I have begun to dread each coming week before the general elections. The last two weeks have brought revelations of two supposedly family values Republicans (Don Sherwood of PA and Mark Foley of FL) being anything but corrupt politicos whose values should be kept as far from my family as possible. What next? Maybe another one of the fellers from Tennessee or Michigan who was elected on representing our values is found out to be no different than Teddy Kennedy? This is the proverbial deepest cut of all....the very people who were sent there to represent our values and beliefs, values and beliefs that liberal Democrats had made a mockery of. The only difference is that the Democrats openly ridiculed our Judeao-Christian values while these corrupt Republicans did the ridicule in private while taking our votes and money in public. Maybe a GOP defeat in the House will serve well a majority that forgot why it was there and who sent them there. Nothing cleanses the soul like a large dose of well earned humility.

 

Not many things unite the two candidates for New York attorney general, except a shared legacy of immense pain from the foulest betrayal. Republican Jeanine Pirro was in the news this week as she went public with the blatant infidelity of her husband who seems to have been a serial philanderer and father of an illegitimate child. Democrat Andrew Cuomo’s life and family were torn apart a few years ago when his now ex-wife Kerry, mother of his three kids, was caught engaging in repeated adultery with a polo player. As to why Cuomo, a rather semi-intelligent lawyer of a decent background, would marry a woman whose genetics have been hard wired for adultery (Kerry Kennedy Cuomo is a granddaughter of Joseph P. and niece of John F. Kennedy), only he knows. Nobody , not even liberal Democrats, deserve the pain and devastation that adultery brings.

It is a telling expose of thoroughly confused attitudes that cracking insensitive jokes is a matter considered worthy of public condemnation and accountability, while betraying your spouse is a ‘private’ matter better left hushed up and eventually forgotten.

 

So we hear that the ever notorious Anna Nicole Smith and her lawyer exchanged ‘non-binding’ vows abroad a cruise ship. This is in the aftermath of the lawyer claiming that his famous client is pregnant with his child…(an entirely new meaning for attorney client privilege and professional ethics of lawyers). But I have got to give credit where it is due: this couple is honest in exchanging its vows. They openly admit it is not a marriage and that the vows are not binding.

Which is in stark contrast to half the people in America who get married and make a mockery of the ‘to have and to hold…till death do us part’. Marriage in our country is somewhere between a huge joke and a massive travesty. In no other instance are pledges given more solemnly, more publicly, more expensively, and less seriously.

 It is certain that Republicans will lose seats in both chambers of Congress. The only question is how many. And yet, that’s not the worst which will befall the party of Lincoln this year.

The post-mortem of these elections will register loud, screeching, knee-jerk noises of the vultures and the hyenas. These cries, to which the faint-hearted are extremely susceptible, will demand that the Republican party abandon its defense of faith, family, and freedom, at home and abroad. There will be ransom notes asking for the party to forget those who have no voice: the unborn. Pundits will spin statistics, as they always do, telling us how the GOP’s fight against terror and its stance for human rights cost it the suburbs. Blah, blah, blah. Essentially the same nonsense one heard in 1862 and 1866. The moneyed faint hearted class of believe-nothings wants to use the frustration of ordinary Americans and attendant incompetence of a few Republican leaders to pry away the raison d’etre of the Grand Old Party.

Thank God, Phyllis Schlafly is still alive and vibrant. It shall be up to the stout hearted like her and her kind to keep the GOP feet to the fire, to give the RNC a spare backbone when little people like George Pataki and Christy Whitman advocate wholesale capitulation. It will be in the wee hours of November 8, 2006 that the battle for the soul of the party will begin in earnest.

Martin Luther King Jr., said it well that the “character of a man is revealed not in times of comfort and convenience, but in moments of confusion and controversy”. That time of confusion and controversy descends on the Grand Old Party on November 8, 2006.

Will the Republican Party stay true to its character?

 

One word…a million images and a continuing attempt to reach a consensus on defining it. Some such attempts are made out of conviction and with good faith while others are tinged with a sneaky desire to let the guilty go free amidst Babel like confusion.

Terrorism.

Easy it is not to define it…for ease often requires a propensity to offend nobody. Simple, however, it is.

An individual, group, or state deliberately engaging in physically harming, by acts of violence, non-combatants for the purpose of achieving a political or policy objective.

That is how I would define terrorism today. I doubt Mr. Kofi Annan or Senor Chavez will like it. Oh well….KsReaganite can’t please everybody!

Now, one has to wonder about the antecedents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Was the man born and raised in barn? Did his mom not teach him any manners? I mean that's the conclusion I can draw given that President Chavez is an educated man and a former paratroop officer. No matter what the policy differences, a gentleman doesn't go to someone else's front porch and call the owner of the house a devil or something even half as offensive.

Criticism is one thing..being an ill mannered ignoramus is quite another.

Being another one of those linear thinking traditional males, I generally avoid any newspaper advice columns that smack of therapeutic nonsense of the Dr. Gilda- or Ask Miss Manners variety. Usually, as far as I am concerned, those snippets are written by women who have too much time on their hands and too little reality on their resumes.

Marybeth Hicks is decidedly different and refreshingly iconoclastic. Okay, I admit it..her Washington Times column "But Then Again.." has lately become an addiction for me. You can find it at http://marybethhicks.com/frameset.html as well. This woman writes from the heart: the heart of a savvy professional, a mother, a wife, a woman of faith, who  genuinely enjoys in a lighthearted manner what she does in a given day or week or month. A lot of her weekly musings about the antics of her household of six brings back nostalgic memories of my own childhood and parents (and I am sure it will for many others as well).

No pontificating, no glamorizing, no feel good advice...just plain normal living with its ups and downs in Marybeth Hicks' columns. If you miss, like I do, television shows like Family Ties, read about the trials and tribulations of Marybeth Hicks and her brood. Fair warning...do not be sipping a drink while reading because the chuckling and laughter is likely to cause spills.

One of the most decent and downright honorable men I have known in my life is Steven Anthimedes. A second generation Greek American small businessman still in his mid twenties, the young man is the epitome of the little things that have made and continue to make ours the greatest civilization on the planet. He's the guy you can call at 3.00 am and tell your woes; he is the fellow who wouldn't bat an eyelash before coming over to pick up a buddy too inebriated to drive; he is the neighbor who cheerfully mows the lawn for the elderly lady down the street. I have known him since he was a teenager and am proud to call him a friend and a brother who lives up daily to his (and mine) fraternity's credo of being a man 'who thinks of the rights and feelings of others rather than his own'. And so, when the Republican party called on him to do the almost impossible, he did not think twice.....men whose ancestors came from the land of Pericles and Leonidas know a thing or two about duty.

You see, Steve is running in a reliably Democratic district against the entrenched number two Democrat in the Kansas House of Representaitves, Representative Jim Ward. Mr. Ward is an extreme liberal lawyer whose main claim to fame has been as the chief lesgislative obstructionist for the extreme liberal Democrat Governor Kathleen Sebelius. Representative Ward's toadying has been rewarded amply from the governor's bulging coffers filled with money from the trial lawyers and the national abortion industry. And as Mr. Ward is busy picking up PAC checks from the governor's ultra-liberal and labor union buddies, Steve is knocking on the doors of his neighbors sharing with them his commonsense Kansas ideas about a safer state, stronger families, and lower taxes. I don't know who will win the race in the district but Mr. Ward will no longer be getting the free ride has enjoyed for a long time.

While courage is a commodity in rather limited supply amongst scared Republicans this year, it is abundant in a Southeast Wichita district where a young man with convictions is taking on a well financed stooge of the liberal special interests in Topeka.

It is well said that evil triumphs only because good men choose to do nothing. That, my friends, is certainly not the case in Wichita, Kansas this year!

To my friend and brother  Steve..a hearty PHI ALPHA!!!

To all my readers, wish my buddy well and say a prayer for him please!

One of the possible candidates for 2008 still under the radar screen is my own Senator Sam Brownback. I say that not only because he is my senator, but because he has most of the strengths that other favorites do, without carrying their ugly baggage. That Sam is still under the radar screen is largely due to his own dimunitive, humble personality.

Personal: The man has been married only once, has procreated children only with his wife, and she is the only ladylove in his life (these days quite a rarity amongst politicians). Definitely not an ethically challenged man like the former mayor of Gotham. A soft-spoken former law professor who has two adopted children as well, Brownback is quite the genuine poster-child for personal and social rectitude. His personality is such that I am yet to find a Democrat in this state (and I know many) who does not like the man after meeting him in person. That Reaganesque quality makes many Democrats here afraid of him, I have been told by several. Brownback is an impossible guy to dislike!

Money: The man is married into money (the wife is from the wealthy Stouffer family) but his genuine ability to connect one-to-one (people in Kansas insist on that from politicians) makes him a very good fundraiser. I have seen him in action....I had the privilege of being his chauffer for a day during one of his earlier campaigns stops in my city when he was running the first time for the Senate.

Politics: Unabashedly, but very humbly, a leader of the right-to-life movement in Congress and a champion of free trade, anti-ballistic missile defense, compassionate welfare, global religious freedoms, comprehensive immigration reform, and the right to bear arms. In other words, a follower of Ronald Reagan's principled, optimistic, hope and growth agenda. In other words, he is no 'compromise on anything' McCain and he is no 'believe in nothing' Pataki.

Watch out for this man....he could be our next President. Plus it's time again for a Kansan to be in the White House anyway. The last time it happened, I wasn't even born...so I'd like to see that.

Two weeks ago, the United States House passed a bill prohibiting the slaughter of horses for human consumption. It was the humane and decent thing to do. Horses, like dogs, have been the best friends of men since the beginning of time. Most Democrats, along with almost all Republicans, voted for the measure. The sheer hypocricy of the Democrats struck me again: not one of them protested about imposing their sense of morality on those strange ones who may think that horse-flesh is a delicacy.

And what does it say about a person who thinks that slaughtering horses is horrible and should be illegal but killing children is an 'unfortunate' choice that must be legal at all costs?

What does it say about a society that rightly shudders at the notion of killing horses but celebrates the killing of the most helpless child as a hallmark of individual autonomy?

The mealy mouth attitude amongst policymakers and opinion-makers is certainly not an isolated phenomena in our contemporary culture. Even in the supposedly competitive corporate world, it is increasingly difficult for executives to say something substantive. Someone I know closely is blessed to be working for a very good, caring, and community oriented company (lets call it ABC Inc) but even here sometimes one has to wonder if political correctness is the newest religion. On a recent project, he asked for certain key files from a client's pointperson two and a half months prior to the completion date of the project. Well, twenty four hours prior to that deadline, his company had STILL not received the completed files; this was after reminding this pointperson every week to send them to ABC Inc. This kind of behavior affected every aspect of the project and took its toll not only on on ABC personnel and that of ABC's client's but also some of their endpoint customers. So what was the post-project observation of the management? Well, there were some "communication issues" and they understood that my friend felt "a little frustrated".

Communication issues?? No, there was sheer and outright negligence on part of an individual or two at ABC's client's business which could have potentially affected ABC's liability and that of the endpoint customer.

Frustrated?? No, frustrated is when you're waiting in line at a DMV office to see some uncaring bureaucrat. This was more like a you gotta be kidding.

I wish three words were absolutely removed from the corporate vocabulary..communication, issues, and frustration. This troika of words has become the first tool in the arsenal of avoidance. Every case of negligence or shortcoming can be explained away by 'communication' (how is rudeness or negligence on one person's part a communication problem with anybody else anyway?).Every major failing is an 'issue' rather than a problem to be solved and accountability to be established. Every serious greivance is considered a frustration, a patronizing description which bespeaks a lazy desire to make everything go away.

It's a pity because there was once a time that singularly amongst the Western world, Americans were known to be the most plain spoken. Now, it seems we speak Kerrylingo even in the halls of our commerce.

 

I was pouring my second cup of coffee that Tuesday morning, watching some special report about New York…and ended up watching live in horror the second plane slam into the Towers. And I had been in the Towers less than two weeks before that, visiting the Windows restaurant and strolling past the esplanade. As we found out later, three of my then company’s own employees perished at the WTC that day.

The war must go on, not because of the past 9/11 but to assure that another does not happen. The dead cannot be brought to live, but those alive must be kept far, far away from such horrendous deaths.

Will we win this long, drawn out war of attrition against a shadowy, sinewy, intelligent, and motivated enemy? That depends largely on our staying power. Since the end of the Second World War, it is said that we have become a selfish society unwilling to sacrifice too much for too long. Others have mocked us as an impatient society addicted to fast food and fast divorces. Are we a society like that indeed? Upon that answer will rest the ultimate fate of this long war on terror.

One of my favorite regular readers, a most delightful lady from South Carolina, made the pertinent observation that my blog posts, while thematically principled, suffered from being occasionally judgmental. I take that observation with good grace and seriousness and will strive to be less harsh in my reflections on others. For it is well said in the Scriptures that we all fall short of the glory of God. I am no exception. Many times in my life I have realized powerfully that 'but for the Grace of God, there go I'.

I hope my readers understand that while often rhetoric blurs the line, my contention is with the deeds of others, not the others as human beings. The fundamental dignity of the human being is a gift granted by the Creator at the inception of life and nothing can take that away. Hence, like true conservatives I do subscribe to the notion that basic respect due to human dignity is immanent regardless of a person's state or status...born or unborn, white or black, woman or man, saint or sinner. Those whose dishonesty, silence, and foul deeds harm others are not worthy of respect as good people...but they are still human beings and children of God and thus entitled to that basic dignity. As a conservative and a man of faith, I cannot believe otherwise.

Neither ethics nor empirical evidence seems to bother the Beltway fellas running the National Republican Senate Committee or the Republican National Committee. The former is busy bashing a Republican (Laffey in RI) in ads and the latter is actively supporting the Democrat-turned-Independent Lieberman over his Republican opponent in CT. These kind of bizarre infighting tactics were common amongst Democrats not too long ago...now the GOP has adopted them in the spirit of unprincipled bi-partisanship.

If principles or the concept of loyalty doesn't bother the latte-sipping, Washington Post reading, moderate image craving Beltway Republicans, at least evidence should. All the money and big guns couldn't help the believe-nothing incumbent GOP Congressman Joe Schwartz in Michigan last month. The same fate befell the Establishment-anointed Jeff Crank in Colorado that same week. It has been well said since time immemorial that those who stand for nothing, fall for anything. Is that the fate that NRSC and RNC are courting this fall?

Why do so many otherwise decent conservative staffers start going pink the moment they get to Washington, DC?

 Just remembered a merciless, but hardly inaccurate in the context of time, comment that a New York preacher made about the Democratic Party on the eve of the 1876 election. He called it, among other things, the party of "Rum, Ruin, and Rebellion"...recalling the party's  efforts to relax state liquor control laws and its contribution to the ruin caused by the then recently concluded War of the Rebellion.

I think today it'll be apt to call the national Democrats the party of "Drugs, Divorce, and Defeat". Recreational drug use, easy divorce, and defeatism abroad seem to be the defining creedo of the liberal Democratic philosophers of the current generation.