The Gantry Launchpad

Ohio Issue 1: NO!

As I hinted in my previous post, I'm going to vote for Bush next week.

I strongly support Bush's work against islamofascism. But while I'm voting for Bush, I'm neither a conservative nor a Republican. I'm just picking those guys for national representation. There's a fair number of conservative/GOP positions with which I do not agree.

One of them is gay marriage. Now, I opposed the Massachutsetts descision, but that's because I can't stand judges who seem to think constitutions were written in pencil. I'm pretty libertarian on this one; let's let folks sort things out for themselves, shall we?

But there's always someone, isn't there? I just found out last week that Issue #1 on Ohio's ballot this fall proposes to amend Ohio's constitution to specify marriage as between one man and one woman. The wording is intimidating:

Be it Resolved by the People of the State of Ohio:

That the Constitution of the State of Ohio be amended by adopting a section to be designated as Section 11 of Article XV thereof, to read as follows:

"Article XV, Section 11. Only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this state and its political subdivisions. This state and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage.

(emphasis added)
Note that this wording would even prohibit civil unions.

Now -originally- I intended to put up a short, incisive, well-reasoned argument against the proposed amendment, but we're past that. If you're for it, then so be it. I'm speaking to the more relaxed folks out there:

Excuse my language, but this amendment is just bullshit.

I'm betting that many folks, like me, didn't even know the issue was on the ballot for next week. What I want to do is jump up on the roof and shout out that we have to defeat this amendment.

Screw that. We don't want to defeat it; we want to beat it to death with a big rock, drive a stake thru its atrophied heart, and bury the very idea under a big landfill; by such a large margin that the next goober who tries to mess with the personal lives of this great state will be ridiculed into oblivion.

Tell your friends, email your pen-pals. Log on to your favorite blog and tell them about this; urge the author to link here (or elsewhere) so that we can politically obliterate this.

For those who consider conservative Ohio to be full of whacky homophobics, I offer the following:
-The Cincinnati Post says no
-The Cincinnati Enquirer says no
-Governor Bob Taft is agin' it
-so is Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro
-both Republican US Senators, Mike DeWine and George Voinovich say nay

Go here for more information.

Just Vote

The past couple weeks have been a bear, but y'all don't want to know about my personal problems. :)

Sgt. Hook has posted a link to a letter from a man who lost his son in Afghanistan, about the slogan "vote Bush, or stay home." Read it.

I think my own preferences for the White House are obvious, but that's not the point, here. The point is that every one of you has the moral resposibility to vote.

Returns from early voting in Georgia tend to indicate a record turnout, even though that state is pretty much red. Here's hoping the rest of the country follows suit.

Many people are praying the same thing: "Please, God, don't let it be a close one!!"

Amen, brothers and sisters!

Eye candy

It seems to be the thing to do these days, so in celebration of my recent recovery, here's a screenshot of my desktop....

Enjoy...

"Arf!" says Sandy

I have before quoted and linked to the lovely and talented Ambra Nykol.

There's a reason for that. I mean, she is lovely, and -well...- talented. At least, I wish I were that judicious, balanced, and well-spoken at that age. And I know she's still got me beat on style... ;)

But there's another reason: she's a political/fashion trend-setter.

I mean, who else in the blogosphere could wear a hot pink "Bush" t-shirt, and still look cool?

Yeppers, smart, sexy, sassy, and expressive: that's Ambra... Heh.

Is it the wrong messenger?

In reply to my last post, Democratic Contempt, fellow blogger Mark Adams said that I had the "Right message," but the "wrong messenger lynched." He then asked a very good question:

Why do we abhor the same things but believe that the source is on the other side of the fense? I know I'm correct and you know you're right. The evil we see is the same. What gives?

Ok. That's two questions. :) Still, good ones. I decided to put up my reply in new post.

---

Well, Mark, in this case my first impulse is to point out the Democratic obsession with the Florida 2000 election, and all the "selected, not elected" horseturds ejected about it ever since. :)

Then there's the hysteria about the "Republican Attack Machine^tm," but it's the Democrats who have called their opponents "Digital Brownshirts," claimed that the President has "betrayed" this country, and said -flat out- that anyone who votes for Bush is "out of their minds." Just to name a few examples.

Oh, and then there's the rash of attacks, shootings, and break-ins lately as well. All on Republian offices.

And the GOP hasn't literally embraced a dishonest demagoge such as Michael Moore. We can disagree, and argue about, whether Bush "had a plan," "not enough soldiers," and so on, but what Moore puts out is just vicious slander.

I agree that there are issues which should be discussed. The PATRIOT act, for example. (BTW, before the Donks start flogging the Derms about that one, recall that the act passed unanimously, thankyouvermuch! {g}) Even the ACLU has calmed down to the point where they admit that certain parts of PATRIOT have turned out to be useful, but that the bill -as it stands- is flawed, and should be objectively reviewed.

I have no problem with this. In fact, I've always viewed PATRIOT with far more suspicion than -for example- Dean Esmay has (at least from his comments), since quite a bit of the provisions are from a huge wish-list that different law agencies have been working on for years. I also think that the entire TSA is a massive cluster-fuck, and should be jettisoned ASAP. After that we should hire the security folks from El Al for direction.

I also think that we should raise two more active-duty divisions. Not because "we don't have enough troops in Iraq," but because I estimate that those troops will be there for at least 3-5 years. We need the strategic reserve.

I just hope that Democrats who keep yelling about "not enough troops," and the guys who repeat Kerry's slogan about 40,000 more troops (not a bad goal; that's approximately two divisions), remember that those new divisions will add billions more to the defense budget.

And maybe, (God forbid!) we should start talking about cutting some parts of the federal cancer? Hm?

But no, Mark, from what I've seen, the worst of it the past few years has come from the Democratic Party, from their refuse to accept the decision of a disputed election, from their cavalier treatement of local elections (can you say "Torricelli?" I knew you could!), to the marshalling of legions of lawyers weeks in advance of the presidential elections, and the actual invitation of the freaking UN to "monitor" the election.

In other words, the Democrats respect neither the voters nor their decisions.

UPDATE: I really should give Michael Moore credit for -once in his life- doing the right thing. Moore actually turned down the Ra^thergate memos, because he couldn't verify them, and that they sounded "too good to be true." Good on ya, Mike! Now lay off the freakin' doughnuts... Heh.

Democratic contempt

You can take the title two ways: contempt for Democracy, or the contempt that current Democrats have for our system.

Either way, Stephen Green solidly nails the issue to the wall for everyone to see:

Democracy is the free market of political systems. And like any free market, it can't function without some basic level of trust. That trust comes, slowly, from hammering out rules even competitors can live with. That trust comes, with difficulty, by honoring those rules, even when your candidate doesn't win. That trust exists in relatively few places around the world.

That, my friends, is why I'm voting Republican this year: because too many Democrats -especially the party leaders, movers, and shakers- have bought into the "Worst. President. Ever." and by any means neccessary dogma they've been spewing for years. They really do believe that the ends justify the means, and that's a frightening thing.

If you don't ask me, ask the people who survived the Terror.

One of the enduring lessons of the French Revolution, and the ensuing Terror, is that the incorrupt leaders of a Republic can wreck the rule of law as well as any tyrant, especially when they do so from the highest of motives.

Casey's Rule for Idealism: any person or group who thinks that they are above the law is a threat to the rule of law, and the Republic.

There's a certain kind of leftie who enjoys twitting Southerners; never mind why; and that kind of leftie displays a marked preference for outspoken bumper-stickers. One of the more popular ones has a message for Dixie: "You lost. Get over it."

Excellent advice, I think, for everyone, the day after an election.

Correction

In my previous entry, Just what is a diversion, anyway?, I attributed to Dale Eddy a quote which stated that FDR "premptively" declared war on Germany.

It turns out that this is not the case, and I had mis-read Dale's original post.

I've corrected that entry, and my apologies to Dale.

Just what is a diversion, anyway?

AKA: "The Wrong War, at the Wrong Place, etc."

Recently, on Dean's World, Dale Eddy said cited a quotation that Germany and Italy declared war on America after FDR had "preemptively declared war on Germany and Italy."

This turns out not to be the case. Germany, followed by Italy, declared war on the US on December 11. Congress returned the favor that afternoon.

What is interesting is that -as Dean observed in the above comment thread- the United States had agreed with Great Britain (before the US became a belligerent) that Germany was the primary foe. In other words, the US and the UK had agreed that Germany would be the primary objective of Allied strategy.

The reasoning behind that priority was quite simple: Germany was an advanced industrialized power controlling most of the European continent at the time. Recall that Europe was (and is) one of the leading industrial regions of the world. On the other hand, Japan -while increasing her industrial base many times over- possessed merely a fraction of that capability. Simply put, Germany was, by any measure, the stronger foe.

Conclusion: destroy Japan, and Germany is unaffected. Destroy Germany, and the world is free to obliterate Japan.

So yes, we began our conquest of Japan in North Africa. What is not generally known is that there was, at the time, a lot of very elemental disagreement amongst the Allies about how we should go about that. The British Empire wanted North Africa, while a large part of the American military establishment wanted to directly invade Germany. Preferably in 1942.

We should also recall contemporary circumstances of that year: among other problems, the US Navy was just about completely unprepared for convoy duty. They had concentrated on building capital ships (battleships, carriers, cruisers, destroyers) with meager funds provided during the 20s and 30s, with the assumption that smaller craft classes could be quickly improvised during wartime. It proved to be a costly mistake. German U-boats experienced their greatest successes in the first half of 1942, along the US eastern seaboard; they called that period "the happy time."

If the Republicans had mimicked the modern Democratic Party, they would have roasted FDR for sending our sailors off to die in unprotected (or barely protected) convoys, for not giving them the tools they needed (destroyer escorts, escort carriers, corvettes, and so on) ahead of time, lying to the American people ("I'm not going to send American boys into any foreign wars"), and being diverted from the main enemy: Japan!

We also need to recall that, at the time, the only armies in contact with Germany were Great Britain (in North Africa) and the USSR., and the convoys to the USSR were taking a terrible beating. One convoy - PQ-17 -lost 22 out of 33 ships in July 1942. Still "But Russia, demanding more, had mobilized left-wing opinions in England and the United States behind the cry, "A second front --Now!" (SE Morison, The Two-Ocean War)

In other words: the administration wasn't prepared, rushed to war with "shoot on sight" orders to US Navy vessels in 1941, refused to use multi-lateral diplomacy to defuse the Pacific crisis (caused, I might add, by the United States aggressive unilateral action in freezing Japanese assets in America), and would not focus on those who had attacked us: Japan.

At the time (early to mid-1942) Great Britain didn't have the resources for a new theater of war, and the United States was -literally- just getting started. The British, therefore, had a strong influence on war aims. In this case, they refused to countenance an invasion of Europe in 1942. From their point of view, spring 1943 would be the earliest realistic time frame.

But here's the thing: the Americans (as I said above) wanted to mount an invasion of Europe in 1942. The British flatly refused:

"The Joint Chiefs of Staff, especially Admiral King and General Marshall, felt that if the British would not set a firm date for a major invasion of Europe, we were entitled to renege on the 'Beat Germany First' decision of 1941, to stop preparing for an invasion that might never take place, and concentrate on the Pacific war.

...

Not only MacArthur, but King, Marshall, and Secretary Stimson strongly opposed the launching of a North African invasion in 1942, as certain to divert and absorb men, ships, aircraft, and materiel that would postpone the direct cross-Channel assault indefinitely."(The Two-Ocean War, p. 221.)

Does any of this sound familiar, yet? It took the direct intervention of FDR, against the advice of the Commander in Chief, United States Fleet Admiral King, General Marshall, and Secretary of War Stimson, to direct that invasion of North Africa would take place.

There is, in fact, to this day a school of thought which claims that we wasted time, resources, and lives, with a "diversion" into North Africa, then Italy. They claim that a cross-Channel invasion in 1942 or early 1943 would have saved tens of thousands of lives, and significantly shortened the war. What this school has never explained is how the Allied armies would have developed the battle experience to meet, and beat, the best of the Wehrmacht; how they would have defeated the U-boat menace a year earlier than actually happened; or how they would have dealt with a still-powerful German Air Force in 1943. Recall that in a single mission over Germany in October 1943, the Eighth Air Force lost over sixty B-17 bombers over Germany during the Schweinfurt raid.

Now, lets scroll back just a tad, and recall the reasoning behind the "Germany First" decision: destroy Japan, and Germany is unaffected. Destroy Germany, and the world is free to obliterate Japan. Jump forward to today, then examine the following proposition:

destroy Al Queda, and Islamofascism is unaffected. Destroy Islamofascism , and the world is free to obliterate Al Queda.

Food for thought...

Novus ordo seclorum

The accepted translation from the Latin is A new order of the ages.

A rather appropriate ageis, I think, for the first democratic election in Afghanistan.

As the United States obsesses over last night's presidential debate, and the incessant wrangling over Iraq, a small miracle has slipped under the mainstream media radar: Afghanis are voting for their first representative government.

While we're talking about it, here's another small miracle the MSM missed: 13 million eligble voters registered, out of 28 million people.

The first corallary of that statement is that -obviously- quite a few women registered.

Since some of the ballots will be transferred from Hindu Kush voting stations via mule, the final result won't be known until late October; but we know who cast the first vote: the young lady -and science student- Moqadasa Sidiq.

Is it too soon to nominate Ms. Sidiq as the 21st Century's new Lady Liberty?

A tool for everyone!

Now here's something which should be on every blogger's list of links:

The U.S. Constitution Online.

You can read the Constitution as plain text, or with (excellent) hyper-links, and views for kids of different ages.

They have a balanced and intereresting discussion of the current marriage debate as well.

This, my friends, is the sort of chewy goodness that the internet was made for! Highy recommended.

To Every Thing

...there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

And in the heavens. Barely 24 hours ago, SpaceShip One made history as the worlds first civilian spacecraft.

Yesterday marks another milestone: pioneer Mercury autronaut "Gordo" Cooper died at home on Monday, October 4, in his Ventura, California home.

If you recall, in the movie The Right Stuff screenwriters Philip Kaufman and Tom Wolfe had Gordon Cooper characterize himself as "the best pilot in the world." You could probably say that of any of the Mercury Seven.

It's almost as if he had been waiting for the pilots at Scaled Composites to join the club, before he left it...

Rest In Peace, Gordo; and may you fly high forever.

You can find Gordon Cooper's bio here.

UPDATE: Dean Esmay pointed out that I mixed up the nicknames for "Gus" Grissom and "Gordo" Cooper; and is my face red right now. Fixed.

The Truth...

A long time ago, a man once asked "What is truth?"

The answer was debated pretty vigorously the next two thousand years...

Most of the time, I prefer discussing facts, over "truth". Or the lack thereof.

In this case, The Truth About Iraq.

From Blackfive:

Steven [Moore] was in Bagdad for nine months, from July of last year through April of this year, doing about a dozen polls and seventy focus groups, and advising Ambassador Bremer on Iraqi public opinion.

Since returning from Iraq, Steven was disgusted with how the media was portraying events in Iraq and thoroughly nauseated by Michael Moore (who has never been to Iraq) and the lies that he is propagating. So, Steven started The Truth About Iraq.org where he uses some of the polling information from Iraq to debunk some of the myths that have been created by the media.

As the saying goes, read the rest.

What impresses me about Moore's work is that TruthAboutIraq.org actually backs up specific claims with specific fact. And links...

An excerpt from their homepage:

Welcome to The Truth About Iraq.org! The more than forty countries that comprise the Coalition Forces have done a great service to the Iraqi people, the American people and the world by deposing one of the most brutal and prolific killers in history.

Our goal is to help the American people better understand the situation in Iraq through sources other than the mainstream media - public opinion research, statistical analysis and personal accounts.

No snippy comments about moonbats; no "cut'n'run" sarcasm. Just a calm measured, and honest exploration of what's really going on over there.

This site should be in the toolbox of every blogger who supports the war.