From the Mere Comments blog of Touchstone magazine:

Observing Tolkien’s Birthday: Letters from Joel Tom Tate & Thomas Howard

Joel Tom Tate, author of Pass-Fail 101 in the June 2004 Touchstone, wrote asking for advice:

Yesterday [January 4] was the birthday of J.R.R. Tolkien and so, when I got home from work, I used a recipe I’d found on the Internet for lembas and my daughters and I made a batch. As we baked I explained to them as carefully as I could who Tolkien was and what a hobbit is. They are six, four and just turned two, so none of them have seen the Lord of the Rings movies yet, of course.

After dinner we assembled upstairs in one of the bedrooms and made a journey through a house lit only by a Christmas tree and a few lamps. My two oldest girls carried the flashlights, and I carried the lembas and a container of honey. One bedroom was Mirkwood, the living room was the plains of Rohan and so on. We ended up setting up camp in the den downstairs where, by the light of our electric torches, we ate our lembas and I read Tolkien’s wonderful poem about the road that starts at our door. We talked about adventures and their eyes were wide with wonder. My wife and I had a great time and the lembas was delicious (probably too much so for authenticity’s sake). And I suspect that the girls had instilled in them again that appetite for adventure that marks the spiritually healthy soul.

But I worry a little bit about events like this which are faintly liturgical without being explicitly Christian. Should I worry? And how old should a child be before she’s ready for The Hobbit?

We asked Thomas Howard to reply:

I myself don’t think there’s any harm in this sort of thing. A woman wrote to Lewis once, worrying that her child loved Aslan more than Jesus. Lewis reassured her that, having loved Aslan, the child would, when she encountered Jesus, recognize the very virtues and glories that had attracted her to Aslan.

Of course the business of “playing Middle Earth” can go awry if it’s taken too solemnly. I once had to speak to a bizarre conclave in California, and on the Sunday morning they all dressed up as hobbits, ents, wizards, etc., but—the whole thing was done with such utterly humorless gravity that it gave me the willies. They had gone deeply into a frame of mind appropriate only to the liturgy itself. I don’t think Mr. Tate took his children that far. It sounded o.k. to me. Where’d he get the recipe, though? I thought elves had to bake lembas!

Joel Tom Tate had this response:

Here’s a link to one of the many, many websites featuring one of a couple of different recipes for lembas. The only thing I added to it was some orange zest and was pleased to find that it came out kind of like a little scone. Still, pleasant or not, I’m afraid the product of this recipe is to real lembas what Tickle-Me-Elmo is to real mirth. But I appreciate Tom Howard’s wisdom on the subject and take encouragement from it.

From the Touchstone magazine blog, Mere Comments:

Late Night Thoughts on Watching TBN

New Year’s weekend I spent a late night watching a marathon “Best of 2004” special on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, Paul and Jan Crouch’s smorgasbord of Christian chat, enthusiasm, and entertainment—a sometimes amusing, often embarrassing parade of heterodox tomfoolery.

TBN has nearly everyone: from Franklin Graham to T.D. Jakes, from Binny Hinn to James Robison, from Joel Osteen to Hal Lindsey, from the converted Deion Sanders to Ephraim Zimbalist, Jr., from Jay Sekulow to Kenneth Copeland, and any celebrity that can say the word Jesus no matter what they believe or say or do otherwise.

If you watch long enough you’ll hear every imaginable twist on the gospel. Something is taught that sounds odd-but-perhaps-believable and—without anyone blinking—the next speaker will proclaim its polar opposite. In too many cases, neither opposed doctrine is recognizable as consensual Christian tradition nor remotely acquainted with what that might be.

Amid the circus-like mélange of performers and teachers, there remains the intuition that these people are not outside the grace of Christ despite all the silliness. In more charitable moments, as the procession of strangeness flickers across the screen, I am unable to imagine how these people could be turned from entering Paradise by an angel with a flaming sword. And, yet, the profound absence of genuine apostolic Christianity is inescapable. How many people are misguided by this false witness? (God have mercy on my judgment, but I don’t know what else to call it.)

I begin to wonder at the generosity of a God who, though he comprehends the innate capacity of humans to progressively sully and confuse and pervert the gospel, leaves the business of the Great Commission to men. Christ knew how diverse and bizarre would become the remembrance of him as the centuries and generations rolled on, still he’s left the work of the Kingdom of Heaven to us.

In fact, false teachers arose soon after Ascension and Pentecost, and their counterfeits continue to progress, spinning out ever-stranger communities of misled disciples.

Still, that said, and the sobering mystery of it meditated upon, the body of Christ is a discernable, effective presence in the world. The truth is out there—his body is, as Flannery O’Connor wrote, somehow available—for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.

"Million Dollar Baby’s" Multi-Million Dollar Rip-Off
By Debbie Schlussel

"Million Dollar Baby” will win the Academy Awards. 

Not because it’s the Best Picture.  But because it’s Hollywood’s best political propaganda of the year.  More effective than “Fahrenheit 911.”

Think “Baby” is about Rocky in a sports-bra—as it’s being marketed?  You’ve fallen for the “Million Dollar” lie.  What it’s really about, has nothing to do with Rocky Balboa or boxing.  That’s just the cover story to suck movie-goers in for a nefarious message.

“Baby”—which has critics gushing all over each other—is a two-hour, twenty-minute exercise in subtle and then not-so-subtle left-wing diatribe. 

If you plan to see the movie and don’t want to read a spoiler, stop here.

If you want to know the truth and save your ten bucks, keep reading.

“Million Dollar Baby” will win the Oscar because it supports killing the handicapped, literally putting their lights out.

It features legendary Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood, as its director and star.  For roughly the first half, viewers are tricked – thinking they are watching a movie about a champion boxer in the making, who just happens to be female. 

Even those who find women’s sports to be freakish sideshows of little interest, are rooting for Maggie Fitzgerald (Hillary Swank) to overcome her trailer-

trash background and become women’s Welterweight champion of the world.

But they’ve been defrauded, manipulated into what appears to be “The Champ” with estrogen, but is really a promotional ad for the Netherland’s euthanasia policy.  Movie critics—most of whom are complicit in this deception—only hint at this “unexpected, surprise twist.”

“Baby” begins with the hillbilly Maggie trying to learn boxing and get gym-owner/trainer/manager Frankie (Eastwood) to train her.  At first, he resists, saying he doesn’t train girls.  “Women boxing—that’s a freak show, and freaks are in.  I’m sure you’ll find someone else to train you,” he tells her.  Besides, at 31, she’s too old to become a great boxer.

But then, he loses his champion boxer to another boxing manager, and he takes Maggie on.  Soon, she’s winning fights all over the place, with instant knock-outs, and Frank and Maggie develop a surrogate-father/daughter relationship.  Maggie’s so good she’s in the Women’s Welterweight championship fight in Vegas with a million-dollar pot to split.

Maggie, on the verge of winning the fight, gets blindsided and knocked-out cold.  She hits her head so hard on the stool in the corner of the ring, she’s knocked unconscious.

And that’s where we learn what this movie is really about.  Maggie is paralyzed, a quadriplegic who loses a leg to infection – of sound mind, but almost a vegetable.  And since she can’t fight—she can’t even move—the proverbial “her life isn’t worth living” message is hammered home. 

To make the message as black and white as possible, Maggie isn’t just a hillbilly with no future outside boxing.  She’s from a broken home, with family members in prison, a mother defrauding welfare and Medicaid, and the standard trailerhome.  Her abusive family is only after Maggie’s money.  They don’t care about her, nor does anyone in the world.  So, as a quadriplegic, her life isn’t worth living.

Then there’s the religion excuse.  Maggie is eventually euthanized (a sanitized word for “murdered”) by trainer/surrogate-father Frankie.  A devout, but questioning, Catholic, he attends mass every day.  He is no common sinner without a conscience.  He’s the perfect Hollywood murderer of the weak – a whole lot more sympathetic than real-life mercy killers a la Dr. Kevorkian.

Janitors and waitresses die every day, thinking “I never got my shot,” Frankie is told by  right-hand man, former boxer Eddie (Morgan Freeman).  It’s better for Maggie to die now, having made it to such a high point in her life—the Women’s Welterweight title fight—than for her to face a life of anti-climactic paralysis.  Since she's only from a trailer park anyway, her life is expendable.

Sickening.

“Baby’s” version of euthanasia seems honorable and heroic—a sort of noblesse oblige for the 2000s.  But imagine if the real-life euthanized, victims of the Nazis and the Netherlands, were the “Million Dollar Babies” instead of a pathetic, washed up female boxer from the trailer park.

The Nazis victims didn’t just include six million Jews.  They murdered the handicapped and infirm, some as handicapped as “Baby’s” Maggie.  The handicapped, a burden on society and flaw in the master race, weren’t entitled to live, the Nazis posited.  That disturbing message is more palatable when the victim is “Baby’s” broken female Rocky with no future, and a likeable religious father-figure is the euthanasia-committing hero. 

Then there’s today’s Netherlands.  The country that values its legalized prostitutes and drugs has little value for human life.  Anyone can be murdered by their doctors at the request of family members.  There is no requirement the patient’s condition be terminal or the suffering be physical.  Thousands of innocents are euthanized each year at the request of greedy or neglectful spouses and family.  The slippery slope has begun. 

Why can’t Warner Brothers—“Baby’s” distributor—say what the movie’s really about, glorifying euthanasia?  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that no-one wants to go see a depressing movie with such stark politicking.  Americans want to see positive movies, not be exploited.  They think they’re going to see one here.  But they’ve been duped.
“Million Dollar Baby” is nothing more than a multi-million dollar fraud.  Sorry, Dirty Harry.  This time, you didn’t make my day.

From VDare.com. Stuff like this really makes you wonder what the hell the difference in voting for Bush over Kerry was. Lip service to pro-life groups, hearing amorphous evangelical hoo-hah and getting to keep a little bit more of my paycheck is about it.

Torture Bad Enough—But Bush AG Pick Gonzales Also Useless On Immigration, Quotas

By Steve Sailer

Despite Alberto Gonzales's dismaying performance before Senators last week, when he repeatedly refused to recant his earlier assertion that the President has the unilateral right to set aside Congress' laws against torture, it appears the fix is in. Gonzales will become the head of the Dept. of Justice (?!) and, as we are incessantly reminded, the first Hispanic Attorney General.

It's also widely assumed that Bush will later nominate Gonzales for the Supreme Court.

The likelihood of Gonzales being confirmed stems in part from the Bush administration's readiness to play the Johnnie Cochran-style race card. Republicans have increasingly taken to slandering as racist anybody who criticizes a minority Bush appointee. And, of course, Gonzales would indeed be the first Hispanic etc. etc.

Yet, what we haven't heard is much evidence that Hispanics particularly want to be represented by a national embarrassment like Gonzales.

Would you?

The best you can say for Gonzales is that he's a tool. He's a classic minion whose career over the last decade has consisted of concocting legal rationalizations for whatever George W. Bush wants to do.

What Bush wants to do is why VDARE.COM has its own questions for Gonzales—which the Senate appears unlikely to ask. Gonzales has been an enforcer in Bush’s campaign to flood the country with immigrants, legal and illegal, and re-engineer it with racial quotas.

Thus the Bush Administration failed to do what it would take to get Miguel Estrada, a principled conservative opposed to affirmative action, confirmed to the federal bench. But Gonzales, who has repeatedly defended ethnic preferences, is a much higher priority.

Gonzales saved racial quotas in the 2003 University of Michigan cases Grutter and Gratz by gelding the anti-affirmative action briefs written by Ted Olson—the truly tragic figure in this Administration.

As Howard Sutherland, VDARE.COM's legal expert, wrote:

"According to Robert Novak and others, Olson’s original drafts did argue against any consideration of race, rejecting the current shibboleth that government has a “compelling interest” in the racial composition of student bodies. But between Olson and Bush stood White House counsel, former Texas Supreme Court Justice and certified Bushbuddy Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales supports affirmative action and quotas. He revised the briefs to laud diversity and emphasize government’s compelling interest in achieving it, excising any call to eliminate preferences other than explicit quotas. Olson apparently never got to make his case to the president--who apparently agrees with Gonzales anyway, in as far as he thinks about it at all."

Gonzales thus delivered a massive hint to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor that she should craft her Bakke-style pseudo-compromise preserving racial preferences. At VDARE.COM, we call the incoherent result the “Michigan Mess.”

Moreover, Gonzales is so pro-illegal immigration that in his Senate testimony last week he used what I've called the "ultimate euphemism"—that illegal aliens are "lawful citizens."

That's not a slip of the tongue. Gonzales has a relentless prejudice in favor of authoritarian lawlessness, which is why the President wants to make him the nation's chief law enforcement officer. Here, for instance, are his semi-coherent thoughts from last Thursday's hearing on enforcing the immigration laws:

Gonzales: "There is no requirement, of course, upon state and locals to enforce federal immigration laws. It is purely voluntary. In fact, of course, some states have prohibitions [against?]. They couldn't, even if they wanted to. [They couldn't what?] In some cases, the department, as I understand it, has entered into with state and local departments in terms of memorandums of understandings in order to enforce this [?]. I certainly am sensitive to the notion that some local law enforcement people don't want to exercise this authority. Well, we're not saying that they have to. If they want to they can assist in fighting the war on terror, that's what this opinion allows us to do. Personally I would worry about a policy that permits someone, a local law enforcement official, to use this authority somehow as a club to harass uuhh they might be unlawful aliens but otherwise lawful citizens. [Emphasis added…!!] That would be troubling. That would be troubling to the President."

The National Council of La Raza (i.e., "The Race") has saluted Gonzales as a fellow-traveler in mestizo supremacist circles. According to WorldNetDaily (November 24, 2004):

"Alberto Gonzales served with distinction on the board of directors of one of NCLR’s oldest and most respected affiliates, the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans in Houston, Texas," [Janet Murguia, NCLR executive director and chief operating officer] said. "Moreover, during his tenure as White House counsel, he has been one of the most accessible members of the White House staff to NCLR and other Hispanic organizations." [NCLR Press Release]

There's no doubt that if a white, or even an African-American, nominee for Attorney General was linked to a group that called itself "The Race," he would be asked to distance himself from it.

The white American establishment, however, is condescendingly unaware of the very existence of the concept of mestizo supremacism—even though that has been the official ideology of the Mexican government since 1928.

There is also the detail that Gonzales is flamingly inept. He recently vetted and endorsed the now-withdrawn nomination of the gangsterish Bernie Kerik to be Secretary of Homeland Security. But, Bush never fires anybody for incompetence, just for independence. And that's the single sin you can be sure Gonzales won't commit.

And don’t believe the NRO crowd that only anti-American liberal wimps worry about little things like torture and tearing up the Geneva conventions. FBI G-men and military officers are also aghast at what Gonzales has done. Twelve high-ranking retired admirals and generals, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili, have criticized Gonzales in an almost-unprecedented open letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

After World War I, Winston Churchill forlornly reflected:

"When all was over, torture and cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and these were of doubtful utility."

I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the First World War. But the rapidity with which the Bush Administration, egged on by Gonzales, turned during their dramatically less desperate wars to torturing Afghan and Iraqi prisoners (70-90 percent of whom were arrested by mistake) makes the Great War look like a moral Golden Age.

One of the best things that happened to George H.W. Bush's administration was the Senate's 1989 rejection of the new President's nomination of their hard-drinking colleague John Tower as Secretary of Defense.

The senior Bush then put forward Dick Cheney, who proved as rational and capable during the First Gulf War as he showed himself hysterical and untrustworthy during the run-up to the Second.

Similarly, the junior Bush escaped serious damage when the atrocious Kerik's nomination collapsed quickly before the ex-bodyguard became a long-term blot upon the Cabinet.

Republican Senators should do their President a major favor and reject his unqualified legal lackey before Gonzales brings additional shame on the Administration and the country.

But, beyond that, they absolutely must reject him because his nomination is part of Bush’s extraordinary attempt to abolish America through mass immigration and replace it with some Tex-Mex oligarchic paradise.

[Steve Sailer is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and movie critic for The American Conservative. His website www.iSteve.com features site-exclusive commentaries.]

From The Australian:

Mark Steyn: Coalition of the giving

WE have Agence France Presse to thank for both the most striking headline and photograph of the tsunami devastation. The headline was "Tsunami Devastates DiCaprio", and for a moment I couldn't quite place the island: DiCaprio? One of the lesser known Maldives? Wasn't there an old Gracie Fields song – "'Twas on the isle DiCaprio that I found you?" Has Kofi Annan been flown over the devastated DiCaprio so he can marvel rhetorically: "Where have all the people gone?"
Well, they're his agent and hairdresser and they've gone to lunch. The devastated DiCaprio turned out to be Leonardo of that ilk, making a few observations on the catastrophe during a promotional visit to Rome. And in his own way he was indeed devastated. He's believed to have given $US1 million ($1.32 million) to disaster relief, as has Sandra Bullock. Michael Schumacher has given $US10 million.

For purposes of comparison, Herr Schumacher's donation is the same as that of oil-rich Kuwait. As for even oil-richer Iran, its Government has earmarked $US627,000 for disaster relief.

For purposes of further comparison, that's barely a twentieth of what was raised at the Sydney Opera House concert this weekend. Today's all-star cricket match between a World XI and an Asian XI at the MCG will do more for the beleaguered Muslims of Banda Aceh than Libya, Syria and Egypt combined.

In fairness to the Saudis, they've just upped their pledge to $US30 million. But for purposes of one final comparison, consider this: a single Saudi telethon in 2002 managed to raise $US56 million. That was for widows and orphans of Palestinian suicide bombers, those deceased as well as those yet to blow. It seems nothing gets the wealthy elite of Riyadh and Jeddah adding the zeroes to the cheques like self-detonating on an Israeli bus.

As for the most striking photograph of this disaster, it's by AFP's Jimin Lai. I haven't seen it in any of the papers, oddly enough. It shows a tsunami-devastated village in Galle on the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka: a couple of rescuers are carrying away a body while, behind them, smack dab in the centre of the picture, a young man looks on. He's wearing an Osama bin Laden T-shirt.

I gave up worrying "Why do they hate us?" on the evening of September 11, 2001. But, if I were that Osodden bin Loser guy watching the infidels truck in water, food, medical supplies and emergency clothing for villagers whose jihad-chic T-shirt collection was washed out to sea, I might ask myself a more pertinent question: "Why do they like us?"

The path of the tsunamis tracked the arc of the Muslim world, from Sumatra to Somalia; the most devastated country is the world's most populous Muslim nation, and the most devastated part of that country is the one province living under the strictures of sharia.

But, as usual, when disaster strikes it's the Great Satan and his various Little Satans who leap to respond. In the decade before September 11, the US military functioned, more or less exclusively, as a Muslim rapid reaction force – coming to the aid of Kuwaiti Muslims, Bosnian Muslims, Somali Muslims and Albanian Muslims. Since then, with the help of its Anglo-Australian allies, it's liberated 50 million Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq.

That's not how the West's anti-war movements see it. I found myself behind a car the other day bearing the bumper sticker, "War Is Costly. Peace Is Priceless" – which is standard progressive generic autopilot boilerplate, that somehow waging war and doing good are mutually exclusive. But you can't help noticing that when disaster strikes, it's the warmongers who are also the compassion-mongers. Of the top six donor nations to tsunami relief, four are members of George W. Bush's reviled "coalition of the willing".

What was it the Romans said? "If you seek peace, prepare for war." It's truer than they know. It's because Australia's prepared for war that it can do all the feelgood humanitarian stuff – such as landing 10 army engineers in Banda Aceh to attach a mobile filtration system to the decrepit mains pipes and thereby not merely restore the water supply but improve it.

But it goes beyond that, beyond even John Howard's spectacular billion-dollar pledge. Most citizens in the West look at the tsunami's victims and recognise our common humanity. When a chap is pulled down from a tree to survey the wreckage of his home and learn of the loss of his family, we see him first as our fellow man – a man in need. And if, afterwards, we happen to spot the sopping Osama T-shirt, we tactfully agree to overlook it – which is why I haven't seen that Sri Lankan AFP photo in any Western newspapers.

By contrast, Muslim leaders divide the world into the Dar al-Islam and everybody else. Yet the deaths of 100,000 members of the club in Banda Aceh alone isn't enough to catch the eye of the big shots in the Arab world. The Arab world's principal contribution these past two weeks has been the usual paranoia: "Was it caused by American, Israeli and Indian nuclear testing?" wondered Mahmoud Bakri in the Egyptian weekly Al Usbu. "The three most recent tests appeared to be genuine American and Israeli preparations to act together with India to test a way to liquidate humanity."

Colin Powell was foolish to suggest that, in its response to this crisis, the Muslim world would come to appreciate the true nature of the US. Fat chance. "It's OK that aid from the US is here," said Hilmy Bakar Almascaty, spokesman for the Islamic Defender Front. "But if they open bars, sell alcohol or open prostitution centres, then we will fight them." Almascaty also warned the Australian charity Youth Off the Streets that its plan to open homes for 35,000 Indonesian orphans was all very well, but on no account was it to try converting Muslim children. Jeez, man, would it kill you once in a while just to send a box of chocolates and a card saying "Thank you, you infidel sons of whores and pigs", and leave it at that?

But one day the smarter lads in the Osama T-shirts will begin to wonder what they're getting in return for their glorification of a multimillionaire whose followers these days spend most of their time killing Muslims – in Iraq, in Turkey, in Saudi Arabia, even in Indonesia. With friends like that, who needs tsunamis?

It shouldn't be necessary to point out the good deeds of Australia and its allies these past two weeks. But it is, because of the grand panjandrums of Western self-loathing. Peter Jennings, the smug Canadian who anchors America's ABC News (which is broadcast on Sky News Australia at 10.30am AEST), reported the other day that "in the oil-rich countries of the Persian Gulf, citizens are being urged to do more . . . Ironically, the controls on Muslim charities after 9/11 may be keeping contributions down."

Ah, yes. If it weren't for the US cracking down on Saudi money-laundering to terrorists, Sumatrans would be able to wallpaper their new homes with Arab cheques. Maybe it's time for the western self-loathers – Jennings, The Guardian, Melbourne Age cartoonist Bruce Petty – to ask themselves: Why do we hate us?

Mark Steyn is a columnist with Britain's Telegraph group and a regular contributor to The Australian's Opinion page.

From The Chicago Sun Times:

Election protest shows why Dems don't count
By Mark Steyn

Thought for the day, from a gloomy party member on the Democratic Underground Web site: ''Reality sucks. That's the problem. We want another reality.''

Well, they're doing a grand job of creating their alternative universe. At midday Thursday, as George W. Bush was about to be confirmed formally as the winner of the presidential election, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, described by Agence France-Presse as the ''Democratic former presidential hopeful,'' led 400 other Democrats in a protest outside Congress. Presidential-wise, they may be former but they're still hopeful. So they were wearing orange, the color of the election protesters in Ukraine, who overturned their own stolen election with an ''orange revolution.''

Now, on the one hand it's very brave for the Rhymin' Reverend to lead an orange protest. There is no rhyme for the word ''orange.'' Irving Berlin tried and the best he could manage was ''door-hinge,'' which just about works in certain boroughs of New York but would make an unreliable jingle for the Rhymin' Rev to bellow at Bush from outside the White House:

''We're here, we're orange

We're pushing at your door-hinge . . .''

On the other hand, what's he really saying? That Americans are in the same situation as Ukrainians? That their election was stolen? In Ukraine, the one side poisoned the other side's candidate. His face broke out and his hair turned gray. John Kerry's hair is fabulous and for much of the campaign his glowing moisturized skin looked like an orange revolution all by itself. He was obviously worried about being poisoned, which is why he nibbled so tentatively during his pretend lunch stop at Wendy's and only took a couple of sips when he was doing his impression of a regular guy drinking beer at that sports bar in Ohio. But he managed to dodge that bullet and Jesse Jackson never got a chance to channel Danny Kaye: The pellet with the poison's in the Brahmin with the Botox.

But I'm beginning to wonder if Karl Rove didn't manage to slip something into the whine cellar at Democratic headquarters. It beggars belief that Rev. Jesse on the steps of Congress, and the Congressional Black Caucus in the House, and Barbara Boxer in the Senate would start the new term with yet another reprise of the same old song from the last four years -- that Bush, the World's Biggest Moron, somehow managed to steal another election. That makes three in a row. The GOP's obviously getting better at it.

As usual, the media did their best to string along with the Democrats' alternative reality. For the most part, the press now fulfill the same function for the party that kindly nurses do at the madhouse; if the guy thinks he's Napoleon, just smile affably and ask him how Waterloo's going. So Alan Fram of the Associated Press reported with a straight face that Sen. Boxer, Congressman Conyers and the other protesting Democrats ''hoped the showdown would underscore the problems such as missing voting machines and unusually long lines that plagued some Ohio districts, many in minority neighborhoods.''

I think not. What it underscores is that the Democrats are losers. Speaking as a foreigner -- which I believe entitles me to vote in up to three California congressional districts -- I've voted on paper ballots all my life and reckon all these American innovations -- levers, punch cards, touch screen -- are a lot of flim-flam. I would be all in favor of letting the head of Bangladesh's electoral commission design a uniform federal ballot for U.S. elections. But that's not the issue here. What happens on Election Day is that the Democrats lose and then decide it was because of ''unusually long lines'' in ''minority neighborhoods.'' What ''minority neighborhoods'' means is electoral districts run by Democrats. In Ohio in 2004 as in Florida in 2000, the ''problems'' all occur in counties where the Dems run the system. Sometimes, as in King County in Washington, they get lucky and find sufficient votes from the ''disenfranchised'' accidentally filed in the icebox at Democratic headquarters. But in Ohio, Bush managed to win not just beyond the margin of error but beyond the margin of lawyer. If there'd been anything to sue and resue and re-resue over, you can bet those 5,000 shysters the Kerry campaign flew in would be doing it. Instead, Boxer and Conyers & Co. are using a kind of parliamentary privilege to taint Bush's victory without even the flimsiest pretext.

And that's sure to work, isn't it? Another two years of Tom Daschle obstructionism and Michael Moore paranoia. You don't need to run a focus group to know that's the formula that will sweep Dems into office on Election Day 2006, right?

A Democrat chum said to me on Thursday, oh, well, they're just doing this to toss a bone to the base. But they're running out of bones to toss, and the base needs a reality check, not more pandering. One reason why the party has shriveled away to Greater New England plus the ''minority neighborhoods'' of a few cities is that it's all fringe, and no mainstream. The base is out of control; the kooks still holding their post-election vigil outside one of John Kerry's mansions sound no loopier than the big-time senators. The party has no urge to move on from moveon.org.

I say all this -- takes out onion and starts to peel -- more in sorrow than in anger. Two plausible parties are necessary for a functioning democracy, especially in war, especially in a long war which will inevitably have to be fought by presidents both Republican and Democrat. The Dems might get lucky. The GOP might nominate some freaky goofball in '08, and the other fellow will win by default. But, as the 2004 field reminded us, this isn't a party exactly brimming with talent and fresh faces. And, as for ideas, when was the last time you heard a fresh policy from a Democrat? The serious arguments about war, social security, immigration and pretty much everything else are all within factions of the right. The Democrats' only contribution is to insist that someone in Halliburton has figured out a way to get the touch-screen voting machines to make Democrats' votes vanish. Democrats' votes are vanishing because Democrat voters are vanishing because Democrat intellectual energy has all but vanished. Or as Republican Congresswoman Deborah Pryce summed up Thursday's Boxer rebellion: ''Their objection is a front for their lack of ideas.''