Beyond the bias and catch-phrases lies our future. 

Until voters and the media get realistic about war and ethics -- we're likely to get what we deserve.

THOMAS SOWELL:

With a war going on in Iraq and with Iran next door moving steadily toward a nuclear bomb that could change the course of world history in the hands of international terrorists, the question for this year's elections is not whether you or your candidate is a Democrat or a Republican but whether you are serious or frivolous.

That question also needs to be asked about the media. In these grim and foreboding times, our media have this year spent incredible amounts of time on a hunting accident involving Vice President Cheney, a bogus claim that the administration revealed Valerie Plame's identity as a C.I.A. "agent" -- actually a desk job in Virginia -- and is now going ballistic over a Congressman who sent raunchy e-mails to Congressional pages.

This is the frivolous media -- and the biased media. Republican Congressman Foley was wrong and is out on his ear. But Democrats in both Congress and the White House have gone far beyond words with a page and an intern. Yet the Democrats did not resign and Bill Clinton's perjury, obstruction of justice, and suborning of perjury by others were treated as if these were irrelevant private matters.

Even when serious issues are addressed, they can be addressed either seriously or frivolously. If you are content to see life and death issues of war and peace addressed with catch phrases like "chicken hawk" or to see a coalition of nations around the world fighting terrorism referred to as "unilateral" U.S. action because France does not go along, then you are content with frivolity.

You may deserve whatever you get if you vote frivolously in this year's election. But surely the next generation, which has no vote, deserves better.

Weak-kneed members of both parties have been calling for a timetable to be announced for withdrawal from Iraq. No other war in thousands of years of history has ever had such a timetable announced to their enemies. Even if we intended to get out by a given date, there is not the slightest reason to tell the terrorists that. It is frivolous politics at its worst.

There has never been any reason to doubt that American troops will be removed from Iraq. They were removed after the first Gulf War. Before that, they were removed from Grenada and from other Western Hemisphere countries throughout the 20th century. Millions of American troops were removed from Europe after World War II.

Why should there be the slightest doubt that they will be removed from Iraq? The only question is whether you can run a war on a timetable like a railroad and whether you need to announce your plans to your enemies.

All this rhetoric about a withdrawal timetable is based on trying to make political hay out of the fact that the Iraq war is unpopular. But all wars have been unpopular with Americans, as they should be.

Even World War II, won by "the greatest generation," was never popular, though the home front was united behind the troops a lot better than today. The last shot of that war had barely been sounded before the cry arose to bring our boys back home. The exuberant celebrations across this country when World War II ended showed that we weren't looking for more war or more conquests. We weren't even trying to hold on to all the territory we had conquered. There has probably never been a time in history when a military force in the millions was disbanded so quickly. Even after the first Gulf War, with its quick success and low casualties, the biggest ovation that the first President Bush got when he addressed Congress afterwards was when he announced that our troops would start coming back home. Those who discuss the current war in terms of frivolous talking points make a big deal out of the fact we have been in this war longer than in World War II. But, if we are serious, we would know that it is not the duration of a war that is crucial. It is how many lives it costs. More than twice as many Marines were killed taking one island in the Pacific during World War II than all the Americans killed in the four years of the Iraq war. More Americans were killed in one day during the Civil War. If we are going to discuss war, the least we can do is be serious.

If the vote next month focuses on the frivolous -- we will deserve what we get.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizens Guide to the Economy.

On Oct. 8, I posted Reaffirming US-Japan Accords, referencing the need to validate agreements which have evolved for approximately 60 years.

I had no idea those Accords would be tested so quickly.

What I did know was that we have pledged to defend both South Korea and Japan in the event they are attacked by other nations. 

On the diplomatic front, we have literally dragged our mighty feet in confronting (albeit enabling proliferation during the Clinton era) Korea's development of nuclear weapons. 

We now have a deceitful, irrational madman -- who we (ala Clinton) provided with nuclear reactors for non-military use -- in possession of a weapon of mass destruction.   

Is the world going to wait until this madman either launches an attack on another country or shares his nuclear weaponry with another madman? 

Kim Jong Il has already thumbed his nose at the prospect of U.N. sanctions. 

Will Russia, France and China actually honor sanctions against Korea?  They were deceitful in honoring sanctions against Saddam.  They failed to intervene in either Syria or Iran -- why should they be trusted now?  What effect would an air or sea  blockade around Korea actually have when they share borders with China and Russia?

China is the key, but will China assume a responsible role in curtailing the Korean threat? 

The U.S. must act quickly. 

While this is not the ideal option, I anticipate  that  the only true deterrent to the proliferation of nuclear weapons among irrational nations is to inform our faux-friends in China and Russia that IF they don't intercede  in Korea, we will make these weapons available to our reputable Asian-Pacific allies:  Japan, Taiwan, Australia and South Korea.   

It's time to call Congress back to Washington, Mr. President.  Our nation needs a unified front in addressing this critical issue.

Although government officials have delayed official discussions on federalizing Iraq's provinces  into 3-4 aligned Iraqi states,  political discourse is moving in that direction. 

Critical to this decision will be a centralized, representative  government which assures  control (with equitable distribution of services and profits) from Iraq's greatest resource: oil. 

Recently, Sunni tribal leaders united to form the equivalence of three infantry divisions (30,000 fighters) to combat insurgents and terrorists along the Syrian border.

The immediate impact?  Over 80% of the al-Anbar region has now joined Iraqi government forces in confronting al Qaeda.  A significant gain for Iraqi and coalition forces is that they are now joined by fighters who know the local terrain.

The long-term effect?  The region will receive critical government services administered by a more secular Shia-dominated government in Baghdad. 

Most importantly,  Shia and Sunni Iraqis have crossed ethno-religious barriers for a common cause.

And the third ethno-religious  group located in northern Iraq, the Kurds? 

Therein may lie the key to Iraq's nationalization. 

 The US-Japan Accords:  Remember them? 

They cover strategic economic, political and security interests and have been around for some time.

Hopefully, GWB remembers them, also. 

As North Korea continues to lob nuclear threats throughout the region (and at the United States), we need to reaffirm these Accords and encourage our friends in Japan to bolster their military forces for self-defense. 

We've already piqued Europe's critical eye by recent economic accords with Japan ....  Russia, and especially China, have long invaded  Japan's maritime boundaries to search for oil reserves.  

It is time to publicly announce our reliance on Japan as a primary co-negotiator with North Korea, in the Middle East AND beyond. 

Why?  One reason is that "Toshiba has become the dominant force in nuclear reactor construction worldwide. The firm currently holds a 35% market share in Japan. Its controlling stake of Westinghouse Electric will now give it a 28% share in the global market. Investors who fear that the recent slide in the price of oil will be short-lived, who are perhaps inspired by China's plans to build as many as 40 nuclear reactors over the next 15 years, might want to give Toshiba a serious look as one of the few 'alternative energy' plays that we know can actually work."

It is not a coincidence that Japan recently visited China and will visit South Korea in the immediate future.

It would also boost both the US and Japan's interests to re-affirm our agreement to support/defend Japan militarily if needed -- in exchange for continued strategic placement of our defense systems.

As important -- a public re-affirmation by President Bush would certainly divert current pre-election attention toward a region of critical concern. 

Ben Stein can either jolt you with his humor or his perspective.  Today, it's his perspective:

... in a world where 3,000 women and children are raped and/or murdered every day in Congo, a member of the United Nations, in which a genuine genocide is going on in Sudan, a member of the United Nations, in which more than fifty men and women per day are being tortured with electric drills and murdered in Iraq, in which two of the world's most dangerous and insane men, Kim Jong Il and Mohammed Ahmadinejad, are developing nuclear weapons, the e-mail of one deranged middle class white man does not really count to me as much as it might to some other people.

......

We do not devote more than a few instants each month to the rape and murder in Congo. We barely notice the rape and genocide in Darfur. No one on earth except George W. Bush and John Bolton and Condoleezza Rice is trying to stop two maniacs from acquiring nuclear weapons even though one of them has promised to wipe out Israel if he gets them. But we can devote 24 hours a day, day after day, to the e-mails of one nutty Member of Congress to a teenage boy.

A country with its priorities so out of whack does not deserve to be the world's shining city on a hill. Let's take a moment, pray for guidance, turn Mr. Foley over to the proper mental health authorities, and try to, as the moral exemplar of the world, use every bit of strength we have to stop the slaughter of the innocents now and in the future. Mark Foley is important, but to me, he's no more important than those teenage girls in Congo who get raped, have their arms chopped off, and then are murdered...and there are a lot of them. Let's get our priorities straight.

Thanks.  We need that jolt, Mr. Stein. 

SUB-TITLE I:  Don't let your kids grow up to be politicians.  Or pundits.  Or pages.  Or punsters, for that matter.

SUB-TITLE II:  Somebody Oughta Write a(nother) Book.  Or as Nancy Pelosi's friend was supposedly doing -- script it like a B-grade movie!

Frankly, I'm far *too old to be electronically-stimulated by repulsive IMs between some latent-to-active homo-savvy page-boy and a power-pandering peccadillic poliwag. 

*Euphemism for totally uninterested in some old-enough-to-know-what-he-was-doing political operative's edited exposè of an Over-the-Hill [pun intended]  homosexual hag. 

For those who want to read REAL "page" sex --  flip through that dog-eared paperback classic of yester-year:

Maxine for President.

.... May be your own?

"We're getting into very dangerous territory, and I've warned my colleagues to be careful." That's what a Democrat leadership aide was saying on Wednesday, as word circulated about David Corn's blog posting that revealed that a list of gay Republicans congressional staffers was circulating through emails.

 to The American Spectator:

Just as troubling are concerns among some House Democrat staff that there are potential scandals lurking of a similar vein for them. According to another Democrat source, "I've been warning my people to stay away from this story because you just don't know what will come back to bite you."

Of concern: that House Democrat leadership or Rep. Dale Kildee (Mich.), the Democrat member of the page board, who has served on it since 1985, or his staff have received complaints about Democrat colleagues' perceived inappropriate communications or contact with pages or former pages, and have not brought those complaints to the board or House management, such as the House Clerk's office. Kildee has been vocal about the Foley complaints not being brought before the full board prior to the scandal breaking, and the secretive nature of the Republican leadership's attempts to bring closure to the scandal.

"We all know this kind of scandal isn't just a Republican problem," says a Democrat political consultant in Washington. "We don't want to see what is out there about Democratic House members or former members."

But other Democrats say more is to come, that talk among Democrats around town is that researchers at CREW and the House Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee have in recent weeks been in contact, and that there are additional stories involving Republicans and questionable ethics behavior to be leaked closer to election time.

If this is the only way the far left can win in November -- then we deserve to be governed by hypocritical smutt-butts.

vote.vote.vote.vote.vote.vote. Foley is gone, but the slime trail continues .....  Don't let Pelosi's Posse win until we know the truth and players behind the "timeline" for the Foleygate disclosures.

SUB-TITLED:  Draining the Swamp

 Self-proclaimed Congressional cleaning-lady-in-waiting NANCY PELOSI might should begin by rinsing out a few rags ..... Including, but not limited to --

* An associate's son who allegedly "gay-baited" Mark Foley for a couple of years before releasing a series of disgusting IMs -- of questionable authenticity -- just in time for the November elections.

* Those expensive junkets she and hubby took to Asia and other parts -- oh yeah, she "reimbursed" the gov a portion of the expenses .....

* Her political action committees that were charged with attempting to circumvent to legal limits on campaign giving -- oh yeah, she reimbursed $21,000 ...

Hey -- Pelosi pledged to clean things up --- just wanted to suggest a few spots that need wiping up ....

More to come.

Democrats race to get scoop on Foleygate before elections ....

Credit:  Lucianne.com

hee hee hee.  Forgive me.  I couldn't resist.

Let outrage reign.  Lots of outrage.  About that louse Foley.  Why not keep the rage going for the next few weeks?  Let's just declare the next few weeks as a political feeding frenzy!

Nevermind that Republicans have expressed their disgust and have accepted Foley's resignation with obvious relief. 

Nevermind that the party of traditional values is likely being blind-sided by the party of self-serving values!

Nevermind that the Woodward book has an early release -- chockful of criticisms of the Bush administration -- just in time for another distraction before the election ....

Nevermind that I have a problem with those to the left of the aisle and their media. 

Nevermind that there is a reason why Democrats and the media continue to release IM's detailing repulsive interactions between Foley and a receptive youth.   Of course Foley is to blame.  He is the adult in this scenario.  As an adult, he has betrayed -- not only his constituency -- but also his duty as a responsible adult.

Nevermind that, if talking heads are correct, Foley may have broken no laws.  Too bad.  He deserves to be punished beyond the stripping of his dignity. 

Nevermind that the media and democrat operatives have deliberately delayed releasing these IMs -- simply to gain a political advantage in the upcoming elections.  They should be be guilty of either enabling and/or hiding Foley's  behaviors.

Nevermind -- heck --- I do mind seeing the public duped and distracted.  I do mind feigned outrage. 

Hopefully -- the FBI will expedite their investigation to identify the source, validity and "timeliness" of the IMs.  I certainly mind that their investigation will likely be stymied by restraints and appeals ....

I also "mind" that Foleygate may be credited with bringing about the loss of Republican seats in the House and Senate.  Why?  Because Republicans -- by their failure to work together during the past few months -- have most likely already splintered themselves into defeat.  [For which you can thank the leadership -- including Frist, McCain AND Hasert.  BTW, we know what Hasert has been doing for the last few days -- but where are Frist and McCain on the outrage?]

Foley doesn't deserve credit for anything beyond being the low-life sick person that he is. 

And if riding the backlash to a sick pervert is the only way democrats can win -- they don't deserve credit either.