Montesquieu

Of course he knows the difference, but he's been cowed by leftists and their cultural relativism tripe. He cannot say our culture or government is better than others that are "democraticly" elected. This quote is a sign of leftist influence on Bush, not really religious influence, because if he were being influenced by religion to that extent, it would be his religion not theirs that he wouldn't mind. An Islamic government would be a blight upon the planet to the super-Christian zealot, and ask some of them sometime (if you have the unfortunate experience of talking to one) and they'll tell you all Islamic governments should be nuked and then we should convert the people to Christianity.

The whole reason there is a "shortage" in the first place is because the government destroyed all the domestic market incentives by putting price controls in place and at the same time built-up demand by sending all of its people to scare the hell out of everyone inot thinking they may be in imminent danger of death without a flu vaccine.

This reminds me of the idiots in the Johnson administration saying they wanted the Vietnamese to be able to have free and fair elections where they could even vote themselves into communism!! I suspect, like other times when Bush speaks off the cuff, if this remark ever becomes a major liability (which I doubt because Kerry couldn't argue against it), but if it did, Bush would change his position. The idea that Bush is somehow not a "flip-flopper" when it comes to political decisions is just a political myth created by the election.

Of course there would be no war in Iraq without 9/11 and the War on Terror, so I view the War in Iraq as a mere battle in the larger war.

I'm sorry if I gave the impression I was personally insulting you, I was referring to Washington D.C. politicians and their taxation without representation crusade, even though they elect one communist after another and if they could elect representatives, would only vote for higher taxes anyway. As for people holding private sector jobs living in D.C., the simple question is "why?" Why would one knowingly live in an area where it is well known you will have no congressional representatives, or at least none with voting powers? Another point, voting isn't the ultimate goal of free government, the franchise is important, but protecting individual rights is the primary function of government, voting is a derivative right. And under our federal system it was established that the States would form a union and create a federal government to handle specific issues. Virginia and Maryland were persuaded to cede land to the federal government for the capital as part of a compromise on Hamilton's economic plans in Washington's administration. No one wanted government employees living in Washington permanently let alone anyone else, which was why there was no entrenched civil service really until Chester A. Arthur got rid of the spoils system. Also the founders didn't make a mistake in making D.C. so large, subsequent Presidents and congresses made a mistake in letting non-governmental employees live in D.C. Also, you're technically correct, you don't live in any of the United States of America, you live in the district of the federal government, which is not a state and cannot be. Why would the federal government need to represent itself in congress? Frankly I think the last thing the country needs is a bunch of civil service representatives in the congress trying to give the bureaucrats rasies, even more job security, and raising taxes on everyone else to pay for it all. There is far too much of that already. Again, if it's really that important to you to have representatives in congress to pilfer and slouch off in your name, move to a state. Also, Puerto Rico and D.C. are not in the same situation. Puerto Rico is a U.S. Territory with a territorial governor, whereas the congress lets D.C. run a local government with a mayor, though the congress reserves the right to make or unmake D.C. laws (which you should consider a good thing given how leftist D.C. is). Puerto Rico can also become a state whevever its citizens decide they want to become a state, D.C. cannot. Our government is a federated group of states, and those states are never going to allow the seat of the federal government to also become a state, it's a ridiculous notion. Of course this is all common knowledge, so it still puzzles me why anyone who wanted to be represented in congress would live in D.C. in the first place.

This is an excellent point, especially from the point of view of economics. The IMF and World Bank aren't private corporations, they are financial slushfunds set up by governments. Amusingly enough, one of the big people running the IMF for a long time was arch-liberal/Vietnam apologist (after he's already done it) Robert McNamara. No capitalist could support either organization anymore than they could support the Federal Reserve, to act as though capitalism and the IMF are the same is wrong-headed in the extreme. Some corporations are run by idiots who aren't capitalists or rational at all, beyond sensing a way to make money. Thus you'll often find them doing things which hurt their own interests in a very hap-hazzard way, much like irrational and stupid people in the general population.

Of course it was never intended to be a major population center, and never was until the Federal government ballooned and created a gigantic bureaucracy and housing projects for poor people. Everyone living there was expected to live there temporarily, but to still have permanent residence in a state. People living in D.C. should wise up and realize this, since they all claim to be so smart. You say the whole system where only states are represented is archaic and needs to be changed, why? How is it archaic, because it is a couple hundred years old? Does it somehow not work? Do you actually know why only states are represented? Puerto Rico and Guam have the ability under the constitution to become states if they want to if they meet the republican government requirement and have the population necessary. You cannot belong to the United States of America unless you become a state. D.C., as the property of the federal government, as agreed to by the founding states, cannot become a state and those dumb enough to live there permanently should have realized that going in.

Do you think so?

What's this supposed to mean? Who has been going around calling Cheney an Objectivist? Is this supposed to make voting for other non-Objectivists, John Kerry and John Edwards more acceptable? I just don't get what the point of pointing out the obvious fact that Cheney isn't an Objectivist is supposed to prove? John Kerry is no Objectivist! Either is any other candidate running, don't vote! What's the point???

The fact that Al Sharpton was even allowed into the debates was a disgrace. Jess Jackson actually looked like he might do well enough to force his way into the number 2-spot on the ticket, but I believe he made his infamous "hymietown" comment about NYC during this campaign and that pretty much ended it for him. The point is we all, very correctly, point to the evil of those like Pat Robertson and Jerry Faldwell, but there are a great number of religious zealots on the left as well. Imagine the outrage in the media if a preacher ran on the Republican side and was a contender for the nomination, talk about the ultimate breach of separation of church and state.

Does anyone else like these? I just got the first season's movies, which you can get at amazon.com or a local media store. There are seven in total and they are all very good, with some good guest stars as villains. The great thing about Columbo is his ingenious use of his wits to foil all of the great and sometimes ingenious plans of the murderers he's always busting. Peter Falk is hilarious and believable as the rumpled and disorganized detective, I just think that all the ones I've seen are well done films, plausable in terms of plots, and satisfying in that Columbo gets his man ethically and through rational detective work.

Of course most people tend to forget that the Democrats have had two outspoken religious officials run for President and get lots of media attention, Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

Sorry, but I find that whole quandry amusing. Everyone thought there were weapons there, even the U.N. and France believed this was so. If we fouhgt for the oil where the hell is it, gas keeeps going up, either this supply boon hasn't materialized or demand is increasing more than all the oil we're "stealing" from Iraq. Also, we have every right to use and take the oil, to pay for our efforts in the region, I wish we would do that, but I doubt that we are.

First of all, the word Brinksmanship is a Cold War word, you use it to avoid war, because the war itself is too costly. THis isn't the situation now, no enemy, save for North Korea (and maybe France, which has nuclear weapons), has the power to deter us from destroying them, at least not yet. As Iraq and Afghanistan have shown, the wars we fight against these people aren't very costly at all, in fact they cost relatively little. We are, as you say, already under attack from Iran, there is no point in wasting time with threats to the Iranians, we should just attack them now. And a good case for preemption would be for us to invade and eliminate the regime in Syria, even though they haven't actually attacked us or event threatened us as far as I know. We have every right to destroy any and all of these regimes whenever we want to for no reason at all other than that they are slave states, not to mention engage in hostile activities towards us and our allies.

That's easy, Curly.

Holleran also makes the point that Bush is altruistic, but Kerry went out of his way in the third debate to show how altruistic he himself was, condemning Bush for not helping his neighbors enough through "works." The only way voting for Kerry would be acceptable would be if a vote for Kerry would meen a mandate for fighting a much more aggressive war, without the restrictions, a war that went immediately into Iran, and that was fought guilt-free. This is not the case. Kerry and his party have alligned themselves with Michael Moore, a man who not so long ago said there was no terrorist problem (this was after 9/11) and that Bush was using it as an excuse to steal oil, he condemned the invasion of Afghanistan!!! which he now claims to support, criticising Bush for "diverting" resources from Afghanistan to Iraq. Kerry has promised to do nothing as far as the war goes, aside from making the North Korea deal that Clinton made in 1994, except this time with Iran. He has promised to dismantle our nuclear weapons programs. He has promised to cosy up to onerous "allies" that Bush at least had the guts to eventually ignore. He, and most others, will see his victory as a clear rejection of the war and a mandate for his ideas.

I can annecdotally point to troops who think Bush is doing a fantastic job, that doesn't make them correct. This is an appeal to authority, and is thus, a fallacy. Now, some of the points they make are good and very poignant, but I fail to see how Kerry's rules of engagement in the tactics of the war, assuming he fights any wars at all, will be better. If anything they can only become more restrictive since it was the Democratic Party that came up with the rules Bush is using today, and Kerry has condemned all of the limited rules of engagement we used in Vietnam, not because they were too restrictive, but because they were reminiscent of Ghengis Khan.

He isn't interested in linking church and state, he's just interested in linking every important moral premise underlying Catholicism to his idea of the proper role of government. Are you kidding? You don't realize that the only reason England and Canada haven't entirely fallen apart is because of certain things in America which still make it profitable to engage in production, innovation, and invention. Were America to adopt all of Canada's or France's laws overnight the world would collapse within fifty years unless something changed somewhere in the direction of capitalism. America is all that keeps the world going, it was all that kept the Soviet Union going, without our intentional and unintentional help that state would have been destroyed in the 1940s, instead it existed until the early nineties. Religions, which are philosophical systems, can cause Dark Ages assuming a majority of people accept them and their political corrolaries. But Communism or "Democratic Socialism" could cause a Dark Age as well assuming a majority of people come to accept them as morally legitimate and good. Also, not all secularists are the same or have the same goals. One could call both Ayn Rand and Stalin secularists, yet would they unite around anything? Not even their common antagonism towards religion could have brought them together because while Ayn Rand saw religion for what is was, and invalid and irrational philosophical system, Stalin merely saw it as a competitor for power. Science and medicine are just as wiped out under secular communists as under religious fanatics, the means are different, not the ends. Kerry told a newspaper after he returned from Nam that American troops should never be committed to combat without the approval of the United Nations. This fact was brought up recently (though it's been out there for a while) by Dick Cheney in the VP debate. Kerry opposed the measures of Ronald Reagan in the 1980's against the Soviet Union (which were flawed and in some cases too timid), even going so far as to advocate unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United States. His comments about the current war, characterizing it as primarily a legal action, criticizing Bush for not sucking up to the U.N. and our allies enough, invoking the past as the ideal as regards terrorism, etc., all point to either an intelligence deficiency or a genuine hatred of using American military power under any circumstance. Under any circumstance because even when all of his dopey requirements were met, allies consenting, explicit U.N. sanction, even Arab participation in the 1991 Gulf War, and he still opposed using the military.

Yes but these "invasions," except for the first one, were small endeavors with no chance for success, even leaders of the country put nothing more than faint hope that somehow they would succeed. The three invasions embarked upon by the British after the first abdication of Napoleon were vast endeavors involving thousands of ground troops and hundreds of naval vessels. Nothing comparable was attempted in our invasions of Canada, except in 1812. Also, Perry's destruction of the British/Canadian fleet on the Great Lakes was another triumph that tipped the balance to the Americans.

This rapper thought it was "justice" on 9/11 because the guards at the world trade center wouldn't let street trash like him in the buildings. Yeah, this guy is a real douchebag.

Brinksmanship could only work in that situation because the real enemies in that situation, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, knew what the consequences to both would be, i.e. nuclear annihilation. When that was made clear to Krushchev he backed down. Despite how irrational the communist country was, its leaders knew they couldn't screw around beyond a certain point without risking war with the United States. This situation was created by both countries possessing the means to totally annihilate the other, therefore our options were limited, beyond stating we would take out the Cuban missiles and risk the nuclear war anyway. This is not our current situation today. No enemy country has the ability to wipe out our country with the push of a button, and therefore we don't have to worry about that scenario when we preemptively take out our enemies before they can attack us. When a country declares the whole purpose of its foreign policy is to destroy the United States and our allies then it is perfectly within our right to take that threat seriously and not stand around and wait for them to kill our citizens before we believe them, that is immoral.

I didn't really disagree with you to begin with, I was only concerned about the use of the term agression for wolves or any animal aside from a man qua man situation.

You are missing the point. In the context of what Kerry said, he was quoting scripture when the idea of "works" came up, which means he's talking religion inspired goverment programs. How is this different from or better than what Bush was talking about? It seems to me Kerry is more consistently tieing his Catholic faith in altrusim, going so far as to quote scripture to back him up, to his follow on belief in forced income redistribution and the government programs that go along with that. Kerry's word isn't worth anything as far as his pledge, untenable given his other statements, that he won't transfer his faith to people in any official way. This is so because he tied the ethics of Catholicism into his belief on the role of government quite explicitly.

"Works" is not a secular reference, it's a quote from scripture. SO, how is Kerry returning to this world when he is quoting the revealed invalid "knowledge" of the Bible as his starting point for governmental policy? Kerry then made this incredibly stupid comment, "But I also believe that because we are the United States of America, we're a country with a great, unbelievable Constitution, with rights that we afford people, that you can't discriminate in the workplace. You can't discriminate in the rights that you afford people. You can't disallow someone the right to visit their partner in a hospital. You have to allow people to transfer property, which is why I'm for partnership rights and so forth." emphasis added First of all, how devoid of knowledge of this world is Kerry when he doesn't even understand the constitution, which doesn't "afford" us rights or "allow" us to do anything? The constitution limits what the government can do and it prevents the government from violating certain inalienable rights which men have as men and which the government can neither give or take away.

Of course I did read your post, there was method to my madness of posting it over my post. I don't think the point you claim to have been trying to make came through very clearly. Again, you say "its [wolf] nature requires aggression," which I think is a mischaracterization of what happens in nature when a wolf kills a rabbit or any other animal. All carnivorous animals, including us, kill other animals to eat. We don't consider it aggression when we kill chickens, why should it be considered anything other than trying not to die when a wolf does it? Aggression is an unwarranted action to destroy in a human context. I just don't think using this particular word is helpful to understanding this issue.