Thursday, October 28, 2004

A flabbergasting failure

Christopher Hitchens is a guest author on a history weblog -- the Liberty & Power: Group Blog. He's a controversialist to the core. Recent articles include "Not Even a Hedgehog - The stupidity of Ronald Reagan," "Flirting With Disaster: The vile spectacle of Democrats rooting for bad news in Iraq and Afghanistan." "Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore." He currently a columnist for Vanity Fair. There's a Christopher Hitchens web site here.

On Oct 21st, he wrote "Why I'm (Slightly) for Bush" in the Nation and on Oct 26th, Slate lines him up as a Kerry supporter. The piece in the Nation supports Bush but is a bit over-qualified. He's basically attacking the "anyone but Bush" crowd.

Here's the statement in Slate:

Christopher Hitchens, Contributor: Kerry

I am assuming for now that this is a single-issue election. There is one's subjective vote, one's objective vote, and one's ironic vote. Subjectively, Bush (and Blair) deserve to be re-elected because they called the enemy by its right name and were determined to confront it. Objectively, Bush deserves to be sacked for his flabbergasting failure to prepare for such an essential confrontation. Subjectively, Kerry should be put in the pillory for his inability to hold up on principle under any kind of pressure. Objectively, his election would compel mainstream and liberal Democrats to get real about Iraq.

The ironic votes are the endorsements for Kerry that appear in Buchanan's anti-war sheet The American Conservative, and the support for Kerry's pro-war candidacy manifested by those simple folks at MoveOn.org. I can't compete with this sort of thing, but I do think that Bush deserves praise for his implacability, and that Kerry should get his worst private nightmare and have to report for duty

.

Another statement from Hitchens and then his piece in Liberty & Power: Hitchens has been quoted as calling Geo W Bush "unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things."

Here's the post

From Liberty & Power
article | Posted October 21, 2004

by Christopher Hitchens


Hoover Beats Roosevelt!

Given the months of bad news and administration blunders, Kerry should be 30 points ahead of George Bush instead of wherever he is. Should the ineptness of Kerry and his campaign managers finally bring him down to defeat it will be the same as if Herbert Hoover had defeated Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.

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One of our far flung secret agents has called in with a report on the hows and wheres of the 380 tons of high explosives which disappeared out of an Iraqi ammunition dump. You may rest easy. The insurgents don't have it. The French do. Out of their well known hatred for the United States the French have bred up a species of undercover ant. These ants penetrated the guard set around the dump and, grain by grain, were able to surreptitiously remove all 766,080 English pounds of the stuff, carrying it across the Middle East and southern Europe to a vast cave in the Pyrenees where it is safely stored next to 55 million flu shots.

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The Republicans are running ads claiming the trial lawyers are responsible for the flu shot shortage. This is a typical bit of Republican understatement. Why are the Republicans covering up for the trial lawyers? Why don't they tell the American people the truth which is the trial lawyers are the ones who do the partial birth abortion baby killings? Trial lawyers are behind the drop in factory employment in Ohio and Pennsylvania, but not in New York or Illinois where it's the liberals who are to blame. It has also been established that the trial lawyers are the cause of over fifteen common kinds of cancer and two thirds of the Federal government deficit. If re-elected President Bush has said that he will ask Congress for the power to draft trial lawyers and send them to Iraq where they can work their mischief on religious fanatics who don't care whether or not they get cancer.

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Congratulations are flowing into Ariel Sharon for his engineering the Israeli "pullout" from the Gaza Strip, leaving those 1.3 million plus Arabs to rot in their own stink. Being the thoughtful person he is, Prime Minister Sharon is making sure that the Gazans or Gazanians or Gazites will not be allowed to wander about the world seeking revenge for what they mistakenly imagine to be their mistreatment. Israel will control all land, sea and air access to the Strip and its inhabitants, thus insuring its continued existence as a desert Gulag. If there is such a thing as justice Herr Sharon will be awarded next year's Nobel Peace Prize. Should the Swedes, who are unreliable and sentimental when it comes to the Middle East, bestow the prize on some obscure mombo under house arrest in darkest Africa and omit recognizing Senior Sharon for his irenic contributions to world comity, President Bush could confer the Medal of Freedom on him. We owe Gaspadin Sharon so much. After the famous peace process failed and the Mitchell Plan failed and the Tenent Plan failed and the Anthony Zinni Plan failed and the Road Map failed, it is he who has at long last settled all outstanding questions in Gaza. This should also help President Bush in his re-election campaign whether or not reports are true that upwards of 200,000 Israelis are voting by very absentee ballot. Shalom.

Posted by Nicholas von Hoffman (Guest Blogger) on Wednesday, October 27, 2004 at 2:54 PM

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