If we are mostly concerned with the short term danger of a war with Iran, then the best candidate might be McCain.  I say that because the way the corrupt “American” media works, the more bellicose a candidate or president is, the less freedom of action they have to start or continue to wage wars.  And the opposite is also true, with likely more room for Obama or Hillary to wage a wider war or stay in Iraq longer. 

Look at it this way:  if McCain pulls out of Iraq, he won’t get much if any resistance from Republicans.  Democrats and the media will also be in a poor position to oppose a withdrawal from Iraq.  It would also appear that McCain is less well positioned to wage a new war against Iran, for the reason that he is already seen as too belligerent. 

As Hillary has been attacked for being to hawkish, she might also be constrained, except that she is a woman and would have to work at being seen as tough enough.  But then again, this is Hillary, whose slogan has been “unsex me now” for decades, and thus isn’t really seen as soft. 

That would leave Obama, the alleged “peace” candidate as the MOST likely to get us into a new war and keep us in Iraq longer.  And not because that is what Obama would like to do, but because the force of circumstances, press bias and powerful interest groups could well push him in that direction. 

This all may seem counterintuitive, but recall that it was Charles de Gaulle who withdrew from Algeria and Nixon who ended Vietnam and went to China and Reagan who was a buddy with Gorby, etc. 

At some point reality is going to intrude, and the collapse of the US economy and the opposition from former allies will bring the current US policy direction to a halt. 

BTW, I will not under any circumstances be voting for McCain, and I think the best outcome for the right is for Hillary to win as she has the least political support from the public and the insiders and thus will likely be the least effective.  If Hillary could get the nomination of course, she would also damage the relationship of the Democrat party to its most loyal base, i.e., blacks and elite white leftists.  This would also be a very good thing.

Chloroform in print. Should be dropped on Waziristan so nobody reading it will notice being bombed into the space age.

John may be wasting his rhetorical eloquence by admonishing his fellow-Catholics in my
state not to vote for abortion-happy Democrats. They do it all the time
and suffer neither social stigma nor ecclesiastical shunning for their actions. In my
considered opinion, these Catholic Democrats are voting as a reflex action against the
predominantly Protestant Republicans. They are also expressing sociological
identification by continuing to support the party of their ancestors.

Here he goes on about being oh so pro-life again. Zmirak, are you really serious or are you pulling our collective legs again?

My theory is that you’re simply out for some undeserved “street cred” among the pro-life readers here. Supposedly you would soooo much want abortions to cease, but eh, what can one do against impossible odds? Had you been sincere, you with your academic background, and with the ease you seem to produce all that text mass, could have dug just a bit wee deeper into this phenomenon and given us the real story on the pro-abortion forces at work. But you will not. Because you’re not sincere. You’re just another hot air ballon who wants to have his cake and eat it at the same time. 

This on again, off again, attitude seems to be a character flaw of yours. Wasn’t it you who told us that you were once just about to grab a rifle and go fight for the independence of Croatia, but somehow you finally didn’t? You also said that you’d leave the US to escape its de-whiteyfication, but in the next breath you say you’d bring along the blacks in your escape.

This is all illogical and unsober. Obviously, as a man who lives of words, printed words and spoken words, you have confused words for reality. To claim something has become as good as to DO something. Evil thoughts are just as bad as evil deeds, aren’t they?

Newsflash, NO, they aren’t. Thinking it right and doing it wrong still amounts to nothing. Thinking about killing someone is very, very far from actually doing it.

Now, stop being an obnoxious Catholic provocateur, pissing off everyone else and start instead becoming a Catholic in spirit, which in all its simplicity means becoming a good man. A man with a spine, a heart and a brain. A man who doesn’t whine.

John, as I see it, and you do, Obama is the best of three bad choices. As for voting for pro-abortion Democrats, I belive that it is even worse to vote for faux anti-abortion Republicans who say they are against, and then promote economic policies that reward women economically for not having children.

The economy in Pennsylvania is bad, except for a few bright spots, and it is not getting any better - same as the US. Now, the abortion rate is a good gauge of despair. People who have hope for the future tend to carry their children to term, people who despair are more likely to abort.  Anything, anyone who makes people see that things can be better, and that they are not hopelessly doomed will make them more receptive to pro-life messages - because if they do not believe there is life for them, then they won’t believe it either for their unborn children.

Which is why I will vote for Obama.

Great work, John. You’re descriptions of the candidates are
hilarious

We need a billboard placed on every highway that says “Please do not feed the two-party system”.  A donkey and an elephant in those circles with a line through it would make a nice visual.

“Now, the abortion rate is a good gauge of despair.”

Obama will lift people from despair? He’s just another apparatchik within the very Managerial Class that has made a wreck out of economy. Voting simply confers your consent to your continuing servitude.

Think again.

We have 3 rotten apples running for president.Obama is the most sane, over the mad bomber, and bug eyed crazy Hillary.The only vote a true conservative can give is to stay home or vote for the most rightwing third party.

A two-party political system only exists in the mind of the beholder.  Nearly three years ago, I joined the Constitution Party, the only political party of which I have ever been a card-carrying member. 

The Democrats left the hard road surface decades ago, in favor of the high weeds over on the side.  The Republicans have followed them over there.  When I came to this realization nearly three years ago, I began doing some research to find a party that understood what traditional values means.  I found these values in the Constitution Party, Over the past three years, the CP has been growing remarkably! 

Check it out:  http://www.constitutionparty.com

Mr Zmirak’s take on the election is witty but cannot be taken seriously a guide to
voting. According to Mr Zmirak’s logic, at root of the problem is that Catholics who are directly
involved in abortion are not excommunicated. But why stop at abortion?
The church is opposed to the death penalty and to contraception, too. Thus, those
involved in procuring the death sentence and the sale or use of contraceptives should
also be excommunicated. The point is: where does the logic of excommunication end?
Single-issue voting is a zero-sum game that benefits only extremists who do bother to vote. Alas,
since I see little prospect of the majority of Americans acquiescing to being ruled
by the House of Hapsburg in the near future, I suggest that Mr Zmirak and those who think like him hold
their noses and vote strategically, based on what is rather on how one would like the
world to be.

Anyone who thinks that Obama is in any way an alternative to the hell on earth that Hillary and McCain promise is crazy.  He is potentially the most destructive because unlike the other two he actually believes what he says.  His agenda will be wrapped in hope and sold by a more likable person but the danger is his conviction.  I honestly don’t think Hillary or McCain believe half of what they say.  Jac has it right.  It’s time for a third party.

jack is back,I don’t know how the hell I became jac.another typing blunder on my part.We need a third party now Mr. Nucci. I may even have to vote for ACLU Bob Barr.

The death penalty is not forbidden by the Church, only discouraged--and only recently at that. As for contraception… it’s matter of personal sin, not the violation of anyone’s rights (except where abortifacients are concerned) and so can be left outside the political arena.

Until the populace, the lapsed-citizenry pull’s it’s spectator-addled head from it’s couch-splayed arse and returns to some form of informed citizenship as a civic necessity, there will be no reversal to the ongoing slide.

We could elect a cross between Washington, Teddy Roosevelt and whatever anointed President you care to recall and there would be no significant change because the President (despite these witless wanker’s clutch at the Unitary Executive) is incapable of instigating the change that is now required. In other words, you cannot lead a horse to water and have it drink when said horse is actually a camel you are ignoring.

The Republic is in remission because it’s people have abdicated and slouched into a spectator-driven life instead of the discursive life required of an intelligently run Republic. The silenced schoolhouse and charming conceits of “No Child Left Behind”....(because, of course, no child will go forward) is Exhibit One in the Farrago. We are a nation of box-checkers, direction-followers, test- takers, banal conversationalists (aptly named small talk), bill-payers and earnest clappers whose major sport now is disaffection. This condition, in some quarters is called “ressentiment” and it takes a very long time to work it’s tawdry way out.

All of it, the Separation of Powers, the two houses of Congress, the States vs. Federal paradigm, the roll of an engaged public in the selection of representatives , the electoral college and delegate structure vs. population disparity......the communication of trade and capitalism with a small “c” with it’s buyer and seller......all of it is a kind of organic response to the potentials of the human mind ensconced within a body of great facility...and furthermore enhanced by a spiritual sense. This requires discourse, a national conversation if you will and while some will assert that the ongoing campaigns are that conversation, they are patently wrong. This is a staged debate, formulaic, polled to the ultimate degree and stage-managed to a fair-thee-well. The most brazen idiocy and sordid affairs gain the greatest attention. We, this generation, is the greatest demonstration of the leaks in the “Intelligent Design” Parade Float.

Seeing their nation plunge deeper into confusion , the public cannot see the forest for the trees because they refuse to discern the essential problem: We have replaced the authentic agora with a vicarious agora. Straw Men are the new Golden Calf. Religion, such as it is, joins in the slouch. Animus and suspicion prevails. Holy Writ is waved to justify war.

Elect McCain, elect Obama, elect Hillary or a troop of professional acrobats or perhaps a chorus of sweetly barking frogs and the outcome will not be substantially different....in the big view...until the people recognize their problem for what it is. Doing so, the solution becomes self apparent. In other words, “that helping hand yer lookin fer is at the end of yer own dag blamed arm”.

We have a government we deserve, richly so and this government is not to blame for the ills that effect us, we are to blame. Whether one is atheist, agnostic, religious, east-west or otherwise, it would appear that the authors of the Book of Revelation were, if not prophetic, at the very least, serious students of human nature.

@Dirk

We, this generation, is the greatest demonstration of the leaks in the “Intelligent Design” Parade Float.

I would add that we, this generation, are also the greatest argument in the survival of the fittest theories.  Wouldn’t these pathetic traits of ignorance have been bread out of the population by now?  But then man is not living in an environment in which he can benefit from evolution if such exists.  I would agree with your take on revelations, fi I understand you correctly, but man appears much more destined for a pre-ordained extinction than evolution.  I guess we can take heart that many religions have said that it what is expected of us anyway.

John Zmirak has named them perfectly!  (One has to know a good deal about Margaret Sanger to know how damning the comparison is; the difference between her and Hillary is that Margaret hated men enough to throw them away while Hillary hates them so much she keeps them around.) Paul Gottfried is also right about how PA Catholics vote and why.  How about a “Don’t vote, it only encourages them” campaign, there and across America?

Tax cuts are a political canard. It hasnt slowed spending not one bit. Bushes discretionary spending in one year tops two years of Clintons. Not only that but the Bush tax cut of 5% pales when one considers the debasement of the dollar is 40% since George took office. Cutting taxes did not boost the economy out of debt. Why McCains economic plan is to further increase the deficit.

To this I respond that most votes are wasted, since your odds of changing the course of a national election by voting are much lower than of your being shot by a sniper on your way to the polls.

I used to believe this. I used to believe that the small ideological differences between the parties were not worth missing happy hour at a decent bar.  I especially didn’t think that the small differences between Al Gore and Dick Cheney (and the other guy on the ticket) amounted to much. And so, I regularly gave my vote to a third party.

How wrong I was; how vastly different was the government and the country, big differences that resulted from small differences in outlook. Democracy forces us to make bad choices, to choose the lesser of the evils offered. And while the lesser evil may still be evil, it is nonetheless lesser. The small difference can lead to big consequences.

@Zmirak:
“Among white voters, Obama is the “He sets such a good example” candidate. Honkies who want Obama secretly hope that electing a black president will make it safer for them to go to bank machines at night, encourage inner-city chastity, and subtly influence urban youths to turn down the subwoofers on their Humvees. “

Let me clue you in, “I’d rather have a red hot poker in my eye” than vote for McCain or Hillary and it has nothing to do with ATM’s, chastity or noise ordinance. I would rather vote for M. Moore, Kucinich, Gore and what not than those two. You run for President and you’ll get my vote.

The choices between Hilly and the mad bomber are like between either rabbies or advanced neuro Syphillis. Obama is still the wrong medicine.Its far better to vote third party to show that some resistence still remains.

Regarding Prof. Gottfried’s comments:

I’ll let his statement pass that Catholic Democrats are expressing social identification by continuing to support the party of their ancestors.

But I strongly reject his statement that they’re voting as a reflex action against predominantly Protestant Republicans. I’ve lived all of my life among ethnics (Irish and others) and I can state without equivocation that I’ve never heard or detected any such sentiments.

But I will happily admit that I’ve heard and detected plenty of sentiments directed against other groups in the racial/religious cauldron of Sodom & Gomorrah On the Hudson (aka, New York City).

From the blog: McCain’s a nationalist…

But the very opposite is painfully obvious Mr.Zmirak. To use Steve Sailer’s formula, he’s an ‘invade the world, invite the world’ lunatic.

“However, even if we grant that McCain would indeed appoint pro-life justices to the court, as I pointed out earlier this month, it’s unlikely that this would save a single unborn life. Overturning Roe v. Wade, while a very good thing, will merely serve to centralize the abortion industry in New York and California airports.”

This is witty, but it’s simply not true.  Before Roe v. Wade, four states already had abortion laws more liberal than Roe, and a few others had laws slightly more restrictive than Roe, but still permissive.  By this logic, the number of abortions pre-Roe should have been the same as the number of abortions post Roe.  All that should have changed was the location in which those abortions took place.

Returning to the status quo ante Roe will save unborn lives--a significant number of them in the first months, as a few dozen states immediately pass laws restricting abortion.  Will some women travel to other states to kill their children?  Yes.  Will all women?  No.  Will most women?  Almost certainly no.

That said, none of this is sufficient reason to vote for McCain, because there is no reason to believe that he or any other Republican president will actually appoint justices who will overturn Roe.  John grants too much when he grants a premise counter to fact.

And that said, I’m afraid there’s still no justification for a Catholic to vote for Obama.  It might be possible to argue that a Catholic could vote on the basis of the candidates’ positions on war, and thus vote for an antiwar Democrat, if the Democratic candidate would simply maintain the status quo regarding abortions.  But Obama has promised to change the status quo in order to enshrine abortion rights once and for all at the federal level.  Read his speech to Planned Parenthood, delivered last July.

A vote for Obama is a vote for an increase in the number of abortions, if Obama is a man of his word.  And the only way a Catholic can justify voting for Obama on the basis of the war is accepting the idea that he is, in fact, a man of his word.

Scott, I certainly hope you’re right, and that we get the chance to find out. I wonder whether the pre-Roe situation is an adequate guide, since a generation of Americans has grown up thinking that abortion is a fundamental right, and back-up contraception. Of course, I’m not suggesting anyone vote for Obama. Merely speculating about the likely outcome that will occur without my vote… which is going to Ron Paul, if I have to write it in my own blood.

I certainly hope you’re right, and that we get the chance to find out.”

Obama will keep his word on abortion and elevate it to Sacramental status. By doing so, he can defer to the foreign policy establishment on Iraq without alienating his base.

This is a brutal lose-lose election for prolife, anti-war Christians.

@John Zmirak:

“I wonder whether the pre-Roe situation is an adequate guide, since a generation of Americans has grown up thinking that abortion is a fundamental right, and back-up contraception.”

It’s certainly not exactly equivalent; I think that you’re right to assume that more women would travel for an abortion today, though I actually doubt that it’s most women.  That may sound strange, but there are entire categories of women who have abortions now because of relative convenience who would actually be forced to think more fully about what they are doing if they had to do something as simple as booking a plane ticket.

What’s more likely is something that you hinted at in your reply: More widespread use of “Plan B” contraceptives.  Of course, that will lead to more deaths of women as well as unborn children, which may well force the FDA to reconsider its approval of Plan B.

By the way, for those commenters on this site (not John, of course) who have occasionally made the comment that “Bush has been the most pro-life president since Reagan (or even since Roe)” on the basis of him signing the partial-birth abortion ban, never forget that it was Bush’s FDA that approved Plan B for non-prescription use.  The number of unborn children killed by Plan B in the year and a half since that decision undoubtedly dwarfs the number of children saved under the partial-birth abortion ban.

@Kevin:

“Obama will keep his word on abortion and elevate it to Sacramental status. By doing so, he can defer to the foreign policy establishment on Iraq without alienating his base.”

I’m certainly not defending Obama, but I’m not sure I follow your logic.  You’re saying that Obama is telling the truth about his stand on abortion, but lying about his stand on Iraq?  Why?

I think it more likely that he’s telling the truth about both, but that Obama will have his own foreign wars that he’ll be willing to fight, if only he can manage to get us extricated from Iraq.  So, yes, lose-lose, but for different reasons.

Scott,
Just to clarify; I’m just taking an educated quess how he’ll spend his political capital. He conform to elite opinion and the death-dealing wishes of his base on abortion, rather than expend his energy or muster the will to take on the “bi-partisan” foreign policy establishment and genuinely reverse the policy in Iraq.

You’re right, he’ll look abroad and find other monsters to slay.

“Sen. Obama cannot be unaware of the harsh impact immigration is having on black communities such as Los Angeles”

Sen. Obama couldn’t care less about black communities threatened by Hispanic immigration.  He cares about his own personal narrative, which has no space for such things.

Wiser heads than mine have pointed out that the Catholic bishops of America (and elsewhere) could have stopped abortion in its tracks years ago had they wanted to. Organized twenty-four hour prayer vigils, complete with civil disobedience if necessary, would have made the clinics that provide most abortions economically untenable. Ha! They won’t even cut off the most notorious pro-abortion Catholic pols from Holy Communion! Perhaps these noble excellencies will one day wish that they had had their necks fitted with millstones, the better to be cast into the sea.

@Theodore,
“Wiser heads than mine have pointed out that the Catholic bishops of America (and elsewhere) could have stopped abortion in its tracks years ago had they wanted to.”

Disagree that anything the Church did in 1973 would have “stopped abortion in it’s tracks”, but I agree they should have taken all the steps you advocated, anyways.
We are called to be faithful, not successful.

The day is fast approaching when a smaller, more cohesive and coherent Church will have to practice civil disobedience out of sheer existential desperation.

Kevin Wrote,

The day is fast approaching when a smaller, more cohesive and coherent Church will have to practice civil disobedience out of sheer existential desperation.

I couldn’t agree more.  I had to restrain myself at mass yesterday as the liberal priest was sermonizing how the lessons of Jesus’ time are not relevant for the church today and that is why people are leaving the church.  I think it is just the opposite.  People are leaving because of the Wal-mart shop at home watered down message that we get from our priests.  You try to please everybody and you end up pleasing nobody.  If people want to leave the church because they find it too restrictive on their lifestyle then teh should do so and make the church stronger in the process.

Mr. Zmirak,

Please explain in what universe could John McCain be called a nationalist, much less an ultra-nationalist like Ludendorff.
Have you read McCain’s latest foreign policy speech?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/us/politics/26text-mccain.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Did you miss the part where he calls for a league of democracies and for America to give up sovereign military power for international co-operation?