QandO

Liveblogging the Convention

Arnold is looking very, very Teutonic this evening.

Arnold talks about how he grew up in fear in Soviet-occupied Austria. Notes that the Sovs are gone, because of the USA.

Evidently, he became a Republican after watching the Nixon-Humphrey debates. Of course, that was '68, when Nixon was still a conservative, rather than a crook.

Everything I have...I owe to America. America gave me opportunities, and my immigrant dreams came true.

If you believe that this country, not the United Nations, is the best hope for democracy, then you are a Republican. If you believe we must be fierce and determined to "terminate" terrorism, then you are a Republican.

If you are pessimistic about the country's economy, don't be economic "girly-men".

Arnold seems to take a perverse pleasure in the yelps of dismay that his use of that line engenders among the perpetually affronted.

Nice line: Our troops don't believe in "two Americas". They believe in one America and they are fighting for it.

Decent speech from Arnold, with a couple of stirring moments. Nothing like Giuliani last night, though.

Is it just me, or is FOXNews trying to show every single African-American they can find in the convention? They just did a crowd reaction shot that flashed to five different black guys in a row. 92% of African-Americans vote Democrat. There can't be that many black delegates at the convention.

And, wherever they are finding the black people, I'm not seeing any of them in the longer-lens crowd shots. It strikes me that FOX is intentionally highlighting minorities.

Maybe there would be more black delegates if the Repubs weren't just writing them all off, or offering token blacks like, say, Alan Keyes, as candidates.

Jenna and Barbara Bush. Cuties.

Jenna: We've tried to stay out of the spotlight over the last four years. Sometimes we did a better job than others. But we told our dad that, when we were young and stupid, we were young and stupid.

For some reason, Jenna looks like the kind of girl who's always ready to say "yes" to a party. Barbara looks like the girl you take home to mother.

Barbara:

We had a hamster, too. *grimace* Let's just say it didn't make it.

That's the best line the kids have. Whoever wrote their speech needs to take a few classes at humor school. Corny, corny, corny.

This is a bit of surprise. W is on live from a remote location, to introduce Laura Bush.

I'm sure Laura Bush is a wonderfully nice person. Heck, I'm sure Teresa Kerry is a peach, too. I'm not to sure whay I am supposed to listen to either of them. That whole Libby Dole deal in 96 set a bad precedent. I mean, what are the wives gonna say? "My husband is a misanthrope who should be put in a bamboo cage and poked with sharp sticks."

I don't think I'd want to make The Lovely Christine speak before a convention. In fact, I'm pretty sure I couldn't.

By the way, is it just me, or is every other person on the convention floor wearing an American Legion or VFW hat? Actually, it's not just me. Veterans are the largest delegate group present at the Con.

You gotta hand it to the Democrats, though. They clearly win the flamboyant headger contest.

Lot's of signs in the Crowd: "W Stands for WOMEN"

Obvious Democratic rejoinder: As long as they don't want, you know, abortions.

Mort Kondracke: Compared to the Kerry Daughters, the Bush Girls came off like ditzes. The rest of the panel agrees. I do too. They seemed like giggly teenagers, while Kery's daughters were poised and mature, and far more entertaining.

Unfortunately, the race isn't between Jenna and Alexandra.

Fred Barnes has it right: Our politicians aren't royalty, and the families really have no business having prime-time speaking roles.

Judging George

Reader MK-Ultra writes:

Judge a man by results. On that score what is Bush for?

Creating jobs? Nope, we have lost jobs during his tenure.

Probably this was due to the recession that started in April of 2001, then the 911 attacks. Oddly enough, people lose jobs in recessions. Apparently, the recession is over, and we've created many new jobs over the last sevral months. Indeed, the Household Survey indicates we are creating millions of more new jobs than the establishment survey counts.

Not that it is anything other than passingly relevant, since presidents don't create jobs. At most, they can convince Congress to sign on to fiscal policy measures that help or hinder job creation. Bush has done the former.

Bringing down deficits? Nope, deficits have skyrocketed during his tenure.

Yes, that usually happens during recessions. And wars. That aside, though, can we presume that you'd prefer that we slash the size and scope of governments to reduce the deficit?

Sorry, I was just being silly. Of course, you probably prefer massive tax increases.

Lifting people out of poverty? Nope, more have joined the ranks of those in poverty during his tenure.

Actually the poverty rate has remained stable. More people have joined the ranks of poverty, just as more people have joined the ranks of the well off, because there are simply more people.

Increasing the number with health insurance? Nope, more people have become uninsured during his tenure.

That's tragic, but we do live in a country where the government is the health insurer of last resort. So medical care for the uninsured is available.

Moreover, I don't want to live in a country where government is the health insurer of first resort.

Reducing the size of government? Nope, the size of government has increased during his tenure.

That's an odd argument coming from a member of the politcal spectrum whose primary accomplishments in government have been constant increases in its size. Especially when the sentence immediately prior seems to be arguing for government intervention in the medical sector, which accounts for 14% of GDP.

That hardly sounds like a prescription for reducing the size of government. Which makes one doubt the sincerity of the "size of government" argument.

Resditributing wealth upward? Bingo. The gap between rich and poor has increased during his tenure.

And government reditribution of wealth to solve that problem worked famously in the USSR for years.

You all deserve what you get. BTW, how many jobs does a President have to lose before you declare him a failure? One more than Bush has lost?

That depends on whether the president implements policies that cost jobs, or whether he can get Congress to sign on to policies that try to prevent job losses.

In this case, the president and Congress have implemented a mixture of both classical Keynesian (Deficit Spending) and Supply-Side (tax cuts) policies designed to assist in job creation. Since that is essentially the limit of what a president can do, it's difficult to see what else Mr. Bush could've done.

A Vietnam Atrocity

An example of one of those day-to-day atrocities John Kerry was going on about in 1971:

The atrocity?

Read the caption:

This is a psyops visit to a village in late 1969 in the Bassac River. That's me with my back to the camera, handing out candy to the kids and vitamins to the adults. Note the expressions on the faces of the adults -- and the fact that they are voting with their feet by crowding toward the boat. Kids and adults loved to have their pictures taken with our Polaroid -- the magic of having their picture right away and most of them didn't even know what a camera was!

Sadly, this village was attacked a day or so later by the Vietcong. They literally beat the village chief and his wife to death with clubs and hacked a 4-inch hole in their daughter's skull with a machette. We ran the little girl to Binh Thuy to the hospital at 0230 with me sitting on the fantail holding her. We never did find out if she lived or not... she was alive when I handed her to the corpsman.

Dave Wallace
Former OinC PCFs 32 & 65
CosDiv 13 / Cat Lo & Sa Dec, RVN

Tommy Franks Surprises Exactly Nobody

While listening to the radio today, I heard Sean Hannity mentioning Tommy Franks upcoming appearance on his show to "announce his endorsement for President....stay tuned! We'll have it next!"

You know what? If a General is about to announce his endorsement at the Republican Convention, on Sean Hannity's show...I don't think there's a whole hell of a lot of suspense left.

Still, Hannity missed the catch by a few minutes. The bloggers got the announcement first, and his additional remarks seemed....well, just about right.

Q: Do you think John Kerry can fight a war on terror?

A: Well, I support George W. Bush. You know what? I know what John Kerry is against. I'm having a little trouble figuring out what he's for.

As near as I can tell, John Kerry appears to be for winning wars, stopping terrorists, making friends and nice weather. He doesn't actually indicate how he'll accomplish them, but, by golly, he'll do it. Because he's not George W Bush.

Captain Ed--one of the convention bloggers--makes a couple other good points, worth passing along.

• Regarding a conversation between Sean Hannity and Terry McAuliffe...

  

  Hannity also tried to press McAuliffe for answers on these questions, all of which McAuliffe refused to answer:

  * Christmas In Cambodia (several times)
  * John Kerry's support for a nuclear freeze during Reagan's term
  * John Kerry's vote against the death penalty for terrorists during Bush's term

  Interestingly, just before the last two questions, McAuliffe had complained that Hannity wouldn't discuss Kerry's Senate record. As soon as he did, however, McAuliffe kept changing the subject back to George Bush's National Guard service.

  Hypocrisy, thy name is McAuliffe...

• And on Rudy Giuliani's speech...
  

  One last thought was something I noticed during Giuliani's speech last night. He spent more time on John Kerry's Senate record than Kerry himself did in Boston.

Third Chechen Woman linked to third terror attack in Russia

We had two Russian aircraft blown out of the sky by terrorists a week ago. In both cases, Chechen women are suspected of the terrorist acts.

It appears that today in Moscow a third Chechen woman commited a terrorist act almost to the hour when the previous attacks occured:

A woman strapped with explosives blew herself up outside a busy Moscow subway station Tuesday night, killing at least 10 people and wounding more than 50 — the second terrorist attack to hit Russia in a week.

We've seen the occasional use of women among the Palestinians in the role of suicide bombers, but its not been prevalent elsewhere ... until now.

Obviously scrutiny of Muslim women in general and Chechen women in particular is going to heighten, especially in Russia.

But I wonder, given the fundametalism of al-Queda and its apparent fundamentalist Islamic view of the role of women, whether that would ever be something they'duse in future operations?

Suicide bombings blamed on Chechen secessionists have struck Moscow and other parts of Russia over the past several years. In February, 41 people were killed in a rush-hour explosion on the Moscow subway that officials said was a terrorist attack; in December a female suicide bomber blew herself up outside a hotel adjacent to Red Square, killing five other people.

Many of the Chechen female suicide bombers are believed to be so-called "black widows," who have lost husbands or male relatives in the fighting.

No doubt Iraq and Afghanistan will produce more than a few "black widows". The question is, will fundamentalist Arab terrorists ever try to use them?

Global Warming? Not according to the mussels

An interesting find. From The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (which describes itself as "a non-profit public charity dedicated to discovering and disseminating scientific information pertaining to the effects of atmospheric CO2 enrichment on climate and the biosphere") comes a Swedish study of, you ready for this, freshwater pearl mussels which says, its no so different now than it was 217 years ago.

Apparently based on the title of the review, yearly growth increments on the shells of these mussels is effected by the air temperature. These folks went to museums which had collected specimens alive and studied their yearly growth increments:

The authors utilized 60 specimens of freshwater pearl mussels that had been collected alive between AD 1853 and 1930 (stored in museums) and between AD 1986 and 1997 from six rivers in northern, central and southern Sweden to reconstruct a 217-year history of summer (June-August) air temperature for the country, which they compared with the Scots pine tree-ring-derived summer air temperature reconstruction of Briffa et al. (1990).

Findings?

Schone et al. report that "both series do not reveal any significant long-term temperature trends," but they say that "the number of cold summers was higher prior to about AD 1900 as compared to the last 90 years." Also, their data reveal that the peak temperatures of the late 1980s and early 1990s were no higher than those of the 1930s and 40s, while the coldest summer of the entire record (by far!) occurred on the last full year of the series.

Meaning?

Clearly, these temperature reconstructions reveal absolutely nothing that is unusual about either the entire 20th century or its last two decades, which are routinely described by climate alarmists as having experienced unprecedented warming over the last thousand years and perhaps even the past two millennia. If such occurred anywhere, it wasn't in Sweden.

Interesting.

Swift Boats, "Liars" and Blogs

In the Atlanta Journal Consititution today, Jim Wooten was discussing why Kerry's post Vietnam activites were fair game. I think we've covered that fairly well here.

But at the end of the article he made a pretty good point about the controversy with the Swift Boat Vets, the mainstream media and the "internet" which is a euhphemism for blogs:

The Kerry camp has treated the swift-boat veterans as an adjunct of the Bush campaign and dismissed them as liars, one and all. That's the story framed for the mass media.

On a parallel information track, primarily the Internet, a different story emerged. Rather than focus on whether the swift-boat veterans were Bush pawns, a community of fact-checkers and military experts assembled to examine the evidence. The result was that veterans who knew the history of the brown-water Navy in Vietnam, who understood tactics and missions, and who had firsthand experience, studied the Kerry claims.

The mainstream media never quite got past the "liar-liar" feed. I have not heard anybody on either side of the Kerry claims who I thought lied. Different vantage points and memories, perhaps. But no liars.

I'm not sure I'm in agreement wtih the "no liars" bit, but I do agree very much with his assessment of what has happened with the Swift Boat controversy and how it has essentially ended the monopoly of the so-called main stream media.

Watching the "internet", aka blogs, dig into this story has been fascinating. Meeting in a virtual room over many weeks, fact-checkers and former (and present) military did indeed sift and compare the evidence at hand, as noted by Wooten. And their conclusions were much different than the MSM who's approach was to focus on the politics and connections and ignore the substance.

As we all know, that's not something new for them.

Its interesting to watch this examination and assessment of the new state of the media going on. Its also fun to be a part of the change that's taking place. I like the fact that it is now possible to address the slant, factual inaccuracies and opinions in some other way than a 'letter to the editor" or an email to the ombudsman and hope they get noticed or published.

Its freedom of speech in the most democratic way .... and it appears to scare the big-boys to death.

What IS the point of the Kerry campaign?

Besides getting rid of Bush, that is?

That's the question Tod Lindberg at the Washington Times is asking:

The Democratic convention, in retrospect, was a glass half-empty. Organizers correctly realized that they had a huge anger management issue on their hands, and to their credit, they handled it well. Several thousand people, including delegates and hangers-on, most of whom loathe George W. Bush viscerally, managed to keep their passions in check well enough to avoid alienating the majority of Americans (including just about all of those whose votes are up for grabs) who don't share their sense of disgust toward the incumbent.

Unfortunately, what the check on the Bush-bashing chiefly revealed was the presence of absence: What exactly was or is the point of the John Kerry campaign? Why is it urgent for Americans to pull the lever for him? What is the Democratic agenda?

The "presense of absense". I like that.

As we all now know, Kerry has since agreed that he'd have voted to go to war with Iraq knowing what we now know about WMDs. So what in the world is different here? Oh, that Kerry served in Vietnam?

Uh, I think he'd just as soon that became a 'backburner" issue. Which leaves him with his Senate record and his anti-war record. As someone noted he gave a 5000+ word convention speech in Boston and he spent 70-something words on his Senate record.

I don't know whether Democrats have answers to these questions or not — beyond, that is, their passionate desire to beat Mr. Bush because of what they take to be his intrinsic loathsomeness. But if you have in mind that your real reason is not one you can safely put on the table — namely, again, Mr. Bush's loathsomeness — you are going to have to find something else.

And that's the weakness the Democrats bring to the election. Kerry isn't there because of his record. Kerry isn't there because of his leadership. Kerry isn't there because of his war time service.

Kerry is there for one and only one reason. Kerry's there because he, of a field of 9 candidates, was deemed the most likely to beat George Bush. He's the nominee because he appeared to be the most 'electable'. The nominee who most excited the Democrats, who appeared to best reflect what they are, Howard Dean, was abandoned like an old whore with STD when it became obvious he wasn't going to make it.

In my opinion, that choice by the Democrats is beginning to show in a campaign which appears to be fraying around the edges and coming apart at the seams.

Its still early, and Kerry has kick-started his compaign before, but barring unforseen catastrophe on the Republican side, I'd have to bet it will come up short.

Economically 2004 much like 1996

In 1996, Bill Clinton was running for reelection. Michael J. Mandel of Business Week notes that, economically, the US was very similar to where it is now:

Perhaps a better, and more informative, comparison is with 1996, the last time an incumbent President ran for reelection. Like this one, the election of 1996, which pitted Bill Clinton against Bob Dole, came several years into a recovery. And the 1996 campaign, like today's, was fought against a backdrop of middle-class anxiety over job cuts and outsourcing, at least in its early stages.

The good news for Bush: On many of the key variables that voters care about, the economy looks uncannily like it did in the summer of 1996, a year when the incumbent was reelected. July's unemployment rate was 5.5%, exactly what it was in July, 1996. Similarly, consumer inflation is running at 3%, the same as July, 1996. Consumer confidence, housing affordability, unemployment claims -- all are roughly at 1996 levels.

However, its not identical:

Some factors have improved considerably this time around: GDP growth, for one, is much stronger. In other areas the economy is worse off, particularly in the number of jobs created and the size of the budget deficit. Still, history suggests that unless the economy suddenly deteriorates, it may be difficult for John F. Kerry to convince voters -- outside of swing states that have suffered disproportionately from the loss of manufacturing jobs -- that Bush has mishandled economic policy.

And we've related the difficulties to be found with the statistics out on job creation. Depending on which survey you're inclined to trust, jobs can be lagging (BLS payroll) or doing quite well (Household Survey). Regardless of the economic good news, those without jobs are most likely going to be voting on the lack of jobs.

But here's an interesting point:

By the time Clinton was running again in 1996, the economy had come a long way, but the national mood was troubled. Voters still felt uneasy about layoffs and outsourcing, with far more insecurity about their jobs than they had in the 1980s. Real wages were only up 0.9% -- total -- since Clinton had first taken office.

In fact, in terms of 1996, jobs really don't look that bad in 2004:

And although jobs were being created -- more than 200,000 per month -- the jobless rate was barely inching down. In fact, going into the August, 1996, Republican National Convention in San Diego, 12 states actually had higher unemployment rates than a year earlier. By comparison, only one -- Rhode Island -- has a higher rate today than a year ago.

Interesting. And there's even more to the comparison:

Moreover, growth prospects did not look very bright at the time of the convention. In August, 1996, the government reported that productivity had risen only 0.7% over the previous year -- a number that has since been revised to 2.8%. Moreover, over Clinton's almost four years in office, a period of economic recovery, growth had averaged a tepid 2.5%, according to the data at that time. As a result, most economic forecasters expected only 2% or so growth over the next year, terrible by current standards.

Just like today, some parts of the country were doing better than others. In July, 1996, 10 states had a jobless rate at or above 6%, not much different from today's eight states. California, in particular, had unemployment over 7% in 1996, far worse than the 5% the state saw in 1989.

Also just like today, the mixed economic picture in 1996 was reflected in the data on consumer confidence from the Conference Board. In July, 1996, the consumer confidence index was 107, about where it is now. That was far below the previous peak of 121, reached in 1989.

Yet, as Mandel notes, Dole was unable to get any traction on the issue with voters. He further notes that "the Democrats were able to argue successfully that a 5.5% unemployment rate was a successful economic record". Of course, 5.5% is exactly the unemployment rate today. But the Democrats are hardly making the same argument this time.

So Mandel asks are there other differences which may help or hurt Bush when compared to Clinton?

Is there any reason to believe that Bush might be more vulnerable on the economy today than Clinton was? Perhaps. For one, Dole was not a very effective candidate, and he ran against one of the great campaigners of all time.

Agreed. But then, I don't believe John Kerry is doing much to impress anyone with his campaigning. And Bush seems to be a much better and more effective campaigner than Dole, his father, and frankly, Kerry. And then there was also the dying gasp of the attempted third party which impacted the right more than the left in 1996 (which is why the Dems are so desperate to get Nader to go away).

Another difference is the unemployment rate for college-educated workers, which stands at 2.7%, compared with 2.2% in 1996. While that may not seem high, it's enough to raise anxiety among the educated class, who face unprecedented threats from outsourcing.

True, if the numbers are true. But there are real indications that job creation has changed quite significantly over the time of 1996 to now. And it is entirely possible that the comparison isn't really valid. That in fact while these workers may not show up on the traditional stats of the payroll survey, they may very well be working in a contract or 1099 capacity in jobs of their own creation.

In addition, real wages are down over the past year, compared with a slight increase in 1996. The political import of that, however, depends on whether voters are more sensitive to recent events or to comparisons with four years earlier. Real wages are still up by 2.1% since Bush took office -- equal to the entire real wage gain from 1983 to 1996.

Again, debatable. As Jon pointed out recently, "total compensation" which is a more fair gauge of what workers are earning, is growing faster than it did in the '90s. But to be fair, its harder to sell "total compensation" than "higher wages".

Then there's the budget and trade deficits, which are far higher as a share of GDP than they were in 1996. These factors may hurt economic growth over the long haul, but it's hard to argue that they are holding the economy back in the short run.

And its hard to argue that many voters are going to pay much attention to this at this time. The economy as a local or personal issue is what is going to drive a voter one way or the other. While there is going to be some concern expressed about budget and trade deficits, those aren't everyday economic issues to which voters are most attuned.

The biggest imponderable is how the labor market does over the next few months. If job growth continues to stall, then Kerry will have a potent economic issue. But a pickup in the labor market will make this look even more like 1996 -- and we know who won that one.

Actually if it continues to grow, it will be better than 1996 in terms of the unemployment rate. And if that's the case then it will be an issue that Kerry will have great difficulty selling (and it should be a comparison the Republicans hammer on the campaign trail).

We'll have to see how it goes.

Moore v. McCain

Snippets from the convention:

We have Michael Moore welcoming Republicans to his New York in USA Today:

But what's all this talk about New York being enemy territory? Nothing could be further from the truth. We New Yorkers love Republicans. We have a Republican mayor and governor, a death penalty and two nuclear plants within 30 miles of the city.

"We New Yorkers"? I thought this slug was from Michigan?

Apparently USA Today found Moore's mocking salute to Republicans "usable" unlike Ann Coulter's piece from the Democrat Convention.

John McCain, however, addressed Moore rather well if a bit obliquely last night:

Our choice wasn't between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war.

It was between war and a graver threat. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Not our critics abroad. Not our political opponents.

And certainly not a disingenuous film maker who would have us believe that Saddam's Iraq was an oasis of peace when in fact it was a place of indescribable cruelty, torture chambers, mass graves and prisons that destroyed the lives of the small children held inside their walls.

My small nit-pick with McCain is he referred to Moore as a "film maker". So did USA Today. I guess the word "propagandist" isn't in the style book.

Heh

Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD), facing a tough campaign against Rep. John Thune, is running a new campaign ad back home.

It features him receiving a hug from President Bush!

"This is delightful!" laughed one republican official in New York on Monday morning. "Senator Daschle now concedes supporting the president can score him votes in the fall!"

That's just too funny.

Energy and Progress

In a post last week, I'd noted some very interesting progress being made in the field of alternate-energy development....

Via Dean Esmay, here's some potentially good energy news...

A team of Australian scientists predicts that a revolutionary new way to harness the power of the sun to extract clean and almost unlimited energy supplies from water will be a reality within seven years.

Using special titanium oxide ceramics that harvest sunlight and split water to produce hydrogen fuel, the researchers say it will then be a simple engineering exercise to make an energy-harvesting device with no moving parts and emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants.

It would be the cheapest, cleanest and most abundant energy source ever developed: the main by-products would be oxygen and water. Rooftop panels placed on 1.6 million houses, for example, could supply Australia's entire energy needs.

Meanwhile, the biomass-to-oil project is continuing apace.

In May, Renewable Environmental Solutions (RES) said its first commercial plant is selling oil -- equivalent to crude oil No. 4 -- produced from agricultural waste products. The plant currently produces 100 to 200 barrels of oil per day using byproducts from an adjacent turkey processing facility.
[...]
At peak capacity, estimated to occur by the end of this year, the first plant will produce 500 barrels of oil per day, as well as natural gas, liquid and solid fertilizer and solid carbon.

Are these the solutions to our energy problems? Who knows? I remember some scientists a couple decades ago swearing up and down that they had created cold fusion in a jar. Whatever happened to those guys, anyway?

Regardless, it's exactly something like this that I believe will render our current environmental and economic energy-related fears an anachronism of another age. With the advancing pace of technology, I fully expect we'll see some serious progress within a couple decades, and implementation within a decade or two after that.

With these advances in technology, the Kyoto Treaty will eventually look a bit like a fellow trying to sell horse carriages right about the time the Model T was being produced.

So, the biomass-to-oil project, and a hydro/solar project show great potential. That's all very heartening, but what brings this up again is an email I got in reference to my question about those cold-fusion scientists.

Apparently, via reader Eric, we know "whatever happened to those guys"....at least, one of the proponents of cold fusion, if not the original University of Utah scientists. Eugene Mallove died--was murdered, actually--just months ago.

Oddly, this occurred just about the time there has been renewed interest in the "Cold Fusion" idea....

Three months ago, the US Department of Energy quietly agreed to examine what cold fusion supporters say is increasing evidence -- culminating at a conference at MIT last summer -- that the reaction exists and is reproducible. If the agency agrees, it will likely mean an injection of both funding and legitimization for the forgotten research.

The entire article is a fascinating look at a scientist who may become either an Einstein, Reolutionary Physicist....or a modern day alchemist, spending his life on the impossible.

Is there anything to it? I'm certainly unable to say--sure, I've read Stephen Hawking, but mostly so I could leave the book laying about where people might see it--but one has to believe that it's exactly these kind of researchers--and not a government program to mandate fuel standards, etc--who will drag us out of the age of dangerous dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Those magnificent scientists in their flying cars.

Idiots

National Review's Rich Lowry went marching with the protestors in New York yesterday. He had some interesting conversations, like the one below:

A kid was holding a sign, "Stop the war on youth, from here to Najaf."

"So," I asked, "do you support al Sadr?"

"I do as long as he's resisting U.S. imperialism."

"OK, so you support Islamic fundamentalism?"

"No," he said, walking away.

"Well, he's an Islamic fundamentalist," I said.

He came back up to me, "Just because you support the youth doesn't mean you side with an extremist."

"Sadr is an Islamic extremist, he's very clear about it."

"It's their mosque."

"He seized the mosque by force!"

"You're wrong," he said. "He supports elections."

"No, he doesn't! He opposes elections."

"Well," he said, walking away again, "they are U.S.-supported elections. Of course he opposes U.S.-supported elections."

Then, this goateed, cigarette-smoking little Chomsky walked off for good.

You can always reason with a Lefty. You can always reason with a brick wall for all the good it'll do ya.

Good grief

I mean come on, is this a bit over the top or what?

A New Jersey game called "Wack the Iraq," where players fire paintballs at people dressed as Arabs, has drawn ire from Arab groups after the city failed to convince the operator to change its name this summer.

The City of Wildwood, a seaside resort in southern New Jersey popular with summer vacationers, said the game would continue to operate until the end of this summer holiday season, but would change its name when it returns next year, according to Fred Wager, commissioner of public affairs and public safety for Wildwood.

At best its in bad taste. It certainly and justifiably gives Arab anti-defamation organizations a reason to complain (and they are).

They should know better.

I don't understand why they didn't, instead, run up the tri-color and call it "Frag the Frog".

No one would have said a word.

That's what I call enthusiasm!

By the way, I noticed this advertisement running on The Nation's web site:

Most of it, of course, is the same old anti-Bush stuff the Left lives for these days. What is really amusing is the pro-Kerry bit in the ad. "John Kerry: The Lesser Evil 'We'll go backwards less fast!'"

That encapsulates perfectlyThe Nation's--and the Hard Left's--political views. But, let's not pretend that it's the kind of slogan that will draw people to the polls on Nov 2.

I think this speaks volumes about Kerrys actual chances of winning. When the best thing your most fervent supporters can say about you is that you'll lead the nation to hell slightly slower than your opponent, then you'd probably better not hold your breath on election day, waiting for people to start lining upoutside their polling places at 5 a.m.

Clinton can empathize with Kerry

Yes, Bill Clinton knows how it feels to have his integrity questioned. The problem is he still doesn't realize the difference between an attack based in truth and an attack based in fiction.

From an exchange he and Geraldo Rivera (born Gerald Rivers) had on Fox.

RIVERA: Quickly comment on the swift boat controversy's effectiveness and John Kerry in the polls etc.?

CLINTON: Well I think there has been too much controversy or discussion about the politics of it and little about its merits. All the guys that were on the boat with him say he told the truth. The records say he told the truth. There have been no serious disputes about any of the incidents in which he earned his medals. The ad was paid for by a big supporter of the president and the campaign's lawyer and one of the military advisers participate accurately in it and it was wrong. It was false witness.

RIVERA: Appropriate on a Sunday — you're about to give a sermon, but you have been a victim of slings and arrows. They don't necessarily have to be true to be effective.

CLINTON: That's why I think we need to answer back. But I think, I think in the beginning John couldn't believe it. I mean after all the guys that were on the boat with him were up there on stage with him including some that were probably Republicans — they just knew him and if you've never been through this kind of thing before, where people question your integrity and your very core — it's disorienting, but I think he's got a good answer. The facts are on his side and he'll prevail.

Note: the record doesn't at all say he told the truth, not if that record is contained in "Tour of Duty". You see, it is that book which spurred this reaction by the Swift Boat Vets. It is rountinely ignored when the Kerry partisans try to defend Kerry's record. And the record certainly points to him claiming he was in Cambodia on Christmas eve, even when his own boat crew won't support it.

But that's the apparent DNC strategy. Talk in generalities about his "record" being supported and ignore the facts brought forth by the Swift Boat Vets. Take as gospel the statements of the Kerry crew and dismiss as heresay or lies the statements of men, some of whom rose to flag rank, who were there as well.

Never mind the fact that Alston has been proven to have not been on Kerry's boat during the Silver Star incident. Ignore the fact that the Kerry campaign has used an incident which happened to Ted Peck as one in which John Kerry was involved. Per the talking points, stress "the record supports John Kerry".

Says Clinton: "...if you've never been through this kind of thing before, where people question your integrity and your very core — it's disorienting, but I think he's got a good answer. The facts are on his side and he'll prevail."

If the facts are on his side, then all he as to do is sign an SF 180 and trot them out. As for Kerry's core, it'd be nice if someone would do us all the favor of identifying it.

I've been trying and with him on both sides of just about everything, I can't find it.

Maybe we ought to look at his Senate record?

"I voted for the 87 million before I voted against it".

Nevermind.

The President: Economic Czar?

Robert Samuelson tries to deflate a myth that has always irked me, too: The idea that the president has some kind of effective control over the economy.

Politicians, the press and the public all buy into this notion. Unfortunately, it isn't even a half-truth. More like a sixteenth. A president's policies do affect the economy. But they're just one of many influences. The others (including the business cycle, technology and the Federal Reserve) usually dominate.

You'd think this would be common knowledge, but it's not. The president has become a totemic figure, in whom resides all our hopes and fears, even our economic ones. Hence, if job growth isn't fast enough, it's because the president is at fault.

As Samuelson demonstrates, though, much of what happens in the economy is completely outside of the control of the president, or, for that matter, anyone else in government.

Over the long term, budgets should be balanced. But in an economic downturn, they should move toward deficit to stimulate private spending. Well, you can't fault Bush there. In fiscal 2000, the surplus was $236 billion; for fiscal 2004, the Congressional Budget Office projects a $422 billion deficit. It's possible to condemn (as many Democrats do) Bush's pro-rich tax cuts. A more middle-class tilt might have translated into more consumer spending. It's also possible to retort (as many Republicans do) that Democrats would have moved more slowly toward deficits. Regardless, the tax cuts bolstered private spending. But the resulting economic growth produced fewer jobs than expected. Why?

Although outsourcing could be the reason, it probably isn't. The stories about software jobs and call centers moving to India aren't make-believe. But the numbers are small. Charles Schultze of the Brookings Institution concludes that perhaps 155,000 to 215,000 U.S. service jobs shifted abroad between late 2000 and 2003. Similarly, Schultze reports that government surveys attribute only about 4 percent of mass layoffs in the past two years to "import competition" and "relocation overseas." Even if these estimates are too low, they suggest that the impact of job loss abroad is exaggerated, writes Schultze.

The bigger cause of slow job growth, he contends, is higher productivity. Companies and workers got more efficient. That's ultimately good; it raises living standards. But higher productivity can temporarily lower employment. Fewer people are needed to do the same work, and new jobs don't instantly materialize. From late 1995 to late 2000, productivity (output per hour worked) grew 2.6 percent annually. During the next three years, annual growth averaged 4.1 percent. If it had stayed at the lower level, there'd be 2 million more jobs, estimates Schultze. Unemployment would be about 5 percent.

Of course, if there is a good unemployment report for August, the truth won't stop Bush from taking credit for it. Or for Kerry to blame Bush for it if the numbers are bad.

Evil Bush

Writing in The Nation, Bill Greider gives us a wonderful look into the mindset of the Hard Left as the election approaches. While reading it, it struck that Krauthammer's right. These guys need therapy, because they are already living in an odd fantasy world where George W. Bush will tell any lie, and commit any act to get himself re-elected, where he runs a vast right-wing conspiracy that uses the power of the government to instill fear and loathing of our enemies.

The Bush campaign strategy is already in play before the GOP convention. The President runs on fear and character assassination--big fear and big lies. While Bush's claims and insinuations are utterly distant from the truth, the strategy can't be dismissed, because Republicans are so experienced at this kind of politics. GOP marketing proceeds on a cynical assumption that voters can be moved by the brazen repetition of evocative falsehoods and broad-brush caricature. Their model is 1988, when Bush's daddy used the racist "Willie Horton" ads and "card-carrying member of the ACLU" to defenestrate Michael Dukakis, a decent and capable governor they turned into a national joke.

For big fear, Bush Junior has the federal government at his disposal, and he's using it to pump up anxieties. Does anyone think the "Ashcroft alert," based on old and murky material, was anything more than a thematic tuneup for the fall campaign? Nor was the White House necessarily upset by the headlines about FBI agents chasing after antiwar protesters who might be planning "violent" actions at the GOP convention. Anything that polarizes public opinion about unknown dangers is assumed to help Bush. Meantime, his war planners are suddenly escalating the "threat" rhetoric surrounding Iran and its nuclear bomb-making. Anything that changes the conversation from Iraq can be helpful too.

For personal slander, the Bush regime is hurling mud at Kerry's brightest armor--his sterling reputation as a decorated Vietnam War hero. The Swift Boat veterans attacking Kerry are clearly agents of the Republican machine--financed by Bush money boys and already exposed for multiple lies and distortions. The well-coordinated attack has produced a media tempest, but this is August, the doldrums between conventions, and we can't yet know how much real damage may be done.

What this farfetched smear demonstrates for sure, however, is the President's desperation. The man will do anything (didn't we already know that?). If Kerry is smart, he can turn this latest hit job into an excellent opportunity. Since Bush has raised the question of character and honesty, by all means let's talk about it. Kerry should open every speech with that line and then review the shameful evidence of Bush's mendacious character, from the fictitious threats from Iraq to the 5 million jobs his rich-guy tax cuts were going to produce for ordinary Americans. Which candidate trashes the truth? By all means let the election be decided on that question.

This is paranoia. There's simply no other word for it. I mean, sure, it's an amusing kind of paranoia; the kind that makes you smile as you see 100,000 people march down the streets of Manhattan, claiming that civil liberties are being smashed, just like in Germany back in the 30s. Marching in front of gas stations where regular unleaded is selling for $2.00+ per gallon while carrying "No Blood for Oil" signs. That kind of cognitive dissonance is just too precious for words.

Mr. Bush seems to invoke that kind of cognitive dissonance though. Any good Lefty can, without even pausing for breath, launch into a harangue describing George W. Bush as a simpleton who needs a brace of Secret Service agents to help him into his pants every morning, then, in the very next sentence, describes him as the global mastermind of a fascist conspiracy to take over the world.

I mean, it's like the freakin' mystery of the trinity, where one God is eternally existent in three separate persons. To the Left, the mystery of George W. Bush is that he is both Forrest Gump and Ernst Stavro Blofeld, which is really quite revealing about the mental Weltanschaung of the Left, because, in the real world, no one person can be both an idiot and a criminal mastermind. That makes no difference to the Left, though. In W they see every single negative character trait. If there is any way in which Mr. Bush can be deficient, he is.

It's almost enough to make you want to round all the Lefties up and stick 'em in dank, cheerless prison cells. At least that way they'd feel the warm glow of knowing they were right, that they were targets of the new fascism. That'd probably be more mentally healthy for them, because at least they would no longer have to reconcile their overblown world-view with reality. Of course, we won't do anything like that. We'll leave them free to march in the streets, which will keep the flames of their paranoia high, as they wait each evening for the midnight knock on the door from the State Security goons; a knock that never quite comes.

I can only imagine how crazy these people will be if Mr. Bush wins reelection in a landslide. I mean, they're already nutty now. We may be in for a repeat of the 1960s.

Blogs threaten main stream media's exlusive hold on news and opinion

I think John Podhoretz has a good point here, and, frankly, I agree with his conclusion, but first check out this part of his op/ed about the left's bottled up rage:

This election is about one thing and one thing only: Which of the two candidates is best suited to be this nation's commander in chief.

And as we speak, a 2004 election plotline is developing among those who wish to see George W. Bush defeated. The plotline is this: The efforts by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to cast doubt on John Kerry's war record may be the tipping point of this campaign in Bush's favor. And if indeed that is so, the rage that liberals and Democrats will direct toward Bush will be something terrible to see.

The election is about who is best suited to be commander in chief. John Kerry made sure of that when he did his hokey "reporting for duty" schtick. With his salute and his "band of brothers" he made it about that. It appears he may rue the day he did so. But then faced with running on his 20 year Senate record or his 120 day Vietnam record, he really had little choice, did he?

Enter the Swift Boat Vets (who had been ignored by the media as well as the Kerry campaign since May when they first announced their presence) and their attack on Kerry's fitness to be c-in-c. Since then the SBV's effect has been slowly eroding Kerry's support.

Despite the lack of any evidence that the Bush campaign or Republicans questioned the patriotism of either McCain or Cleland in their last elections, those claims have now passed into legend among the left, just as the belief that the use of Willie Horton was at the behest of Bush 41 (instead of first used by Al Gore) and that Bush 43 "stole" the election.

What the Swift Boat Vets will have done, if Kerry loses, is add to the impotent rage felt by those on the left.

At a panel discussion yesterday on the press and the election at the Harvard Club, two media doyens — Joe Klein of Time and David Gergen of U.S. News — pronounced themselves frightened by this prospect and the damage it might do to our democracy.

One only has to revist our fairly recent past to understand why Klein and Gergen feel that way. The '60s and early '70s were an era of leftist violence the likes of which this country hadn't seen before. The Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army were staples of that violence. The frustration of the left at their inability to have their way spawned violent groups who murdered policemen and destroyed property. Will we see a return of the "Days of Rage?"

But that wasn't really Podhoretz's point in this little epistle. It was more about the entity known as the "main stream media" and its future.

Others on the panel — Al Hunt of the Wall Street Journal and Jill Abramson of The New York Times — fretted about the capacity of the mainstream media to play the role of fact-finding truth-teller in an age dominated by cable news and the Internet.

I was on the panel too, and I feel like I was the only one who didn't arrive at the Harvard Club riding on my pet dinosaur.

I've been listening to mainstream-media types talk about the terrible threat posed to the news business by one new phenomenon or other since I began my career 22 years ago. The complaint is invariably, and drearily, the same: Whatever is new is bad because it supposedly lowers the historically high standards of the mainstream media.

The last two years in particular have seen the explosion of a new medium — the personal Internet newspaper, or blog — that has already and will forever change the way people get their information.

This is a thrilling development — unless you are a mainstream-media Big Fish.

Interesting. So blogs are a "threat to the news business"? Call me crazy, but it seems to me that the main stream media is more of a threat to the news business than blogs are. Its they who the blogs are finding to be, in many cases, "factually challenged". It is blogs who are exposing institutional biases the MSM has been denying for years. It is blogs who are picking up stories that the MSM would prefer to spike.

What blogs are is a threat to business as usual among the MSM. Blogs refuse to let the MSM have the exclusive rights to what is and isn't news.

And that scares the hell out of them. So we see this appeal to "journalistic standards" and how they're hobbled by them while we nasty bloggers aren't.

Guess they've never heard of commenters and the instant feedback they bring.

Podhoretz points to the perfect case study. The event which has finally, given the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the MSM about irresponsible journalism, pushed them over the brink and made them recognize and acknowledge the threat to their monopoly.

The success of the Swift-boat vets' ads is the tale of the triumph of the nation's alternative media. The mainstreamers didn't want to touch the story with a 10-foot pole, and they didn't. But the alternative media did. Amateur reporters and fact-gatherers offered independent substantiation for some of the charges. It turned out the criticisms of the Swifties weren't quite so easily dismissed.

Because there was new information coming out every day, there was more and more to discuss on talk radio and cable news channels. And the story just wouldn't go away, because millions of people were interested in it.

This democratization of the news is clearly a good thing, if only because it increases available sources of information in a democracy.

But it isn't a good thing if you're a proud part of an Establishment whose authority is being eroded and whose control of the marketplace is being successfully challenged.

No, it scares the hell out of them. Just as Gutenberg's bible took the exclusive interpretation of the bible out of the hands of priests and "democratized" it by putting it into "everyman's" hands, so has the internet and blogs changed the way news is reported and consumed.

And it worries the big boys to death.

What these Establishment-media types will never do — what they can never do — is consider the possibility that the 24-hour news cycle and the rise of talk radio and the Internet are all positive developments.

And I would argue they can't consider that possibility — not only because their platforms are slowly sliding into the quicksand, but because these alternative phenomena have been of great benefit to conservative ideas, anti-liberal attitudes and Republican politicians.

They hate the Swift-boat story. Hate it with a passion. Some of it's based in genuine conviction. Some of it's patently ideological. And some of it's based in fear. They are worried the bell is beginning to toll for them, and they're right.

Bingo. And its only going to get worse for them.

Elections Futures

The election is a long time away, and, of course, anything can happen. But take a look at the Sunday closing prices for the Presidential election from the futures markets from Tradesports, based on the closing Sunday prices¹:

Bush.....58.0
Kerry....42.6

That can't be good news for the Kerry campaign. I don't think the polls are accurately reflecting the outcome of the election. I think, all other things being equal, Bush is headed for a landslide. And, evidently, people who are putting their money where their mouth is are thinking the same thing.
__________
¹ I'm writing this at 22:28 PDT, but, because this is an East Coast blog, it will appear as an 30 Aug 04 Entry.

Booze Blogging

Even though I'm not a heavy drinker by any stretch of the imagination, there are certain things that I simply have to have around the house, when it comes to booze. But, why blog about it? Well, first, because sometimes, you need to have a little break from public policy. Second, because The Lovely Christine is out of town this weekend, so I have nothing else to do but get lit, which, to be frank, I am doing this evening with a vengeance. (Sleeping alone is very unpleasant. It's even more so when the one you usually sleep with is the best thing that's ever happened to you in your whole life, and she's not there.)

One of the best things about living in Escondido, CA, is that one of California's historic wineries, the Ferrara Winery, is located here. The Ferraras are the oldest active grape growing, winemaking family in San Diego County, supplying wines to California since 1932. Now, the thing about the Ferrara winery is that they offer two products that are unavailable everywhere else in the world: California Nectar da Luz and Almond da Luz.

The Nectar da Luz is a ported wine that has been kind of…uh…brandy-ized (18% alcohol by volume). It has a sweet initial taste that's almost like pure clover honey that fades to a robust port aftertaste almost like that of a dry sack sherry. It's really indescribable, and indescribably good. It is just the perfect after-dinner aperitif. It's even more perfect if you pour it over strawberries and vanilla ice cream. That's a dessert you can't stop drinking eating.

The Almond da Luz is an amaretto-flavored version of the Nectar da Luz. The flavor is like that of a fine amaretto liqueur, but, again, with the full-bodied aftertaste of a fine port. If you ever happen to be in the San Diego area, and you can get to the Ferrara Winery, I promise you that you will not regret picking up either of these two products. The Ferraras still run the winery as a family business, and Mamma Ferrara will most likely be in the wine store, and will be happy to let you have a free taste of the products, after which, you'll probably sprain your wrist with the speed at which you reach for your wallet.

For those of you who cannot get out to San Diego, I have another recommendation for you. If you are one of the elite members of the sake aficionado community, you will want to go try to pick up a few bottles of Sho Chiku Bai Nigori Sake . Nigoro sake is produced the way sake first appeared when it was brewed for the Imperial Court in Kyoto as well as for most of its 2,000 year history. It is coarsely-filtered and the sweetest of all types of sake. It is especially delicious with very spicy foods. The bottle should be shaken each time before pouring due to the high rice content that settles in the bottom of the bottle. It is available from Takara Sake USA, and comes in 12.7 oz. bottles. If you like sake, this very traditional brew, with its slightly sweet, robust flavor, will be a must-buy on your shopping list.

Of course, it goes without saying that you should--unlike me, this weekend--drink responsibly.

EXACTLY!

Remember when I noted that McCain hadn't condemned the second Swift Boat Vets ad?

Well that's because McCain finally has gotten it right:

Republican U.S. Senator John McCain said Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's anti-war activities after he returned from Vietnam are an appropriate subject for political debate.

McCain, 68, of Arizona, said on the CBS News program ``Face the Nation,'' that he disagreed with Kerry throwing his ribbons from his medals on the steps of the U.S. Capitol when he returned from the war.

``Every American is entitled to protest,'' McCain said. ``Whether he did that appropriately'' is a legitimate subject for debate, he said.

Bingo, Senator.

And I define "appropriate protest" as "responsible dissent."

In other words, it is the responsibility of the dissenter to ensure his dissent is based on facts not fiction. Appropriate dissent doesn't spread or propogate lies in order to make its point. It either has factual support or its not appropriate.

That isn't to say there wasn't appropriate and responsible dissent possible about Vietnam. That isn't to say that I disagree with all who were against that war. There were valid arguments to be made. And there were those who made that sort of dissent.

But John Kerry wasn't one of them.

And that is what vets hold against the man.

A spokesman for the Kerry campaign didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

No kidding.

LIVE from New York Its ...

... the prettiest "commie" in Manhattan. Yes folks, one of the many "protestors" in NY today ... and this one has it right. Another ringing Kerry endorsement.

Yes, its a joke (you could only dream it was true). Someone having a bit of fun with everyone (per one source, its the Protest Warriors, but I can't confirm that). Part of the anti-protesting protesting. Check out the web site listed. Its' hilarious and pretty well done.

"Operation RAW" deal

Reader Becky comments on the Kerry testimony before the Senate in 1971 by asking:

Okay, guys. Could you PLEASE just read the ENTIRE transcript of Kerry's testimony instead of a few random quotes from someone's article?

Kerry emphatically stated, at the beginning of his testimony, "...I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of the group of 1,000 which is a small representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table they would be here and have the same kind of testimony...."

He was speaking on behalf of a group of Viet Nam vets he met with in Detroit.

Not an unreasonable request and not an unreasonable assumption, if you only limit your research into Kerry’s anti-war, anti-military activities to his testimony. But there’s more .... much more that makes the case that Kerry was indeed indicting the entire military through his activities in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). His testimony was only the most visible of these activities and certainly not the most damning.

As an example of his other activities, let’s start with “Operation RAW” which began on Labor Day, 1970. Organizing flyers seen here and here were sent out.

Note who is among the organizers and among the speakers. As you can see they planned on “forming an infantry unit of company strength” comprised of “Vietnam vets, active duty GIs and other war veterans” and staging a 4 day march from Morristown, NJ to Valley Forge, PA where they’d have a mass protest. On the surface, it sounds pretty benign, doesn’t it?

But the devil is in the details.

There was a reason they formed an “infantry unit of company strength”. It was so they could portray American infantrymen, every day soldiers, as brutal butchers. Now, the words sound hyperbolic, but they’re not. As Operation RAW moved through each town they enacted their version of a “search and destroy” operation”. As described in one of the flyers, the purpose of this unit was to “dramatize as authentic a picture of a US Army search and destroy mission to the American people as practical."

How did they do this? Well read it straight from the horses’s mouth. As it proclaims in the cite: “This story is taken from material saved by Joe Urgo-VVAW AI. Joe was one of the marchers, a former national officer of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), and the first Vietnam vet to travel to Hanoi in support of the revoluntary struggle of the Vietnamese.”

It was Labor Day weekend 1970. At 10:30 a.m. in Doylestown, PA a company of infantry swept into town, seizing and occupying the center of the city, setting up road blocks and taking civilian prisoners. Anyone fleeing was killed, the rest were tortured and then killed for just being there. The younger women were particularly mauled and abused before being killed. At 10:45, once again on alert, the company marched south of town, leaving a trail of bloody bodies and survivors standing in their yards and streets, mute with shock, unbelieving eyes fastened on the departing soldiers. Leaflets lay in the streets like the one below.

Beginning in Morristown, New Jersey, 150 combat veterans marched through the countryside toward Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The veterans, who held 110 purple heart medals between them, had enlisted the help of the aptly named Philadelphia Guerilla Theater Company to go ahead of the march and plant themselves in the villages and towns along the march route. Sweeping through the rural back countries of New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania, the vets wore as much of their combat fatigues and battle gear as they had been able to scrape together. Their "infantry company" was realistically armed with toy rifles.

As the column of veterans passed through the communities, they cordoned off the villages, "interrogated," "tortured," and "shot" the actors posing as civilians, and in general tried to recreate the brutal realities of war. The towns and roads were mapped out in advance and the skits were pre-arranged so that as the company surrounded a home or a village--with walkie-talkies screaming and vets running all over the place, blood capsules bursting on library steps or in front of stores--there was a sense of realism in the air as these safe rural hamlets were "invaded." The veterans terrified and shocked some people, challenging many others. Of course, some patriots thought that the vets were "disgracing the uniform of the U.S." to bring their message to civilian Amerikkka. One thing was certain: there was no business as usual for those communities on the day the column of vets marched through.

"Amerikkka". No agenda in that spelling, is there?

The flyers they left laying in the street as they departed said the following:

A US INFANTRY COMPANY JUST CAME THROUGH HERE

If you had been Vietnamese

--We might have burned your house
--We might have shot your dog
--We might have shot you
--We might have raped the women
--We might have turned you over to your government for torture
--We might have taken souvenirs from your property
--We might have shot things up a bit
–We might have done all these things to you and your town

If it doesn’t bother you that American soldiers do these things every day to the Vietnamese simply because they are “gooks”, then picture yourself as one of the silent victims. Help us end the war before they turn your son into a butcher or a corpse.

Signed,

Vietnam Veterans Against the War

Becky claims Kerry’s focused on the “leadership” of the military, not the soldiers.

Now, before you get all crazy...keep in mind one very important thing. Kerry NEVER blaimed the vets for the atrocities comitted. He blamed our LEADERSHIP. Read the whole thing. Read it 3 times. I read it 5 times.

Operation RAW certainly didn’t do that, did it? It was talking about American soldiers. In particular infantry soldiers. It was saying “American soldiers do these things every day”. It said we were the butchers. It said we raped and murdered “every day”.

You know, just another day at the office.

Listed on the organizing flyers for Operation RAW is a partial list of the event sponsors, including Jane Fonda and John Kerry. Listed as an information and transportation sponsor in Boston is John Kerry. Listed as speakers are Jane Fonda and John Kerry.

So I’m sorry Becky, I can read it 50 times, which I most likely have in the last 35 years, but it is only a part of what John Kerry has responsibility for ... and its high time that all of it was exposed. In Operation RAW the only purpose of their “theater” was to paint everyday soldiers in Vietnam as stone-cold butchers and rapists. As war criminals. And nothing could have been further from the truth. That’s what the 2.5 million Vietnam Vets are finally saying.

Read this stuff 3 times, 5 times. It doesn’t matter. The conclusion is inescapable. John Kerry and the VVAW purposely and viciously painted a whole generation of soldiers as baby killing rapists through actions such as Operation RAW.

I haven’t forgotten it and I haven’t forgiven it.

Becky concludes with:

I am angry. I am VERY angry. And that you people can sit back and condemn Kerry for speaking out against an unjust war, for bringing to light the atocities of war that our LEADERSHIP condoned in the name of freedom -- in the name of MY country....I have no words for you, either.

Well I’m very angry as well, Becky.

I’m angry that a nation treated its soldiers the way it did 35 years ago. I’m angry that actions of John Kerry led to that dishonorable treatment. But more than that, I’m angry that now that we who were maligned and smeared by Kerry and the VVAW want to speak out about it, people like you want us to shut up.

Well we’re not going to shut up.

We kept quite about it for all those years and we’re damn tired of living with the lies Kerry and others told about us. We’ve as much right to speak as John Kerry. And we’ve got as much right to tell you and others he was full of crap as any other citizen of this country.

Its not just YOUR country. Its OUR country as well. And this is about how OUR country treated us because of the lies people like John Kerry and the VVAW spread.

When Kerry grows the balls to stand up and tell the Vietnam Vets that he was wrong, he lied and he portrayed them falsely and that he’s sorry for doing so, then perhaps, some real healing can begin.

Until then, I agree with John O’Neill ... he’s unfit for command.

UPDATE: A few images from the VVAW "Operation RAW" march, found in Kerry's book "The New Soldier", depicting American soldiers 'at work' brutalizing and butchering Vietnamese:

Thanks, John Kerry.

1st Blogiversary for QandO [updated]

UPDATE: TrueBlueGal makes us a cake!

________________________________________________________________

I just went back to the old Blogspot version of QandO, and realized....we turn 1 year old today. The first QandO post was 8/29/2003.

Was it a magnificent piece of analysis? A biting insight? A devastating fact-check? Well, not exactly.

First Post Stress.

What to write?
Well, in the absence of ideas, I'll just duck the whole thing by posting this.

That's out of the way.

Clearly, things have improved since then. The move to our own domain--and MovableType--was the start. Most importantly, though, were the additions of McQ and Dale Franks.

And, without getting too maudlin, it cannot be overstated how much I appreciate and enjoy the people who have been reading, commenting, emailing and participating for so long.

At any rate, today marks the 1st Blogiversary of QandO. Expensive gifts Congratulatory links, blogrolling, bookmarking and word-of-mouth advertising are not discouraged.

UPDATE: To the newcomers: welcome. Where have you been? For a good idea of what this blog is about, check this latest weekly roundup of our best posts.

NoKo's Latest pop hit? "F***ing USA!"

You've got to see this.

If it hadn't been in the Korean language I'd have sworn it was a MoveOn.org video.

The first part is being explained by a South Korean TV station I assume as they play the video to their audience.

This passes for MTV in North Korea, I guess.

Oh, and lest we forget, North Korea endorses John Kerry.

More from Adm. Schachte

Yesterday, I talked about Admiral (then LT) William Schachte's version of Kerry's skimmer mission here. NRO is carrying a complete statement by Schachte here made on August 27th.

The highlights:

- Per Schachte he was manning the M-60, not Bill Zaldonis.

- All Skimmer missions were his and consisted of two officers and one enlisted man to man the outboard motor.

-Schachte doen't remember the name of the enlisted man on that particular night.

-Schachte says there was no after action report made on that night because there was no hostile fire. AA reports are only required if there is hostile fire.

-Schachte reports that he opened fire with the M-60 and it jammed after a short burst. Kerry fired with the M-16 until it jammed. While Schachte was trying to clear the M-60, Kerry fired the M-79.

As for the Purple Heart, he says:

Lt. Cmdr. Hibbard denied Lt. (jg) Kerry's request. Lt. (jg) Kerry detached our division a few days later to be reassigned to another division. I departed Vietnam approximately three weeks later, and Lt. Cmdr. Hibbard followed shortly thereafter. It was not until years later that I was surprised to learn that Lt. (jg) Kerry had been awarded a Purple Heart for this night.

Badda BOOM!

Pretty damning.

Bomb plot in NY

Developing:

A U.S. citizen and a Pakistani national were arrested in an alleged plot to bomb a subway station in midtown Manhattan and possibly other locations around the city, police said Saturday.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the men were not thought to be connected to al-Qaida or any other international terrorist organization, although he said they expressed hatred for America. The arrests come two days before the start of the Republican National Convention, which is drawing tens of thousands of visitors into the city.

Though there was no clear tie to the convention, authorities moved to arrest the two men before it began, two law-enforcement sources told The Associated Press.

The men had been under police surveillance and had discussed placing explosives at the Herald Square subway station and stations at 42nd and 59th streets, Kelly said. The men never obtained explosives, he said.

"...they expressed hatred for America."

One was a US citizen.

Sigh.

Amazing. They apparently were willing to kill many, many people in NY in order to demonstrate the depth of that hate.

What a great purpose in life. Blowing up innocent people on a subway for "hate".

And one was a US citizen?

Kerry and James Warner

I was reading through American Legion Magazine, and came across an interview with Kerry by the staff of ALM. While perusing it, I came across this quote from Kerry in answer to a question about a flag burning amendment:

"James Warner, who was a POW in Hanoi, said in a very eloquent article the Vietnamese showed him the photo of somebody burning the flag and said, "See? You're wrong." And he said, "No, that makes me right, because that shows that in our country, you're free, and that's the meaning of freedom." And the captor got absolutely outraged, purple, and he'll never forget having used that as a way of showing what America stands for."

Well Jim Warner, a Marine Corps F4 pilot shot down over North Vietnam, had some other "very eloquent" things to say when recalling his imprisonment there and a man named Kerry who shamelessly used his name above:

After we had talked for quite sometime the interrogator showed me a transcript of testimony that my mother had given at something called the winter soldier hearings...which I had no idea what these were. I read her testimony, and it wasn't damning, but then I saw some of the other stuff that had gone on at this winter soldier hearing and I wondered how did somebody get my mother persuaded to come, uh, appear at something like this.

And then shortly thereafter he [his interrogator showed] showed my some statements from John Kerry. He said that John Kerry had helped to organize the winter soldier hearings because he was so motivated because he had been an American officer served in the US Navy...and...then he started reading some of the statements that John Kerry made.

I'm sorry I can't quote them, but essentially he accused all of us in Vietnam of being criminals. That everything we had done was criminal. Therefore, of course, the North Vietnamese had told us from the time they got their hands on us that we were criminals, we're not covered by the Geneva Conventions, so it was ok for them to do whatever they wanted to us.

And they told us that they were going to put us on trial, and some of us would be executed....

The interrogator went through all of these statements from John Kerry. And he starts pounding on the table, "Well see here is this Naval officer, he [John Kerry] admits that you are a criminal and that you deserve punishment."

Kerry is indeed shameless. As is obvious, Jim Warner isn't his biggest fan. Kerry used Warner's mother in 1971, and now he uses Warner in 2004.

Would someone please forward this to Teresa Heinz Kerry so she can buy a clue about what's going on concerning her husband and wannabe president?

Weekly QandO Roundup

The best posts of this past week, linked and excerpted in one convenient place. Read the excerpts and--if it interests you--follow the links. Even if you don't follow the link, I think you'll enjoy the excerpts. And, as usual, check the lower right-hand sidebar for Quick Links to other interesting posts around the 'sphere.
_________________________________________________________________


* Swifties and Rood (McQ) - If I were Kerry, I don't think I'd be touting this Rood fellow.

I have to admit I sort of chuckled when I read Rood's account of the action in which Kerry won his Silver Star. It was funny because the first thought that popped in my head was "how can this matter, he wasn't in the same boat as Kerry". This has been an article of faith with the pro-Kerry side in all of this. I'm going to be interested to see how they manage the acceptance of Rood's story while still rejecting the stories of the other Swift boat commanders who served "with" Kerry as Rood did.

Having read the book "Unfit for Command" and Rood's version, I really don't see much in Rood's story that contradicts what was said in the book.

It more of a case of differing opinions about the incident. The book, for instance, points out that Kerry didn't act alone in his pursuit of the wounded VC. Rood confirms that. If I'm not mistaken, "Tour of Duty" alludes to Kerry acting alone.

BTW, that's the one part missing in all of this. Much of the dispute "Unfit for Command" has is with Kerry's biography "Tour of Duty" and its version of the events. Note that the "Tour of Duty" version is not related in any of these articles.

_______________________________________________________________

* Swifties and MoveOn (McQ) - One doesn't have to look very hard to find coordination between Kerry and liberal 527s. It's just that, so far, nobody seems interested in that coordination.

But while there is no apparent relationship with the SBVT and Bush, there’s definitely a relationship between John Kerry and “The MoveOn family of organizations”

On June 17, 2003, John Kerry addressed a letter entitled “A letter to MoveOn members from John Kerry” in which he solicited their support and asked them to sign a petition on his web site...

________________________________________________________________

* Suggestion for keeping the peace (Dale Franks) - A suggestion which would allow us to finally move this campaign past 1972.

In order to move the presidential campaign away from what happened or didn't happen in Vietnam 35 years ago, I offer a suggestion. Since the Kerry camp wishes to argue that official Navy records are conclusive proof that Kerry served honorably and with distinction, I suggest that those of us opposed to Kerry offer to accept that argument, as long as the Kerry people accept the logical corollary: the official Air Force records indicating George W. Bush was honorably discharged from his service is conclusive proof that he properly met his obligations as well.

______________________________________________________________

* Media Matters for John Kerry's Election (Jon Henke) - Media Matters tries to prove that Gore won Florida, by citing a study that concluded Bush won Florida. Interesting epistemology.

The only scenarios in which Gore would have won were those involving the loosest possible standards...standards not adopted by most counties. So,yes....if everybody had done something that almost nobody was going to do, Gore would have won.

Well, yes...and--to borrow a line--if we only had eggs, we could all have ham and eggs, if we had ham.

________________________________________________________________

* Iran: Job One for 2005 (Dale Franks) - "They aren't part of the "Axis of evil" for nothing, the Iranians."

Moreover, the mullahs have a series of goals--a vision, if you will--about the world order as it pertains to the Mideast. First and foremost in their minds is the destruction of the "Jewish Entity", that is to say, Israel. Second is the elimination of American power in the region. Third is the imposition of direct Islamic rule--preferable of the Shi'a flavor--all throughout the Mideast. Fourth, and finally, is the expansion of Islam to the West, and eventually, the rest of the world.

These seem like fairly grandiose dreams for a poor, desert country, but, unfortunately, they think otherwise. By their reckoning, God is on their side.

It took WWII to teach Germany that putting "Gott Mit Uns" on the belt buckles of their army uniforms was no guarantee that God actually was with them. The Iranians have, as of yet, undergone no such learning experience.

_______________________________________________________________

* Departamento de los Vehículos de Motor (Dale Franks) - We don't tolerate law-breakers round here. We give 'em Driver's licenses. Yes, sir. Law and order, you know.

The basic argument that Democrats have been making is that illegals need licenses, because, right now, they're driving anyway, and they are a public danger. We must, says cedillo, get licenses out to the illegals so that we can be reasonably asssured of their ability to drive safely.

OK, fine, I'm willing to listen to that argument. But, when Cedillo starts shrieking that they absolutely, positively cannot have some sort of distinguishing mark, then he loses me completely. Because then it becomes obvious that this is about something else than safe driving.

There's a reason that Cedillo wants illegals to have the same license that citizens get, and the reason can be described in one phrase: Motor Voter.

_______________________________________________________________

* Factchecking Factcheck.org...again (Jon Henke) - Factcheck leaves out some facts. We checked.

FactCheck.org claims the SwiftVets ad is misleading, because "Kerry was quoting stories he had heard from others" rather than "claiming first-hand knowledge".

However, of the 6 Kerry statements in the Swift Vets ad, Kerry has claimed firsthand knowledge--even participation--in 3 of them (shooting at civilians, razed villages, and ravaged the countryside), and only claims to have not participated in two of the allegations (those dealing with torture, dismemberment).

_______________________________________________________________

* Make. It. Stop. (McQ) - Kerry goes from "bring it on!" to "not in the face!" in record time.

The WSJ notes that back in February, John Kerry felt it was perfectly fine to question the service of his opponent:
[...]
Well fair enough, it is a presidential election which means everything is going to be scrutinized.

But wait. After going after Bush and using his Vietnam service as the centerpiece of his campaign we have Kerry and company playing the vicitim of, you guessed it, the ubiquitous "Republican Smear Machine", or for the older folks, a revival of the "dirty tricks" department first made famous under Nixon.

_____________________________________________________________

* Kerry's evolving story (Jon Henke) - a compendium of recent, er, problems with Kerry's story. Plus, the lengths to which partisans will go to ignore them.

With Kerry backpedaling on various stories, this seems like an opportune time for Kerry's supporters to call for an end to Vietnam-era allegations, and Ezra steps up to the plate, saying "Fucking enough".

That is, he's had "enough" of the focus on the SwiftVets Vietnam allegations that have "shone light on everything corrosive, everything vile, everything that turns off Americans not just from voting but from civic participation".

The Bush/AWOL Vietnam allegations? Well, just yesterday, Ezra wanted to focus the debate on "his time AWOL".

Cause that's just different.

________________________________________________________________

* Finally figured it out (McQ) - "A) The NYT deliberately left out some of the report.
B) The NYT writers who used the report had no idea about the meaning of what they were reading."

There was no reported small arms fire around the mine. There was no reported VC KIA or WIA at that time. Those all took place in the previous Mike Force operation, not the mine detonation.

Which explains why the PCFs were able to spend 90 minutes on site, saving the 3 boat and its crew before towing it in and not suffering one single solitary casualty from small arms or any other type of fire.

Of course if the writers at the NYT had bothered to show their source for the claim of the "later intelligence reports indicate that one Vietcong was killed in action and five others wounded, reaffirming the presence of an enemy" to someone who knew what a Mike Strike Force was, or what they apparently did on that operation, they wouldn't look as foolish, as they'd know the VC KIA and WIA were killed and wounded on a previous part of the operation and not at the mine detonation.

_______________________________________________________________

* Media Matters for John Kerry's Election (PT 2) (Jon Henke) - Fact-checking Media Matters. (something you really shouldn't have to do to an organization supposedly "devoted" to correcting mistakes.

To their credit, they did cite a credible authority on Purple Heart regulations. To their discredit, they didn't cite all of it. The Military Order of the Purple Heart also includes this requirement for the Purple Heart...

(5) Examples of injuries or wounds which clearly do not qualify for award of the Purple Heart are as follows: [...] (h) Self-inflicted wounds, except when in the heat of battle, and not involving gross negligence.

Now, one might credibly make the argument that Kerry was not negligent in standing within the blast radius of his own grenade.....or, one might make the argument that it was negligent. There's room for debate.

But Media Matters called Kondrake's allegation "false" and Kondrake "ignorant of the relevant requirements for awarding a Purple Heart".

That's just wrong. It is not, however, surprising that Media Matters would make such a tendentious argument.

______________________________________________________________

* Why I oppose McCain-Feingold (Dale Franks) - All the good intentions in the world won't solving the unintended consequences of the McCain-Feingold stake in the heart of the 1st ammendment.

All you guys on the Left were piously droning on about the corrupting effects of money, and the other drivel that Senators McCain and Feingold were spouting. The necessity of its passage became an article of faith among Democrats. You ignored warnings that it gutted the first amendment. You ignored warnings that 527s would just take up the slack in soft-money spending. No, you had your starchy white ideal of utopia, and you weren't gonna be happy 'til you got it, and thank God that there are a few Republicans, like Senator McCain, who, unlike the rest of his party, knows how to do the right thing.

Well, you got it. And what has it given you this election year? The Swiftvets.

So, how does campaign finance reform taste now? Does it taste good? Is it yummy? I hope so, because now you're just gonna have to suck on it for a while.

Enjoy.

By the way, I hear the Swiftvets are working on a new ad.

_____________________________________________________________

* Misunderestimating W. Again. (Dale Franks) - "the Democrats have underestimated George W. Bush's political skills .... Or, perhaps they've overestimated John Kerry's."

If Kerry reallt wants to stop the bleeding, then he'll have to hold a press conference specifically to invite questions about the Swiftvets ads. But, that's the one thing he simply can't do, because the dangers are too high.

He'll have to cover the whole Cambodia/Magic Hat story. Why does the last entry in his diary from Vietnam indicate he'd never been to Cambodia? How could he mistake Christmas in Cambodia, which was seared--seared!--into his memory? Why did he write about his Cambodia experiences in his writted review of Apocalypse now in 1979? When, exactly, was he in Cambodia? What was he doing?

_____________________________________________________________

* Kerry's Economic Spin (Jon Henke) - factchecking John Kerry's economic pessimism.

After 4 years of Democrats complaining--correctly, in many instances--about how the Bush administration is painting a deceptive picture of the economy, it's worth pointing out that the new boss will be the same as the old boss. The Democrats are not upset about the President putting political spin on economic information...they're just upset that it's not their turn.

____________________________________________________________

* The Iranian Problem (Dale Franks) - "Negotiating with a potential enemy who desires nothing you can offer him other than capitualtion, is usually not productive, a fact that is often completely lost on the chattering classes."

...it's hard to take with anything less than a metric ton of salt that Iran isn't seeking to produce a nuclear arsenal.

First, if they were seeking such an arsenal, they certainly wouldn't admit it. Unfortunately, Mr. Ibrahim doesn't explain to us how we can be sure that their denials are being issued because they really aren't trying to produce such weapons, or because they really are. But their rejection of any demands that they stop their uranium enrichment program isn't a positive sign. They are saying, essentially, that it's vitally important that they be able to enrich uranium, which would give them the capability to make nuclear weapons, but that they will never do so.

Because, it would be, you know, wrong.

But, totalitarian states don't have a sterling track record of actually doing what they say they will do. Indeed, quite the opposite is usually the case.

______________________________________________________________

* Are we back in Cambodia for Christmas or not? (McQ) - It's the political equivalent of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - we can either believe what the Kerry camp is currently saying about when/if Kerry was in Cambodia, or we can believe what they were saying yesterday. We cannot believe both at the same time. McQ discusses the various stories....

Another conflicting and unexplainable position. The campaign says he went there on an unspecified date. However, based on Kerry’s own recollections as featured in Brinkley’s book, “his curiosity was never satisfied” which, per the context of the sentence, means he was never in Cambodia ... ever.

Except, well, not quite. You see, two days before, on Meet the Press, Tad Devine, a Kerry advisor, put him back in Cambodia on Christmas.

______________________________________________________________

* McCain-Feingold II (Dale Franks) - Nobody likes to hear "I told you so". But that's no excuse....they need to hear it anyway.

At this point, the best scenario I could possibly hope for is that politics becomes so down and dirty, and so divisive, that Congress goes back and repeals this travesty of a law post-haste. Let, as Mao once said, a thousand flowers bloom. Let the air be filled with the sounds of TV ads of increasing moonbattery. Let every politician running for office have his name, his reputation, and his family savaged by independent ad groups.

Then we'll see how long McCain-Feingold holds up.

______________________________________________________________

* Exploiting Max Cleland (McQ) - Max "Timmy!" Cleland....

Being from GA, I used to have a lot of respect for Max Cleland. He was the epitome of someone who'd shaken off the horrible effects of losing three limbs in Vietnam (for which, ironically, he did not get a Purple Heart ... no hostile fire) and and literally pulled himself back together, entered politics and was much beloved by the home folks.

Until he became a Senator. Then, it seems, Max got Potomac Fever. He became a staunch party man. He began to show an increasingly conservative state an increasingly liberal side. [...] But that was then and partisan Max is dealing in the now. Of course, it seems the exploitation of anyone to get Kerry into the White House, no matter how sad, shameless or distasteful it is, appears to be par for the DNC/Kerry Campaign course.

_____________________________________________________________

* AWOL for the Goose... (Jon Henke) - There appears to be every bit as much evidence that John Kerry was AWOL as there is evidence that George W Bush was AWOL.

Hm....so, while Kerry was contractually obligated, he had "other priorities" and got an exception that meant he "never showed up for [Reserve Duty] for a period of approximately one year".

Now, where have I heard that before?

_____________________________________________________________

* The Job Picture Gets Muddier (McQ and Dale Franks) - "Time to take a good hard look at the BLS payroll survey."

The conventional wisdom, of course, is that the establishment survey is more precise than the household survey, for a number of statistical and practical reasons. But, that only remains true as long as the composition of the workforce doesn't change radically. A shift from direct employment, to employment as a contractor or an LLC may not seem like self-employment to the worker, but that is, in fact what it is. So, if there has been a workforce shift towards contract work, the payroll survey, no matter how accurate it is methodologically, will still be wrong, simply because it can't record what it doesn't measure.

______________________________________________________________

* More about Jobs (Dale Franks) - It's too early to tell if the tax cuts have increased revenue, but it's apparent that they did help to ameliorate the recession.

Even if one assumes that the payroll data from the establishment survey are absolutely correct, that still puts our current rate of employment of 5.5% at the same rate it was in July of 1996, which is hardly remembered as a time of great tribulation. Indeed, the unemployment rate never reached as low as 5.5% from 1974-1988, or from 1990-1994. So, it's a bit dumb to pretend that a 5.5% rate of unemployment is a crisis. Moreover, if in fact, the establishment survey is missing employment because it does not account for changes in the composition of the labor force, the actual unemployment rate is below—and judging by the household survey, significantly below—5.5%.

_______________________________________________________________

* The Laffer Curve (Dale Franks) - A discussion of the Laffer curve, as it relates to the Bush tax cuts. (with reader questions)

Well, here's the thing about the Laffer Curve. It posits, correctly, that higher rates of taxation hinder economic growth by killing incentives. But, and this is often missed, it also posits that, below the equilibrium point, the tax rate no longer impedes economic growth.

_____________________________________________________________

* Swifties Phase II addresses vets real anger (McQ) - "...the smearing and back stabbing took place in 1971 by a man named John Kerry. He's the one who broke faith with his military comrades and who stabbed them in the back while they were still in combat."

Most who were in Vietnam, as in any war, know that there were war crimes committed as well as atrocities. It happens in every war, and they're perpetrated by both sides. But what Kerry describes above, were he to be describing WWII, would be a very valid description of the Nazi army, but not the Allies. That's not to say that the Allies didn't commit the occasional war crime or atrocity. But unlike Nazi war crimes and atrocities such as their advance through Poland, atrocities and war crimes by the Allies were isolated incidents which were not "committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command". That is also what happened in Vietnam.

And, that is the beef. That is the label which Vietnam veterans reject Mi Lai was an aberation, not a policy, just as we're now finding with Abu Ghrab. To pretend that Mi Lai was comparable to the Warsaw Ghetto is simply ludicrous, but that is what Kerry contends with those statements.

_____________________________________________________________

* The Highest uninsured rate since Herbert Hoover...er, Bill Clinton? (Jon Henke) - A look at the recent "uninsured" data, which isn't as bas as it sounds on the evening news....

This data will be making the Democratic talking points...

A stagnant economy and rising health care costs helped push the percentage of people in the USA without health insurance last year to 15.6% of the population...

The rest of that sentence will not....

...the highest since the share hit a peak of 16.3% in 1998.

Rest assured, you won't be hearing any "worst since..." comparisons on that point.

______________________________________________________________

* Busting the McCain 2000 myth (McQ) - Bush attacked the service of Cleland and McCain! Except, beyond the strange syllogism that "Rove is evil, and attacking their service is evil....therefore, Rove was behind it. QED! " there doesn't seem to be much to that claim.

This is a crew that takes every single little thing said in criticism, no matter how true, to be an attack on their service or their patriotism. We've delt with the Cleland nonsense before, but how about McCain? Just as with Cleland, there's a myth which has grown up about McCain and Bush in South Carolina which has Bush questioning McCain's military credentials and patriotism.
[...]
McCain was rejected by SC voters not because of his service or his "lack" of patriotism, but because he was too liberal when they compared him to Bush. Max Cleland was rejected by GA voters for the same reason. However, to hear McCain whine about it, you'd think they cut the buttons off of his uniform, broke his sword and escorted him to the SC line.

______________________________________________________________

* Curiouser and Curiouser (Dale Franks and Jon Henke) - Questions arise surrounding Kerry's records. Which may explain why he's not real big on releasing records.

Now, we shouldn't jump to conclusions here. Peoples' DD214s get screwed up all the time. My DD214 missed my AF Achievement Medal. Not a particularly impressive medal, but, still, I earned it, and my DD214 should show it. So, it may be that way with Kerry.
[...]
But, we'd probably know more about this whole deal if we could actually see Kerry's records, which, of course, we can't.

______________________________________________________________

* 1st Blogiversary for QandO (Jon Henke) - It's our Birthday weekend!

And, without getting too maudlin, it cannot be overstated how much I appreciate and enjoy the people who have been reading, commenting, emailing and participating for so long.

At any rate, tomorrow marks the 1st Blogiversary of QandO. Expensive gifts Congratulatory links, blogrolling, bookmarking and word-of-mouth advertising are not discouraged.

Margin of Victory?

The Tallahassee Democrat carries the results of an interesting poll just taken in the state of FL.

A new survey of Democrats and Republicans shows how polarized the parties are in Florida and has some potentially troubling implications for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

The poll of 500 Democrats and 500 Republicans, released Friday by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc., showed predictably partisan breakdowns on issues and unity behind Kerry and President Bush within their own parties.

But the poll found 11 percent of Democrats willing to vote for Bush on Nov. 2, compared to just 5 percent of Republicans who said they would cross over for Kerry.

And while only 18 percent of Democrats consider themselves conservative, more than one-third of conservative Democrats said they will vote for Bush.

If this same sort of dissaffection, no matter how small, holds true in other states, it could be the margin of victory for Bush.

As the poll notes:

Democrats in the survey backed Kerry by 82 percent. Bush had 87 percent support among his own party's likely primary voters.

Bush's approval rating also broke down along party lines - 85 percent approval among Republicans, 75 percent disapproval among Democrats - and party members were similarly split on the economy. Seventy-seven percent of Republicans said the economy is improving while 76 percent of Democrats said it's not.

Seventy-nine percent of likely Republican voters backed Bush on the Iraq war, 12 percent said it was a mistake to invade, and 83 percent felt the administration is making progress in fighting terrorism.

By contrast, 76 percent of Democrats felt invading Iraq was a mistake. Only 25 percent thought the war on terror is making gains while 59 percent said it isn't.

Interesting.

Libertarians for Bush

Well, it probably goes without saying that most libertarians have Big Problems with the Bush administration. Between the spending, trade restrictions, increased regulation, dramatically enlarged entitlement programs, and assorted other quibbles and bits, there's a whole lot to dislike.

On the other hand, I'm having trouble recalling any election in which libertarians didn't have Big Problems with the whole slate of realistic candidates.

And there is, after all, a War on.

So, primarily for that reason, some libertarians have thrown in their chips with Bush.

Bush is not a libertarian, nor do we claim he is. He is a Centrist with soft conservative leanings. In this election and upcoming term we believe he is the right man for the job.

Of course, the fact that the alternative is John Kerry is....well, motivation.

There is also a Political Quiz at the site. I got:
Economic Issues: is 95
Social Issues: is 90
...probably because of a few "maybe's" I put in response to questions that I wasn't sure could be accurately answered with a Yes or No. At the end, there's an interesting map of projected rankings for other well-known political and social figures.

I'd be interested to know your scores, as well. Take the test, and visit the site.

Never again

Teresa Heinz Kerry has broken her silence of weeks to wade into the fray about her husband's VN service and war-protesting. Perhaps she shouldn't have:

"I believe that discussions or attacks on [my husband's] service undermine the peace of mind not only of Vietnam veterans but of those now fighting for their country," she told the Dayton Daily News.

"Let us hope that if they volunteer for service their reviews are not going to be so nefarious in the future," she added.

In a word, Ms. Heinz-Kerry: "Nonsense". If anyone, those fighting in Iraq know exactly what this is about, even if you don't.

What they know is the veterans of the Vietnam era, who were so maligned by your husband, are going to make sure of two things. A) He doesn't get a pass on if as he has for 30+ years and B) that the sorts of lies and exaggerations he told against our military will never again go unanswered or unconfronted. Not if the veterans have anything to say about it.

While this may be painful for you and your husband, try to imagine how painful it was for those who were branded wholesale as murderers, rapists and war-criminals by his false testimony. Imagine having to live silently with the lies your husband told about them for all these years.

Is this detrimental to the morale of the troops in Iraq? Hardly. What would be detrimental to their moral is to have to endure a Commander-in-chief who trashed the institution they hold dear and has worked incessently during his Senate career to cut their funding, weapons systems and size.

Asked Monday about the Swiftvet criticism by the Gannet News Service, Heinz Kerry responded less forcefully, saying, "I honor my husband's work. I honor his past."

"I may be wrong," she added. "But I have to believe that no veteran today, including those who don't plan to vote for my husband, feels very good about these attacks."

In this case you're precisely right. But its like surgery. We may not like it but its something which must be done. This has been a festering wound among veterans for 35 years. But there's never really been a forum to present the tide of resentment which has abided in Vietnam era vets that this particular man seeded with his testimony and activites in 1971.

Until now.

As you saw at the VFW Convention, what your husband did in 1971 has not been forgotten and it certainly hasn't been forgiven. You, like most of the left who were complicit in the lies and the resulting shabby treatment of members of our military at that time, would love to just pretend like it all never happend.

Well it did.

And your husband is in large part responsible for that. This is the first opportunity on a national scale for the veteran community to finally have its say about what he did. The time has come for John Kerry to face up to it and pay the piper.

Is it hurting morale in Iraq? Don't kid yourself. Its most likely building it up ... our troops know that, at least in the veteran community, we'll never let this happen again if we can help it.

UPDATE: Reader Peter distills the essense of the anger felt by Vietnam veterans toward John Kerry with a passionate and articulate rendering of his deepest feelings about what this has awakened and why its important to him and to others like myself:

I cannot speak to any effect that this controversy has on serving Military. I cannot even speak to any Viet Nam Veteran but myself.

This controversy has affected my morale, albiet not in the way Mrs. Heinz-Kerry seems to think. This controversy has made me ashamed of myself.

Make no mistake, my tours in Viet Nam were not the stuff of the glorious fiction of a John Wayne movie, my war had far more to do with lonlieness, homesickness, fear and exhaustion than it had to do with charging enemy pillboxes shooting a flame thrower from the hip. I was simply one of millions doing an ugly job in an ugly place.

I do not apologize for my mundane service, I went where I was sent and did what I was told, to the best of my ability. My shame comes from when I came home to the cacophony of the 'anti-war' movement.

For a little while I tried to defend myself and my comrades, when few would listen I gave up. In my weariness, my desire to fit in, my eagerness to build a civilian life and, yes, my cowardice, I shut up, put my head down and allowed the Haydens, Fondas and Kerrys to define me, and, worse, those who had done more and sacrificed more than me. I sat silent for three and a half decades while the children of men who died over there were taught the same thing that mine were, that the men who fought that war were a bunch of raping, murdering thugs of subhuman intelligence but enough cunning to master the incredibly complex machinery of then-modern war and unleash it, not in defense of freedom but in opposition to it.

As I sat with my family and told them of the absolute integrity, love and honor of so many of the young men I was privileged to stand alongside, the superhuman courage, born out of love, that I had the honor to see, a small voice in my soul was asking 'who is telling this to the children of the dead?' It wasn't me. It should have been me.

Now, after years of my silence, the man who, more than any other single man, put that black cloud over those 58,000 names carved in black granite, is back. Three and a half decades after pissing on every single one of those 58,000 neatly-folded flags he is wrapping himself in them.

I'm angry and ashamed. Angry at myself for allowing this. Angry at him for doing this.

I am not competant to judge the quality of Kerry's service in those boats. I was nowhere near them, my job was elsewhere. I simply don't know enough about the war on the rivers to have an opinion, I defer to those who served on the rivers.

I do know this. John Kerry surrounded himself with 'veterans', many of whom had never spent a day in uniform. Others had never been assigned to Southeast Asia. None of those 'veterans, not a single one, would testify under oath, to all of these 'widespread atrocities'. Even after being offered full immunity they would not testify.

This is what I know. John Kerry slimed the good name of every single one of the millions of good men I had the honor of standing beside. He did it on purpose, knowingly. He did it after running for office as a hero and losing. Discovering that heros weren't selling very well he turned to knavery. Had he spoken only for himself I could forgive him for his lies and myself for my silence.

I am silent no longer. Everywhere my voice is welcome and places where it isn't, I'm speaking out. I should have done this decades ago.

This isn't about George Bush. It's not about me. It's about scrubbing the slime off that black granite wall. It's about the pride and love being, thirty-odd years too late, restored to some 58,000 families.

Please forgive the length, somebody smarter than me could probably say this in a single sentence.

Thank you Peter. I don't think I could have said it better if I had tried.

Thank you for you service ... and welcome home.

Curiouser and Curiouser

Chicago Sun-Times political reporter Thomas Lipscomb has been looking over the military records on Jiohn Kerry's campaign web site. After doing so, he's wondering about something.

The Kerry campaign has repeatedly stated that the official naval records prove the truth of Kerry's assertions about his service.

But the official records on Kerry's Web site only add to the confusion. The DD214 form, an official Defense Department document summarizing Kerry's military career posted on johnkerry.com, includes a "Silver Star with combat V."

But according to a U.S. Navy spokesman, "Kerry's record is incorrect. The Navy has never issued a 'combat V' to anyone for a Silver Star."

Naval regulations do not allow for the use of a "combat V" for the Silver Star, the third-highest decoration the Navy awards. None of the other services has ever granted a Silver Star "combat V," either.

That's certainly odd. But that's not all. For a single medal, Kerry seems to have gotten more than the usual number of citations (1) to go with it.

Kerry's Web site also lists two different citations for the Silver Star. One was issued by the commander in chief of the Pacific Command (CINCPAC), Adm. John Hyland. The other, issued by Secretary of the Navy John Lehman during the Reagan administration, contained some revisions and additional language. "By his brave actions, bold initiative, and unwavering devotion to duty, Lieutenant (j.g.) Kerry reflected great credit upon himself... ."

But a third citation exists that appears to be the earliest. And it is not on the Kerry campaign Web site. It was issued by Vice Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, commander of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam. This citation lacks the language in the Hyland citation or that added by the Lehman version, but includes another 170 words in a detailed description of Kerry's attack on a Viet Cong ambush, his killing of an enemy soldier carrying a loaded rocket launcher, as well as military equipment captured and a body count of dead enemy.

Actually, that's not just odd, it's bizarre. Usually, if you lose the citation or certificate, you just request a duplicate from the DoD. They don't get re-written for you.

But, wait, there's more!

Kerry's Web site also carries a DD215 form revising his DD214, issued March 12, 2001, which adds four bronze campaign stars to his Vietnam service medal. The campaign stars are issued for participation in any of the 17 Department of Defense named campaigns that extended from 1962 to the cease-fire in 1973.

However, according to the Navy spokesman, Kerry should only have two campaign stars: one for "Counteroffensive, Phase VI," and one for "Tet69, Counteroffensive."

Now, we shouldn't jump to conclusions here. Peoples' DD214s get screwed up all the time. My DD214 missed my AF Achievement Medal. Not a particularly impressive medal, but, still, I earned it, and my DD214 should show it. So, it may be that way with Kerry.

Experts point out that even the official military records get screwed up. Milavic is trying to get mistakes in his own DD214 file corrected. In his opinion, "these entries are not prima facie evidence of lying or unethical behavior on the part of Kerry or anyone else with screwed-up DD214s."

But, we'd probably know more about this whole deal if we could actually see Kerry's records, which, of course, we cant.

Reporting by the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs points out that although the Kerry campaign insists that it has released Kerry's full military records, the Post was only able to get six pages of records under its Freedom of Information Act request out of the "at least a hundred pages" a Naval Personnel Office spokesman called the "full file."

So, what's in those hundred pages of documents? What kind of goodies might be unearthed? For instance, might we find out what happened with Kerrys discharge from the Navy?

Questions have been raised about President Bush's drill attendance in the reserves, but Bush received his honorable discharge on schedule. Kerry, who should have been discharged from the Navy about the same time -- July 1, 1972 -- wasn't given the discharge he has on his campaign Web site until July 13, 1978. What delayed the discharge for six years? This raises serious questions about Kerry's performance while in the reserves that are far more potentially damaging than those raised against Bush.

Nice to see the mainstream media finally jumping in and asking some questions.

UPDATE (JON): "Wow" is right. Reader "Jumbo" refers us to NRO's Kerry Spot, which has this....

Veterans said yesterday that although they would take offense at someone falsely wearing a "V" combat pin, they couldn't see how this could drive Navy Adm. Jeremy Michael Boorda to suicide.

“Is it wrong? Yes, it is very wrong. Sufficient to question his leadership position? The answer is yes, which he clearly understood,” said Sen. John Kerry, a Navy combat veteran who served in Vietnam.

It is, apparently, no longer sufficient to question one's leadership based on potentially inappropriate medals. I don't recall, precisely, what day that change went into effect, but John Kerry says it's all different now, and John Kerry is an honorable man.

One more question. If John Kerry believes this....

“In a sense, there's nothing that says more about your career than when you fought, where you fought and how you fought,” Kerry said.

“If you wind up being less than what you’re pretending to be, there is a major confrontation with value and self-esteem and your sense of how others view you.”

...then why won't he release his records, so we can know about this thing that "says more about [his] career" than anything else? Why has Kerry suddenly gotten gun-shy about his Vietnam-era resume?

And, more to the point, why did John Kerry say that Bush "owes America an explanation about whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. Prove it. That's what we ought to have."....and, yet, John Kerry--principled man that he is--refuses to do more than a very limited, selective release of his own records? And why is the left side of the 'sphere so suddenly quiet about that whole "release the record" thing?

Of course, those are rhetorical questions.

The fact is, while each side blathers about "the principle of the thing", there's still an election to be won, and principles don't win the Electoral College. The shots fired are for advantage, not principle.

Busting the McCain 2000 myth

I like Rich Lowry's characterization of a trio of Vets we've come to know well here lately:

It is supposed to be a devastating critique of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that John McCain doesn't like their ads. But should we be surprised? McCain knows no party. Instead, together with Kerry supporter Max Cleland, the Arizona senator makes for the smallest caucus in American politics -- Thin-Skinned Vietnam War Veterans Adored by the Media (TSVWVAM).

This is a crew that takes every single little thing said in criticism, no matter how true, to be an attack on their service or their patriotism. We've delt with the Cleland nonsense before, but how about McCain? Just as with Cleland, there's a myth which has grown up about McCain and Bush in South Carolina which has Bush questioning McCain's military credentials and patriotism.

Lowry says, "not true". Consider the context and the situation:

A Kerry ad (now taken off the air) featured a clip from McCain at a 2000 debate in South Carolina excoriating Bush for abiding attacks on his service. It seems devastating, unless you know the context. McCain was furious -- a not-infrequent condition for the Arizona maverick -- that a Bush supporter who is a veteran had stood next to Bush at a rally and complained about McCain's Senate voting record. It wasn't an attack on McCain's service. But both members of TSVWVAM have the same inability to distinguish between criticisms of their records and themselves personally.

"He has always opposed all the legislation," the pro-Bush vet said, "be it Agent Orange or Gulf War health care, or frankly the POW/MIA issue." You don't have to subscribe to every particular of this litany to consider it firmly in-bounds. A McCain vote in 1999 against a Department of Veterans Affairs spending bill, for instance, angered some vets, as did his work to normalize relations with Vietnam. Veterans of Foreign Wars gave McCain a 75 percent favorable rating in 1998, respectable but lower than other senators who scored in the 80 percent to 100 percent range. In 1995, McCain scored a mere 27 percent. So it's not as though his legislative record was beyond reproach.

McCain was rejected by SC voters not because of his service or his "lack" of patriotism, but because he was too liberal when they compared him to Bush. Max Cleland was rejected by GA voters for the same reason. However, to hear McCain whine about it, you'd think they cut the buttons off of his uniform, broke his sword and escorted him to the SC line.

As Lowry points out:

McCain lost in South Carolina because he was too liberal for Republican primary voters and his campaign was considered too negative after he compared Bush's honesty to Bill Clinton's.

So as you can tell, it wasn't exactly all "sweetness and light" from McCain.

As an interesting aside, since we're talking about McCain, the Washington Post is reporting the following:

McCain said that he urged Kerry sometime ago not to talk about Vietnam during his campaign. "I did advise John. I said, 'Look, you shouldn't talk about Vietnam because everybody else will. Let everybody else do it.' His advisers figured that was probably not enough, that he had to emphasize that in his campaign. In my campaign, as you know, I didn't talk about it because I didn't need to."

McCain also said he drew a distinction between the first anti-Kerry ad by the veterans group, which focused on Kerry's Vietnam service, and a second ad now airing that criticizes Kerry for his leadership in the antiwar movement after he returned from Vietnam. McCain condemned the first ad but not the second.

Not condemning the second ad, huh?

Telling.

Laugh of the Day

John Kerry's characterization of the Swift Boat Vets attack on him:

"They have obviously decided that some people will believe anything, no matter how fictional or how far-fetched, if they just repeat it often enough. That's how they have run their administration, that's how they're running their campaign, and that's how they will run their convention," Kerry said.

Is he talking about himself or the Swifties? When it comes to "repeat it often enough" no one can hold a candle to Kerry's "... when I was in Vietnam" and all the now frayed and frazzled hero vignette's which have been repeated ad nauseum for 30 plus years.

Oh wait ... he's repeating the canard that the Swifties are run by the administration.

Well, you know, he may have a point, depending on how many times he intends to repeat that specious bit of nonsense.

Heh ... watching this guy work is making me consider the possibility he may be "irony impaired."

the Pressure Cooker Theory of Hydraulic Release

That's Charles Krauthammer's name for his theory about the relatively quick emergence of the left's virulent hate of George Bush. You see, it all began in Florida and ended with the Supreme Court. Despite mountains of evidence showing no matter how many times and ways the recount had been done the result would be the same, the left rejects the result. Anger boils:

The hostility, resentment, envy and disdain, all superheated in Florida, were not permitted their natural discharge. Came 9/11 and a lid was forced down. How can you seek revenge for a stolen election by a nitwit usurper when all of a sudden we are at war and the people, bless them, are rallying around the flag and hailing the commander-in-chief? With Bush riding high in the polls, with flags flying from pickup trucks, the President was untouchable.

The Democrats fell unnaturally silent. For two long, agonizing years, they had to stifle and suppress. The forced deference nearly killed them. And then, providentially, they were saved. The clouds parted and bad news rained down like manna: WMDs, Abu Ghraib, Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill and, most important, continued fighting in Iraq.

Stripped of his halo, Bush's ratings went down. The spell was broken. He was finally once again human and vulnerable. With immense relief, the critics let loose.

The result has been a virtual avalanche of fear and lothing. "Hate" has unhinged the left:

It is not often that a losing presidential candidate (Al Gore) compares the man who defeated him with Hitler and Stalin. It is not often that a senior party leader (Edward Kennedy) accuses a sitting President of starting a war ("cooked up in Texas") to gain political advantage for his reelection.

The loathing goes far beyond the politicians. Liberals as a body have gone quite around the twist. I count one all-star rock tour, three movies, four current theatrical productions and five best sellers (a full one-third of the New York Times list) variously devoted to ridiculing, denigrating, attacking and devaluing this President, this presidency and everyone who might, God knows why, support it.

In a word, it has become "toxic".

The subject of one prominent new novel is whether Bush should be assassinated. This is all quite unhinged.

What if Bush is reelected? If they lose to him again, Democrats will need more than just consolation. They'll need therapy.

Actually I think if they lose, they'll need more than therapy. I'm of the opinion we'll see a preview of what we can expect if they lose in the streets of NY during the RNC convention.

I mentioned in an article the other day when writing about irony of Kerry's antiwar past and the probability he'd almost be forced to prosecute a war in the face of a gathering anti-war movement. But there was a paragraph in the op/ed I cited which makes me uneasy.

The anti-war movement in this country today is precisely where it was in its earliest stages of Vietnam. This nation is about a year away from serious antiwar activity, especially if Bush wins re-election and the pent-up bitterness that now drives the national Democratic Party has no productive outlet.

I happen to agree with this assessment. Jim Wooten, who wrote the piece in which it is found, has articulated something I've been thinking about for some time. If they lose, considering the virulence of the hate being spewed by the left, what will be the outlet for that hate but an anti-war movement? How else, with the presidency out of play for four years and a probable hold by Repubicans in Congress, will they vent this almost nuclear-powered hate?

We'll see ... but I certainly don't think its going to be pretty.

Well "Duh"!

Another from the liberal side of the fence has a revelation on the order of a "blinding flash of the obvious". Joan Ryan of the SFGate tells us:

As a good San Franciscan, I swallowed my judgment as I watched the Muslim women move through the malls and restaurants like shadows of their husbands and sons and young daughters. If I have learned anything in two decades in the Bay Area, it is tolerance for the customs of other cultures and religions.

But one day at breakfast in our Dubai hotel, I came across a story in the English-language Gulf News that made me question the assumption that tolerance is always a good thing. Is it possible, I wondered, to so single-mindedly embrace the virtue of tolerance that we become de facto supporters of oppression?

You see making a judgement means having to determine whether something is good or bad. And that then requires the "thinker" to determine whether their culture is "better" or "worse" than the culture being judged.

Much to , er, judgmental. Its an article of faith among many liberals that intolerance is perhaps the greatest of secular sins. The "thinking" is all cultures are equal, and to judge one as superior to another is to be intolerant, and thus narrow minded, parochial and partisan. It is to miss out on the richness of cultural diversity and the lessons we can learn from others.

Well I would agree that there's much to be said for many cultures and I wouldn't doubt we can learn from other cultures as well, but does that mean I must consider a culture which holds its women in virtual slavery, to be equal to a culture that demands the same rights for its women as it does its men?

I suppose that depends on my view on freedom, women and a whole raft of other things doesn't it? But regardless of what my views might be, I'm going to judge, one way or the other, whether a culture's treatment of women is "good" or "bad" according to what standards? The standards of the culture which supports (and shaped) my views. What our lib friends tell us is that any "judgement" of another culture is wrong. In other words they ask us to abandon the views which have been shaped by our culture and to view other cultures in a value-neutral sort of way. To acccept other cultures as being "as good as" ours, even if we don't agree with the basic precepts or principles of that culture.

Well you know what, that's just not human nature.

Time to be forthright. I am and always have been intolerant of many things, and I plan on remaining that way. It is through intolerance and discrimination that I make many daily decisions concerning the conduct of my life.

So sue me.

And even worse, I suppose, I find some cultures to be far superior to others.

They're shrieking in Berkley!

For instance, I'm intolerant of a culture which will stone a woman to death for being unfaithful and write the guy's infidelity off as "guys will be guys and just can't help themselves". A culture which treats that sort of offense as an offense to be settled between the two people and provides for them to do so legally is far superior.

I'm intolerant of a culture which finds male children superior to female children. I find far superior the culture that views both male and female children as equal gifts and treats them as such.

I'm intolerant of cultures which place their women in such a subserviant and degraded place that they're virtual slaves. I find far superior the culture which sees males and females as equals both in the law and through rights.

I'm intolerant of a culture which classifies and treats other human beings as inferior simply because of their race, sex or religion. The superior culture would treat all people, regardless of race, sex or religion as equals.

Those are just a few. And, somehow I figured all of this out all by myself years ago.

For Joan Ryan, the apparent revelation and conversion came late in life and was made on a very recent trip to the UAE where an honest to goodness "different culture" stared her right in the face. She apparently had a rough time applying the value-neutral "tolerance" template to what she saw and learned.

We cannot force another country to change its values and customs so they better reflect our own. But we don't have to accept them, either. Some customs and values are not worthy of our tolerance.

Welcome to the real world, Joan. Maybe we ought to make the UAE a "must go" destination on the liberal travelogue in the future.

The Abu Ghraib Report

Former career soldier Ralph Peters takes a critical look at the report on the Abu Ghraib Abuses. He's not happy. He's especially unhappy with the senior leadership at the pentagon, who shouldn't've have created the situation that led to it.

he problem isn't that we did the wrong thing. We did a great thing by ridding the world of Saddam Hussein. But we did it needlessly badly. Because we tried to do it on the cheap. Well, the truth is that you don't always get what you pay for — but you never get what you don't pay for.

Why was our military prevented from conducting its standard, detailed planning processes? Why were troop levels held artificially low?

Because ideologues in the Bush administration feared that, if the American people were given honest answers about the potential cost, it might be politically impossible to go to war...

The administration clutched at the straw that the Schlesinger report didn't call for Rumsfeld's resignation (the Army's internal report could not have done so). Cold comfort: The report damned his performance. Besides, the Schlesinger team was drawn from the Washington old-boys' club, of which Rummy is a long-term member. The old boys never call for each other's resignation. It's remarkable they were as critical as they were.

The fact that the same bloodstained civilian leadership remains in place in the Pentagon is an insult to our troops — and a prime cause of our occupation stumbles.

Keep in mind, that Peters is a bush supporter.

I could write a book on everything the Bush administration has done wrong in Iraq. If there was any possible mistake the Bush Administration could make in being too tentative, or too risk averse, they made it. For example, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Moqtada al-Sadr. If I had been president, al-Sadr would've been dead or in prison a year ago.

And, while we're on the subject, Fallujah would be nothing but a very wide, flat place on the highway out of Baghdad, because, as soon as the trouble started there, I'd've evactuated it, razed it to the ground, leveled the rubble, and sowed the earth with salt.

And I'd've had enough troops in Iraq to do it, even if I'd had to empty out Germany to do so.

But, where were we? Oh. Yes. Abu Ghraib. Nasty business that. But apparently, though the senior leadership committed enough sins of omission to fill a book, they can't bear the blame for Abu Ghraib directly. That lies on the heads of the perpetrators. That doesn't mean the penatgon's leadership should be held blameless, though.

Whatever the sins of omission and commission at the top of the chain of command, the thugs in uniform at Abu Ghraib were self-starting criminals. Which is why they're pleading guilty, one after the other. No sympathy for those devils...

The reports also found officers in the Abu Ghraib chain of command derelict in the performance of their duties. They need to be court-martialed.

The easiest link in the chain of command to sympathize with is Lt.-Gen. Rick Sanchez and his staff in Baghdad. They had a growing insurgency to fight with too few troops, too small a staff, too few resources and indecision in Washington. It's easy to grasp why Sanchez and his deputies concentrated on the combat situation and slighted other matters. As a former soldier, I can easily imagine a sweating general snapping, "Look, I'm busy fighting a war, colonel. Just handle that prisoner business, all right?"

In the military, it's always the issue for which you don't have time that bites you on the backside.

And sometimes they take a big bite.

"I miscalculated...."

Kudos to George Bush for standing up and admitting that he "miscalculated what the conditions would be" in Iraq after the US invaded.

Of course that doesn't solve the problem or change the current situation in Iraq, but it does prove, at least to me, that Bush isn't above admitting an error or miscalculation. That admission does make it easier to now consider a course change and do what is necessary in Iraq to correct the effect of that miscalculation with an eye to remedying the situation.

We've all seen politicians who refuse to acknowledge error, apparently believing that doing so somehow damages them politically. Well folks when its obvious to the entire world but they won't admit it, how does it help their cause?

This is an important admission, because now alternatives and remedies can be openly discussed without further fear of the politics getting in the way.

Oh sure, the Dems are going to use this .... they'd be fools not too ... but I think this show of honesty will resonate more positively with the American people than negatively (well at least with the undecided). Yes it shows Bush to be fallible, but then I'd love to hear from someone who has always believed our elected officials to be infallible. I'm not sure of anyone who's ever believed him or any other president to be something other than a human being who may make mistakes.

More important than that is the man or woman who's willing to review his or her actions, admit their mistakes and not ride them over the canyon wall so they don't have to say "I was wrong".

Its that type person I prefer in a leadership positions.

Why not kiss and Make Up?

Daniel Henninger asks a question I've been wondering about for a while now.

How can this be happening? Why didn't John Kerry months back--if not years--find some gracious way to make peace with the John O'Neills of the world? Why didn't one wise head among the Democrats point out the obvious difficulties of the Kerry candidacy once past the party's primary voters? This is a man who would be running as both a hero of Vietnam and a famous accuser of the war's heroes. This is an election, not a Shakespearean tragedy. How come John Kerry never worked out, before the final leg of his long odyssey, a let-bygones statement, admitting the hyperbole (at the least) of his accusations of atrocity before Congress in 1971, honoring the service of colleagues who never felt obliged to apologize for Vietnam, but reserving his right to oppose that troubled war?

That's actually a pretty good question. It would seem like the smart thing to do would be to come to some sort of reconciliation with his fellow Viet vets; some sort of "mistakes were made" kind of deal. I mean, he wouldn't've had to go the whole mea maxima culpa route, just some sort of accomodation that took some of the edge off.

Henninger, however, thinks he knows why that never happened.

Alongside support for the civil-rights movement in the 1960s, opposition to Vietnam forms the moral bedrock of the modern Democratic Party. John Kerry (whose fidelity to principle, on the available evidence, is weaker than that of those who voted him into this role) is obliged to stand by his 1971 testimony as a matter of principle. Abandon that, and the party abandons him.

Henninger goes on to take this analysis a bit farther--perhaps too far--but this is compelling enough.

One of the things that the Left never did, except for a very few people like Joan Baez, was to admit that they were completely duped by the whole commie line of BS about being champiopns of democracy, and the VC being an indigenous movement that was all about self-determination for the people of South Vietnam.

That was all a sham, and once the VC had served their purpose, the North Vietnamese government gutted them, disbanded the VC, and bumped off any troublesome VC leaders who weren't completely willing to knuckle under.

And of course, the aftermath: a hundred thousand Vietnamese dying in "reeducation" camps, hundreds of thousands of "boat people", many of whom dies trying to leave the new workers' and peasants' paradise, the murder of 1/4 of Cambodia's population under the Khmer Rouge, the whole sad, sorry detritus of defeat.

The response of the Left was denial. It wasn't really happening, and besides, we caused it with our unjust war over there, and anyway, we still don't have social justice at home, and please, please, please, whatever you do, don't try to tell me that I was wrong, and that my opposition to the war in Vietnam led, in some small way to the murders of millions upon millions of people at the hands of my heroes.

They didn't want to hear it then, and they don't want to hear it now. It has become an article of faith that nothing was accomplished in Vietnam, nothing could've been accomplished, and so nothing that happened after our departure could possibly be their fault.

And they certainly don't want to be told they were wrong by their own presidential candidate. So Kerry is in an odd position. He is running as a valiant hero for fighting in a war he is mainly known for opposing. But to reconcile those two positions by admitting that his past statements were...factually incorrect, well, that simply isn't in the cards.

At least, not until he gets a lot more desperate than he is now.

Wow!

I've got to tell you, I find this both amazing and fascinating:

A German who had his lower jaw cut out because of cancer has enjoyed his first meal in nine years — a bratwurst sandwich — after surgeons grew a new jaw bone in his back muscle and transplanted it to his mouth in what experts call an "ambitious" experiment.

According to this week's issue of The Lancet medical journal, the German doctors used a mesh cage, a growth chemical and the patient's own bone marrow, containing stem cells, to create a new jaw bone that fit exactly into the gap left by the cancer surgery.

Tests have not been done yet to verify whether the bone was created by the blank-slate stem cells and it is too early to tell whether the jaw will function normally in the long term. But the operation is the first published report of a whole bone being engineered and incubated inside a patient's body and transplanted.

This is really an amazing story and development. But apparently not that new of a thing:

Paul Brown, head of the Center for Tissue Regeneration Science at University College in London, said it's not clear any major scientific ground has been broken, and tests may not be able to show whether the new bone came from stem cells, rather than from the growth factor alone.

The operation put established techniques together, resembling a well-known experiment in which University of Massachusetts scientists grew a human ear using a mold on the back of a mouse in 1995, he said.

They're going to try to make that determination at a later date. In the meantime the patient is eating steak and complaining he can't chew it well because he has no teeth so he has to cut it into tiny, tiny pieces.. On the agenda for later is the implantation of teeth so he can chew and enjoy large freaking chunks of charred cow.

Maybe his friends ought to learn the Heimlich maneuver now.

Clips from "Stolen Honor"

There is a film currently in production called "Stolen Honor" which bills itself as "a documentary exposing John Kerry's record of betrayal". Obviously it has an agenda. But there is a portion of the web site which has some sample clips of interviews with Former POW's which I found to be very powerful and very damning.

The three who speak in these 3 to 4 minute clips are Ralph Gaither (7 years as a POW), Robinson Risner (7 years as a POW) and James Warner (6+ years as a POW). Pay particular attention to the Warner clip as he directly ties Kerry into the North Vietnamese using anti war activities against the POWs. Gaither is also compelling. He is of the opinion that had the war ended 6 months earlier, one of his fellow POWs (who died 6 months prior to the war's end) would have survived, but because of the anti-war movement extending the war, he didn't.

As mentioned below when I talked about phase two, this is part where the real anger with Kerry is found. As I've pointed out before, this isn't about duty, its about honor. And it appears "Stolen Honor" is going to address that point rather vividly if these clips are any indication.

Schachte speaks

Retired Rear Adm. William L. Schachte Jr claimed that he "definitely" was in the "skimmer" (Boston whaler) with Kerry on the night he wounded himself with an M79 grenade.

In an exclusive interview with Robert Novak he says:

"I was absolutely in the skimmer" in the early morning on Dec. 2, 1968, when Lt. (j.g.) John Kerry was involved in an incident which led to his first Purple Heart.

"Kerry nicked himself with a M-79 (grenade launcher)," Schachte said in a telephone interview from his home in Charleston, S.C. He said, "Kerry requested a Purple Heart."

He also said it was he, Kerry and an enlisted sailor, but he doesn't remember that sailor's name.

This obviously contradicts the claims by Bill Zaldonis and Patrick Runyon who both claim to have been on the skimmer that night with Kerry. They related their rememberances to the Boston Globe thusly (from Chap 3, "Unfit for Command")

The two men serving alongside Kerry that night had similar memories of the incident that led to Kerry's first wartime injury. William Zaldonis, who was manning an M-60, and Patrick Runyon, operating the engine, said they spotted some people running from a sampan to a nearby shoreline. When they refused to obey a call to stop, Kerry's crew began shooting. ''When John told me to open up, I opened up,'' Zaldonis recalled. Zaldonis and Runyon both said they were too busy to notice how Kerry was hit. ''I assume they fired back,'' Zaldonis said. ''If you can picture me holding an M-60 machine gun and firing it-what do I see? Nothing. If they were firing at us, it was hard for me to tell.''

Runyon, too, said that he assumed the suspected Viet Cong fired back because Kerry was hit by a piece of shrapnel. ''When you have a lot of shooting going on, a lot of noise, you are scared, the adrenaline is up,'' Runyon said. ''I can't say for sure that we got return fire or how [Kerry] got nicked. I couldn't say one way or the other. I know he did get nicked, a scrape on the arm.''

So somebody (or maybe all of them) has it wrong. But note they do agree on one thing ... both Zaldonis and Runyon cannot, in anyway, verify return fire.

Back to Schachte:

Schachte, who also was then a lieutenant junior grade, said he was in command of the small Boston whaler or skimmer, with Kerry aboard in his first combat mission in the Vietnam War. The third crew member was an enlisted man whose name Schachte did not remember.

Two reasons why Schachte's story has some credibility. One is you'd rarely if ever, send a green officer out alone on his first combat mission.

Grant Hibbard, who as a lieutenant commander was Schachte's superior officer, confirmed that Schachte always went on these skimmer missions and "I don't think he (Kerry) was alone" on his first assignment.

But that's not the only reason to believe Schachte's account:

Schachte described the use of the skimmer operating very close to shore as a technique that he personally designed to flush enemy forces on the banks of Mekong River so that the larger Swift boats could move in.

[...]

Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis are the two enlisted men who said they were aboard the skimmer and did not know Schachte. However, two other former officers interviewed Thursday confirmed that Schachte was the originator of the technique and always was aboard the Boston whaler for these missions.

In other words, all skimmer missions were all Schachte's missions. It was his technique and it was only used, per Schachte, when he was aboard the skimmer. The Swift boat which was in support and which had towed the skimmer in was commanded by Lt. Voss.

So who's zoomin' who here? And why? We've already seen Alston's "memories" of Kerry's Silver Star event to have been false, as well as Alston's attribution of the actions of Ted Peck to Kerry. Is this just another in a long line of mistaken rememberances?

If we assume Schachte was always on the skimmer a number of possiblities ensue.

A) One of the two enlisted sailors wasn't on the skimmer.
B) Both were on the skimmer, but for some reason neither remembers Schachte
C) Shachte's rememberance of the number of sailors on the skimmer is faulty

Kerry has always supported the one officer (Kerry), two enlisted version in his rememberances as have, obviously, the two saliors, Zaldonis and Runyon. Schachte supports three in the boat, but with one of them being him.

Ted Peck, another Swift boat commander, said, "I remember Bill (Schachte) telling me it didn't happen" -- that is, Kerry getting an enemy-inflicted wound. He said it would be "impossible" for Kerry to have been in the skimmer without Schachte.

So who's right? Is it possible that Runyon or Zaldonis have perhaps mixed up a different skimmer mission with this one? If so, and if Schachte was on everyone of them, wouldn't one of them remember Schachte? Wouldn't Kerry?

Lots of interesting questions.

But let's remember one thing while contemplating the questions. According to Kerry, he went on exactly one of these missions not long after he first reached VN. This is how Schachte describes Kerry wounding himself that night:

At about 3 a.m. on Dec. 2, Schachte said, the skimmer -- code-named "Batman" -- fired a hand-held flare. He said that after Kerry's M-16 rifle jammed, the new officer picked up the M-79 and "I heard a 'thunk.' There was no fire from the enemy," he said.

The M-79 does indeed have a distinctive "thunk" when it fires. Absolutely no mistaking it (like you can't mistake the fire of an AK-47 for an M-16). But more importantly, note the code name of the skimmer. Then consider this conversation related by Schachte:

The next time he saw Kerry after the first Purple Heart incident, Schachte said, was "about 20 years" later on the U.S. Senate subway in the basement of the Russell Senate Office Building. "I called, 'Hey, John.' He replied, 'Batman.' I was absolutely amazed by his memory." He said they "talked about having lunch" but never did.

What does that say to you? What it says to me is Kerry identified Schachte with the skimmer mission. There is no other reason to refer to him as "Batman" otherwise.

It says to me that in all likelyhood, William Schachte was indeed on that skimmer the night of the incident. Note I'm not then suggesting that Zaldonis or Runyon weren't. Its entirely possible they were and Schachte's memory is faulty in that regard. Its entirely possible that all three have forgotten the other was on there.

But, based on the Kerry reaction to Schachte 20 years later and the fact that the skimmer missions were all Schachte's and he was on every one of them, I have to come down on the side of the Schachte version here. If it was his technique, he'd be the responsible party for employing it. Regardless of who was in the boat, all of them either remember there was "no fire" or don't know if there was any fire, and that puts the Purple Heart awarded for that incident in deep doubt.

The Highest uninsured rate since Herbert Hoover...er, Bill Clinton?

This data will be making the Democratic talking points...

A stagnant economy and rising health care costs helped push the percentage of people in the USA without health insurance last year to 15.6% of the population...

The rest of that sentence will not....

...the highest since the share hit a peak of 16.3% in 1998.

Rest assured, you won't be hearing any "worst since..." comparisons on that point.

As we've noted here often, our health care system is terribly mangled, and a change is absolutely warranted. Of course, when we say "a change", we don't mean "more government".

For future reference, though, the Census Bureau lists these stats...[formatted differently for your viewing pleasure]

Covered by private or government health insurance

2003.......83.2
2002.......83.3
2001.......84.2
2000 9/...84.8
1999 8/...84.4
1999.......83.5
1998.......82.7
1997 7/...82.4
1996.......82.9
1995.......83.2
1994 6/...83.4
1993 5/...82.9

And interesting point in all of this is that the total insured numbers for whites, blacks, and Asians are all fairly high...generally around 80%. So, where is the uninsured problem really hitting? Take a look at the Hispanic community...

Covered by private or government health insurance

2003.......67.3

And there is a dramatic discrepancy--much larger than with any other racial category--between Hispanic males and Hispanic females. Indicating? Well, it seems a large component of our uninsured problem--and the health care problems that creates--is a result of mass (and, perhaps, temporary) immigration, and not a lack of economic oppportunity.

Now, one can argue whether the number of insured people should be legislated higher--i.e., "government provides health insurance"--or whether the government should stay out of it and allow people to make their own choices.

We could argue all of that, discuss Canada, per-capita health care spending, a priori economic assumptions on efficient allocation of resources, and the number of MRI machines in Tennessee.

We could discuss all of that, and and I think we probably will over the course of the next few years. Socialized medicine is coming and, as Dan Patrick might say, we can't stop it...we can only hope to contain it.

UPDATE: Via INDC Journal, I see Prudent Politics has taken on the poverty aspect of the report.

The first thing that stands out to me when looking at this graph is that the years with the lowest number of poor were in the booming years of the 1970's.

I also noticed that a poverty rate of 12.5 percent is still one of the lowest poverty rates since 1959. Any idea why AP didn't report this?

Why do you think we're rock stars?!

Heh ... Alice Cooper weighs in on Rock Stars going political:

"When I was a kid and my parents started talking about politics, I'd run to my room and put on the Rolling Stones as loud as I could. So when I see all these rock stars up there talking politics, it makes me sick.

"If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal."

Ground truth.

[via Dispatches from the Outland]

Swifties Phase II addresses vets real anger

Jeff Jacoby points out that while all the bruhaha about Kerry's combat record has distracted Kerry, put him off message and caused there to be doubt about his version of events in Vietnam, its not that about which the Swifties are really angry:

That doesn't mean their version of the facts is closer to the truth than his. There are conflicting eyewitness recollections, and, as The Washington Post says, "both accounts contain significant flaws and factual errors." Kerry certainly wouldn't be the first soldier to have embellished his war stories; the Swift Boat vets wouldn't be the first whose passions have altered their memories. Of course, if Kerry really wants to silence the debate about his medals, he can authorize the government to release all his military records. But that won't silence the Swifties. Because their real beef with him is not about what he did in Vietnam. It's about what he did when he came home.

Certainly its been hinted at enough, but now, the full effect and effort of pointing out his perfidy when he returned from Vietnam is their aim.

On April 22, 1971, Kerry went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to indict the American war effort in Vietnam for horrendous war crimes. These were "not isolated incidents," he testified, "but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

Most who were in Vietnam, as in any war, know that there were war crimes committed as well as atrocities. It happens in every war, and they're perpetrated by both sides. But what Kerry describes above, were he to be describing WWII, would be a very valid description of the Nazi army, but not the Allies. That's not to say that the Allies didn't commit the occasional war crime or atrocity. But unlike Nazi war crimes and atrocities such as their advance through Poland, atrocities and war crimes by the Allies were isolated incidents which were not "committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command". That is also what happened in Vietnam.

And, that is the beef. That is the label which Vietnam veterans reject Mi Lai was an aberation, not a policy, just as we're now finding with Abu Ghrab. To pretend that Mi Lai was comparable to the Warsaw Ghetto is simply ludicrous, but that is what Kerry contends with those statements.

BG Burkett, in his book "Stolen Valor", quotes findings by historian Guenter Lewy in his book "America in Vietnam" which address the issue:

Lewy pointed out that incidents similar to those described at the Winter Soldier hearings did occur. "Yet these incidents either (as in the destruction of hamlets) did not violate the law of war or took place in breach of existing regulations," Lewy wrote. Those responsible were tired and punished.

"In either case, they were not, as alleged, part of a 'criminal policy,'" Lewy said. Despite the antiwar movement's contention that military policies protecting civilians in Vietnam were routinely ignored, Lewy said the rules of engagement were implemented and taken very seriously, although at times the rules were not communicated properly and the training was inadequate. That's what made the failure so notable.

But that is not what Kerry said. Instead Kerry willingly (whether knowingly or unknowingly) perpetrated a fraud which has since branded an entire generation of soldiers with the false impression he generated about the war in Vietnam.

What Lewy found is what most who were in Vietnam remember. But in 1971, no one was interested in listening to soldiers who disagreed with the anti-war side's version. No one was interested in the other side of the argument. So for 35 years, the false impression John Kerry is responsible for perpetrating in both the fradulent "Winter Soldier Investigations" and his 1971 Senate testimony has laid there like a cold lump in need of excising. Now with a war on, now with an understanding of the things which can happen in war, now with support for the military at an all time high, the maligned vets of the Vietnam era see their chance to finally tell their side of the story ... and it won't be kind to John Kerry.

That is what thousands of Vietnam veterans, not to mention countless other vets, have never forgiven or forgotten. Bob Dole, whose right arm was crippled in World War II, suggested on Sunday that Kerry apologize to the 2.5 million veterans he defamed. Kerry's words -- which drew immense media coverage at the time -- helped poison public attitudes about Vietnam veterans and the cause they had fought in. Even worse, they gave encouragement to the enemy.

Kerry has refused to acknowledge his responsibility in this, trying to wave it off as youthful indescretion. But that's not how the majority of vets of that era see it. They instead see a calculated campaign to impugn their honor and what they were doing. They remember the aura of disgust and revulsion those like Kerry helped generate against the military based on that false testimony. They haven't forgotten.

We see comments here at Q and O by some of those backing Kerry that by questioning his combat record or any other record we're smearing him or stabbing him in the back.

Well as far as I'm concerned, and I'm only speaking for myself, the smearing and back stabbing took place in 1971 by a man named John Kerry. He's the one who broke faith with his military comrades and who stabbed them in the back while they were still in combat. They've neither forgiven nor forgotten what he inferred about all of them. So I don't begrudge the Swifties at all in taking advantage of this opportunity to set the record straight and repair the honor of the military of that era that Kerry so badly impugned.

As their Phase II rolls out, remember that while there are certainly questions on both sides about Kerry's Vietnam record, the real anger comes from what he did afterward.

Kerry has never taken back his terrible slur against his fellow soldiers -- men he now calls his "band of brothers." The most he has been willing to say is that his words "were a little bit over the top" and that he could perhaps "have phrased things more artfully." He certainly doesn't regret the propaganda coup he handed the Viet Cong: "I'm proud that I stood up," Kerry told NBC in April. "I don't want anybody to think twice about it."

As I've pointed out before, eveyone has a right to dissent. But when you dissent, you have an obligation to do so responsibly. Responsible dissent doesn't include spreading falsehoods, lies and outright fabrications in order to build or boslter your case. That is what Kerry did. So while he declares no real remorse for what he did, I can find no reason to fogive him for it and I certainly haven't forgotten about it. He abrogated his responsiblity to dissent responsibly and I have no problem with now confronting him with his record on that account.

The second phase of the Swift boat vet's ads addresses the core of the anger an era of soldiers, saliors, airmen and marines hold against Kerry. If he handles this phase as badly as he has handled the questioning of his Vietnam duty, he may have the DNC researching whether they can pull a "Torecelli" nationally and elevate John Edwards to the top spot.

Quick Hits

* I am not above appeals to my ego--"in the same way that the sea is not above the clouds"--so this is getting TrueBlueGal some attention....

... QandO (I swear, I'm gonna cheerlead for these fellas)...

And this is getting her blogrolled....

Completely aside from the clever flattery, she's got some good posts, too. Check this one out, in particular.

__________________________

* Via Dean Esmay, here's some potentially good energy news...

A team of Australian scientists predicts that a revolutionary new way to harness the power of the sun to extract clean and almost unlimited energy supplies from water will be a reality within seven years.

Using special titanium oxide ceramics that harvest sunlight and split water to produce hydrogen fuel, the researchers say it will then be a simple engineering exercise to make an energy-harvesting device with no moving parts and emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants.

It would be the cheapest, cleanest and most abundant energy source ever developed: the main by-products would be oxygen and water. Rooftop panels placed on 1.6 million houses, for example, could supply Australia's entire energy needs.

Meanwhile, the biomass-to-oil project is continuing apace.

In May, Renewable Environmental Solutions (RES) said its first commercial plant is selling oil -- equivalent to crude oil No. 4 -- produced from agricultural waste products. The plant currently produces 100 to 200 barrels of oil per day using byproducts from an adjacent turkey processing facility.
[...]
At peak capacity, estimated to occur by the end of this year, the first plant will produce 500 barrels of oil per day, as well as natural gas, liquid and solid fertilizer and solid carbon.

Are these the solutions to our energy problems? Who knows? I remember some scientists a couple decades ago swearing up and down that they had created cold fusion in a jar. Whatever happened to those guys, anyway?

Regardless, it's exactly something like this that I believe will render our current environmental and economic energy-related fears an anachronism of another age. With the advancing pace of technology, I fully expect we'll see some serious progress within a couple decades, and implementation within a decade or two after that.

With these advances in technology, the Kyoto Treaty will eventually look a bit like a fellow trying to sell horse carriages right about the time the Model T was being produced.

_____________________________

* Ah, Bob Herbert. Today, he asks "where is the shame", and asks President Bush--who is not allowed to coordinate with 527 groups--to "call off his dogs".

Naturally, he doesn't seem to have any problem with criticizing National Guard service...but then, the National Guard seems to be a "free fire zone" these days. At least he doesn't repeat the myth that Bush leapt ahead "of 500 other applicants who were on a waiting list" as he has done before.

Most obviously, though, Herbert is just missing the point when he calls this "trash[ing] their service for political gain". Let's get this very clear. Right or wrong, the questions surrounding Kerry right now are about his STORY, not his service.

______________________________

* Priceless. Just priceless.

_____________________________

* Recently added "Winning Argument" to our blogroll. It's an interesting liberal blog, with each post addressing a particular issue with a "why you're right/why they're wrong" pattern. They seem to encourage reasonable, factual debate. I like that in a blog.

Needless to say, though, I disagree with their conclusions, especially in posts like this, where they pass on the misleading story that "Bush proposed rolling back increases for imminent-danger pay". In fact, the proposal was simply an attempt to restructure the pay, with no attempt to reduce the overall level of pay received by the soldiers.

Seems like a good place for reasonable debate, though.

UPDATE: And since I mentioned reasonable debate, it's worth taking on this point at Winning Argument.

Bush should stop using the Olympics in political advertisements.
[...]
The ads are inaccurate. The advertisement implies that Iraq was able send athletes to the Summer Olympics because the United States invaded Iraq. The ads say "today, because the world acted with courage and moral clarity...[Iraqi] athletes are competing in the Olympic Games." But Iraq was represented in the 2000 Sydney Games.

While it is true that Iraq has been in previous Olympic games, it is absolutely inaccurate to say that the ads say "today, because the world acted with courage and moral clarity...[Iraqi] athletes are competing in the Olympic Games."

That line came from a radio address Bush gave ~2 weeks ago, and their ellipses left out the phrase "those nations are free"...which seems an important component of the statement.

The actual phrase use in the ad: "this Olympics there will be two more free nations". That's a far cry from claiming the nations are only competing because of the wars.

On the legal issue, I'm unpersuaded by their argument, but only because I haven't heard the opposing argument. However, I do agree with WA that the ad should be pulled on general principle.

______________________________

* The NYTimes writes...

President Bush said on Thursday that he did not believe Senator John Kerry lied about his war record, but he declined to condemn the television commercial paid for by a veterans group alleging that Mr. Kerry came by his war medals dishonestly.

Some Democrats are complaining that Bush "still won't condemn Swift Boat Vets". You know what? When the Republican Party, and a bevy of major GOP figures goes to a "Unfit for Command" book-signing, and call the book "fair", "very powerful, much more powerful than I thought it would be" - when Ed Gillespie makes an allegation comparable to the allegation that Bush went to war in Afghanistan for an oil pipeline - then, and only then, can the Democrats bitch about Bush not telling a couple hundred Vietnam Veterans that they're all liars.

But they won't wait.

The Laffer Curve

Roger Snowden objects to my characterization of the Laffer Curve below, arguing:

The Laffer Curve is valid, I believe, but must be placed in the context of time. And lots of questions remain, such is the actual growth effect of tax policy, lag times, the effects of changing levels of government spending, etc. The inevitable "all other things being equal" that does not actually happen in reality.

Well, here's the thing about the Laffer Curve. It posits, correctly, that higher rates of taxation hinder economic growth by killing incentives. But, and this is often missed, it also posits that, below the equilibrium point, the tax rate no longer impedes economic growth.

Snowdon appears to be interpreting that as meaning that lower taxes keep incentivizing economic growth, so the lower the tax rate, the greater the rate of economic growth. But that isn't the correct interpretation.

Once taxes have reached the equilibrium point, lower taxes don't encourage even greater economic growth. Once you've reached the equilibrium point, you're already at the optimum level of growth. Cutting taxes beyond that point begins to reduce revenues, because the lower tax rates no longer produce increased economic growth.

Essentially, the Laffer Curve posits that, below the EP, people are already maximizing their economic production, because they are, after all, willing to pay some taxes. It keeps the cops on the beat, and the courts open, and the roads relatively pothole free. It is only after you move to the right of the EP that economic activity begins to become constrained. Moving to the left of the EP no longer increases economic growth, it merely reduces revenue, and that's true over time, as well.

Once people are already maximizing their production, lower tax rates can't make them super-maximize.

UPDATE:

Reader Frank Castle asks:

I thought equilibium point is where govt revenue is maximized, not economic growth. Are you saying that both are maximized at equilibrium, or am I in error?

I am saying something close to that, but not exactly that. At the EP and below, economic decisions are not made with much reference to taxation. So, as long as tax rates are acceptably low, i.e., at the equilibrium point or the left of it, people make economic decisions on other factors.

Once taxes reach the equilibrium point, or move to the right of it, taxes begin to distort economic decisions because they provide disincentives. In other words, the main power of tax rates is to hinder economic activity. Once tax rates are low enough, the disincentive they provide is removed.

Now, it might very well be that very low taxes might help economic growth to some small extent, simply because more money is freed up for, say savings or investment. But in all probability, the increases in economic activity aren't enough to overcome the lost revenues.

So, you are technically correct to say the EP is the point at which revenues are maximized. But the reason revenues are maximized is because the revenue losses from tax rates at the left of the EP are greater than the marginal increases in economic activity that might be provided by the extra money in people's pockets.

It is important to remember that there are other reasons why economic growth can't increase too much. There are, for instance, physical limits on the amount of work one can do in a single day. Lowering tax rates doesn't change those physical limits.

Raising tax rates above the EP might make a person decline to work more than eight hours a day, because the benefits of doing so are hindered by high tax rates. But, if a person is willing to work 10 hours a day at the EP, he won't necessarily be willing, or even able, to work 12 or 14 hours a day if tax rates are cut even more. His output is already maximized.

That's why the true power of tax rates is to hinder economic growth, not to boost it.

UPDATE II:

Reader Oscar asks:

I wonder why it has not been generally recognised that below some cut-off point, however defined, the effect stop. Do economists not study mathematics?

But, it has been defined. The Laffer Curve is just the graphic representation of that definition. That's precisely why the curve shows tax revenues dropping on the left side of the EP.

The trouble is not that economists don't study math. The problem is that the Equilibrium Point can't be quantified. It changes over time, and in response to political or economic conditions. Indeed, the definition of the EP is remarkably imprecise: The rate at which the population consents to be taxed.

During a war, for example, the rate may be quite high, as people are more willing to sacrifice in a time of national emergency. But when peacetime comes, people no longer are as willing to do so.

I have long posited that we saw an example of this during the first term of President Clinton, when he raised the top rate to 36%.

During the previous several years, there was increasing concern about the deficit. Supply-Siders were aghast, though, at the thought of raising taxes. At the time, I spoke every week to former Reagan Administration Deputy Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts on my radio show in LA. Craig was adamant that raising tax rates would slow te economy, then just coming out of recession, and would reduce tax revenues.

In fact, quite the opposite occured. The economy boomed and tax revenues rose quite sharply. More sharply, in fact, than during Reagan's term. I think the Supply-Siders were quite wrong because public fear about the deficit made people more willing to pay higher taxes in order to reduce the deficit. The EP had moved to the right, and Clinton's tax increases produced more revenues because they moved tax rates closer to the EP.

UPDATE III:

Co-blogger Jon ponders:

So, while an effective tax cut from 40% to 36% might create an additional, say, 1% GDP growth, that GDP growth would not offset the 10% reduction in effective tax percentage. Meaning, the revenue would still go down, though not quite by the full 10%.

But, as Snowden indicated, the cumulative effect over that extra 1% GDP growth would add up. Over the course of 10 years, that's quite a large increase in potential GDP, and that eventual increase in GDP would offset the lost revenue...though, it would not occur in any single year.

Well, that's true, but not very relevant. as long as there is any economic growth at all, eventually revenues will increase beyond the level they were before taxes were cut.

But that wasn't the argument the Supply-Siders were making in the late 1970s. Their argument was that cutting rates would result in an immediate increase in revenues, because tax rates were, at the time, so far to the right of the EP, with the top rate at 70%.

Sure, if you don't mind deficits for a decade, you can cut taxes 10% at any time, even if you're already on the left of the EP. If you don't mind deficits for a century, you can cut taxes by 99%, and 100 years from now, the money will be rolling in!

Once you start making the "Well, in the long run, revenues will increase" argument, you're moving the goalposts. As long as the economy keeps growing, then at some point, revenues will increase beyond where they are when you change the tax code, no matter what you do. In the long run, then, it doesn't matter if you raise taxes, lower them, or do nothing, as long as there is any economic growth at all.

Of coure, as Keynes wrote, in the long run, we're all dead.

UPDATE IV:

Reader el Seco is full of questions:

You are saying that we are presently very close to the maximum amount of revenue we can expect given how much we are willing to be taxed. Is that about right? Thus, our situation with revenue has little to do with the unemployment rate or Bush's tax cuts. Is that about right?

Yes, that's what I'm saying. The main reasons for our current revenue problems have been the massive increases in government soending over the past 4 years, the revenue-lowering effects of recession, and the implosion of the equities market that began in the spring of 2000.

There are, after all, a lot of things that affect revenues besides tax rates.

Last question: Did Bush promise that the tax cuts would increase revenue or did he promise that they would stimulate the economy?

Now that I think about it, I never remeber Bush explicitly making the revenue enhancement argument. He argued that his tax cuts would encourage economic growth, which is an indirect revenue enhancement argument, but he also argued that the 2003 tax cuts were an important stimulus tool.

I think both arguments were wrong. If we were already at the EP, then further cuts wouldn't encourage more growth to the extent that the revenues losses would be neutralized. And the tax cuts themselves weren't particularly stimulative. I know of no reputable economist who agreed with the stimulus argument at all.

No matter how good the moral arguments were and are for the 2003 tax cuts (i.e., the government has no right to be a majority shareholder in my income), the economic arguments for them were a bit weak, from both the stimulus and revenue point of view.

That's also not to say that all the economic arguments were bad. Ending taxation on dividends is quite a good idea, although I'm not sure I want to get into that whole argument now. But the basis on which Bush pushed them, the arguments were deficient. There were several good arguments for tax cuts, they just weren't the arguments that Bush made.

More about Jobs

In reference to the jobs picture we talked about below, reader MK-Ultra writes:

If employment is in fact higher than the payroll numbers indicate, then the question becomes why are we operating in record deficit territory?

When employment numbers were high in the 90's, we had a surplus. Bush hasn't cut the size of government, but he hasn't created any new major programs either. And yes, government spending outpaces inflation. But not on a level that would account for the current deficit.

Only two explanations present themselves: Revenue is down because there simply aren't that many people working. Or Bush's tax cuts are not having their promised effect, i.e., increased revenue.

Funny how that works.

First, despite his rather cavalier dismissal of federal spending , saying simply that it "outpaces inflation" that substantially understates the case, in much the same way as saying that the South Pole is "somewhat cool". In point of fact, Federal spending has substantially increased:

Since 2001, even with record low inflation, U.S. federal spending has increased by a massive 28.8% (19.7% in real dollars)—with non-defense discretionary growth of 35.7% (25.3% in real dollars)—the highest rate of federal government growth since the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson. This increase has resulted in the largest budget deficits in U.S. history, over $520 billion in fiscal year 2004 alone. Furthermore, the projected spending for 2005 is a conservative estimate, since it doesn’t include at least $50 billion for the 2005 cost of the Iraq occupation.

Technically, though he is correct. Spending increases have certainly outpaced inflation.

Revenues, of course, are down as well:

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($Trillions)
2000	2.025
2001	1.991
2002	1.853
2003	1.782
2004(e)	1.798
2005(e)	2.036

And you can take that 2005 estimate with as many grains of salt as you like.

So clearly we have an unsustainable spending situation going on, with massive spending increases, and declining revenues. So, why are revenues down? Alan Greenspan, earlier this year, provided the answer:

In part, the recent deficits have resulted from the economic downturn in 2001 and the period of slow growth that followed, as well as the sharp declines in equity prices. The deficits also reflect a significant step-up in spending on defense and higher outlays for homeland security and many other nondefense discretionary programs. Tax reductions--some of which were intended specifically to provide stimulus to the economy--also contributed to the deterioration of the fiscal balance.

The chief problem with the federal budget has not been revenue losses due to tax cuts, but rather revenue losses due to the recession that began in early 2001, and the implosion of the stock market that began in the spring of 2000, which reduced equity values across the board by 40%.

To go back to MK-Ultra:

Only two explanations present themselves: Revenue is down because there simply aren't that many people working. Or Bush's tax cuts are not having their promised effect, i.e., increased revenue.

Even if one assumes that the payroll data from the establishment survey are absolutely correct, that still puts our current rate of employment of 5.5% at the same rate it was in July of 1996, which is hardly remembered as a time of great tribulation. Indeed, the unemployment rate never reached as low as 5.5% from 1974-1988, or from 1990-1994. So, it's a bit dumb to pretend that a 5.5% rate of unemployment is a crisis. Moreover, if in fact, the establishment survey is missing employment because it does not account for changes in the composition of the labor force, the actual unemployment rate is below—and judging by the household survey, significantly below—5.5%.

As far as the Bush Tax cuts not having their desired effect, i.e. increasing revenue, there's really no way we can know that one way or another at this point. Both rounds of tax cuts were back-end loaded, although the 2003 round moved $100 billion in cuts to the front end as a stimulus method. Considering the time it takes for tax cuts to filter into the revenue basket, especially if they come during a recession, it seems to me that it is hard to bifurcate out those effects.

What we do know, however, is that despite the complete implosion of the equity markets, followed by the 9/11 attacks, the recession of 2001-2003 was fairly shallow, all things considered. Those of us who remember the back-to-back recessions of 1982-83, with unemployment above 10%, have some historical experience to go by, and the 2001-2003 recession was extremely tame compared to that. It was, in fact much shallower than the 1991-1992 recession, where unemployment peaked at 7.6% a full 1.3% higher than it reached at any time in the last four years.

If, as John Maynard Keynes first taught us nearly 70 years ago, that stimulus through deficit spending and tax cuts is the appropriate remedy for ameliorating recessions, then I suggest that the tax cuts and increasing deficits, while not increasing revenue, certainly helped to make the recession shallower, and, by so doing, prevented even worse hemorrhaging of the fiscal situation.

If, in fact the tax cuts do eventually increase revenue, that will happen at the top of the economic cycle, when economic growth is higher, and the period of expansion is longer than it otherwise would have been. Tax cuts at the bottom of the cycle don't increase revenues; they merely help cut the losses.

As regular readers know, though, I am not a Supply-Sider, so I dispute that, outside of certain bounds, Supply-Side economics has the powers its advocates attribute to it. So, I am agnostic that the Bush tax cuts will increase revenues. But, even I were to accept, arguendo, that Supply-Side policies work in the exact way Supply-Siders describe, I would argue that we are either very close to, or perhaps slightly to the left of the equilibrium point on the Laffer Curve.

As such, any reductions in taxes, no matter how spiffy they are at keeping the economy growing, will not result in significant increases in tax revenues, and, may actually result in revenue decreases.

But that, of course, is a subject for another post.

The Job Picture gets muddier

There's been discussion and debate for quite some time as to whether the BLS payroll survey or the Household Survey more accurately reflect job growth. To this point, most have felt it was the payroll survey. But an op/ed in USA Today says, "hold on".

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently snuck out a telling confession beneath everyone's radar: Its flagship payroll survey is likely undercounting hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The article, by Timothy Kane and Andrew Grossman of the Heritage Foundation is worth the read. They note that when looking at the economy, it seems everything adds up - except the payroll survey:

In his July 20 testimony to Congress, Greenspan cited measures from the payroll and household surveys. Then the Federal Reserve, led by Greenspan, voted unanimously to raise interest rates. It said the economy is "poised to resume a stronger pace of expansion" and noted that labor-market conditions continue to improve. It's no secret which survey would lead to that conclusion.

The Fed's actions helped everyone, including Wall Street, remember the good news. Claims for unemployment benefits, for example, are 10% below their 30-year average, while the unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level since 2001. Best of all, the household survey showed a gain of more than half a million jobs in July alone.

Everything adds up — except the payroll survey.

So, per these guys, it appears that there have indeed been more jobs created than have been counted in the payroll survey. If we're going to judge the health and stability of our economy with certain statistics, it would help if they're accurate.

They also mention the following:

The definition of a job has changed, but the payroll survey hasn't. It is a huge mistake to focus on an illusory problem of economic weakness. Instead, policymakers should update business laws to reflect the new reality — the rapid pace of change in the workplace.

Time to take a good hard look at the BLS payroll survey.

One last thing mentioned in this article that caught my eye:

American workers need health care that's portable between jobs. They need pensions and 401(k) rules that are as flexible to move between employers as they are. What they don't need is more hot air about flawed statistics.

Want health care reform? There it is. Its as easy as making insurance portable. It should be the job and choice of the employee as to which insurance pool he chooses to join and he or she should also have the ability to change whenever their needs change. Make health insurance portable and you eliminate "preexisting conditions" and periods of no coverage. Institute competition for clients among insurers and see pricing adjust.

UPDATE (Dale):

Andrew Grossman ws kind enough to provide a direct link to Mr. Kane's paper, which the article references.

Now, I generally don't refer to publications put out by politically oriented think tanks. Without casting aspersions on anyone, the simple fact is that the job of a conservative or liberal think tank is to provide ideologically sound interpretations of data for use by their political allies. I prefer to refer, therefore, solely to peer-reviewed work from the academic world, or from government sources like the generally quite good working papers released by the economic staffs of the various Federal Reserve Banks and the like. Once you quote Heritage on policy X, someone invariably points to an opposing paper put out by some place like the Progressive Policy Institute, which doesn't get you very far.

No doubt, someone will point out how convenient that Heritage has published a paper that says the jobs picture is better than the government says it is, just as we are moving into the fall campaign season.

With that caveat noted, however, I think Mr. Kane's work deserves a close look at the very least. For the last year or so, we've seen very large discrepancies between the number of jobs the payroll survey is indicating, and the number of people who are telling us, via the household survey, that they are gainfully employed. So far, no one has come up with any convincing rationale that allows us to try and rectify this obvious discrepancy. Even the BLS is stumped.

The BLS reviewed the disparity in a major study for its October 2003 Advisory Committee, concluding, "To date, BLS has not been able to pinpoint a source or sources of these differing trends in employment growth." More recently, the February 2004 Economic Report of the President noted that "the explanation for why these two surveys' results have diverged so markedly over the last few years, and what this might indicate about the economic recovery, remains a puzzle."

My own, tenative conclusion, and the one I've been touting for several months, has been that the rise in self-employment is being missed by the payroll survey. Mr. Kane appears to agree.

Self-employment is a different matter, and the latest statement by the BLS commissioner confirms the appearance of a new class of contractors. The evolution of the workforce--specifically, the demographic emergence of consultants and contractors who do not consider themselves self-employed--is a likely wedge between the surveys. Self-employment has grown by over 600,000 in two years, and misidentification by the LLC and consulting workforce implies a much higher number.

The conventional wisdom, of course, is that the establishment survey is more precise than the household survey, for a number of statistical and practical reasons. But, that only remains true as long as the composition of the workforce doesn't change radically. A shift from direct employment, to employment as a contractor or an LLC may not seem like self-employment to the worker, but that is, in fact what it is. So, if there has been a workforce shift towards contract work, the payroll survey, no matter how accurate it is methodologically, will still be wrong, simply because it can't record what it doesn't measure.

I'm loathe, however, to place a lot of reliance on the household survey in terms of taking up the slack, because there's a lot the household survey doesn't measure, too. Bob may say he is employed full-time, but, just because he counts, say, selling cocaine as a full-time job doesn't mean that we should count it as such.

So, I doubt the employment picture is quite as good as the household survey indicates, but, I doubt it's as low as the establishment survey says either.

The Evolution of Horatio Hornblogger

Captain Ed is getting very mainstream. After recent media mentions in the Washington Times among others, and a bit in the Wall Street Journal today, Captain Ed has sold a blog post to the New York Sun.

I remember when he was just a beginning blogger, still learning the ropes. I remember, because I was right there with him. Good work, Ed. Keep it up.

This mainstream infiltration--for lack of a better term--is something that should be occurring more and more often among the better writers and researchers in the blogosphere. The media, and especially the more advocacy-journalism publications, have an amazing resource: hundreds of writers who do their research and publish for free. They could be picking up valuable opinion pieces and research like this, this and this for very little, indeed.

They should, too. Those who don't will be left behind soon, wondering why they didn't see the freelance gold being published every day.

AWOL for the Goose...

Was Kerry AWOL? I mean, it appears he did skip out on his active duty Reserve obligations in the early 70's.

Look, I don't think he was AWOL, and I don't think he was wrong to ask for an early out on his obligation. But I do wonder if the same people who accused Bush of getting out early--"deserting for a year even from this surrogate service", and that he fulfilled his obligation "only because he had essentially been relieved of any further obligation"--will go after Senator Kerry with 1/10th of the righteous anger with which they went after Bush for, essentially, the same thing.

Wait. No. I don't wonder about that at all.

NOTE: You can find a plausible exculpatory explanation of his status here. It concludes....

I conclude that Kerry, while in violation of his contract (as I was) was not legally required to drill and hence not AWOL...

Hm....so, while Kerry was contractually obligated, he had "other priorities" and got an exception that meant he "never showed up for [Reserve Duty] for a period of approximately one year".

Now, where have I heard that before?

Exploiting Max Cleland

Being from GA, I used to have a lot of respect for Max Cleland. He was the epitome of someone who'd shaken off the horrible effects of losing three limbs in Vietnam (for which, ironically, he did not get a Purple Heart ... no hostile fire) and and literally pulled himself back together, entered politics and was much beloved by the home folks.

Until he became a Senator. Then, it seems, Max got Potomac Fever. He became a staunch party man. He began to show an increasingly conservative state an increasingly liberal side. The final straw came when he voted against Homeland Security in favor of labor union rules.

Of course Max has come to prefer to believe he was sacked because his "patriotism was questioned". Nothing could be further from the truth. No one in GA has ever had a question about Cleland's patriotism. They've had many questions about his voting record however. And they turned him out because of it. What's happened since is sad:

In one of the stranger photo-ops in an increasingly bizarre presidential sea son, former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland yesterday rode his wheelchair to the front gate of President Bush's Texas ranch to protest attacks on Democratic candidate John Kerry's Vietnam War record.

Cleland lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam — hence the wheelchair — but we won't patronize him by pretending he is anything other than what he became after losing his Senate re-election race two years ago: bitterly resentful, highly partisan and an effective deflector shield for Kerry whenever the latter's military bona fides are called into question.

Cleland has willingly allowed himself to be exploited by the Kerry campaign. As the NY Post notes, "an effective deflector shield" for Kerry when the "combat Kerry" meme is questioned. A triple amputee sitting in his wheelchair trashing other vets who are speaking out as is their right. Apparently Max doesn't see the irony.

The other irony is instead of letting this die a natural death, the Kerry camp keeps it alive with stunts like Cleland pulled yesterday. Why?

And, for better or for worse, Kerry has made Vietnam service the centerpiece of his campaign — though it is not at all clear why Kerry & Co. are working so hard to keep this issue alive.

As evidenced by Cleland's visit to the Crawford ranch.

"The question is where is George Bush's honor. The question is where is his shame," Cleland said after Secret Service agents at the Texas ranch refused to accept a letter calling on Bush to disavow the anti-Kerry veterans.

Tough talk.

Yes, tough ... and dumb. And because it was dumb it provided a perfect opportunity for the Bush people to respond:

"You can't have it both ways. You can't build your convention and much of your campaign around your service in Vietnam, and then try to say that only those veterans who agree with you have a right to speak up," said a Bush spokesman.

Game. Set. Match.

The Kerry campaigns shameless exploitation of Cleland's bitterness is telling. Even more telling is Cleland's willingness to be exploited. Does anyone really believe yesterday's photo op would have had much of an impact if say, Tom Harkin had delivered the letter? Of course not.

Why Cleland is so bitter toward George Bush is beyond me. Bush has done more for Cleland since his defeat in the Senate than the Democrats have. He appointed him to a cushy $130,000 a year job on the board of the Export-Import bank:

Former U.S. Senator Max Cleland (D-GA) is a member of the board of directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank). President George Bush nominated Cleland on Nov. 21, 2003. He was subsequently confirmed by the Senate and sworn in on Dec. 15, 2003 for a term expiring January 20, 2007.

But that was then and partisan Max is dealing in the now. Of course, it seems the exploitation of anyone to get Kerry into the White House, no matter how sad, shameless or distasteful it is, appears to be par for the DNC/Kerry Campaign course.

As Opinion Journal points out, in 1971, Kerry said in his testimony before the Seanate:

"I called the media. . . . I said, 'If I take some crippled veterans down to the White House and we chain ourselves to the gates, will we get coverage?' 'Oh, yes, we will cover that.' "

Cruel, calculated and exploitive then and now.

Seared, I tell you! Seared!

Via Taranto, here's a snippet of a Martin Luther King Day speech that John Kerry gave last year:

I remember well April, 1968 - I was serving in Vietnam--a place of violence -- when the news reports brought home to me and my crewmates the violence back home...

Well, Vietnam was surely a place of violence in April of 1968, but it's hard to see how Kerry saw much of it, since he didn't get into the country until November of that year.

Maybe he could see all that violence by looking towards Vietnam and squinting real hard from the quarterdeck of the USS Gridley.

McCain-Feingold II

There is an excellent editorial in the Wall Street Journal (not available online, unfortunately), abd George W. Bush and his craven caving in on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law.

President Bush didn't tell the full story on Monday when he denounced TV ads by such "527s" as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. But not because he didn't agree to the Kerry campaign's demand that he repudiate the specific Swift Boat ads.

Our gripe is that Mr. Bush assailed the very campaign-finance system that he helped create."I don't think we ought to have 527s," Mr. Bush said, referring to the independent political fund-raising groups that have become such an important part of this election season. "And I hope my opponent joins me in saying, condemning those activities of the 527s. It's the -- I think they're bad for the system."

Not so fast, Mr. President. One reason 527s are so prominent now is because Mr. Bush made the mistake of signing the McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform" that barred big donations to political parties. So 527s have become the new alternative vehicle that Americans passionate about politics are using to exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech. The difference is that now the campaigns can't control how that money is spent.

If Mr. Bush wanted the two major parties to better control their campaign messages, he could have vetoed McCain-Feingold. Some of us urged him to do so, but his political advisers whispered not to worry, the Supreme Court will take care of it.

Well, Sandra Day O'Connor failed too, but in any event since when are Presidents supposed to pass the buck to judges?

In our view, this was among the worst moments of Mr. Bush's term. Having helped to midwife the current campaign-finance system, it ill behooves him to blame others for the way this world works.

A very good "gotcha" from the WSJ's I told you so file. After being hammered by MoveOn.org for the last two years, I'll bet Bush would love to get rid of the 527 organizations.

At this point, the best scenario I could possibly hope for is that politics becomes so down and dirty, and so divisive, that Congress goes back and repeals this travesty of a law post-haste. Let, as Mao once said, a thousand flowers bloom. Let the air be filled with the sounds of TV ads of increasing moonbattery. Let every politician running for office have his name, his reputation, and his family savaged by independent ad groups.

Then we'll see how long McCain-Feingold holds up.

Money is, has been, and will always be the mother's milk of politics. Even the founders knew it. Unlike us, however, they were too smart to try to make Utopian changes the way the real world works.

A note to QandO readers

First, it goes without saying that I love you all, dear readers, with a pure, untainted love. I want to (metaphorically) gather you all in my arms, cover you with my burning kisses, until the hot flames of your desire are fanned to heights of ecstacy.

What I do not want, however, is for you to return my (metaphorical) passion by adding me to your mass email list, in order to review your comments and positions on the issues of the day. I certainly don't mind you writing to me, and, to the extent possible, I'll try to write back, even if it's just a brief note of thanks for your comments. I appreciate emails from readers.

But, as soon as I see your link-filled email screed, directing my attention to the top 10 news stories of the day, and wondering why I'm not covering them, my first temptation upon seeing the TO: address listed as "Recipients Undisclosed" is to hit the delete button like a lab chimpanzee hitting the push bar that delivers crack cocaine pellets.

Because, what it tells me is that you aren't interested in writing me, you've just added me to your list of bloggers, et al. to whom you mass broadcast your stream of consciousness rantings on a regular basis. What's even worse, is that some of you seem to think I'm waiting to receive hourly updates on your thoughts.

If it's not even 11:00 am, and I've already received 5 mass emails from you, then you need to know that you've just become the newest entry to my "Add this sender to your Junk Senders list" roll call. That means that your emails are deleted as soon as they arrive in my inbox, and I never even see them.

As much as I might agree with you that we need to maintain the purity of our precious bodily fluids, that there really is a face on Mars and that Nasa's covering it up, or that the Freemasons are indeed threatening to end our way of life, I don't need to be reminded of it every 1.37 hours by emails from you. I suspect that the other 200 bloggers on your mailing list don't either.

If you have that much to say, then log on to TypePad or Blogger and start your own blog. But, once you've become part of the worldwide spam conspiracy, you go from being the (metaphorical) hot beach volleyball girl to being the creepy, fixated, Fatal Attraction chick.

And that's not showing me the love.

Are we back in Cambodia for Christmas or not?

Well it seems Christmas in Cambodia is back on the table ... either that or Tad Devine didn’t get the DNC memo.

First let me set this up for you as outlined in the Washington Post. You all know the story of Kerry’s claim on the floor of the Senate that his supposed “Christmas in Cambodia” was seared in his memory. He only spent one Christmas there, so that was the Christmas of ‘68. When that was roundly questioned by the Swift Boat Vets as well as his crew, things started to come apart:

However seared he was, Kerry's spokesmen now say his memory was faulty. When the Swift boat veterans who oppose Kerry presented statements from his commanders and members of his unit denying that his boat entered Cambodia, none of Kerry's shipmates came forward, as they had on other issues, to corroborate his account. Two weeks ago Kerry's spokesmen began to backtrack. First, one campaign aide explained that Kerry had patrolled the Mekong Delta somewhere "between" Cambodia and Vietnam. But there is no between; there is a border. Then another spokesman told reporters that Kerry had been "near Cambodia."

So around August 8th, they’re beginning to “backtrack” with him somewhere in the area of Cambodia. Apparently backing off didn’t sit well with the Kerry campaign. So next they trot out Brinkley on or about the 16th of August.

Next, the campaign leaked a new version through the medium of historian Douglas Brinkley, author of "Tour of Duty," a laudatory book on Kerry's military service. Last week Brinkley told the London Telegraph that while Kerry had been 50 miles from the border on Christmas, he "went into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February 1969 on clandestine missions." Oddly, though, while Brinkley devotes nearly 100 pages of his book to Kerry's activities that January and February, pinpointing the locations of various battles and often placing Kerry near Cambodia, he nowhere mentions Kerry's crossing into Cambodia, an inconceivable omission if it were true.

Obviously, based on the Post’s analysis, it didn’t really do Kerry or Brinkley’s credibility any good. Brinkley's been in hiding ever since.

Back to the drawing board.

The new position, per the post of August 24th was this:

Now a new official statement from the campaign undercuts Brinkley. It offers a minimal (thus harder to impeach) claim: that Kerry "on one occasion crossed into Cambodia," on an unspecified date. But at least two of the shipmates who are supporting Kerry's campaign (and one who is not) deny their boat ever crossed the border, and their testimony on this score is corroborated by Kerry's own journal, kept while on duty. One passage reproduced in Brinkley's book says: "The banks of the [Rach Giang Thanh River] whistled by as we churned out mile after mile at full speed. On my left were occasional open fields that allowed us a clear view into Cambodia. At some points, the border was only fifty yards away and it then would meander out to several hundred or even as much as a thousand yards away, always making one wonder what lay on the other side." His curiosity was never satisfied, because this entry was from Kerry's final mission.

Another conflicting and unexplainable position. The campaign says he went there on an unspecified date. However, based on Kerry’s own recollections as featured in Brinkley’s book, “his curiosity was never satisfied” which, per the context of the sentence, means he was never in Cambodia ... ever.

Except, well, not quite. You see, two days before, on Meet the Press, Tad Devine, a Kerry advisor, put him back in Cambodia on Christmas.

MR. RUSSERT: The New York Daily News intervened on this yesterday with an editorial and said this: "As for Kerry, he might ask why the Swifties' attacks have been effective. The answer is his propensity to exaggerate. Kerry exaggerated about 'atrocities' in testimony before Congress. And it's looking more likely that he exaggerated, if not worse, when he claimed through the years that he was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968. He has said the memory was 'seared' into him, but it's now clear Kerry was elsewhere, at least at that time. He has yet to explain. Until he does, the Swifties will have a powerful weapon in their arsenal." And this is...

MR. DEVINE: Sure.

MR. RUSSERT: ...so we--be clear and give you a chance to respond. Senator Kerry in '86 on the floor of the Senate: "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there, the troops were not in Cambodia. ...I have that memory which is seared--seared--in me."

In '79 in the Boston Herald: "I remember Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."

First of all, Nixon was not president...

MR. DEVINE: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: ...in December of '68.

MR. DEVINE: Sure.

MR. RUSSERT: He didn't take office until January '69. Does Senator Kerry stand by that statement that on Christmas Eve of '68 he was physically in Cambodia?

MR. DEVINE: Right. Well, his memory, Tim, is being there, around there. And
I'll tell you what happened on December 25th...

MR. RUSSERT: No--being there or around there?

MR. DEVINE: No, being right at the Cambodian border, over the Cambodian border. That's what he remembers. That's his clear memory. Now, Tim...

MR. RUSSERT: Five miles across the border.

MR. DEVINE: Now, Tim, obviously, as those records demonstrate, particularly in respect to President Nixon, you know, there's some difference between some of the records. Let me tell you what happened on December 24, 1968. John Kerry started that morning 50 miles away from the Cambodian border and they headed towards Cambodia, deep behind enemy lines. First, they were ambushed once. Second, they were fired upon, again in a separate incident. And that night they encountered friendly fire. Three times in one day he was fired upon deep behind enemy lines. And that certainly was seared into his memory.

WTF?

Is this the gang who couldn’t shoot straight or what?

Clearly Devine is trying to give some credibility to the Cambodian Christmas story as its dismissal is otherwise very detrimental to Kerry’s credibility. Yet two days later, after Devine is on MTP, the campaign says it was on an “unspecified date”ruling out the 25th of December, 1968.

Hello? Mr. Devine? Did you miss that meeting?

Oh and never mind about the Kerry recollection, via Brinkley, of never having his curiosity about Cambodia satisfied right up through his last mission in Vietnam. Instead, let’s pretend that was never written. Move along, nothing to see here... move along (or perhaps I should say MoveOn).

This is amazing stuff. Usually spin is subtle, nuanced and hidden as well as possible. In this case it is so poorly done, so contradictory and so blatantly obvious as to almost be laughable if this subject wasn’t such a serious reflection on Kerry’s character.

Its also having other effects. As found on Instapundit, Editor and Publisher notes that candidate Kerry has been reported to be much less accessible to the press:

Some of the reporters covering Kerry said that the candidate had become less accessible on the campaign plane in recent weeks, with a few speculating that it might be because he did not want to face questions about the swift boat issue. But among them, different views arose over the swift boat story, with some saying it had gone on too long and others believing it was news that had to be covered.

"What I've heard from colleagues is that people feel it probably has had too long a life," said Frank James, a Chicago Tribune reporter. "We wish someone would put a stake in this vampire."

James also said some wondered why Kerry did not take on the issue himself earlier on. "He should have knocked it down early, but the campaign clearly thought it would go away."

Its not going to go away, especially if it is ignored, especially if continuing conflicting statements are made about events such as “Christmas in Cambodia”. And as the Kerry campaign knows, this is resonating with a lot of veterans, despite the main stream medias valliant attempts to first ignore it and then to spin it in Kerry's favor.

Interestingly the entity doing the worst damage to the Democrat nominee’s campaign is not the Swift Boat Vets, the media, bloggers or talk show hosts.

It is the Kerry Campaign.

(Huge hat tip to Kendall Harmon for the links and idea.)

And, speaking of Iran

Iran's supreme leader is offering us a prediction

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told the United States Wednesday it was facing "decades of hatred" from the Islamic world due to fighting in the Iraqi holy Shiite city of Najaf.

Which is a shame, because we've been getting along so well for the last twenty-five years or so.

The Iranian Problem

Youssef M. Ibrahim writes in USA Today that we'd better think twice before confronting Iran.

A confrontation with Iran could considerably widen the Iraqi quagmire, threaten the survival of any government in Iraq and unleash a wave of terrorism, car- and suicide-bombing attacks against all American interests in Islamic countries as far as Pakistan and as close as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Iran would make sure of that. No cakewalks here.

Just as ominous, it is not possible to conduct two wars in the single region of the world where two-thirds of the global oil and natural gas reserves reside without pushing oil prices even higher than their current record levels of nearly $50 a barrel. Such a conflict would wreak havoc on the U.S. and world economies...

Iran's tentacles reach far and wide. They were amply demonstrated in the 1980s and 1990s in Lebanon, where Hezbollah, the Iran-sponsored militia, forced both the United States and Israel to unilaterally withdraw their troops.

Just as a reminder, a few weeks ago, the Iranians stirred a little trouble in Bahrain when threats were made against Americans. The words came from some of the 475,000 Shiites who constitute a majority of the population of Bahrain, where the United States maintains its largest naval base in the Persian Gulf. The Bush administration panicked and ordered all U.S. dependents to leave immediately.

If a confrontation with Iran erupted, we would be taking on more than a single country. Iran and Syria have maintained a 25-year strategic alliance. Both have been targeted by neoconservatives for "regime change."

Together, they share the longest open borders with Iraq. They have built and retained armed militias inside Iraq for years, and those forces have been considerably reinforced in the past 14 months.

More arms, men and logistical support would flow through these borders to attack overtaxed, demoralized U.S. troops already locked in a war of attrition. Both countries would also press into action various dormant terrorist cells, which would attack, among other things, oil facilities in the region.

Despite the overly tendentious tone of Mr. Ibrahims opinion (Iraq as a "quagmire", The Bush admninistration panicking, etc.), he makes some valid points:

• Confrontation with Iran will make the situation in Iraq much more difficult.


• The effect on Gas prices would be...bad.


• Iran's terror tentacle reach far and wide, which would make any place in the region unsafe for US personnel or interests.


• Iran would, in all probability, use any confrontation as an excuse to attack Israel, possibly setting of a large-scale regional war.

All very valid points. The trouble is, though, that Mr Ibrahim doesn't also expound on what consequences a nuclear-armed Iran would have on the region. In such a case, an attack on Israel would touch of his feared war, anyway, this time with nukes, and Israel has a lot more than Tehran would have, by the way.

Mr. Ibrahim notes that Iran denies it is making nuclear weapons. So, he concludes, we should negotiate more, rather than risk a horrific war by offending them.

Maybe so, but it's hard to take with anything less than a metric ton of salt that Iran isn't seeking to produce a nuclear arsenal.

First, if they were seeking such an arsenal, they certainly wouldn't admit it. Unfortunately, Mr. Ibrahim doesn't explain to us how we can be sure that their denials are being issued because they really aren't trying to produce such weapons, or because they really are. But their rejection of any demands that they stop their uranium enrichment program isn't a positive sign. They are saying, essentially, that it's vitally important that they be able to enrich uranium, which would give them the capability to make nuclear weapons, but that they will never do so.

Because, it would be, you know, wrong.

But, totalitarian states don't have a sterling track record of actually doing what they say they will do. Indeed, quite the opposite is usually the case.

But, because the WMD argument went so horribly awry in Iraq, any similar claims about Iran will now meet an almost insurmountable barrier of skepticism from both the press and the electorate.

The sad thing is that a nucelar-armed Irtan would be even scarier than a nuclear-armed Iraq, by almost any measure. Saddam Hussein may not have been playing piano with both hands, if you know what I mean, but at least he didn't think he had God whispering instructions in his ear. The mullahs, on the other hand, do.

No matter how you cut it, it's a tricky situation, despite Mr. Ibrahim's childishly naive assumption that we can negotiate our way out of this mess. Negotiating with a potential enemy who desires nothing you can offer him other than capitualtion, is usually not productive, a fact that is often completely lost on the chattering classes.

Mr. Ibrahim paints a very dark picture about the dangers of a confrontation with Iraq. Of course, in 1941, a very dark picture could've been painted about a possible confrontation with Germany and Japan. We did it anyway, of course.

But, not because we wanted to.

What Mr. Ibrahim seems to forget is that it takes two willing partners to make peace. It only takes one party to go to war. Mr. Ibrahim assumes that the decision between war and peace rests solely in Washington. It would be nice if that were true. In the real world, however, the US and Iran can be at war withing minutes of Iran's head Mullah, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, making a phone call.

The Iranians, after all, have the ability to make choices, too.

Kerry's Economic Spin

One of the key talking points for the Democrats this year is represented by this statement on the Economy page of the Kerry/Edwards site....

In America, a rising tide is supposed to lift all boats. But today, Americans are working harder, earning less, and paying more for health care, college, and taxes.

I'm willing to assume that health care and college costs are rising. Indeed-- as they are largely legislated beyond the normal pressures of the free market--they are always rising, so this is hardly a keen insight by the Kerry/Edwards team.

However, I'm less willing to give ground so quickly in the other areas. To take them in order:

• Working Harder....

Briefing.com presents this handy little graph of the Average Workweek....

So, we're working harder than...when, exactly?

• Earning Less...

This statement is generally substantiated by pointing to weekly and hourly earnings, which have been only roughly approximating--even lagging--inflation. The Kerry campaign issued a press release on those lines, claiming...

Real wages fell 1.0 percent in the last year and are now lower than they were when the economic recovery began.

Well, fair enough...real wages have fallen. We won't even get into the argument regarding whether that is a temporary structural anomaly.

No, instead, let's remember something: "wages" do not represent our total compensation. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has a category to represent total compensation. They--in a rare instance of comprehensible economic language--call it "Total Compensation".

Here's the BLS data for 12 month % change in private industry total compensation, going back 10 years.

Note, please, current compensation is growing faster than in much of the 90s. Apparently, current compensation is shifting from wages to other benefits. Whether that is a net positive or not, the fact is that businesses did not suddenly begin stiffing employees on compensation in--oh let's just say--January, 2001. In fact, after a drop beginning in 2000, continuing through the recession, and worsened by 9/11, it has been rising steadily.

• Higher Taxes...

Are we paying higher taxes? Not Federal taxes, per the Congressional Budget Office. can't speak for your state, but Virginia just shot down a tax cut, citing a"budget deficit"...shortly before announcing a $300+ billion revenue surplus.

The Congressional Budget office recently released a report called "Effective Federal Tax Rates Under Current Law, 2001 to 2014" (pdf) What did the CBO find?

TOTAL EFFECTIVE FEDERAL TAX RATE
Quintile --- 2001 -- 2004

• 1st Q: - 5.4 ---- 5.2
• 2nd Q: - 11.6 --- 11.1
• 3rd Q: - 15.2 --- 14.6
• 4th Q: - 19.3 --- 18.5
• 5th Q: - 26.8 --- 23.8

You see any higher effective federal tax rates in there? No? Neither do I. And the effective individual tax rates tell the exact same story.

But, remember, John Kerry promises to turn this all around.

After 4 years of Democrats complaining--correctly, in many instances--about how the Bush administration is painting a deceptive picture of the economy, it's worth pointing out that the new boss will be the same as the old boss. The Democrats are not upset about the President putting political spin on economic information...they're just upset that it's not their turn.

Misunderestimating W. Again.

Zev Chafets writes, once again, the Democrats have underestimated George W. Bush's political skills, and Kerry is paying the price.

Or, perhaps they've overestimated John Kerry's.

In any event, the Swiftvets ads have started to hurt Kerry badly, and his response has been foolish. Forst he tried to silence them, then he tried to get the president to silence them.

And that was exactly what Bush has been waiting for.

On Monday, down in Crawford, Tex., Dubya hitched up his jeans, sauntered out to a press conference and allowed as to how he'd be glad to help his worthy opponent. But, just to be fair, he said, let's shut down the negative campaigning by all 527 groups. Goodbye, Swifties. So long, MoveOn. Just say the word, Sen. Kerry, and we'll take all the nasty dollars out of politics.

But Kerry hasn't said that word. He probably can't. His entire campaign finance structure is predicated on 527 money. Of the top 10 soft donors, nine are Kerry supporters. Combined, they have already raised more than $100 million for the Democrats. The Swifties, by contrast, have raised much less than 1% of that. For Bush, soft money is just a dab of Texas perfume; for Kerry, it's oxygen.

So, the President comes off as the champion of upright McCain-Feingold reform, while Kerry is stuck with George Soros & Co. If the senator cuts off his billionaire backers, he suffocates. If he sticks with Soros, et al., he's stuck with the Swifties, too. That's a hook Kerry can wriggle on until Nov. 2. Then Bush will throw him back.

If Kerry reallt wants to stop the bleeding, then he'll have to hold a press conference specifically to invite questions about the Swiftvets ads. But, that's the one thing he simply can't do, because the dangers are too high.

He'll have to cover the whole Cambodia/Magic Hat story. Why does the last entry in his diary from Vietnam indicate he'd never been to Cambodia? How could he mistake Christmas in Cambodia, which was seared--seared!--into his memory? Why did he write about his Cambodia experiences in his writted review of Apocalypse now in 1979? When, exactly, was he in Cambodia? What was he doing?

And that's just the beginning. He'll have to cover the Purple Hearts,and his Bronze Star for the Rassman rescue. Then he'll have to move on to talk about VVAW. He'll have to explain why he is so proud of his service in Vietnam, a war he made a career of opposing, and how, if he did take part in the atrocities he has admitted to, fighting there can be both terribly wrong and immoral, and, at the same time, such a source of pride.

Then, of course, as some point, we'd have to get into the whole 527 deal, and he would have to explain why his Soros-based funding of 527s is substantially different from Bush's, whose links to the Swiftvets are way more tenuous than his campaign's associations with MoveOn, org.

No, the questions in that press conference won't get any easier as the conference goes on.

Which is why I don'tthink he'll do it. I think he'll try to ride this thing out until the Republican convention, which should take some presure off of him, and hope that a week concentrating on other things will move the media past the story, and on to the fall campaign.

Good luck with that.

America Wins the Gold

Women's Beach Volleyball: It's all about athletic excellence.

Why I oppose McCain-Feingold

Robert Samuelson, like many others, now realizes why McCain-Feingold wasn't such a hot idea after all.

The presidential campaign has confirmed that, under the guise of "campaign finance reform," Congress and the Supreme Court have repealed large parts of the First Amendment. They have simply discarded what were once considered constitutional rights of free speech and political association. It is not that these rights have vanished. But they are no longer constitutional guarantees. They're governed by limits and qualifications imposed by Congress, the courts, state legislatures, regulatory agencies -- and lawyers' interpretations of all of the above.

We have entered an era of constitutional censorship. Hardly anyone wants to admit this -- the legalized demolition of the First Amendment would seem shocking -- and so hardly anyone does. The evidence, though, abounds. The latest is the controversy over the anti-Kerry ads by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and parallel anti-Bush ads by Democratic "527" groups such as MoveOn.org. Let's assume (for argument's sake) that everything in these ads is untrue. Still, the United States' political tradition is that voters judge the truthfulness and relevance of campaign arguments. We haven't wanted our political speech filtered.

Now there's another possibility. The government may screen what voters see and hear. The Kerry campaign has asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to ban the Swift Boat ads; the Bush campaign similarly wants the FEC to suppress the pro-Democrat 527 groups. We've arrived at this juncture because it's logically impossible both to honor the First Amendment and to regulate campaign finance effectively. We can do one or the other -- but not both. Unfortunately, Congress and the Supreme Court won't admit the choice. The result is the worst of both worlds. We gut the First Amendment and don't effectively regulate campaign finance.

People like...well...me, were saying this when the law was still just a gleam in Senator McCain's eye. When the bill went to the President's desk, we warned that the things we've seen this election cycle, namely the funnelling of marge amounts of money to 527s would be the logical result, and it would mean more viciously partisan attacks.

Moreover, we warned that it gave the government too much leverage on the right of free speech, and sure enough, now everybody--including the president--is keen to try and shut up the 527 organizations. And the most outrageous thing is that the Supreme Court assented in this gutting of the right of free speech, with hardly a quibble.

Like Inspector Reynaud, everyone is shocked--shocked!--that all this has happened. The washington people all knew that this would be the result of McCain-Feingold, but they signed it anyway. The protections that its clampdowns on free speech provide incumbents (no direct mentions of support for a candidate, no ads 30 days prior to an election, limits on direct, "hard money" contributions, etc.) were too good a treat to pass up. The major campaign finance reform it accomplished was to reform the system so that chellengers would find it almost impossible to finance a successful challenge to an incumbent office holder.

And I, and people like me, were saying all this at the time. The only real campaign finance reform, the one with the fewest unintended consequences, and the one most compatible with our constitutional liberties, is to let people give as much money as they want, to any candidate they want, with the proviso that all such donations are public knowledge, cannot be given anonymously, and must be immediately reported to the public.

All you guys on the Left were piously droning on about the corrupting effects of money, and the other drivel that Senators McCain and Feingold were spouting. The necessity of its passage became an article of faith among Democrats. You ignored warnings that it gutted the first amendment. You ignored warnings that 527s would just take up the slack in soft-money spending. No, you had your starchy white ideal of utopia, and you weren't gonna be happy 'til you got it, and thank God that there are a few Republicans, like Senator McCain, who, unlike the rest of his party, knows how to do the right thing.

Well, you got it. And what has it given you this election year? The Swiftvets.

So, how does campaign finance reform taste now? Does it taste good? Is it yummy? I hope so, because now you're just gonna have to suck on it for a while.

Enjoy.

By the way, I hear the Swiftvets are working on a new ad.

The ultimate Irony

Jim Wooten, at the Atlanta Journal Constitution suggests that the Kerry/Vietnam story is actually three stories:

John Kerry's Vietnam experience is not one story.

It is at least two. A third, not fully explored, is whether the "combat Kerry" or the "anti-war Kerry" survived to become a U.S. Senate policy-maker.

The two stories are Kerry in Vietnam and Kerry as the anti-war activist who accused his fellow veterans of committing atrocities on a daily basis with the full knowledge of their officers -- a view he holds to this day. Swift-boat veterans and the military records are the authorities on his months in Vietnam. Kerry has not agreed to sign Standard Form 180 for their release, though he has released some. His post-Vietnam activities, however, affect everybody who ever served.

An examination of his Senate record indicates to me, at least, that the anti-war Kerry is the one that survived, even though he now is attempting to use his "combat Kerry" as the best stepping-stone for his aquisition of power. That's primarily because we are at war.

Ironically, if we lived in a pre 9/11 world, the argument could be made that his anti-war past would be an asset in a Presidential run. And it would be hard to argue that his Senate record wouldn't rank right up there with the best in that regard. He'd be peddling the "Peace dividend", talking about our bloated intelligence apparatus and suggesting cuts and generally allying himself with the anti-military left. He could do so unabashedly, and have the credentials to pull it off.

But 9/11 did happen and that sort of record, at least at this point, is pure poison. Thus, "combat Kerry" is created for the times we live in. But it isn't the real Kerry, the 20 years worth of Kerry which resides in the Senate records.

The ultimate irony, however, is found in Wooten's next statement:

The anti-war movement in this country today is precisely where it was in its earliest stages of Vietnam. This nation is about a year away from serious antiwar activity, especially if Bush wins re-election and the pent-up bitterness that now drives the national Democratic Party has no productive outlet.

But what if Kerry wins? The irony there would be undeniable. He's almost completely accepted Bush's position.

It [the anti-war movement] will develop much more quickly now than then. In the absence of a draft, the nation is cultivating generations of opinion leaders with no ties to the military, no real comprehension of their capabilities and no real sense of when and how to use them. Kerry's Vietnam experience is commendable and useful, but the real question unanswered by the campaigns so far is what lessons he learned about how to use power to combat terrorism. That's the third story not yet pursued.

How would the poster-boy for the Vietnam anti-war movement handle the budding Iraq anti-war movement? More importantly .... how would he handle the War on Terror.

I have my ideas. Love to hear yours.

Media Matters for John Kerry's Election (PT 2)

Media Matters--previously caught red-handed calling a win for Gore by citing research that actually concluded Bush would have won Florida--weighs in on the matter of Kerry's Purple Heart, and once again they leave out relevant information....

Echoing a widely discredited allegation by the anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Roll Call executive editor Morton M. Kondracke ... falsely claimed ... that Senator John Kerry ... did not properly earn his third Purple Heart, awarded for an injury sustained during a combat incident on March 13, 1969.

The truth is that Kondracke is ignorant of the relevant requirements for awarding a Purple Heart. Annenberg Public Policy Center's Political Fact Check pointed out that the buttock wound alone -- which Kerry sustained while blowing up a cache of rice that was a source of food for the Viet Cong -- would have qualified Kerry for a Purple Heart, even without the arm injury Kerry subsequently sustained in full-fledged combat later that day. A "friendly fire" injury can qualify for a Purple Heart "as long as the 'friendly' projectile or agent was released with the full intent of inflicting damage or destroying enemy troops or equipment," according to the website of the Military Order of the Purple Heart.

To their credit, they did cite a credible authority on Purple Heart regulations. To their discredit, they didn't cite all of it. The Military Order of the Purple Heart also includes this requirement for the Purple Heart...

(5) Examples of injuries or wounds which clearly do not qualify for award of the Purple Heart are as follows:
[...]
(h) Self-inflicted wounds, except when in the heat of battle, and not involving gross negligence.

Now, one might credibly make the argument that Kerry was not negligent in standing within the blast radius of his own grenade.....or, one might make the argument that it was negligent. There's room for debate.

But Media Matters called Kondrake's allegation "false" and Kondrake "ignorant of the relevant requirements for awarding a Purple Heart".

That's just wrong. It is not, however, surprising that Media Matters would make such a tendentious argument.

UPDATE: DMan points out that the wound did not occur "in the heat of battle"--as the regs seem to require, per my reading--which may call an end to the whole debate on whether the "rice grenade" could even be considered for a Purple Heart.

If "heat of battle" is a prerequisite--and exploding rice doesn't count as "enemy fire"--Kerry and Rassmann's attack on the pile of rice would not seem to qualify. ("Sir, the enemy attacked with far more than my daily allowance of starch!")

Finally figured it out

I've been bothered by a passage that was contained in a NYT article that all three of us had a go at this last Friday. You remember the one, it was the topic of the day. The NYT entitled it: "Friendly Fire: The Birth of an Anti-Kerry Ad".

But in that article there was this paragraph:

A damage report to Mr. Thurlow's boat shows that it received three bullet holes, suggesting enemy fire, and later intelligence reports indicate that one Vietcong was killed in action and five others wounded, reaffirming the presence of an enemy. Mr. Thurlow said the boat was hit the day before. He also received a Bronze Star for the day, a fact left out of "Unfit for Command."

Before that time, I had never heard it suggested that there was a report in which a claim of 1 VC being KIA and 5 being WIA. It wasn't until today, when Jon sent me a link, that I found the source of the NYT claims.

They're contained in The Coastal Division Eleven Command History "Chronology of Highlights". I'm not sure how I managed to miss it up to now, but I have.

Anyway to the point at hand which will demonstrate two things:

A) The NYT deliberately left out some of the report.
B) The NYT writers who used the report had no idea about the meaning of what they were reading.

First the report (you'll find it on page 8 of the pdf):

March 13, 1969: PCF's 3, 51, 43, 93 and 94 with MSF RF/PF troops conducted SEA LORDS operations in Bay Hop river and Dong Cong canal. A mine detonated under PCF 3 and units were taken under small arms fire several times during the operation. Friendly casualties were 8 USN WIA and 1 MSF KIA. Units destroyed 30 sampans and 5 structures and captured 16 booby trap grenades. Later intelligence reports indicated 1 VC KIA and 5 VC WIA.

Once I read this, I understood why the NYT had screwed up this part of the story so badly.

Let me translate it for you. Those 5 boats hauled some Mike Strike Force (MSF) Regional Forces/Popular Forces (RF/PF) on a Sea Lords operation. The Ruff Puffs apparently assaulted a village, killed 1 VC and wounded 5 VC, but that final total wasn't clear at the time. During their assault they (and possibly the PCFs) were under enemy small arms fire (stands to reason, wouldn't you say and might also explain the 3 holes in Thurlow's boat). They, the Mike Force and PCFs, destroyed 30 sampans, 5 structures and captured 16 grenades while losing 1 MSF KIA (a booby trap). The Mike Strike Force stayed there at the village site (and thus became the source for the "later intelligence").

On the way back, sans the Ruff Puffs (who are still at the village), PCF 3 hit a mine.

END OF STORY.

There was no reported small arms fire around the mine. There was no reported VC KIA or WIA at that time. Those all took place in the previous Mike Force operation, not the mine detonation.

Which explains why the PCFs were able to spend 90 minutes on site, saving the 3 boat and its crew before towing it in and not suffering one single solitary casualty from small arms or any other type of fire.

Of course if the writers at the NYT had bothered to show their source for the claim of the "later intelligence reports indicate that one Vietcong was killed in action and five others wounded, reaffirming the presence of an enemy" to someone who knew what a Mike Strike Force was, or what they apparently did on that operation, they wouldn't look as foolish, as they'd know the VC KIA and WIA were killed and wounded on a previous part of the operation and not at the mine detonation.

Great research guys.

UPDATE (JON): Recon suggests this analysis, which appears very interesting.

Kiss it, Kerry!

[Begin brief vulgar interlude]

Drudge is reporting that Kerry called one of the Swifties and had the following conversation:

KERRY: "Why are all these swift boat guys opposed to me?"

BRANT: "You should know what you said when you came back, the impact it had on the young sailors and how it was disrespectful of our guys that were killed over there."

[Brant had two men killed in battle.]

KERRY: "When we dedicated swift boat one in '92, I said to all the swift guys that I wasn't talking about the swifties, I was talking about all the rest of the veterans."

If so, and as one of the "rest of the veterans" I'd like to say to Mr. Kerry ... you can kiss my ass, you lying sack of shit. You still don't get it, do you, you freakin' clown!?

[End brief vulgar interlude.]

Back to your regularly scheduled programs

Meanwhile in North Korea

Kim Jung-Il, or at least North Korea, who does nothing without Kim's OK, is indeed for John Kerry.

"The North Koreans made it very clear, politely, that they want Mr. Kerry to win the election," said C. Kenneth Quinones, a former U.S. diplomat who was in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital this month for a Korean studies conference, said in a recent interview in Tokyo. "Nobody wants to move. North Koreans are going to play wait and see."

Consequently:

"The negotiating process is stalled," said Alexander Losy-ukov, who was Russia's negotiator at the talks until this spring and now is its ambassador to Japan, said in an interview last week. "It is clear they have just refused to participate in talks before the American presidential election. There are expectations in Pyongyang of a change in American policy. Probably they are wrong."

And North Korea's had some nice things to say about Bush as well:

North Korea called President Bush an "imbecile" and "a tyrant that puts Hitler into the shade" yesterday, unleashing a stream of insults that seemed to rule out any serious progress on nuclear disarmament talks before the American election this fall.

Apparently NoKo's characterization had to do with Bush aptly describing "Dear Leader" while on the campaign trail:

Yesterday's tirade appeared to have been set off by a campaign speech in Wisconsin last week by Bush, who referred to Kim Jong Il, North Korea's hereditary leader, as a "tyrant."

So at least one foreign leader and country have come out of the closet to back John Kerry. I wonder if he'll tout that endorsement on his website?

Weather Underground back in action

Seems like no matter what, the Vietnam era is bound and determined to remain a part of this election process. The NYPD, per the NY Post, is getting ready to do battle with ... are you ready for this? The Weather Underground.

A number of extremists with ties to the 1970s radical Weather Underground have recently been released from prison and are in New York preparing to wreak havoc during the Republican National Convention, The Post has learned.

A top-level source with extensive knowledge of police plans wouldn't disclose the names of the aging rabble-rousers but said a handful of them are already here and will play a behind-the-scenes role in attempting to disrupt the GOP gala.

"These people are trained in kidnapping techniques, bombmaking and building improvised munitions," the source said. "They've very bad people."

"They're not likely to take direct action," the source continued, "but they'll be orchestrating operations."

Originally called "The Weathermen," the anarchist organization came into existence in June 1969 as a radical splinter group of the Students for a Democratic Society.

Yes the old leftist bomb tossers of the 60s and 70s are apparently gathering in NY for the Republican Convention.

Now everyone should understand that they're going to be characterized as "anarchists" with the hope that they'll essentially be written off as apolitical. But they were anything but apolitical in the '60s and 70s. They were, and probably still remain, a violent and extreme leftist group.

Why do I say that? Well it has to do with how they described themselves:

The Weathermen, also known as the Weather Underground Organization, was a US-based, self-described "revolutionary organization of communist men and women" formed by members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), splintering that organization in the process.

A "revolutionary organization of communist men and women" isn't an anarchist group. They're an extreme leftist group. And these folks have a history. Originally a part of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), they were committed to a "New Left" as outlined in their Port Huron Agenda, a portion of which I've excerpted below. What you'll see is the SDS was primarily focused on effecting change in universities and colleges that would move them to the left:

1. Any new left in America must be, in large measure, a left with real intellectual skills, committed to deliberativeness, honesty, reflection as working tools. The university permits the political life to be an adjunct to the academic one, and action to be informed by reason.

2. A new left must be distributed in significant social roles throughout the country. The universities are distributed in such a manner.

3. A new left must consist of younger people who matured in the postwar world, and partially be directed to the recruitment of younger people. The university is an obvious beginning point.

4. A new left must include liberals and socialists, the former for their relevance, the latter for their sense of thoroughgoing reforms in the system. The university is a more sensible place than a political party for these two traditions to begin to discuss their differences and look for political synthesis.

5. A new left must start controversy across the land, if national policies and national apathy are to be reversed. The ideal university is a community of controversy, within itself and in its effects on communities beyond.

6. A new left must transform modern complexity into issues that can be understood and felt close up by every human being. It must give form to the feelings of helplessness and indifference, so that people may see the political, social, and economic sources of their private troubles, and organize to change society. In a time of supposed prosperity, moral complacency, and political manipulation, a new left cannot rely on only aching stomachs to be the engine force of social reform. The case for change, for alternatives that will involve uncomfortable personal efforts, must be argued as never before. The university is a relevant place for all of these activities.

Its a rather interesting agenda for taking over the universities of the land. Some argue the agenda has all but been achieved there, at least in such places as Berkley.

Founder of the SDS? Tom Hayden. Hayden will be in NY for the protests saying "Dissent must come alive in New York City. Dissent against an unelected government that misled us into an unnecessary war that has cost nearly 1,000 American lives and $200 billion that could have been invested in health care."

One wonders if his fellow 60's radical anti-war activist and former wife, Jane Fonda, will be there? One of Jane Fonda's fellow radical anit-war protesting buddies won't be there for sure though.

John Kerry.

Anyway, back to the Weathermen or later Weather Underground. They split from the SDS wanting to take more direct and violent action against the government than the SDS was willing to do.

In October 1969, they organized their first event, called the "Days of Rage" in Chicago. The opening salvo in the Days of Rage came on the night of October 6, when they blew up a statue dedicated to police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket Riot. Although the October 8 rally failed to draw as many participants as they had anticipated, the estimated three hundred who did attend shocked police by leading a riot through Chicago's business district, smashing windows and cars. Six people were shot and seventy arrested. Two smaller violent conflicts with police followed the next two nights.

In 1970, following the shooting of Black Panther Fred Hampton, the group issued a Declaration of War against the United States government, changing its name to the "weather underground organization", adopting fake identities, and pursuing covert activities only. These initially included preparations for a bombing of US military noncommissioned officers' dance at Fort Dix. But when three Underground members died in an accidental explosion while preparing the bomb in a Greenwich Village, New York City safe house, other cells reevaluated their plans and decided to pursue only non-lethal projects.

The group released a number of manifestos and declarations, while conducting a series of bombings, attacking the U.S. Capitol, The Pentagon, police and prison buildings, and the rebuilt Haymarket statue again, among other targets. They successfully broke LSD advocate Timothy Leary out of prison and transported him to Algeria. They remained largely successful at avoiding the police.

Bombings, jail breaks, conspiracy to commit murder, you name it ... all in the name of revolutionary communism.

So if any of the talking heads begin waxing nostalgic or pretending like these are just, you know, benign, aging old hippy war protesters and lovers of peace, well its not true. They were (and possibly still are) murderous communist rabble and left wing extremists, and the world needs to be reminded of that when their minions are battling the NYPD next week.

Kerry's evolving story

Despite the fact that John Kerry has called them "lies", the Swift Boat Veterans seem to be forcing the Kerry camp into quite a lot of retreats, rowbacks and other concessions. Captain Ed has been positively invaluable in documenting the ongoing story. A few things he's noted recently....

* The [Washington] Post Runs A Stake Through The Heart Of Kerry's Cambodian Fable

Joshua Muravchik writes an article that may prove mortal to John Kerry's presidential aspirations in today's Washington Post. Muravchik's piece, entitled "Kerry's Cambodia Whopper," not only dissects the meaning of the collapse of this so-called epiphany, but it also moves the story forward, thanks to Kerry's hagiographer, Douglas Brinkley:
[...]

Now a new official statement from the campaign undercuts Brinkley. It offers a minimal (thus harder to impeach) claim: that Kerry "on one occasion crossed into Cambodia," on an unspecified date. But at least two of the shipmates who are supporting Kerry's campaign (and one who is not) deny their boat ever crossed the border, and their testimony on this score is corroborated by Kerry's own journal, kept while on duty. One passage reproduced in Brinkley's book says: "The banks of the [Rach Giang Thanh River] whistled by as we churned out mile after mile at full speed. On my left were occasional open fields that allowed us a clear view into Cambodia. At some points, the border was only fifty yards away and it then would meander out to several hundred or even as much as a thousand yards away, always making one wonder what lay on the other side." His curiosity was never satisfied, because this entry was from Kerry's final mission.

Add to that the other recent evidence--from John Kerry's own hand--that contradicts John Kerry's story in a variety of places. It is a bit surprising, isn't it, that the best critic of John Kerry is...John Kerry.

It's a bit less surprising that the media isn't paying more attention to these inescapable discrepancies in his story.

UPDATE: Somehow, Matthew Yglesias manages to address this story, accuse Muravchik of "ignoring minor facts", call it "largely debunked".....and never--not once--address the points made by Muravchik: that...
a) Kerry's own journal appears to indicate that he was never there
b) Kerry's shipmates do not corroborate his story.

What's more, Matthew writes--as fact--that "Kerry was in Cambodia a few weeks later". What is the basis of this? Brinkley's after-the-fact suggestion that Kerry was in Cambodia a few times? A suggestion, by the way, contradicted by the Kerry camp, which is now saying Kerry was in Cambodia once.

With no apparent irony, Matt writes, "Muravchik's supposed to be a "scholar" but here he is acting like a campaign operative. There's nothing okay about it." Well, that cuts both ways, Matt.

* Has Kerry Backed Off Of First Purple Heart Claim?

Here's the link to the Fox News report from Major Garrett. It mostly covers the Chris Wallace interview with John Hurley and CNN's interview of Bob Dole. Towards the end, Garrett talks about the first Purple Heart:

GARRETT: And questions keep coming. For example, Kerry received a Purple Heart for wounds suffered on December 2nd, 1968. But an entry in Kerry's own journal written nine days later, he writes that, quote, he and his crew hadn't been shot at yet, unquote. Kerry's campaign has said it is possible his first Purple Heart was awarded for an unintentionally self-inflicted wound.

Score another one for the Swiftvets, and another retreat for Kerry, this time on a key contention for both a medal (which some, including me, felt were too difficult to argue effectively) and for his truncated tour of duty.

I'm anxious for the Kerry camp to confirm or deny what Peter Garrett claims here....that they are standing behind the original "enemy fire" story, or retreating to the Swift Vets contention that it was self-inflicted.

And if so, will Chris Matthews be half as apologetic as he was uninformed? Just asking.

UPDATE: Media Matters is still running with this...

Following Michelle Malkin's August 19 appearance on MSNBC's Hardball -- during which host Chris Matthews refused to accept Malkin's false accusation that a shrapnel injury Senator John Kerry (D-MA) suffered in Vietnam was a "self-inflicted wound"...

Guess they haven't gotten the memo, yet.

* Fact-Checking The Gray Lady

The New York Times apparently has a similar problem with its media critic Alessandra Stanley. In covering the Swiftvet controversy (hey, at least she's covering it at the NYT!), she makes this whopper of a misstatement while attempting to tweak Fred Barnes:

Fred Barnes, the executive editor of The Weekly Standard and a regular Fox commentator, ardently defended the Swift boat critics of Mr. Kerry, saying on Fox that a majority of the senator's Vietnam brethren believed that Mr. Kerry "fabricated or exaggerated his record." Mr. Barnes added that "the entire chain of command above Kerry have said the same thing." He did not mention any notable exceptions in that chain of command, including Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, a former secretary of the Navy who said Mr. Kerry fully merited the Silver Star. Mr. Barnes's hyperbole went unchecked.

Maybe Barnes' "hyperbole" went unchecked because Barnes knows of what he speaks, unlike the hapless Ms. Stanley. Alert CQ reader and now honorary fact-checker Scott Hudson did what Stanley failed to do: check to see if Barnes was wrong before scolding him in print. Scott went directly to the source and found this in the listing for Secretaries of the Navy:

John W. Warner.............4 May 1972 - 8 Apr 1974

Well....ouch.

Very consistently good stuff at Captain Ed's. Read him daily.

UPDATE: With Kerry backpedaling on various stories, this seems like an opportune time for Kerry's supporters to call for an end to Vietnam-era allegations, and Ezra steps up to the plate, saying "Fucking enough".

That is, he's had "enough" of the focus on the SwiftVets Vietnam allegations that have "shone light on everything corrosive, everything vile, everything that turns off Americans not just from voting but from civic participation".

The Bush/AWOL Vietnam allegations? Well, just yesterday, Ezra wanted to focus the debate on "his time AWOL".

Cause that's just different.

Why Iran's involved in Najaf

Claude Salhani of The Washington Times has an interesting piece examining the apparent Iranian hand in the fighting in Najaf:

To establish the "why" of the fighting in Najaf, one must first try first to ascertain the "who." Who stands to profit from the turmoil? Who could be pulling Sheik al-Sadr's strings and, of course, to what end?

The answer, no matter how you turn this thing around, dissect and analyze it, seems to point in one direction: Iran.

Sheik al-Sadr has traveled twice to Iran in recent months. He maintains close links with Ayatollah Kazem al-Haeri, a cleric in the city of Qom and a close confident of Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Analysts believe he receives support and most probably financing from Iran.

So it would seem safe to assume there's certainly a relationhip between al-Sadar and top level clerical and political (not that they're really separated in Iran) leaders. As the Times notes, that answers the "who". But what about the "why". Why is Iran doing this and what is the message they're trying to send?

The reason is the Iran's ayatollahs are sending Washington a message. The message is "make sure that you, Washington, will convince Israel to stay away from our nuclear sites and desires." Otherwise, the fighting currently under way in Najaf can easily expand to other localities and grow in intensity. Lives are, unfortunately, expendable in this part of the world.

In other words, keep Israel on a leash and ensure there's no "Osirik". In the meantime, Iran has been issuing not so veiled threats to Israel, according to The China Daily:

Last month, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards said Iranians would "crush" Israel if it attacked the Persian state. Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani, upped the ante this week, telling Al-Jazeera television that his government might launch pre-emptive strikes to protect its nuclear facilities if they were threatened.

"We will not sit to wait for what others will do to us," he said, adding that some Iranian generals believe the doctrine of pre-emption is "not limited to Americans."

The warning was seen as aimed at Israel, alluding to the Israeli strike on Saddam Hussein's reactor two decades ago.

Israel has responded with its own warning to Iran:

A senior Israeli official responded that Israel's government was ready for all eventualities.

"We're not seeking war with Iran. But if a real threat materializes, Israel will know how to defend itself," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, reflecting long-standing Israeli policy of not talking publicly about matters involving nuclear arms.

In other words, Najaf is a warning to the US that its control of Israel is key to the amount of discord and insurgency it will continue to face in Iraq. While the US has quite a bit of influence over Israel, it cannot stop Israel from doing what it perceives to be a threat against its existance. Iran has the means to hit Israel and Israel knows it. As Iran nears the completion of its nuclear weapons, Israel is going to be less and less inclined to listen to any US entreaties to hold off hitting Iran preemptively.

Of course hitting Iran wouldn't be as easy as hitting Osirik in Iraq was. Iran has learned from the Iraqi strike and has spread its facilities over a wide area and studded them with air defenses. But with Iran's threat to consider hitting Israel preemptively (as noted above), tensions are high.

Najaf, if Salhani is correct, is Iran playing international hard-ball. As mentioned here, whoever has the reigns after the election of November is going to be faced with a terrible dilemma and few real options for dealing with Iran.

Make. It. Stop.

The WSJ notes that back in February, John Kerry felt it was perfectly fine to question the service of his opponent:

The issue here, as I have heard it raised, is was he present and active on duty in Alabama at the times he was supposed to be. . . . Just because you get an honorable discharge does not in fact answer that question. --John Kerry, questioning President Bush's military-service record, February 8, 2004.

Well fair enough, it is a presidential election which means everything is going to be scrutinized.

But wait. After going after Bush and using his Vietnam service as the centerpiece of his campaign we have Kerry and company playing the vicitim of, you guessed it, the ubiquitous "Republican Smear Machine", or for the older folks, a revival of the "dirty tricks" department first made famous under Nixon.

The Swift Boat Vets couldn't possibly be principled people who find Kerry's behavior during and after the war to be suspect and scurrilous. They, instead, must be a bunch of liars who've been put up to this by Republican political operatives. Or so the story goes on the left.

As the WSJ points out:

A good rule in politics is that anyone who picks a fight ought to be prepared to finish it. But having first questioned Mr. Bush's war service, and then made Vietnam the core of his own campaign for President, Mr. Kerry now cries No mas! because other Vietnam vets are assailing his behavior before and after that war. And, by the way, Mr. Bush is supposedly honor bound to repudiate them.

"Bring. It. On." has become "Make. It. Stop".

What the left won't face is this isn't about Bush, the Republicans or the Democrats:

In any case, anyone who spends five minutes reading the Swift Boat Veterans' book ("Unfit for Command") will quickly realize that their attack has nothing to do with Mr. Bush. This is all about Mr. Kerry and what the veterans believe was his blood libel against their service when he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the spring of 1971 that all American soldiers had committed war crimes as a matter of official policy. "Crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command" were among his incendiary words.

Its about words and actions taken 35 years ago in which the real "smears" and "dirty tricks" took place. It is about that account finally coming due. Now you have two choices here. Understand what really is driving this, shrug off the "dirty tricks" canard and take an honest look at what these veterans are saying and decide for yourself, or adopt the victimhood argument of the Kerry campaign and whine about how its your opponent's responsibility to stop this examination.

But again, remember ... it was Kerry who questioned Bush's service and it was Kerry who made his 4 months in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. Its hard to find any "victimhood" available to Kerry in light of those two facts.

Factchecking Factcheck.org...again

Factcheck.org has released an analysis of the latest SwiftVets ad, and it's....er, incomplete.

"Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" announced a second anti-Kerry ad Aug. 20, using Kerry's own words against him. It features the 27-year-old Kerry in 1971 telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee stories about American troops cutting off heads and ears, razing villages "in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan" and committing "crimes . . . on a day-to-day basis."

The Kerry campaign called it a smear and said his words were "edited" out of context. The ad does indeed fail to mention that Kerry was quoting stories he had heard from others at an anti-war event in Detroit, and not claiming first-hand knowledge. But Kerry passed them on as true stories.

It's true, as far as it goes--in his 71 testimony, Kerry was simply passing on hearsay--but this analysis doesn't go far enough. From the commercial transcript, here are the claims Kerry made....

John Kerry: “They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads. . .”
John Kerry: “. . . randomly shot at civilians. . .”
John Kerry: “. . . cut off limbs, blown up bodies. . .”
John Kerry: “. . . razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan. . .”
John Kerry: “. . . crimes committed on a day to day basis. . . ”
John Kerry: “. . . ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam.”

In Factcheck.org's defense....yes, in his 71 testimony, he was simply passing along stories he'd heard. At least, that is what he claimed during that testimony.

But FactCheck.org claims he "was not claiming to have witnessed those atrocities personally", and that's not entirely true.

In his Congressional testimony Kerry did not claim to have witnessed them personally, but he did claim to have witnessed and participated in similar "atrocities". From an April 18 appearance on Meet the Press....

"I committed the same kinds of atrocities as thousands of others in that I shot in free fire zones, used harassment and interdiction fire, joined in search and destroy missions, and burned villages. All of these acts were established policies from the top down, and the men who ordered this are war criminals."

Note that John Kerry seems to believe that the men who ordered this are "war criminals", but he--apparently--claims the "I was just following orders" defense. Note, too, that John Kerry was an officer and it was his duty to know and abide by the Geneva Convention....even to refuse unlawful orders.

Oddly, Mr Kerry admitted participating in what he terms "war crimes" prior to appearing before the Senate.....but he did not admit to his own participation in testimony before the Senate, claiming he was just passing along the testimony of others.

He also admitted to participating in those actions on the Dick Cavett show, though he quickly pointed out that they weren't trying to, you know, turn themselves in or anything....

"I did take part in free-fire zones, I did take part in harassment and interdiction fire, I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground. And all of these acts, I find out later on, are contrary to the Hague and Geneva conventions and to the laws of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the application of the Nuremberg Principles, is in fact guilty. But we are not trying to find war criminals. That is not our purpose. It never has been."

Let's review:

FactCheck.org claims the SwiftVets ad is misleading, because "Kerry was quoting stories he had heard from others" rather than "claiming first-hand knowledge".

However, of the 6 Kerry statements in the Swift Vets ad, Kerry has claimed firsthand knowledge--even participation--in 3 of them (shooting at civilians, razed villages, and ravaged the countryside), and only claims to have not participated in two of the allegations (those dealing with torture, dismemberment).

FactCheck.org has a good point--one I've made here--that some atrocities similar to what Kerry described did occur. But FactCheck.org fails miserably in claiming that Kerry "was not claiming to have witnessed those atrocities personally".

In addition to the hearsay of the Winter Soldier "investigation", Kerry very clearly did claim to be a witness and an active participant in what he termed "atrocities".

UPDATE: Let 'em know....

Editor@FactCheck.org

UPDATE II: More Kerry-related fact-checking here.

UPDATE III (McQ): This is QandO's second fact check of FactCheck.org.

Free Speech for everyone. Uh, except you, Swifties.

Atrios is incensed that W is calling for 527 ads to be denounced. Why, George W. Bush is trying to stop free speech!

Now, as I've said before, I'm a tepid supporter of some campaign finance initiatives, but can some reporter please nail down just what the hell Bush is talking about. Can he really be saying that all outside ads should stop because "they're bad for the system." Should political parties be the only ones who are allowed to engage in political speech? Or, is his objection to disclosure requirements? If so, the media should start learning just what disclosure laws are, which groups are complying with them, how, and whether they're doing it in a timely fashion.

But, there's free speech, and there's free speech,

Why are the Swift Boat Liar ads and Move On's ads equivalent? On one hand we have proven liars contradicting existing Navy records and 35 years of public comment, and on the other hand we have legitimate questions, raised by many prominent news organizations, about whether George Bush bothered to show up for national guard service as he was required. There are many legitimate questions about Bush's failure to fulfill his duty, including his failure to take a required flight physical, as well as the fact that Bush lied about his military record in his autobiography. Kerry has Navy records to back up his claims, Bush does not.

So, it's not really "free speech" Atrios cares about. Just speech he likes.

Oh, by the way, have you ever read the comment threads over there?

Wow.

Steyn Speaks

Mark Steyn writes that, as campaign strategies go, there have been many better ones than John Kerry's idea of touting his four months of service in a war he's primarily known for opposing. It doesn't seem to have helped him with the military vote.

If Vietnam vets loathe him, World War Two vets seem to think he's a buffoon. Short of reversing over the last 128-year-old Spanish-American War veteran in the retirement home parking lot, it's hard to see how Kerry could more comprehensively diminish his military support.

Still, he's doing his best. After going around huffing and a-puffing that, if Bush wanted a debate about Vietnam, "Here is my answer: BRING. IT. ON," he's now gone to ground and is demanding Bush call it off. Meanwhile, his lawyers are threatening suits and the campaign's complained to the Federal Election Commission to get the Swift vets taken off air.

His hagiographer Douglas Brinkley, after an intriguing interview with the Telegraph's David Rennie, seems to have entered the witness protection programme. If this campaign were any more inept, Michael Moore would be making a documentary claiming Kerry's a Republican plant secretly controlled by Karl Rove and the House of Saud.

Did Kerry honestly think that touting his war record wasn't just asking for the current spate of attacks? What was he thinking?

Quick Hits [updated]

Bumped to the top and updated, because....well, because it's important to me.

* Been away from the blog for the most part for the last couple days, and that may continue somewhat today. Tim Blair has been staying with me here in Richmond these last couple days before taking off for the GOP convention, and--to be perfectly blunt--talking to him is much more interesting than anything I have to write on this blog.

In short: Tim is every bit as clever and interesting as you might assume from reading his blog, he's good with children, and he is an incorrigible agitator.

Seriously. Within 2 days he has my son convinced of some very questionable Australian astronomical "facts" (did you know they have 5 moons in Australia?), and has declared war on various neighborhoods within my subdivision. Some sort of August Revolution of the Proletariat against the Bourgeoisie living near the lake. Eggs are involved.

Vive la Woodlake Revolucion! Cry havoc and let slip the bloggers of war!

At any rate, fine fellow, and it's been an honor to meet him. He's even added us to his blogroll....a nice gesture, and one for which I had not asked, thinking it a bit gauche to put a guest in that spot.

Still, as a blog-promotion tactic, it seems ingenious. The hell with reciprocity. From now on, I'm offering free boarding to prominent bloggers, in exchange for a spot on the blogroll. Now, if only Glenn Reynolds will make a trip to Richmond....

* Rusty Shackleford writes....

Making the rounds today I was checking out Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's (you may know him from such beheadings as Paul Johnson and Kim Sun-Il) website. Guess what...it was hacked!!!

He's got a screenshot, and it's pretty funny. While I normally favor capital punishment for hackers, I'm willing to let these guys off with only a mild warning: don't get caught.

* Speaking of internet savvy terrorists, this Sacred Cow Burgers shot was funny...

* John Hawkins has a couple interesting pieces at RightWingNews....

• The Questions The Mainstream Media Needs To Ask John Kerry About Vietnam - wherever you come down on this controversy, Hawkins points out some questions Kerry--and Kerry supporters--should address....or, at least, acknowledge.
• A review of Michelle Malkin's book "In Defense of Internment", which he calls "effective". Remember, too, Dale Franks reviewed the book, and reached a different conclusion. Read both, make up your own mind.

* Via Dr Galen, I note this wonderful bit from the AtlanticBlog....

What depresses some of us about Krugman is that he has become a one trick pony. He has become so unhealthily obsessive about George Bush that he cannot seem to think about anything else. George Bush has become his great white whale. Robert Solow once took this shot at Milton Friedman: "Everything reminds Milton of the money supply. Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I keep it out of the paper." Krugman is determined to blame George Bush for everything, which keeps reminding me of Joseph Schumpeter's remark that the most remarkable thing about the Japanese earthquake of 1924 was that it was not blamed on capitalism. Sometime this fanatical urge to believe that the Bush administration is alway, always wrong leads him to say things that should embarrass a professional economist.

That sound about right.

UPDATE: Oh, and don't forget the Weekly QandO roundup from the past week. Excerpted, linked and worthwhile.

UPDATE II: Capt. Joe--one of my favorite commenters here at QandO--left this comment to a post below, and I think it deserves a promotion....[formatted a bit for this post]

So let's look at how the press has given a pass to kerry where others have not, shall we? In 1992, Sydney Blumenthal was contracted to do a hit piece on Bush Sr for the new republic.

What really happened at Chichi Jima will never finally be resolved. Were the men really dead when Bush jumped? Did one man parachute out? Why did the intelligence report say one thing and the Finback log another? And why have Bush's versions changed over time? Bush's experience in the Good War was more tortured and his accounts more tortuous than he now admits.

This was when a decorated WW2 vet (Bush Sr) faced off against a draft dodger (Clinton). Remember Kerry's words about military service not being a requirement for the presidency?

In 1996, Another hit piece was commisioned by the nation to dispute Dole's war record. Again a decorated WW2 vet(Dole) was facing off against a draft dodger (Clinton).

It seems that you lefties have a problem with vets when there were on the wrong side.

Hey, maybe I got my meme's twisted around but I thought WW2 was the good war, the just war. You know, the one to rid the world of the nazis.

Me, I'm really just amazed that Bush 41 and Dole lost, what with all the Democrats who believe so fervently in the value of military service in a President.....and really really believe in voting for people who've been heroic in war. I guess I just didn't read between the lines closely enough.

With these stories in mind, John Cole writes...

Dear Democrats 'outraged' over the Swift Boat Vets (who unlike Blumenthal and Ellis, actually where there),

STFU.

Regards,

John Cole

The Noose tightens

Meanwhile, in Najaf, US troops have tightened the noose around the Imam Ali Shrine where Michael Moore's Iraqi brother, Muqtada al-Sadr continues to hide or maybe not:

Al-Sadr has not been seen in public for many days, and police drove around Najaf with loudspeakers declaring that he had fled and was headed to the northern city of Sulaymaniyah. Al-Sadr's aides denied that.

"Muqtada al-Sadr is still in Najaf and is still supervising the operations," Sheik Aws al-Khafaji, the head of al-Sadr's office in the southern city of Nasiriyah, told the pan-Arab television station Al-Jazeera.

As for his militia:

With the U.S. advance Monday, fewer militant fighters were visible in the streets of Najaf and some were seen leaving the city. Militant medical officials said at least two insurgents were killed and four others injured.

I'm still not clear as to al-Sadar's goal in all of this. Its been reported that his support, which peaked in April, has steadily declined. And with it apparent, at least at the moment, that the US isn't going to back off getting him out of the shrine and his militia out of Najaf, I'm not sure he knows how to end this without looking pretty bad ... being "humiliated", which apparently is much worse than being dead to some Arabs.

So the face-saving effort is as follows:

Al-Sadr's aides said Friday they would turn over the shrine to Shiite religious authorities, but the militants had still not withdrawn by Monday amid squabbling with the religious leaders over the details of the pullout.

Great. While eveyone tries to be careful about not harming the shrine, al-Sadar continues to hold the whole process hostage.

Which brings us to the interim government:

The crisis has posed a severe challenge to the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who has tried to take a hard-line toward insurgents causing chaos throughout the country.

Government officials have sent mixed messages in recent days, first threatening to raid the shrine — which would infuriate the nation's Shiite majority — then backing down and saying they were willing to wait for a peaceful solution.

[...]

Interior Minister Falah Hassan al-Naqib said the government would not wait indefinitely.

"Certainly there's a limit, and I think the period has started to narrow," he told Al-Arabiya television Monday. "It could be days or it could be hours. Such decisions are taken at the time, depending on the developments."

Well it could be days only if you patronize this idiot. Its time to pound on the table and set a deadline. Its time to act like a government which has the best interest of its citizens and country at heart. Its time to stop letting some nut hold the country hostage. Its time to grow a pair and do something.

Meanwhile neighboring countries are beginning to worry a bit:

Worries over the fallout from the violence have fueled calls for international action. Syrian Prime Minister Naji al-Otari, in talks with his Jordanian counterpart Monday, warned that instability in Iraq "is about to backfire on neighboring countries" and called for Arabs and Iraq's neighbors to "help it get out of its current ordeal."

Iran has called for an urgent meeting of Muslim nations to deal with Iraq. Iranian President Mohammad Khatami (news - web sites) repeated denials of claims by some Iraqi officials that his country supports al-Sadr.

"We have never taken sides in favor or against any group or faction in Iraq," Khatami told reporters when asked if Iran was supporting al-Sadr, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Yeah right Iran ... and you never had any plans of breaking your word with Britian, France and Germany about restarting your nuclear program again, did you? I'm sure your denial will sooth a lot of worry about your not taking sides in Iraq.

Departamento de los Vehículos de Motor

California Democrats are insisting that not only should illegal immigrants be given driver's licenses, they should look exactly the same as regular licenses.

Gov. Schwarzenegger begs to differ, so Democrats in Sacramento are not hot as blazes, particularly state Sen. Gil Cedillo

A driver's license bill for illegal immigrants, perhaps the most emotional issue facing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as California's legislative session winds down, will likely land on his desk within days.

Schwarzenegger has indicated he'll veto it unless the license "looks different" from other licenses for security reasons - an amendment supporters of the bill call a discriminatory "marker" that's unacceptable.

With no apparent middle ground in view, the postmortem for SB 1160 by state Sen. Gil Cedillo is already taking shape. Latino legislators say Schwarzenegger promised them he would sign a license bill; the governor maintains the bill does not address his security concerns.

The Republican governor also maintains he never assured Cedillo - as the Los Angeles Democrat insists - that licenses for illegal immigrants would look the same as licenses for legal residents.

The basic argument that Democrats have been making is that illegals need licenses, because, right now, they're driving anyway, and they are a public danger. We must, says cedillo, get licenses out to the illegals so that we can be reasonably asssured of their ability to drive safely.

OK, fine, I'm willing to listen to that argument. But, when Cedillo starts shrieking that they absolutely, positively cannot have some sort of distinguishing mark, then he loses me completely. Because then it becomes obvious that this is about something else than safe driving.

There's a reason that Cedillo wants illegals to have the same license that citizens get, and the reason can be described in one phrase: Motor Voter.

In California, once you get a driver's license, you're automatically issued a voter registration card, right at the DMV. And, since no one ever actually checks to see if you're eligible to vote, Motor Voter would allow Democrats to swell the voter roles with illegal immigrants who aren't legally allowed to vote, but who generally won't get caught if they do, because of how Motor Voter was implemented in California. Putting a distiguishing mark, like a "Non-Resident" stamp on the license, would put an end to that.

No, this isn't about letting illegals drive. It's about political power in Sacramento, and how to keep it.

But Democracy's Hard!

According to Expatica, East Germans long for the "good old days":

Some 15 years after the Berlin Wall came down, more than 75 percent of eastern Germans polled in a survey released Monday believe communism to be a good idea in theory.

Over half of the people in formerly communist eastern Germany are disillusioned with democracy, said the survey by Datenreport 2004.

Some 25 percent of respondents agree with the statement: "There are other, better forms of government than democracy."

A whopping 76 percent eastern Germans said they believed communism was a good idea that was only poorly carried out by the regime in the former German Democratic Republic.

The canard that "communism is a good idea" but was "poorly carried out" is an article of faith among members of the socialist left and limo liberals. They believe it would work if only someone else had done it properly. Despite the contrary evidence to be found in the west's success, it remains a siren song to them. Despite all that's written about its theory and its reality, there are large numbers who still choose to believe that a socialist or communist utopia is both achievable and best. It still amazes me that in the face of the real repression communism brought to that region that a majority would pine for it.

But then it seem memories fade quickly. The East German generation that grew up under the banner of the DDR and never knew anything but communism until now seem to be engaged in selective nostalgia. My guess is if their newly found freedoms were again taken from them, and the oppression that was rampant in the good old days were returned, perhaps it would jog their memory.

Then again, maybe not.

At last, a little daylight filters through

The editors of the New York Times support the nucelar waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain. Will wonders never cease?

There seems little doubt that the safest way to dispose of used fuel rods from nuclear power plants and highly radioactive wastes from nuclear weapons production is to bury them deep underground in stable geological formations resistant to leaking. Experts in this country and abroad, as well as many environmentalists, agree on that point. Although Yucca Mountain was partly chosen because of a perception that Nevada lacked the political clout to reject it, the site has a lot to recommend it. It sits on federal land where nuclear bombs were tested, in an arid desert where population density is low, well above the water table and atop volcanic rocks that have been there for 12 million to 13 million years. But technical obstacles, litigation, political opposition in Nevada and the sheer difficulty of the undertaking have slowed progress for 17 years and threaten to prolong the agony indefinitely.

The sheer idiocy of mandating that a waste facility should operate safely for 100,000+ years is evidently apparent even to the the editors of the New York Times, which is surprising, considering how often they are the kings of not getting it when it comes to other shibboleths of the Left.

Apart from anything else, one suspects that, sometime in that period, we'll probably come up with a wide range of technologies to secure this stuff.

WTF!?

Con somebody, anybody, tell me how this piece about the administrations war on "terraces" made it into the Op/Ed page of the Los Angeles Times?

The premise of the bit is that the president gave this speech at a private campaign event:

Some people say there are simply too many terraces, that we can't win this war. It's true that there are also lots of terraces in old European countries like France and Germany. But many of our newer allies, like Poland, don't have this problem. My father, the former president, says it has something to do with Soviet construction.

Sen. John McCain has told me he has no use for terraces. I was glad to hear it. He said it's too hot in Arizona. I told him, "John, I know wars can get hot. That's why I won't rest until we've won the war on terraces."

As I see it, the choice in this election is clear. For example, the media reported that my opponent has several terraces. His wife enjoys terraces in five languages. I take a different approach. As far as I know, there are no terraces at the ranch in Crawford, just a lot of brush that needs to be cleared. Dick told me he took care of the one terrace he knew of in Wyoming. I thanked him for the superb job he is doing.

My opponent has also raised questions about our strategy in going into Iraq. I am so happy to be able to tell you that there are now far fewer terraces in Iraq than there were under Saddam Hussein. Mission accomplished.

Huh?

I mean, what is the point? I would get it if it was supposed to be funny, but it's just lame. Did the guys at the LAT editorial board read this, and go, "Ha, ha, W is dumb, he gets terraces and terrorists confused! That's funny!"

Because, it isn't.

And I'm a guy who's made fun of Bush's verbal problems myself:

But this article isn't funny. It's just...dumb. How this makes it into the op/ed page of one of the nation's 1st tier newspapers is mystifying.

UPDATE: Beltway Traffic Jam

Rood forgot Bellodeau

Well you can't have a day pass without noting something new or different in the Kerry Vietnam flap. Today it has to do with whether the VC Kerry chased was wounded or not.

Yesterday I went through William Rood's article in the Chicago Trib. This was about Kerry's Silver Star. In it Rood says:

"Kerry, followed by one member of his crew, jumped ashore and chased a VC behind a hooch – a thatched hut – maybe 15 yards inland from the ambush site.

"Some who were there that day recall the man being wounded as he ran. Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat's leading petty officer with whom I've checked my recollection of all these events, recalls that, which is no surprise. Recollections of those who go through experiences like that frequently differ."

Well they do, unless they're the guy who wounded the VC.

"You know, I shot that guy," Bellodeau told the Boston Globe during a 1996 interview, correcting an earlier Globe report that echoed Kerry's claim that he alone had neutralized the enemy ambusher.

"He jumped up, he looked right at me, I looked at him," Bellodeau continued. "You could tell he was trying to decide whether to shoot or not. I expected the guy on Kerry's boat with the twin 50s to blast him, but he couldn't depress the guns far enough. We were up on the bank."

Only after the enemy soldier was wounded, said Bellodeau, did Kerry leap from the boat onto the beach and pursue him around the back of a nearby hut, where the would-be president finished him off.

So there's a pretty definative account that says the VC was wounded. And only after he was wounded and headed away did Kerry jump off after him.

More importantly, though, this again makes a point I made yesterday. Bellodeau points out that they were essentially defenseless against this guy because Kerry had beached the boat and made them unable to respond with their on-board weaponry.

Bellodeau has since passed away. His 1996 statement has been ignored (whether purposely or accidentally), both by Kerry and Rood. But if the standard for relevance is having to be on Kerry's boat, Bellodeau was there and his recollection of the wounding is recorded by the Boston Globe.

One other point. Bellodeau says the VC was trying to decide whether to shoot or not. That stongly suggests that the launcher was loaded and it was Bellodeau who saved PCF 94 .... not Kerry. After Bellodeau fired on him, he took off instead of firing the RPG.

Iran: Job One for 2005

Amir Taheri writes that, no matter who becomes president this year, next year Iran will be his biggest foreign policy headache.

Sometime next month, three European foreign ministers are expected to fly to Tehran for what is tipped in diplomatic circles as a "last chance" attempt at persuading the Islamic Republic to stop its quest for nuclear weapons.

This will be the second time in 10 months that the three "wise men of the West" will be traveling east to "save the future peace of the Middle East," as British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who is of the party, likes to put it.

What Straw and his German and French colleagues are trying to do is not new. A similar move was made almost 25 years ago when Germany's then-Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher persuaded his European colleagues to adopt a policy of "critical dialogue" with the Khomeinist regime in Tehran.

In time, Genscher's policy proved to be a total failure. And many now believe that Straw's version of it will also end in disaster.

The reason for those failures is simple: The Khomeinist revolutionary clique that has seized control of the Iranian state is determined to use its power to reshape the Middle East in accordance with its own radical strategy. The rest of the world, including the Europeans, has the choice of either accepting Tehran's agenda or resisting it by all means, including force if and when necessary.

A nuclear-armed Iran is a prescription for more trouble than you can shake a stick at. At the moment, the Mullahs are facing a lot of pressure. Their borders with Afghanistan to the East, and Iraq to the west puts them right in the middle of two incipient democracies that they perceive to be American clients. Their population is both young and restive with clerical rule, and democratic examples in bordering nations are not conducive to the maintenance of their rule.

Moreover, the mullahs have a series of goals--a vision, if you will--about the world order as it pertains to the Mideast. First and foremost in their minds is the destruction of the "Jewish Entity", that is to say, Israel. Second is the elimination of American power in the region. Third is the imposition of direct Islamic rule--preferable of the Shi'a flavor--all throughout the Mideast. Fourth, and finally, is the expansion of Islam to the West, and eventually, the rest of the world.

These seem like fairly grandiose dreams for a poor, desert country, but, unfortunately, they think otherwise. By their reckoning, God is on their side.

It took WWII to teach Germany that putting "Gott Mit Uns" on the belt buckles of their army uniforms was no guarantee that God actually was with them. The Iranians have, as of yet, undergone no such learning experience.

But, such learning experiences as they have undergone in the past few years has brought one fact to their attention. Baghdad has a new government, and Pyongyang does not, and the mullahs expect that they know why. So the choice they must make is obvious: obtaining nuclear weapons now may very well prevent Tehran from following the path that Kabul and Baghdad have taken.

Additionally, it would allow them to begin a blackmail campaign against the Afghani and Iraqi governments, to force them to require the removal of American and NATO troops. With that out of the way, some sort of Iran/Iraq axis might be formed--with Iraq as a very junior partner--or the secession of southern, Shi'ite Iraq, and it's union with Iran might be engineered.

Also, a nuclear-armed Iran might feel far more safe in organizing and supporting terror movements throughout the west, secure from any meaningful retaliation because of the deterrent shield provided by it's nuclear arsenal.

Really, we can play this kind of game forever, and construct any number of scenarios that might play out if Iran obtains nuclear weapons. And all the scenarios have one great similarity: none of them are good for the security or interests of the world in general, or the United States in particular.

They aren't part of the "Axis of evil" for nothing, the Iranians.

Is Kerry Done? Maybe .... maybe not

Adam Sparks at SFGate puts together a long list of reasons why he figures "The Jig is Up for Kerry". Its an interesting read. The first thing he claims is it quietly imploded when Kerry admited he'd have voted for the war resolution even if we had known what we know now about WMDs, etc. Sparks feels that pretty well sliced any possiblity of the winning vote from his side by alienating the peacenik faction which resided with the Deaniacs.

Possibly. But the Deaniacs must have remembered that as recently as January of 2003, Kerry was saying things like, “[W]e need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime."

I realize he changed his colors when it became politically expedient to do so (to appeal to the Dean supporters and their ilk during the primaries), but is this really something that will surprise and disgust them enough to refuse to vote for Kerry?

I'm not sure it is.

Sparks then goes into quite a litany of other reasons. One that struck my eye was this:

In 1997, he mused on the floor of the Senate, "Why it is that our vast intelligence apparatus, built to sustain America in the long twilight struggle of the Cold War, continues to grow at an exponential rate? Now that that struggle is over, why is it that our vast intelligence apparatus continues to grow even as government resources for new and essential priorities fall far short of what is necessary?" Kerry knew then about the global threat al Qaeda poses. Is this how he and Clinton prepared us for the war on terror?

The debatable point here is did he indeed know about the global threat al Qaeda posed? That's really hard to establish. I would be assumed that someone serving on the Senate Intelligence Committee would be up on that terrorist threat, but then this guy missed 38 of the 49 Senate Intelligence public meetings during his tenure.

Is it any wonder that the proposed $6 billion in cuts in intelligence funding instead of boosting it? One would guess if he were in fact up on the terrorist threat, he wouldn't have made such a proposal. So he was either ill-informed or didn't have the best interest of the security of the United States in mind when he made the proposal. Either way, its clear his proposal was not in the best interest of the US and this was demonstrated when his colleagues roundly defeated his proposal 75-20.

Sparks also notes Kerry's almost knee-jerk opposition to troop withdrawl:

And then there's his response to Bush's announcement last week of the largest return of troops since the start of the Cold War, in which the president promised to bring back to the United States 70,000 troops from units originally deployed in Europe and Asia as a presence to deter communist aggression. This move should please all those antimilitary types in Europe and the United States. However, to everyone's surprise, Kerry said he's against the decision, which he calls "hasty." The Cold War ended in 1989, when the Berlin Wall was torn down, and that decisive candidate, John Kerry, now calls the president's decision to finally bring the troops back "hasty"?

As noted here, this was only weeks after he'd said he was for making the very realignment he was now against. If his justification for cutting intelligence funding was based on the fact that the Cold War had ended how in the world does he justify keeping Cold War troop deployments 15 years after its end? In a word: politics. If Bush is for it, he must be against it. Its what his base expects.

Of course we've discussed the Swift Boat thing and Christmas in Cambodia to death, but Sparks touches on them. I'll leave the details for you to read and concentrate on this aspect:

On the heels of the release of the critical book "Unfit for Command," a group called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are running an anti-Kerry commercial in battleground states. But Kerry and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) would prefer you didn't see it: They're pulling out all the stops with intemperate threats of lawsuits against any of the TV stations that dares run the commercial.

Gee, I wonder whether Kerry's running mate John Edwards, that boyish multimillionaire former personal-injury attorney, had anything to do with this novel strategy of defeating the First Amendment? They know not many people will read the book, so Kerry has prepared an all-out ground assault against this "air war" on the part of his fellow veterans. Kerry, with the DNC, has threatened libel suits against all TV stations that run the ad.

Rather than sue after the ad comes out, they're trying to intimidate TV stations into not running it. They're going for the throat. Regrettably, some stations have caved in to the cheap threats. (You're welcome to see the commercial at the center of the hoopla.)

This very unusual tactic of threatening TV stations with legal action is very aggressive, but it shows Kerry is fearful of an examination of his Vietnam record. The threats are not real, though; Kerry has no intention of suing anyone. Does he really want a libel trial in which all his exploits will be cross examined? Unlikely. Here's the letter from his lawyers to the stations, threatening legal action, and here's a rebuttal from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Where are all the liberals who defend the First Amendment? They're nowhere to be seen, and their absence in this controversy is perplexing. It must mean liberals will fight to defend free speech only when it's speech they agree with. The rest of the time, the First Amendment be damned.

This reminds me of the thundering silence from the left when Bill Clinton's peccadillos came to light. After hounding Bob Packwood from office for lesser offenses, they simply refused to engage the Clinton problem. Paula Jones, et. al. were treated as pariah's. But now, when the left tries to lecture on "women's rights" and "abusing women", they're reminded of their ignoring the problem when politically the perpetrator was on their side. Their blatant moral relativity removed them most emphatically from the moral high-ground. The same principle applies here. In principle, you're either for the first amendment or you're not. You can't be for it on a selective basis depending on the politics of those involved. But it again appears to be the case with the left as it pertains to the Swift Boat Vets. Where are the great first amendment crusaders of the left on this one? You can hear the crickets chirping away.

Sparks then does a little "poll analysis" and notes some of the difficulties Kerry now faces:

Now that we all know Kerry is more warlike than the president -- after all, he would have removed Saddam without any evidence of WMDs -- Bush's job approval in the latest Gallup poll is now at 51 percent, almost identical to Clinton's 52 percent rating in August 1996 and President Reagan's 54 percent mark in August 1984. Last week, USA Today reported that "no president who has been at or above 50 percent at this point in an election year has lost."

Well "no president has lost" rules are simply made to be broken. But Sparks gives you some other links and analysis which makes a pretty descent case for "not this time". You may or may not agree with his analysis, but it is interesting.

Sparks concludes with:

The Democratic primary was hotly contested, but there was no question of Bush getting the Republican nod. The Demos really would like to be excited for Kerry, if they could figure out just who he is and what he stands for -- this week. The Kerry strategy of campaigning on the basis of not being Bush is, unfortunately, not enough to win an election. As of now, with most of Kerry's fellow Vietnam veterans on the warpath against him, it looks as if his swift boat to the White House has sprung a leak and is sinking quickly.

We live in interesting times. The admission he'd have voted for the Iraq war resolution even if he knew then what he knows now, the Swit Boat flap and the brutal attempts to suppress their right to express themselves along with rising poll numbers for Bush in front of the Republican convention do indeed spell trouble for Kerry. All the distractions have kept him off message and on defense. And when he has taken a moment to address the issues (Iraq war and troop realignment), he's fumbled them.

If he's still playing catch-up and defense coming out of the Republican Convention and Bush gets any kind of a decent bump, I'd have to say Kerry'd be all but toast.

We'll have to stay-tuned and see.

Media Matters for John Kerry's Election

Neal Boortz claims "every single recount in Florida, even a recount handled by a media consortium unfriendly to [George W.] Bush, showed Al Gore lost", and Media Matters jumps all over him for it....

As MMFA has noted on each occasion, the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center (NORC) conducted a study which concluded that in at least four different recount scenarios, Gore emerged the winner of the disputed election.

Aha! So, NORC reported that Gore would have won! Except..., well not so much.

A comprehensive study of the 2000 presidential election in Florida suggests that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a statewide vote recount to proceed, Republican candidate George W. Bush would still have been elected president.
[...]
Using the NORC data, the media consortium examined what might have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court had not intervened. The Florida high court had ordered a recount of all undervotes that had not been counted by hand to that point. If that recount had proceeded under the standard that most local election officials said they would have used, the study found that Bush would have emerged with 493 more votes than Gore.

The only scenarios in which Gore would have won were those involving the loosest possible standards...standards not adopted by most counties. So,yes....if everybody had done something that almost nobody was going to do, Gore would have won.

Well, yes...and--to borrow a line--if we only had eggs, we could all have ham and eggs, if we had ham.

What's more, the margin of error made the study--per CNN--"instructive but not definitive in its findings".

So, they've cited a study--though, not a definitive study--which verified that Bush would have won Florida. Which is, you know, what Neal Boortz said in the first place.

Good work, Media Matters!

Semper Fi!

Major Glen Butler, USMC, writes, in the New York Times, of all places, that the fighting in Najaf is about peace and security in Des Mones, Iowa, just as much as it is about a democratic Iraq.

Now we are on the verge of victory or defeat in Iraq. Success depends not only on battlefield superiority, but also on the trust and confidence of the American people. I've read some articles recently that call for cutting back our military presence in Iraq and moving our troops to the peripheries of most cities. Such advice is well-intentioned but wrong - it would soon lead to a total withdrawal. Our goal needs to be a safe Iraq, free of militias and terrorists; if we simply pull back and run, then the region will pose an even greater threat than it did before the invasion. I also fear if we do not win this battle here and now, my 7-year-old son might find himself here in 10 or 11 years, fighting the same enemies and their sons.

When critics of the war say their advocacy is on behalf of those of us risking our lives here, it's a type of false patriotism. I believe that when Americans say they "support our troops," it should include supporting our mission, not just sending us care packages. They don't have to believe in the cause as I do; but they should not denigrate it. That only aids the enemy in defeating us strategically.

Michael Moore recently asked Bill O'Reilly if he would sacrifice his son for Falluja. A clever rhetorical device, but it's the wrong question: this war is about Des Moines, not Falluja. This country is breeding and attracting militants who are all eager to grab box cutters, dirty bombs, suicide vests or biological weapons, and then come fight us in Chicago, Santa Monica or Long Island. Falluja, in fact, was very close to becoming a city our forces could have controlled, and then given new schools and sewers and hospitals, before we pulled back in the spring. Now, essentially ignored, it has become a Taliban-like state of Islamic extremism, a terrorist safe haven. We must not let the same fate befall Najaf or Ramadi or the rest of Iraq.

No, I would not sacrifice myself, my parents would not sacrifice me, and President Bush would not sacrifice a single marine or soldier simply for Falluja. Rather, that symbolic city is but one step toward a free and democratic Iraq, which is one step closer to a more safe and secure America.

Major Butler gets it.

Suggestion for keeping the peace

In order to move the presidential campaign away from what happened or didn't happen in Vietnam 35 years ago, I offer a suggestion. Since the Kerry camp wishes to argue that official Navy records are conclusive proof that Kerry served honorably and with distinction, I suggest that those of us opposed to Kerry offer to accept that argument, as long as the Kerry people accept the logical corollary: the official Air Force records indicating George W. Bush was honorably discharged from his service is conclusive proof that he properly met his obligations as well.

Perhaps then we can move forward to matters more relevant to Mr. Kerry's record, such as his support for the Sandinista's in the 1980s, or his 20-year record of voting to cut military and intelligence funding. Or, why Sen. Kerry voted for the Iraq War, and maintains that he would've done so even if he had known there were no WMDs in Iraq, but George W. Bush was wrong for actually doing what Sen. Kerry authorized him to do.

So, how does that sound to everyone?

"The New Soldier"

Kerry's 1971 book, which he has gone to extreme lengths to see wasn't republished, is now available over at Slings and Arrows in PDF format.

I'm going to give it a look later and may have some comments on it.

And now for something completely different

Gotta tell you, there are some weird folks in this world.

A Malaysian woman is trying to reclaim the world record for the longest stay in a room full of scorpions, news reports said Sunday.

Nur Malena Hassan, 27, moved Saturday into a locked glass box where she plans to live for 36 consecutive days with more than 6,000 of the poisonous arachnids in a shopping mall, the Malay-language Mingguan Malaysia newspaper reported.

Scores of people watched as Nur Malena stood fearlessly in a red sweater and jeans with scorpions crawling up her head, chest and legs in Kuantan, a city about 160 miles east of Kuala Lumpur, a photograph published by the newspaper showed.

Nur Malena set a world record in 2001 by living for 30 days with 2,700 scorpions. She was stung seven times, fell unconscious and almost gave up the attempt.

The only record I can imagine involving scorpions is how many years I can go completely avoiding them.

Yikes.

Bush Derangement Syndrome (o