Wolfgang von Skeptik

Three Uneasy Pieces

I AM SOMEWHAT HANDICAPPED this morning: two of the three subjects I intend to write about require links to registration-only publications, for which I apologize in advance. From stories in The Los Angeles Times (registration required) and The San Francisco Chronicle (open access) come some ominous indications under-30 voters are an increasingly unknown quantity that could give the Bush Campaign a nasty surprise on November 2. Meanwhile, the New York Times Magazine has published a detailed portrait of John Kerry that will probably do Kerry more harm than good – decidedly surprising in a publication so vociferously anti-Bush – but once again, registration is required to link to the article. My third topic this morning is the flu vaccine debacle – a deadly example of what is wrong with outsourcing – but that link, to Michelle Malkin’s blog, is also open-access.

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The LA Times says the draft-resumption rumor has acquired such a life of its own it lives on despite denials by both Bush and Kerry. The Times discloses that Rock the Vote has sent fake draft notices to 640,000 e-mail addresses as part of its get-out-the-vote campaign, prompting clearly justified Republican charges that the group has violated its non-partisan status and is openly advancing the agenda of the pacifist Left. The LAT story, here, also reports that about half the 18-29 age cohort believes (probably because of the ongoing chaos in Iraq) that a draft is inevitable if Bush is re-elected. But the joker in this particular deck is The Chronicle’s report that cell-phone use by the 18-29 group means their views are under-counted by pollsters. In other words, opposition to the hypothetical draft (and thus support for Kerry) may be higher than the pollsters have been able to document. This unnerving analysis is available here. Combine these facts with nearly 70 percent opposition to compulsory military service under any circumstances – proof positive the 18-29 generation has become so selfishly, cravenly hostile it does not think America is worth defending (see "Slouching Toward Dhimmitude," Oct. 4) – and I for one see in these facts the potential of a very unpleasant election-day evening.

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Two of the most Kerry-damning quotes I have read anywhere appear in The New York Times Magazine portrait of Kerry by Matt Bai. Alas, as I noted above, registration is required – but the piece, entitled “Kerry’s Undeclared War,” is well worth reading, for it makes the differences between Bush and Kerry vividly clear. It is linked here.

The first quote confirms the view (held by many, including myself) that Kerry wants to reduce the war to a pre-9/11-type law-enforcement operation, essentially reverting to the failed policy of the Clinton Administration:

When I asked Kerry what it would take for Americans to feel safe again, he displayed a much less apocalyptic worldview. ''We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance,'' Kerry said. ''As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.''

Bottom line, Kerry truly does regard Islam’s 14-century war on civilization as a mere crime problem – a stance I believe makes him patently unfit to be a wartime president.

The second quote reveals as nothing I have ever seen the true Michael-Moore, Americans-are-hopelessly-stupid arrogance of the Democratic Party’s inner circle:

When I asked Kerry's campaign advisers about these poll numbers, what I heard from some of them in response was that Kerry's theories on global affairs were just too complex for the electorate and would have been ignored -- or, worse yet, mangled -- by the press. ''Yes, he should have laid out this issue and many others in greater detail and with more intellectual creativity, there's no question,'' one adviser told me. ''But it would have had no effect.''

This is, of course, a common Democratic refrain: Republicans sound more coherent because they see the world in such a rudimentary way, while Democrats, 10 steps ahead of the rest of the country, wrestle with profound policy issues that don't lend themselves to slogans. By this reasoning, any proposal that can be explained concisely to voters is, by definition, ineffective and lacking in gravitas...

Any party this outrageously hostile toward its constituency deserves rejection by a landslide.

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The last item I am going to wrestle with this morning is the flu-vaccine horror. I was hoping to find a comprehensive analysis of it somewhere – a piece detailed enough to provide me at least the illusion I understand what went wrong. Malkin, available here (scroll down to “Something To Think About When You Get The Flu This Winter”), attributes the ultimately deadly disaster to government price controls – but that does not address the infinite folly of outsourcing the production. Perhaps the culpable officials don’t believe we are at war. Or perhaps – since this is the same nation that during the Clinton years shut down all but one of its ordnance plants and thus recently had to outsource the production of 5.56mm and 7.62 mm ball ammunition merely to keep up with the wartime demand – the officials simply don’t give a damn. Or maybe they are exceptionally dense – so much so they haven’t yet learned one of the basic lessons of World War II: the longer the supply line, the more vulnerable it is to enemy action.

Verily, outsourcing will be the death of us all.

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I apologize if I seem a bit out of sorts. The chore of unpacking from my forced move into the city is yet unfinished, and late Sunday night – hauling two heavy boxes of tools out of a closet so I could sort the tools into their proper domains – I rather painfully wrenched my back. Thus sitting at this keyboard is not much fun. I’ll do some Yoga before I go to bed; tomorrow will no doubt be a better day.

Posted by Loren at October 11, 2004 05:52 AM