Texas Conservative

Hasn’t anyone considered that Kerry would need a draft a lot more than Bush? Bush is very popular among current military personnel (he stands to get 75% to 80% of the military vote), and the various branches are currently meeting recruitment goals. In contrast, Kerry is reviled by about 95% of those who served directly with him because he pissed all over them with false accusations of atrocities merely to promote his own political ambitions. Who the hell would volunteer to serve under such a commander in chief?

In fact, this is very much in line with what I learned today from talking with a student who has friends in the armed forces. It is no secret that the men and women of the military find Kerry despicable, and apparently there are many who say that if he is elected they will not reenlist. Assuming he would be unable to make up for these losses with French and German soldiers, it is at least as reasonable to suppose that Kerry would reinstate the draft as it is to suggest that the president might.

Had Lincoln lost the 1864 vote, a victorious General McClellan would have settled for an American continent divided, with slavery intact. Without Woodrow Wilson's reelection in 1916 — opposed by the isolationists — Western Europe would have lost millions only to be trampled by Prussian militarism. Franklin Roosevelt's interventionism saved liberal democracy. And without the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan and his unpopular agenda for remaking the military, the Soviet Union might still be subsidizing global murder.

This election marks a similar crossroads in our history. We are presented with two radically different candidates with profound disagreements about how to conduct a historic worldwide war. We should remember that all our victorious past presidents were, at the moments of their crises, deeply unpopular precisely because they chose the difficult, long-term sacrifice for victory over the expedient and convenient pleas for accommodation (if not outright capitulation). We are faced with just such an option today: a choice between a president whose call for patience and sacrifice promises victory, and a pessimist stirring the people with the assurances that we should not have fought, and now cannot win, the present war in Iraq.

John Kerry is actually an old family friend of mine. In fact, growing up, I knew him as my beloved "Uncle John."

I have a scrapbook I keep of my Uncle John. It has many treasured memories.

One of the oldest items I have is a Christmas card from Uncle John. It's from 1969, when I was barely two years old. I even saved the envelope it came in - I was fascinated by the Cambodian stamp and postmark on it, even at that age.

A few pages later in the book is a postcard from the early 70's. It features the Eiffel Tower on it, and it is signed by "Cmdr. John F. Kerry USNR)." He also sent me the autographs of several North Vietnamese officials Uncle John was good enough to collect for me.

Last time I checked, women can say anything they damn well please in the United States of America. I know that isn't the case everywhere in the world, but here in our country, you can say what you want and be heard. Just look at the internet and blogosphere, public TV, radio talk shows, etc.

It doesn't do justice at all to the screamfest that took place, but you'll get the idea if you imagine O'Donnell chopping at the air with a rhetorical hatchet a la Jack Nicholson in The Shining ...

U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

An investigation by The Washington Times reveals that while the candidate did talk for an unspecified period to at least a few members of the panel, no such meeting, as described by Mr. Kerry on a number of occasions over the past year, ever occurred.

At the second presidential debate earlier this month, Mr. Kerry said he was more attuned to international concerns on Iraq than President Bush, citing his meeting with the entire Security Council.

"This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable," Mr. Kerry said of the Iraqi dictator.

Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in December 2003, Mr. Kerry explained that he understood the "real readiness" of the United Nations to "take this seriously" because he met "with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."

But of the five ambassadors on the Security Council in 2002 who were reached directly for comment, four said they had never met Mr. Kerry. The four also said that no one who worked for their countries' U.N. missions had met with Mr. Kerry either.

You’re a Republican???

In today’s America, ask a growing number of high school and college students; their teachers and professors; the self-anointed media elite and/or hard working men and women of all ethnicities, the question, “What is a Republican?”, and you’ll be told “… a rich, greedy, egotistical individual, motivated only by money and the desire to accumulate more and more of it, at the expense of the environment … the working poor ….and all whom they exploit…”

I am a Republican … I am none of those things… and I don’t know any Republicans who are.

[...]

WHAT I AM … is a man who feels the need to spend, $104, 655.60,(tax paid) of his own money, to purchase this advertisement, in order to set the story straight. Some may say this money would have been better spent feeding the world’s poor. At the risk of sounding self-serving, as an American and as a Republican, for the last six decades of my life, I have done exactly that… and more. Following the examples of my parents and grand parents, I have used my earnings to feed the poor, shelter the homeless, provide housing for the elderly and medical care for the sick….. and continue to do so… and I’m not alone in that work.

WHAT I AM … is someone who is paying for this announcement, at my sole expense, in hopes of opening the eyes of those led blindly by ill-informed elements of our great nation, who, through either ignorance, or malicious intent, repeatedly attack and belittle those of us who belong to a political party that holds true to the belief, “… the rights of the governed, exceed the power of the government”. For those interested, I am speaking only as a tax-paying individual who is in no way associated with The Republican National Committee, nor with any of its directors, or delegates.

The centerpiece of John Kerry's foreign policy is to rebuild our alliances so the world will come to our aid, especially in Iraq. He repeats this endlessly because it is the only foreign policy idea he has to offer. The problem for Kerry is that he cannot explain just how he proposes to do this. . . .

He really does want to end America's isolation. And he has an idea how to do it. For understandable reasons, however, he will not explain how on the eve of an election.

Think about it: What do the Europeans and the Arab states endlessly rail about in the Middle East? What (outside of Iraq) is the area of most friction with U.S. policy? What single issue most isolates America from the overwhelming majority of countries at the United Nations?

The answer is obvious: Israel.

In what currency, therefore, would we pay the rest of the world in exchange for their support in places such as Iraq? The answer is obvious: giving in to them on Israel.

No Democrat will say that openly. But anyone familiar with the code words of Middle East diplomacy can read between the lines.

Kerry's belief in working with allies runs so deep that he has maintained that the loss of American life can be better justified if it occurs in the course of a mission with international support. In 1994, discussing the possibility of U.S. troops being killed in Bosnia, he said, "If you mean dying in the course of the United Nations effort, yes, it is worth that. If you mean dying American troops unilaterally going in with some false presumption that we can affect the outcome, the answer is unequivocally no."

Is John Kerry just too weird to be president?

John Kerry is the ’60s peace activist who brags about his combat experience in Vietnam.

John Kerry is the anti-war candidate who voted to go to war in Iraq. He’s the “internationalist” who believes we should only use force after passing a global test, but who voted against the first Gulf War and its international coalition.

John Kerry is the Catholic who believes life begins at conception, but who supports partial birth abortion. He’s the ACLU liberal who fears the influence of the Christian Right, but spends his Sundays campaigning from the pulpits of black churches.

John Kerry is the life-long advocate of gun control who never misses a chance to wave a shotgun over his head, even when it’s a style of shotgun he’s voted to ban.

John Kerry is the guy who says the wealthy don’t pay enough in taxes, but who paid just 12.5 percent in federal income taxes last year. The average working American family paid around 20 percent.

And that’s just the political John Kerry — the John Kerry who speaks French while campaigning in Florida. The personal John Kerry is even more bizarre.

•Bush/Cheney — 296

•Kerry/Edwards — 242