August 1, 2004
ENTITLEMENT PARTY (via Mike Daley):
He was complacent, arrogant and humourless. How they loved him (Mark Steyn, 01/08/2004, Daily Telegraph)
In another perilous time - 1918 - Lord Haig wrote of Lord Derby: "D is a very weak-minded fellow I am afraid and, like the feather pillow, bears the marks of the last person who has sat on him." It's subtler than that with
Kerry: you don't have to sit on him; just the slightest political breeze,
and his pillow billows in the appropriate direction. His default position is
the conventional wisdom of the Massachusetts Left: on foreign policy,
foreigners know best; on trade, the labour unions know best; on government,
bureaucrats know best; on defence, graying ponytailed nuclear-freeze reflex
anti-militarists know best; on the wine list, he knows best.Sometimes these default positions have to be recalibrated to take account of
various political pressures - hence his current kinky Vietnam macho
nostalgia, after two decades of voting against every important weapons
system for the US military. But there's no sense - other than the blurry
abstract nouns he shoveled off the stage on Thursday - of what Kerry stands
firm on.Last year, I was at a Kerry campaign stop in New Hampshire chatting with two
old coots in plaid. The Senator approached and stopped in front of us. The
etiquette in primary season is that the candidate defers to the cranky
Granite Stater's churlish indifference to status and initiates the
conversation: "Hi, I'm John Kerry. Good to see ya. Cold enough for ya?" Etc.
But Kerry just stood there nose to nose, staring at us with a semi-glare on
his face. After an eternity, an aide stepped out from behind him and said,
"The Senator needs you to move.""Well, why couldn't he have said that?" muttered one of the old coots, as
Kerry swept past us.That's how I felt after the Convention: all week Senators Biden, Lieberman
and Edwards made the case that the Democrats were credible on national
security. Why couldn't Kerry have said that?Because in the end he's running for President because he feels he ought to
be President. That's his message to George W Bush: "The Senator needs you to
move." And even then everyone else says it better.
We shall not be moved... Posted by Orrin Judd at August 1, 2004 8:35 AM
The phrase "We shall not be moved" comes from a song:
[Which was originally a union song]
We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
Just like a tree that’s standing by the water
We shall not be moved.
The Union is behind us,
We shall not be moved
We shall not be moved
Just like a tree that’s standing by the water.
We will stand and fight together,
We shall not be moved
We shall not be moved
Just like a tree that’s standing by the water.
[Which was later recycled by the civil rights movement]
We are black and white together,
We shall not be moved
We shall not be moved
Just like a tree that’s standing by the water.
Of course all really good phrases come from deeper springs:
Psalm 1
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at August 1, 2004 9:07 PM
1 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.