Ted Haggard’s gay? No...way! Next thing they’ll be telling us is that Neil “the stud” Patrick Harris is gay. Okay, maybe that’d be a stretch. I mean, come on, the dude was "Doogie Howser,” and there ain’t no way the Doog's gay.

I’m not sure what surprised me more; that the Left-tilting media tried to capitalize on Haggard’s “outing” by attempting to persuade evangelicals that it’s not what Haggard did that was so offensive but his congregation’s reluctance to embrace it, or the fact that his congregation never gleaned the enigma that is Haggard’s sexual predilection. Are these folks that sheltered or just hearing impaired?

There are so many aspects of this issue that clearly delineate the differences between Christians and secularists; Democrats and Republicans, that I almost don’t know where to begin. The secularist media views Christians through a jaundiced lens that filters out most of the light and depicts Christians in an elitist pose. Through that distorted viewfinder, Christians reserve their places of worship for those without obvious sin, which is why the Left refer to what happened to Haggard as a “fall,” when indeed Christians realize that no person need “fall” very far to stumble upon lascivious behavior. Christians insist that it is only through God that they can keep from faltering; some to greater degrees than others.

It is likely that Haggard knew of his homosexual proclivity from the jump, but he probably also realized that it was only through God’s work that he could keep it in check, so to speak, which is how close most of us are to sin on a continual basis. The real hypocrisy would be for him to now deny his ongoing struggle and God’s work within that milieu by admitting to his homosexuality and capitulating to its grip on his life. Is he homosexual? Yeah, most probably. But being homosexual and engaging in destructive homosexual behavior are two entirely different things. The Left would love for him to recuse God from his struggle and in typical agnostic fashion attempt to minimize his own culpability by insisting that it is God’s law that is fallible and inflexible, and not his inability to resist the temptation of what comes natural.

Most Christians seem to understand that what comes natural doesn’t necessarily come without a cost, and that what comes natural doesn’t necessarily excuse the behavior, either. Take adultery, for instance; men are naturally inclined to want to engage in sexual activities with a beautiful woman, but that certainly does not excuse the behavior, especially when they’re married to someone else.

By comparison, whenever Democrats find themselves slipping in the latest Gallop poll, they insist that it’s because they haven’t been able to get their message out, which is code for “We’re not sure what position we should take on a particular subject at this juncture.” As with Pastor Haggard, wherein secularists would encourage him to embrace his sexual predisposition, Democrats are all about doing what the masses think is appropriate. They seek consensus and compromise when they should espouse leadership and guidance.

If your popular religious leader admits to serious moral failings, the Left believes s/he should throw a moist finger to a stiff breeze and reconsider the populist opinion on the subject before declaring his/her newfound, albeit morally ambiguous position on the matter...as though it were more important to align oneself with the majority opinion than to stand out like the sorest of thumbs.

Cultural mores, like voter opinion, is a perpetual moving target, and politicians who oscillate to reflect those capricious political mood swings are not leaders at all, but bureaucrats prone to political expedience and impetuousness. Besides their belief in collecting revenue (taxes), do any of us really believe that the Democrat party has a set of core beliefs that they consider edicts, which they would rather lose an election over before surrendering to the alter of electability? Many would say a woman’s right to choose, but I’m quite certain they’d throw the baby out with the bathwater if it meant winning a seat in Washington.

President Bush realizes that his Presidency will be judged on the Iraq war, but not unlike President Lincoln who knew that his presidency would be judged on the Civil War, which never achieved greater than a 35% approval rating, he has stayed the course and has done what leaders do...dried his finger, stuck it back in his pocket and made a decision...a decision to finish what he started.

Republicans didn’t lose their respective elections because of the President’s perceived failure in Iraq, they lost because they failed to demonstrate sound leadership, which allowed the Iraq war to assume front stage, center. They didn’t distinguish themselves from the centrist Democrats by championing the diktats of Conservatism.

People follow the Reagan’s, Lincoln’s and Haggard’s of the world because of their conviction to their core principles. Even in the afterglow of a political nuke that portends to vaporize their careers – 220 US Marines murdered in Lebanon, the emancipation of millions of free laborers, and sexual depravity, respectively – they had to remain steadfast and true in order to survive and eventually prevail. If Haggard were to take the path of least resistance by bending to secular pressure to proclaim homosexual sex as morally equivalent to heterosexual sex with a spouse, he would gain the respect of the masses as he blended seamlessly into their compliant herd. Leaders don’t blend and they don’t seek minimal resistance, which is exactly what the Republicans candidates did. They were too all-consumed with political self-doubt and the perceived liberal wave washing over the land that they denied their Conservative roots, which is what the Party's constituents were looking for and not finding...leadership.

Does anyone have a problem with folks who stump for causes that’ll benefit them to the detriment of others or who call themselves martyrs when their motives are as soiled as Bill Clinton’s shorts after he heard Lewinski never dry-cleaned her dress?

Take the terrorist...please. Seriously, doesn’t it annoy the crap out of you that the media turns a blind eye to the religious motives of these myopic bastards. They’re not martyrs, nor are they sacrificing themselves for God; they’re doing if for sex. Ostensibly, for seventy-two virgins who await them on the other side as payment for their cowardice barbarism. So what do the female terrorists get...eternity without Muslim men? Hell’s bells, could you blame them? Trust me, if seventy-two virgins are really on the other side of that blast, the first thing they’re gonna do is kick the burqa out of his selfish posterior.

And how about tree squeezers like Al Gore? In prototypical, uncharismatic monotone cadence, Gore implored Brazilians to stop cutting down the rain forest…from his 10,000 square-foot home in Nashville, TN made entirely of WOOD. Yeah, that’s not hypocritical. And by the way, do you know what South Americans typically grow when they’re forced to stop harvesting their natural resources?

When Massachusetts wanted to place a wind farm (wind turbines) in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, a favored form of energy production for the Democrats, Senator Kennedy poured all his energy into submarining it. Now why would Kennedy sink such a perfectly “green” method for producing energy? A jaded person might suggest that it had something to do with the millions of dollars he’s been raking in via his oil company, The Arctic Oil Royalty Trust, which operates in 5 states, but that would be incredibly shallow of him. No, Kennedy railed against those green bastards for reasons far more substantive than mere dollars; he torpedoed the energy-saving project because it interrupted the spectacular vistas from his Hyannis Port compound.

Let’s take a look at that oft asserted misnomer that the vast majority of wealth rests with the Republican Party and that the Democrats are demonstrably more compassionate towards the less fortunate. Did you know that of the top 10 wealthiest people in America, the top six are all Democrats and, if not for the Wal-Mart family, Democrats would hold the top 10 positions and then some.

What do you suppose would happen if someone gathered up hordes of the less fortunate and abandoned them to the hood of the more fortunate…let’s say the front-yard of Martin Sheen’s mansion (or someone’s of his ilk), but not before helping them construct a tasteful tent city, of course. Certainly there’s more disposable cash in the Hills for the homeless to grovel for and its residents allege to have a greater penchant for redistributing it. Factor in the abundance of drugs and expensive liquor, and you’ve got the makings of a perfect socialistic microcosm, right? Not quite. We all know what happened to the homeless in the socialist enclave that is San Francisco when the Liberal elite were asked to put their money where the less fortunate’s mouths were. And what about skid row in downtown LA when the well-to-do art crowd moved in and discovered that the homeless were much more palatable in the abstract. But surely that wouldn’t happen in the Hills of Beverly, would it? I say we give it a shot.

Democrats claim to be the party of the poor but it might surprise most people to find that the five wealthiest members of Congress are all Democrats and of the top 10 contributors to political parties since 1989, 9 gave to the democrat party, totaling approximately $227,000,000, as compared to $25,070,000 for republicans. But the really telling statistic is that the Republican party takes in 65% of the smallest individual contributions, while Democrats take in a whopping 92% from the biggest contributors, a million or more.

And now this latest hullabaloo over the Michael J. Fox commercial. I don’t know about you but I’m not particularly moved by people who are suffering with varied afflictions pleading for our government’s (you and me) complicity in the slaughter of millions of babies for the declared purpose of separating a man and a woman from the unintended consequences of a physical tryst and the ulterior purpose of testing their stem cells for “possible” medical cures and treatments. The first part of this has been argued ad infinitum so I won’t bother addressing it here. The second part, however, has either been ignored or not fully contemplated as yet. Anything that makes abortion more acceptable, like the promise of cures for serious diseases derived from such “procedures,” poses a viable threat to our country’s moral compass, which is pointing a little too southward for my taste.

There are several more examples I could heap on to illustrate the Left’s duplicity in all things moral or ethical, such as their propensity to ask salacious questions about a Congressman’s homosexual proclivity whenever he’s caught soliciting a minor or their love of lotteries which do nothing more than tax the poor...but I’m fairly certain they’ll surface during other blog installments.

With thumb pressed firmly to index finger a la JFK and his tongue as out of touch with his cheek as Kerry is with his constituents, he proudly declared, "You know, education -- if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Apparently when Senator Kerry was asked to turn his clock back one hour to comply with daylight savings, he mistook that instruction to mean one generation, thereby confusing our modern voluntary force with the conscripts of the 1970’s. So instead of judging this seemingly self-evident statement denigrating our military heroes, maybe it would be fairer to Kerry if we considered his statement in retrospect. In April of 1971, Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and, as far as I can tell, did not have his tongue tucked firmly into his cheek as he claims to have done in this gaffe. Here is what he said:

“They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan (w/affected, pseudo-intellectual pronunciation), shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam…”

No parsing words there, I’d say. Keep in mind that this is the same Senator who, upon hearing criticisms to the verbatim transcript of his extremely revealing statement, insisted that “A veteran would [never] criticize more than 140 thousand troops [in harm’s way].” Oh really? Unless there were fewer than 140-thousand troops in Vietnam, I’d say he’s already demonstrated a predilection for doing just that. It launched his political career in 1971 and he has ridden the backs of fallen troops that he has tripped up and trodden upon for decades.

But once again, I think it only fair to consider what he wrote in an earlier time, where he didn’t feel compelled by political ambitions to recant.

“I am convinced a volunteer army would be an army of the poor and the black and the brown,” Kerry wrote. “We must not repeat the travesty of the inequities present during Vietnam. I also fear having a professional army that views the perpetuation of war crimes as simply ‘doing its job.’ Equally as important, a volunteer army with our present constitutional crisis takes accountability away from the president and put the people further from control over military activities.”

Isn’t this exactly what he just said about our “volunteer” force being less educated and precisely what he’s been saying about our troops raping and pillaging the Iraqi people? Senator Kerry continues to insist that his words are being misinterpreted, yet I think what he really means is that they’re not being interpreted enough. “…if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." It seems to me that the only mistake he made here, which is one rarely stumbled upon by a Democrat, was to be too clear and too honest. Hell, he’s not even saying that you have to be smart to avoid getting “stuck in Iraq,” only “make an effort to be smart.” Snap! Now that’s abusive – now he’s suggesting that our troops are not only stupid, but lazy as well.

Senator Kerry alluded to the fact that over half the names on the Vietnam memorial were put there after our government’s policy had already failed.

In typical Dem fashion, he deliberately avoided calling the entire war the product of a “failed policy,” knowing as he does that it was Kennedy who put us there, Johnson who escalated our involvement and Kerry himself who volunteered to serve in it, which any Democrat will tell you is a prima fascia case for a proper and just war/policy. What Kerry either attempts to mislead us on or is completely ignorant of...which according to him qualifies him to serve...is that protesters like himself who, for mere political gain, made it possible for left-wing ideologues to deny troops that which they needed to win that war. If anyone believes that the Republican Party has now become the party of frugality when it comes to supporting our military, please raise your right hand...and swear after me...because according to Kerry, your ignorance is the only qualification you need to become a soldier in the US military.

When Kerry makes statements in his own defense that those who criticize him have “Never worn the uniform, [yet] are willing to lie about those who did or {those who] had the courage to stand up and fight for this country,” it begs the question as to why he hasn’t championed the cause of so many dead military men and women who have suffered the indignity and insult of malicious protestors during their respective funeral services?

Kerry has since apologized to the troops for his insensitive remarks but added, “If they’re already in Iraq, they’re too stupid to understand what any of this is about, anyhow.” Okay, so I made that part up, but you know he thought it.

On October 18th, CNN claimed that it made a decision to air a tape of the assassination of an American soldier after what it described as an intense internal discussion over the video’s news value. Like most people when they heard this, I imagined a crush of sweaty journalists crammed into a conference room, mulling the many nuances of war, the first amendment, propaganda and the adverse affect this footage might have on our selfless troops.

That momentary flight of fancy augured in at Mach five, however, when I learned that CNN had lobbed an e-mail into their ideological counterparts in Iraq asking them if they had any compelling video of American soldiers getting whacked.  This might explain why CNN claimed that it did not know exactly when this gruesome tape was made.  When the tape was made, however, goes directly to the question of culpability. If the tape was made after the request was proffered, then a direct nexus could be drawn between that request and the killing it depicted...the proverbial quid pro quo, if you will.

To gauge whether this is consistent with CNN’s modus operandi in the recent past, we need look no further than what it has already admitted to vis-à-vis promising the terrorists “equal” treatment in its reporting of the war in exchange for the tape. Forgetting for a moment that the terrorists don’t deserve anything remotely approaching equal footing with our soldiers and that journalists shouldn’t be in the business of purchasing “news footage” for the price of a soldier’s life, doesn’t this tactic trigger memories of another unethical decision to purchase news?

CNN producer David Doss wrote, “Whether or not you agree with us in this case, our goal, as always, is to present the unvarnished truth as best we can.” Oh, really? This from the network that sold its journalistic soul to Saddam in exchange for its right to maintain an office in Baghdad during his bloody regime. CNN turned a blind journalistic eye to all of Saddam’s atrocities for a fistful of silver and it now expects us to believe that it wrestled with the decision to air this patently obvious piece of pulp propaganda.

Not unlike CNN’s tacit approval of Saddam’s rape rooms, genocide, WMD ambitions, et al, for a safe haven in uptown Baghdad, they didn’t just air a despicable piece of salacious propaganda at the behest of terrorists; they sponsored the video like a studio backing an independent film with a guaranteed wide release. The film doesn’t get made; ergo the hit never occurs, if not for the proactive steps taken by CNN to insert itself into the story.

But CNN learned from its previous miscue in re its swanky digs in pre-war Baghdad. The blogs have become better at and are certainly more motivated to ferret out these sorts of hypocrisies than the mainstream media has ever been predisposed to do. Knowing this, sources inside our intelligence community tell me that CNN wisely requested the footage in generic terms and when they later learned that one existed...having been procured by means of the first e-mail...they lobbed in a second e-mail re-soliciting the tape. So why would they do this?

CNN has been one of the staunchest opponents of the Patriot Act, habitually referring to its surveillance component as “domestic spying” in an effort to sway public opinion decidedly against it. Knowing that their efforts to reach out to the terrorists would eventually surface, CNN made certain to send more than one e-mail, having previously worked out this strategy with their terrorist counterparts, who knew not to respond until subsequent messages were received. The first message triggers the hit – the distribution funding for our independent film in the above analogy – then the terrorists go out and make themselves a good piece of propaganda, which happens to serve the political purposes of the CNN cabal, as well. The terrorists then wait until they receive another request from their backers before remitting the video. This creates the denial plausibility that CNN needs: they can now safely state that they made these requests at periodic intervals and they eventually received a confirmation that a tape existed. This is why the inability to discern the tape’s date of origin is so significant to CNN.

This is the first of many blogs I intend to write – if you do not wish to be on this list, please let me know and I will remove your addy post haste.