Karl Zinsmeister In The Blogs and News

Karl Zinsmeister In The Blogs and News

There are some days that I curse myself for being a pack-rat. On rare occasions, I am happy to say I'm a furious saver.

Karl Zinsmeister is a local resident who was recently tapped as President Bush's new domestic policy chief.

Last week I introduced you to the controversy surrounding his alleged unauthorized altering of an article written by Justin Park of the Syracuse New Times in Syracuse, N.Y. and updated you on the story.

Here is the snippet from the Syracuse New Times article that is in question.




Below is the cover of the August 18, 2004 edition of the Syracuse New Times picturing Mr. Zinsmeister.



In an update from Editor and Publisher, I caught something Mr. Zinsmeister said just one short year ago that has no fitting place among our references to reality today:

June 20, 2005, Zinsmeister, after another period as an embed, wrote, "What the establishment media covering Iraq have utterly failed to make clear today is this central reality: With the exception of periodic flare-ups in isolated corners, our struggle in Iraq as warfare is over....Contrary to the impression given by most newspaper headlines, the United States has won the day in Iraq.... the battle of Iraq is no longer one of war fighting—but of policing and politics."

I'm afraid that the Iraqi civil war is more than a series of periodic flare-ups in isolated corners of the unfortunate nation. Chopped-off heads are delivered daily to public squares. It's more like Murder, Incorporated than
'a-tussle-here and a knock-down-there.'

But do I really have to be saying this as if I'm trying to prove something to you that's already happened right in front of your very own eyes?

I respect Mr. Zinsmeister for what I believe is a genuine caring for the welfare of our troops and a patriotic spirit, but I don't have to go far to point out that he's overconfident in his opinion that this war is won by any stretch of the imagination. Is he writing as an intelligent patriot or as an ideologue? I leave that up to you to decide.

The manly-man bravado displayed in another statement made by Mr. Zinsmeister about the journalists who are risking their lives alongside troops every day in Iraq was not lost on Crooks and Liars. Think of "the appalingly soft" Bob Woodruff from ABC and the "whiny" James Brolan from CBS. It's funny how our past statements come back to haunt us.

At American Prospect's Horse's Mouth blog, Greg Sargent questions Mr. Zinsmeister's claims that he founded the American Enterprise magazine.

Where was God in Those Days?

Where was God in Those Days?

Jeff Jacoby wrote a thought-proking piece for the Boston Globe this week. Like me, Mr. Jacoby was a bit incredulous at Pope Benedict XVI's question asked when visiting Auschwitz, the infamous place where Nazis tortured, starved, and murdered over a million innocent human beings: "Where was God in those days?"

Mr. Jacoby said:

The God "who spoke on Sinai" was not addressing himself to angels or robots who could do no wrong even if they wanted to. He was speaking to real people with real choices to make, and real consequences that flow from those choices. Auschwitz wasn't God's fault. He didn't build the place. [..] It was not God who failed during the Holocaust or in the Gulag, or on 9/11, or in Bosnia. It is not God who fails when human beings do barbaric things to other human beings.

Perhaps the Pope understands that the Catholic church leadership stood stone-silent and it was a great moral misjudgement to have done so. If European Catholics who prized morality had witnessed that silence of the Vatican during those dark times, I would not have blamed them for losing their faith in the church as a gatekeeper of God's love on Earth. Perhaps many Catholics had regrets that they did not speak up when the Jews were discriminated against and socially isolated. By the time the Nazi voice had reached its fever pitch, it was too late.

I have to call myself a seriously doubting Catholic today upon hearing what I believe is a wrong-hearted message about God's love on Earth. I've learned from Raw Story that the current Pope has released a 60-page document called "Family and Human Procreation" that bashes gay family units and was, curiously, issued just days after Bush publicly supported a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. My heart and soul tells me that Pope Benedict XVI is very wrong when he turns the Catholic heart away from any loving family on the face of this all-too unloving Earth. The fact that the Vatican more than likely realizes how their document will affect U.S. politics turns my heart away from the moral path they are asking me to take. Make no mistake, a Catholic-sanctioned discrimination and isolation of LGBT families is just as morally wrong, if not as dramtic, as barbarism. It is an instruction that runs against God's love.

If I'm a sinner by loudly supporting loving and committed families, then I'm a beautiful and conscientious sinner on the side of love. For all his recent proclaiming of the importance of love, Pope Benedict XVI has lost my faith that he truly understands what love is all about by this recent document. "Where was God?" a future Pope may ask as he looks back on the discrimination, trampled human rights, and social abuse that gays and lesbian families will likely experience for years to come. I'll tell that Pope of the future exactly where God was. He was in the hearts of the people who truly believed in God's love and justice. I'll know I was right. Listening to our hearts and responding to the faith God has instilled within us is the only way for God's voice to be heard on Earth. Unfortunately, I'm quite aware that a lot more people will follow the Pope than to follow Iddybud. Then again, there was once one this loud voice in the wilderness......