to war, or that the 2000 election was "stolen" or that Bush was "AWOL", or to declare that Michael Moore would no longer be their principal propagandist. What he meant was (and he came right out and said it) that we can expect "negative campaigning" to come out of the GOP. And I hope he is right. Because he knows that "negative campaigning" to them means that Kerry's voting record will be revealed, and his contradictory statements will be replayed, and the sources of John Edwards' wealth will be revealed. This was an attempt to inoculate themselves against the inevitable but responsible effort by the GOP to inform the voters about the true character of the candidates, which they would prefer to remain unpublicized.

Footnote: during an interview with Greta Van Susteren that evening, Madeline Albright said that Kerry would take some of the Iraq contracts away from U.S. companies and "give them to foreign companies." I see. I guess this is a peek into the Kerry policy of "punishing outsourcers."  

Two notable speeches tonight -- no, Teresa's was not one of them (OK, she can speak five languages; but four of them are practically dialects of one another). Barack Obama and Ron Reagan.

Obama: an excellent speech, which really touched on values. American values. And not surprising, coming from the son of an immigrant. Immigrants often understand American values better than Americans do, because they have a basis for comparison. But his message was lost on most of the attendees at the convention. Because he was chosen to speak not for his message, but for another trait. This is sad, because Mr. Obama could help the Democratic party retain the stature it once had, if only more of its members were more like him. But, alas, Mr. Obama does not have much of a future in his party, because the ideas he espoused in his speech are antithetical to most of what the Democratic Party has been advocating since Hubert Humphrey. His speech would have been more appropriate for the GOP convention.

Reagan: the Glaze-Over speech. Face it, a tiny miniscule of the audience had any understanding of any of the points made. Stem-cell research? What in blazes is a stem cell? And who cares? No matter, he's the son of Ronaldus Maximus, and his presence here irks he GOP, so we'll welcome him. He could be advocating necrophilia, and we'll applaud.

He said at the outset that his position was non-partisan...then attacked opponents of stem-cell research for having political motives. This makes no sense, since most people have little or no understanding of the issues involved, leaving advocates and opponents to develop their arguments free of prevailing or longstanding opinions or prejudices. You have to accept the fact that both opponents and proponents have rational reasons for their positions, apart from politics or even religion, but from reason alone.

But Ron Reagan couldn't even acknowledge that simple fact. Instead, he argued that embryonic cells had "no fingers or toes." Huh? Neither he, nor I, nor you,  nor anyone else had "fingers or toes" at our early stages of our development. So what? We couldn't read until a certain age, either. What difference did that make to our humanity?

But this reliance on imagery by the liberals is typical. We should call them on this. "They don't look like us" was a common excuse to deny the status of humanity to people of bygone days.

Hillary & Bill's speeches last night were pretty good. Meaning they did the job of setting the tone for the rest of the week, which is presumably the objective. Carter's was pathetic, and Gore's was just awful.

One point Bill Clinton maked at length really irked me -- his opinion that he does not pay enough in taxes. First, the fact that he is seeking admiration for (a) making a high income and (b) opining that he doesn't deserve it, says a lot about the man's character that many of us already knew but most of his admirers are too blind to see.

Second, anyone who says he doesn't pay enough income taxes is really saying that he doesn't deserve his income. Because if he deserved it, why would he believe the government is more entitled to it than he? After all, he is perfectly free to give the U.S. Treasury as much of his wealth as he likes, voluntarily. But he would prefer to be coerced out of it.

And this is where the wealthy Left, such as Warren Buffet, expose their hypocrisy. Of course, they want to keep their money, because they do. Otherwise they would boast about their donations to the Treasury or to charity or just release their tax returns. It's their attitude about the government's entitlement to the upper incomes of other people (and not the moderate-income but high-consumption super-rich like the Heinz-Kerry fortune) that is especially revealing. This is class warfare at its crudest.

Anyhow, the point got big applause, which says a lot about the attendees at the convention.

Anyone who has ever been entrusted with classified material (except perhaps R&D types who work in labs such as Los Alamos) are acutely aware of how absolutely ludicrous are the claims of the former national security advisor. And for those who haven't, but may want to find his excuses somewhat plausible, you are hereby advised of having had your intelligence insulted in a most outlandish way. And the rest of you may be classified as none other than among those such as David Gergen, Terry McAuliffe, Tom Daschle, Dan Rather, and so on, who place partisan politics above the law, national security, and national interest.

For what Sandy Berger did, even what he has admitted doing, was criminal. It goes without saying that if he had deliberately lost or destroyed or just removed Top Secret codeword documents, he has committed a federal felony. But few realize that even if the actions were "inadvertent", they are still a crime, because careless handling of such material is also a felony, because it shows a criminal disregard of the procedures and violation of the agreements entered into when access is granted. Anyone who has sat through the lengthy read-in and read-out of these classified compartments must be gasping for breath upon hearing of today's events and the nonchalant and irrelevant way the media are treating them.

Now, don't forget that Mr. Berger was a paid lobbyist of the Communist Chinese before he became Clinton's national security advisor. And that during his tenure, the Chinese acquired U.S. technology for the ballistic missile delivery of nuclear weapons.

Why this guy isn't in Leavenworth with John Walker and Aldrich Ames is beyond me.