Republicus

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door." The Statue of Liberty (P.S. Please be so kind as to enter through the proper channels and in an orderly fashion)

Name:
Location: Arlington, Virginia, United States

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

BREAKING NEWS: He's No Lance Armstrong



GLENEAGLES, Scotland — President Bush collided with a local police officer and fell during a bike ride on the grounds of the Gleneagles golf resort while attending a meeting of world leaders Wednesday.

Bush suffered "mild to moderate" scrapes on his hands and arms that required bandages by the White House physician, said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. The accident occurred on asphalt, McClellan said. It was raining lightly at the time, and Bush was wearing a helmet.

Police said the officer suffered a "very minor" ankle injury.

The officer was on a security detail. He is a member of the police department of Strathclyde, McClellan said.

The president talked with the officer to make sure he was all right, and also asked White House physician Richard Tubb to monitor the officer's condition at the hospital.

The presidential bike suffered some damage, McClellan said, so Bush rode back to the hotel in a Secret Service vehicle.

The fall did not affect the president's schedule. Dressed in a tuxedo, he attended a dinner hosted by Queen Elizabeth at the annual Group of Eight economic summit.

He showed no signs of distress.

A year ago, Bush was cut and bruised when he sailed over the handlebars while riding a mountain bike at his Texas ranch.

In 2003, he tried out a Segway, the standup, motorized scooter at the family's seaside estate in Maine.

It went down on his first attempt, but he stayed on his feet with a flying leap over the machine.

Undeterred, he got on again and cruised around the driveway with his father.

Note by Republicus:

LOL! He hits a police officer! He sails over handle-bars!

And he just keeps climbing back on.

We're talking about a 59 year-old man here, and he's like a kid at heart (with the rugged and resilient body of a thirty year-old).

Hey, waitasecond: "Mild to moderate scrapes on his hands and arms that required bandages," and "cuts and bruises?"

Wow. If he was John Kerry, he'd have five Purple Hearts by now.

A Salute and Censure

July 6, 2005, SAN DIEGO — Retired Vice Adm. James Stockdale, Ross Perot's 1992 presidential running mate who received the Medal of Honor after enduring 71/2 years in a North Vietnamese prison, died Tuesday. He was 81.

The Navy did not provide a cause of death but said he had suffered from Alzheimer's disease. He died at his home in Coronado.

During the Vietnam War, Stockdale was a Navy fighter pilot based on the USS Oriskany and flew 201 missions before he was shot down on Sept. 9, 1965. He became the highest-ranking naval officer captured during the war, the Navy said.

Stockdale was taken to Hoa Lo Prison, known as the "Hanoi Hilton." His shoulders were wrenched from their sockets, his leg had been shattered by angry villagers and a torturer, and his back was broken. But he refused to capitulate.

Rather than allow himself to be used in a propaganda film, Stockdale smashed his face into a pulp with a mahogany stool.

"My only hope was to disfigure myself," Stockdale wrote in his 1984 autobiography "In Love and War." The ploy worked, but he spent the next two years in leg irons.

After Ho Chi Minh's death, he broke a glass pane in an interrogation room and slashed his wrists until he passed out in his own blood. After that, captors relented in their harsh treatment of him and his fellow prisoners.

Stockdale spent four years in solitary confinement before his release in 1973.

He received 26 combat decorations, including the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest medal for valor, in 1976. The citation reads, "By his heroic action at great peril to himself, he earned the everlasting gratitude of his fellow prisoners and of his country."

He retired from the military in 1979, one of the most highly decorated officers in U.S. Navy history, and became president of the Citadel, a military college in South Carolina. He left in 1981 to become a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.

In the 1992 presidential election, Stockdale became independent candidate Perot's vice presidential running mate, initially as a stand-in on the ticket but later as the candidate.

Stockdale gave a stumbling performance in the nationally televised vice-presidential debate against Dan Quayle and Al Gore and later said he didn't feel comfortable in the public eye.

"Who am I? Why am I here?" he asked rhetorically in his opening statement.

Toward the end, he asked the moderator to repeat a question, saying, "I didn't have my hearing aid turned on."

Stockdale came to know Perot through Sybil Stockdale's work establishing an organization on behalf of families of prisoners held during the Vietnam War.

When Perot ran again in 1996 as the candidate of his Reform Party, Stockdale had rejoined the Republican Party.

He is survived by his wife and four sons.



Note by Republicus:

The 1992 Presidential Campaign had a patriot like Stockdale (on patriot H. Ross Perot's Reform Party ticket) running against Distinguished Flying Cross WWII pilot George H. Bush for the Republicans...

...and draft-dodger Bill Clinton for the Democrats, who grew a scraggly beard, visited Russia, and organized BAFAW protest marches in Europe during the Vietnam War .

On his ticket was Vietnam "veteran" Al Gore, who went as a journalist and kept well out of harm's way, and spent most of his time with a pencil and "smoking some pot," as he put it.

Clinton/Gore won.

And throughout the first term, since 1992, it was drummed out from the Clintonites' version of a "war room" (which was not in the Pentagon, but in a coffee & donut meeting room wherein Colonel Carville and Sergeant Stephanopoulos barked out orders as they waged war against conservative common sense and decency), that veteran status was irrelevant to governing and certainly did not indicate a greater love of country (though one should have wondered--if those were true--why then Gore's "veteran" status was inflated as a plus in 1992 and used as a counterbalance to the minus of Clinton's military evasion? Maybe because they were talking out of both sides of their mouths?).

In 1996 Purple-Hearted WWII veteran Bob Dole went up against the entrenched draft-dodger.

He, too, was defeated.

In 2000, the Republicans nominated for president former Texas Air National Guardsman George W. Bush (the son of decorated WWII pilot George H. Bush), who had went to boot camp, worn the uniform, and earned his wings, learning to fly fighter jets during the war (which is no small task, as mistake-panic-and-eject wartime pilot John McCain would attest, and mistake-panic-and-crash peacetime-pilot JFK Jr. discovered too late).

On his ticket was Dick Cheney, who received several draft deferments during the Vietnam War but who had been career public servant in the highest echelons of the federal government for several Republican administrations and who was the intrepid Secretary of Defense during Bush 41's Desert Storm.

The Democratic strategists shamelessly changed their tune, highlighting Gore's "veteran" status overseas even more so than before to put that up against the stateside Guardsmen service of W. Bush and his spotty attendance record (when the war was over) and Cheney's draft deferments.

That's insane:

Gore was a "more experienced" military man because he carried a pencil and smoked pot in Vietnam during the war than Cheney who was the Secretery of Defense during the collapse of the Soviet Union and Operation Desert Storm?

For good measure, Gore put a conservative and religious Democrat (Senator Joe Lieberman) on the ticket, and so co-opting and trumpeting the conservative values that were marginalized and even attacked (e.g. veteran status and Faith in God) for eight years on behalf of draft-dodging and Religious-Right-Hating Bill Clinton (who, upon being acquitted, was praised by the bellowing Gore himself that he would be remembered as "ONE OF THE GREATEST PRESIDENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY!!!").

But it was too late. The damage was done (attributed not to disgust, but to the euphemistic "Clinton Fatigue"), and common sense and decency put an end to the unprincipled insanity of Clintonism and denied Gore the inheritance.

The conservative revival and the Republican sweep back into power since has been astonishing, and forced the unprincipled Left to change its color like the chameleon it is, to better blend into its environment and escape the notice of eagles.

By 2004, the shameless Democrats had changed color from blue to red, inverting their "principles" a perfect 90 degrees, trotting out the Vietnam War "battlefield heroics" of veteran John Kerry in the hopes of unseating stateside former National Guardsman George W. Bush.

The new drumbeat: veteran status was relevant to governing and certainly indicated a greater love of country!

The star-spangled banner was unfurled at the DNC. Commander Kerry took the stage, saluted, and "Reported for duty."

Disgusting. Even when feigning honor and dignity, the Democrats can't help but being snide and petty. That was a dig at President Bush's spotty post-war attendance record in the Texas Air National Guard, when he allegedly "failed to report for duty."

The crowd that went--and still goes-- wild for the draft-dodging Bill Clinton and elected him over decorated WWII veterans in 1992 and 1996, went wild for...

...decorated Vietnam War veteran John Kerry over "draft-dodgers" George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Incredible. Shameless.

And insane:

Swiftboat commander Kerry who received a unanimous thumb's down from ALL of his military peers (except from his underlings on the swiftboat) was more qualified to lead the nation during wartime than the President who was trained as an Air National Guard pilot, had removed the Taliban in Afghanistan AND Saddam Hussein in Iraq in his prosecution of the GWOT since 9/11 as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States, and Vice President Dick Cheney, who oversaw both those endeavors and was the Secretary of Defense for Operation Desert Storm, both of whom are beloved and trusted by those in the armed services, something which most CERTAINLY could not be said for Commander Kerry?!?

Kerry was the best they could do to "prove" their patriotic/conservative credentials, to prove that they did-- "Really! Honestly! Truly! No kidding! We're serious!"-- have appreciation and respect for America's military services and martial valor?

What happened to their heated "war room" campaigning on behalf of the draft-dodger Clinton in the drive to unseat decorated WWII pilot George H. Bush in 1992, and having to marginalize the latter's war service in the process?

What happened to their heated arguments to preserve that draft dodger's power and fend off the ascension of another decorated WWII hero and life-time public servant Bob Dole in 1996, actually calling the latter's sacrifice "irrelevant" to governing?

And what happened to Vietnam War prisoners John McCain and Admiral Stockdale when the liberal/Democrat's version of a Vietnam War "hero"-- John Kerry-- speedily got three band-aids, quickly left his "Band of Brothers" behind, and came home to testify about American atrocities to the U.S. Senate before embarking on a political career (as role-modeled by his hero, JFK)?

Here's what happened:

The prison guards used his senate testimony to demoralize their prisoners, and tighten the screws on P.O.W.s like McCain and Stockdale (while the reputation of the armed services suffered for nearly a decade, until Ronald Reagan re-vitalized them and made them "Be all they could be").

In the Vietnamese Communist War Remnants Museum (formerly known as the "War Crimes Museum") in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), there is a photograph of John Kerry hanged I mean hanging in a room dedicated to the anti-war activists who aided and abetted the Viet Cong and helped them win the Vietnam War.

Meanwhile, throughout the 1970's, the typical Vietnam veteran was portrayed by the liberal BAFAW media as damaged goods, the twisted fruits of war-mongering America.

They were disfunctional, shell-shocked psychotics.

Shell-shocked by eggshells, perhaps, and by their countrymen calling them marauders reminiscent of Genghis Khan (where'd they get that idea? Kerry).

The shameless and/or moronic Left, after embracing that post-Vietnam caricature of the American soldier as either a fascist imperialist deserving of hatred, a Frank Burns type worthy of ridicule, or a psycho, has now been trying to win elections during wartime and a conservative revival by dressing up those few in their party who wore the proverbial boots in Vietnam into G.I. Joes and John Rambos.

The latter, Rambo, is the fictional Vietnam vet who came home from the war to meet thrown eggs and cries of "baby killer" from his own countrymen, based on the actual and shameful cultural phenomenon that was the direct reaction to Kerry's shameless "Winter Soldier" senate testimony, in which he slandered America's military operations as being carried out by roving bands of marauding killers.

And it is that very anti-military stigma which they brought upon themselves that the Left is trying to play down now by the repeated, self-conscious assertions of "We support the troops!" -- between condemnations of the troops' mission, howls of protest against their casualty-causing performance in battle, demands for incarceration for those guarding vicious enemy combatants while on prison-duty and experiencing a slip or two in discipline in a high-stress environment, and calling for a court-martial of their beloved Commander-in-Chief.

But they overcompensate in that endeavor, to "prove" that they don't loathe the military, inverting one extreme into another, and hence the ridiculous exaggeration:

"We love John Kerry 'The War Hero'!"

"We love John Kerry 'The Warrior'!"

They're phonies. They don't care about that stuff. They hate that stuff. They still march in protest against American interests to the delight of our enemies, and decry the resurgence of patriotism as "jingoism." Oh, but but never mind that:

"We support the troops!"

When they exploded in fury because George W. Bush landed on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier-- to the great delight of the troops-- and they accused him of exploiting military imagery for his own political purposes, they were projecting. That's what they do, and they were angry that Bush trumped anything they could possibly pull off with that one.

They get angry everytime Bush invokes 9/11, as if he, the Commander in Chief, is exploiting that attack on American soil to justify the prosecution of his signature issue, the War on Terror, which was triggered by it.

Go ahead. Read that again.

And a majority of the American people know, or at least sense, that the Left's sudden appreciation of the military services and their toughguy talk on how THEY would properly utilize the military and win the war is phony.

All anyone has to do is pay attention and remember, and see the giant albatross of the draft-dodging "military loathing" (his own words) Bill Clinton hanging from their necks, but still worn proudly like a medallion.

Despite any ebbs and flows in Bush's approval ratings, in any area, even in his handling of various aspects of the War on Terror, there has been an indomitable constant: The American people trust the Republicans to do a better job of protecting them during wartime.

And so, in order for liberal Democrats to regain power in a time of war so as to enact their social agenda, they have to overcome that stigma of weakness, and hence the military masquerades.

During peacetime, Gore won the popular vote (by less than the population of NYC or LA) but lost the electoral in 2000.

During wartime, Vietnam "hero" Kerry lost both the electoral and the popular vote in 2004 when the greatest amount of democratic voters in the history of Democracy made sure to silence the charges of "illegitimacy" the Left has been hurling at Bush since 2000 (and still muttered with a wink and a smirk).

They also knew that Kerry was a liberal and, as reminded by the Swifties, slandered the military and undermined popular support for a war (and caused American civilians to hate their own military).

In other words, they knew he was a phony.

Kerry admitted--without providing specifics-- to commiting atrocities, but he shirked personal responsibility by adding, essentially, that "Everybody was doing it."

The other Vietnam War veteran the Democrats had floated was Senator Bob Kerrey, who had to quickly step aside when it came out that he machine-gunned down civilian peasants.

Who was crying loudest about the "atrocities" at Abu Ghraib and the "gulag conditions" at the Club Med of Gitmo?

The Democrats. The experts on war crimes.

So who's left for the Left?

They can't hope to recapture the White House during wartime with war criminals and on the platform of same-sex marriages and abortion rights.

Vietnam veterans Gore and Kerry are certainly fantasizing a return to the ring, biding their time and basing their hopes only on the opportunity to exploit a disaster to their benefit, but no, they're finished.

So who's left?

Why, the Clintons!

Their "Best and Brightest."

Yes, right back where we started:

Veteran status is irrelevant to governing and certainly doesn't indicate a greater love of country!

Incredible.

Anyway, Republicus belatedly welcomes Admiral Stockdale back to the Republican Party, where he belongs, and he welcomes him to Arlington, a resting place he has earned.

Strength and Honor. Long Live the Republic.

Monday, July 04, 2005

July 4, 2005: Happy Birthday



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Action of Second Continental Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America

WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great- Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.

HE has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.

HE has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

HE has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyrants only.

HE has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures.

HE has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.

HE has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of the Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and the Convulsions within.

HE has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

HE has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

HE has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.

HE has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.

HE has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures.

HE has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

HE has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

FOR quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us;

FOR protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

FOR cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:

FOR imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

FOR depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:

FOR transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:

FOR abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rules into these Colonies:

FOR taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

FOR suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever.

HE has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

HE has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.

HE is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.

HE has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

HE has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.

IN every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.

NOR have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them from Time to Time of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our Connections and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of Consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends.

WE, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in GENERAL CONGRESS, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great-Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

[Signed by] JOHN HANCOCK [President]

New Hampshire:

JOSIAH BARTLETT, WM. WHIPPLE, MATTHEW THORNTON.

Massachusetts Bay:

SAML. ADAMS,JOHN ADAMS,ROBT. TREAT PAINE,ELBRIDGE GERRY

Rhode Island:

STEP. HOPKINS,WILLIAM ELLERY.

Connecticut:

ROGER SHERMAN, SAM'EL HUNTINGTON, WM. WILLIAMS, OLIVER WOLCOTT.

New York:

WM. FLOYD, PHIL. LIVINGSTON, FRANS. LEWIS, LEWIS MORRIS.

New Jersey:

RICHD. STOCKTON, JNO. WITHERSPOON, FRAS. HOPKINSON, JOHN HART, ABRA. CLARK.

Pennsylvania:

ROBT. MORRIS, BENJAMIN RUSH,BENJA. FRANKLIN,JOHN MORTON,GEO. CLYMER,JAS. SMITH,GEO. TAYLOR,JAMES WILSON,GEO. ROSS.

Delaware:

CAESAR RODNEY, GEO. READ, THO. M'KEAN.

Maryland:

SAMUEL CHASE,WM. PACA,THOS. STONE,CHARLES CARROLL of Carrollton.

Virginia:

GEORGE WYTHE,RICHARD HENRY LEE,TH. JEFFERSON,BENJA. HARRISON,THS. NELSON, JR.,FRANCIS LIGHTFOOT LEE,CARTER BRAXTON.

North Carolina:

WM. HOOPER,JOSEPH HEWES,JOHN PENN.

South Carolina:

EDWARD RUTLEDGE,THOS. HAYWARD, JUNR.,THOMAS LYNCH, JUNR.,ARTHUR MIDDLETON.

Georgia:

BUTTON GWINNETT,LYMAN HALL,GEO. WALTON