Musings Archive September 2004
Thursday, September 30, 2004 QUICK DEBATE REAX: I agree with our fearless leader that the debate wasn't particularly exciting but was conducted fairly civilly and intelligently. I think it was a draw and here are a few things to take away:
Bush was often simplistic and repetitive, and at times seemed to be struggling for the correct words (more than a few times I felt the need to complete his sentences for him). Yet he did stake out a consistent, discernible position and send a clear message. Kerry, on the other hand, was more articulate and smooth but several of his positions - especially on Iraq - remain totally incoherent. If I understand Kerry correctly, if he becomes president he will skillfully go all out to win a war that is a diversion and a waste of time by bringing in allies other than the insignificant kinds of allies we already have. Or something. I think this Kerry conundrum is the inevitable result of the Democrats' failure to take the risk of running an unambiguously antiwar candidate. It's possible Howard Dean would have flamed out, but at least he could make a full-throated argument againt the Iraq war that would have made some kind of sense.
Bush seemed less aware of the cameras when he wasn't speaking, causing him to occasionally be seen smirking or sighing, but he did not do anything comparable to Al Gore's bizzare first debate performance in 2000.
Kerry was nervous at the opening of the debate, while Bush was more confident. But Kerry seemed to relax and gat her strength as the debate wore on while Bush started to get tired and cranky. Nevertheless the president made no major mistakes. Kerry didn't either - with the possible exception of his "global test" comment, which is already the source of contention among Democratic and GOP post-debate spinners - but he also didn't generate any winning soundbites either. Those are the kinds of comments that really transform a debate win from an academic point into an election-altering encounter.
Overall, Kerry supporters have reason to be pleased with their candidate's performance but he didn't do anything to alter the fundamentals of the race and I doubt this will erode Bush's lead. Bush turned in a credible performance, but did not put Kerry away as conclusively as one might have expected in a debate devoted to the topic where he polls the best. He missed opportunities to challenge Kerry and drive home the point that there was more to the whole $87 billion vote than his mangled procedural rationale - there is, after all, the vote itself. This has to raise concerns about how he will perform in the next two debates, which are on less favorable terrain for the president. But Bush at least did what he minimally needed to go and I suspect he came out of this debate with his lead intact.
Posted by antle @ 11:58 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
~ LESS EXCITING THAN I HOPED: But better than I had expected since both John Kerry and George W. Bush actually debated the issues in a fairly intelligent way. They occasionally dodged questions but for the most part they actually discussed what they were asked.
Both cats seemed pretty well rehearsed coming in but every time Kerry spoke I had to struggle to figure out how he came to the conclusion he has a cohesive policy when it comes to national security and the war in Iraq. He stated he hasn't wavered in his beliefs but I just didn't buy it because I'm still not sure where he stands on several key issues. His position on North Korea, for example, seems to be all things for all people. I want both multilateral and bilateral talks! And by the way Mr. Kerry, the CIA believed North Korea possessed nuclear weapons during the Clinton administration.
Was it just me, or were those questions phrased in a way to question Bush (and I don't mean that in a nice way) and put him on the defensive?
So who won? I have to give it to Bush simply because it was John Kerry who had to come in and hit a homerun. He hit some jabs but he didn't land any big punches. Neither guy lost the debate but Bush won it by not losing. I'll say this: Bush is lucky he never ran against Clinton because he would have been demolished. He's fortunate that he's running against a guy that makes water look exciting.
Hugh Hewitt went all teacher on everyone and graded each candidate on the answers they provided. He grades Kerry a little too harshly in my opinion and he believes Bush won easily.
Posted by steve @ 11:08 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
~ THE REAL BOB ROBERTS: A review has appeared of Dr. Bruce Thiessen's folksy album Right Wingers Need Love Too over at Intellectual Conservative. Andrew M. Alexander says he likes it and it reminds him of what the soundtrack to the movie Bob Roberts would have sounded like had Tim Robbins allowed its release.
You can read the review here or download his newest song, The Rather Matter, here.
Posted by steve @ 07:06 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
~ LETTERS TO TED: Roger Banks has had a series of humorous/satirical articles running in Insight Magazine that are letters he's imagined John Kerry writing to Ted Kennedy. If you haven't read the series, here is the first, second, third and fourth.
Definately worth a read and I can't wait until the next one.
Posted by steve @ 07:02 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
~ DOES CBS NEWS EVER LEARN?: The New York Post reports that CBS News was used once again by someone with an anti-Bush agenda.
Consider: Both President Bush and Sen. John Kerry say they adamantly oppose reinstitution of the military draft, which was ended in 1973. The Pentagon also says it is vehemently opposed to giving up the all-volunteer army.
But that didn't stop "The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather" and reporter Richard Schlesinger from airing a story Tuesday about a Pennsylvania woman's fears that her sons will be drafted.
"I think there's a good possibility," said Beverly Cocco, ID'd only as an average voter, and a Bush supporter to boot — yet with only one issue on her mind.
But there was more to her than that.
What Rather & Co. did not tell their viewers is that she is an activist — the head of the Pennsylvania chapter of People Against the Draft, an allegedly bipartisan group that opposes not only the draft but also the war in Iraq, arguing for a "peaceful, rational foreign policy."
Is there anyone minding the shop over at CBS News?
Read on.
[Update - 3:17pm] Turns out it isn't only CBS. Michelle Malkin reports that NBC News' reports on fears over the draft are pretty bad too.
Posted by steve @ 03:14 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
~ OH THOSE RUSSIANS: The Russian cabinet today approved the Kyoto Protocol, moving the country one step closer to ratifying the treaty. I was hoping the Russians would be heroes in the battle against the treaty but it looks like that won't happen now.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:28 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
~ THANK YOU: I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank ESR contributor Carol Devine-Molin for her incredibly kind donation to our fundraising drive. I wish I had the right words to thank people who are so kind to ESR but I'm not that good a writer so I'll simply say thank you.
If you'd like to help us out, you can find more information here.
Posted by steve @ 01:26 AM EST [Link] [No Comments]
~ NIXON'S THE ONE: I've heard some conservatives liken our options in the 2004 race to that of the 1972 election, with George W. Bush reprising the role of Richard M. Nixon. Jeremy Lott, over at Brainwash, however, takes the position that John Kerry is Nixon.
While I think the big-goverment Republican is the marginally better choice in this race just like it was 32 years ago, both comparisons in my opinion are rather unkind to Nixon.
Posted by antle @ 12:16 AM EST [Link] [5 comments]
Wednesday, September 29, 2004 WAR IN IRAN?: Project: Free Iran reports today that there is intense fighting across Iran, including in Tehran, between protesters and government forces. The beginning of the end?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:16 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
~ VOTER FRAUD WISCONSIN?: Sean Hackbarth says there is the potential for it. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:07 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
~ ARB STANDS FOR ACRONYMNS REALLY BITE: It's not uncommon for a shorthand phrase or meme to get thrown around during the course of a political debate and manage to irritate me in the process. But can we please, conservatives especially, stop using "MSM" to refer to the mainstream media.
Main and stream are not even separate words! At best, the acronymn reminds me of a Christian student organization I belonged to in college, the Methodist Student Movement (frequently referred to by members as "MSM"). At worst, it sounds like some kind of deviant sex practice, not that there's anything wrong with that.
A request: Quit it. Please.
Posted by antle @ 12:14 AM EST [Link] [5 comments]
Tuesday, September 28, 2004 MONDAY NIGHT QUARTERBACK - LATE EDITION: Errr, forgot to regale you about my latest failures in predicting football games.
Well, after last week's recovery from a poor start I once again flubbed it and went 8 of 14. At the rate I'm going I could just flip coins and do just as well. At any rate, I'm kicking myself for picking Tampa Bay to beat Oakland but when you have two sad sacks like those, who do you pick? Easy, you go with the home team when you aren't sure. Other mistakes included picking Kansas City, St. Louis, Cleveland, Tennessee and Washington to win Monday night by 6. Washington? By six? Oi vey.
How about dem Colts? If you caught the Colts-Packers game it resembled an artillery duel with Peyton and Brett throwing for nine touchdowns. I was rooting for Green Bay to win but I pretty well thought that the Colts were going to take it. Hard to bet against Peyton Manning these days. The only other quarterbacks I'd trust more are Tom Brady and Donovan McNabb.
Week 1 - 8 out of 15
Week 2 - 11 out of 16
Week 3 - 9 of 15%: 61.0 (-0.2 per cent)
In honour of the Colts win on Sunday I offer Jennifer as our Cheerleader of the Week. The Colts don't believe in drowning the reader with information about their cheerleaders unfortunately but Jennifer is a physical therapist. No doubt.
Oh, and I've been remiss in linking to the latest Tuesday Morning Quarterbacks by Gregg Easterbrook. You can find today's column here.
Posted by steve @ 07:32 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
~ RATHER CONTINUES TO SHED VIEWERS: A half-assed apology has done nothing to salvage Dan Rather's ratings. The New York Post reports today that The CBS Evening News continues its free fall and a poll shows that a quarter of respondents think Rather should resign.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:32 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
~ MORE ON USA TODAY AND THE KILLIAN MEMOS: Sean Hackbarth continues his dogged pursuit of USA Today's role in the Killian memo controversy here.
Posted by steve @ 01:38 AM EST [Link] [No Comments]
~ ESR'S FUNDRAISING UPDATE: I'd like to thank John Nelson, who also helped us out earlier this year during our spring drive, for his kind donation Monday evening to our fall fundraising drive. Thanks very much John!
If you'd like to help us out, you can find more information here.
Posted by steve @ 01:31 AM EST [Link] [No Comments]
~ NEW NATIONAL QUESTION BLOG: VDARE now has a blog. They were kind enough to link back to us here at ESR. Please check it out.
Posted by antle @ 12:34 AM EST [Link] [2 comments]
Monday, September 27, 2004 NOW HE FLIP-FLOPS ON WHAT HE OWNS: How did John Kerry win the nomination of the Democratic Party? It's a question that 1,000 Political Science graduate students couldn't answer. Recently John Kerry claimed to own a Chinese assault rifle as a memento of his days in Vietnam. So what's the problem? Well, apparently it isn't true.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:59 AM EST [Link] [No Comments]
Sunday, September 26, 2004 I'M A BAYONET, AND MY STRIKE IS HARD!: (via Brothers Judd Blog) Cool story in the next issue of US News about an elite Iraqi Marine force being built up by the Iraqis and the U.S. Marine Corps.
On the outskirts of this U.S. Marine base in hostile Anbar province west of Baghdad, an Iraqi military chant in Arabic cuts through the hazy stillness of the afternoon. "I'm a bayonet, and my strike is hard! I'm ready for death, not for shame!" shout a group of Iraqi men in military garb, their arms swinging and knees pumping to the beat of the song as they march in haphazard formation. "We're the Iraqi marines!" declares one of their officers, a 39-year-old man calling himself Major Haidr. "We're the Specialized Special Forces."
What makes this force really special is not that they are trained to rappel from helicopters or shoot with sniper precision, but that they are, effectively, an Iraqi militia under American command. U.S. Marine commanders hope the Iraqi force will bolster their units' strength in an area where the key to finding the enemy may be simply knowing whom to ask. "We're up against a country where we don't speak their language and don't know their culture," says U.S. Marine Capt. Jason Vose, 31, who works with the new Iraqi militia. These Iraqis, he says, "can go and identify the problems and the bad guys. They're sent into mosques that we can't go into. We've had them on the border; we've had them in Fallujah. And they just perform."
There's something about chants in Arabic that always stir my blood. One too many viewings of Lawrence of Arabia I guess.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 07:07 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
~ THINGS I DON'T BELIEVE: I don't believe that The Rolling Stones are better than The Beatles and I don't believe that John Kerry sits around sports bars watching football games while drinking beer from mugs. Just my opinion.
Posted by steve @ 06:52 PM EST [Link] [2 comments]
~ DO NO EVIL...UNLESS IT MIGHT COST YOU MONEY: Google confirmed this weekend that it is presenting cleaned up search results to users in China. Chinese web surfers are prevented from seeing among the results web sites that have been banned by their government.
It's Google's (and their shareholders) business if they want to censor their own offering but it's disconcerting to see yet another western firm screwing the average Chinese to avoid angering a brutal and repressive tyranny.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 05:45 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
~ AMERICANS SURPRISINGLY UNHAPPY ABOUT DRAFT DODGER MEMORIAL: I know, I'm shocked as well. The Seattle Point-Intelligencer reported earlier this week that Americans are plenty steamed about plans to erect a statue honouring American draft dodgers who fled to Canada.
As a reader noted recently, the activists behind the planned memorial seem to be mainly American.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 05:27 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
Saturday, September 25, 2004 I'M SURE HE'LL GET A LOT OF SUPPORT: A deserter from the U.S. military here in Canada is asking my fellow Canadians to write in and support his claims of refugee status.
"I'm just asking for their support and hope that they'll pressure the government to allow me to stay because we believe that is what's going to cause them to allow us to stay - pressure from the public and public opinion," Hughey said.
"If there is enough pressure from the people, we believe the Liberals will have to allow us to stay."
He said he's hoping Canadians will get in touch with their MPs and write letters.
Well, we already let in families that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan and have close links to Osama bin Laden, why not soldiers who refuse to fight against those families? We could become the new home for terrorists and the people who refuse to fight them.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:19 AM EST [Link]
Friday, September 24, 2004 ANOTHER CBS 'NEWS' STORY: Robert Musil over at Man Without Qualities explores another CBS news story that got bumped by the Killian documents story, one that once again shows the network to be a bit challenged with it comes to not having an agenda.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 08:08 PM EST [Link]
~
WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBOURHOOD: I was in the backyard last week when I saw something remarkable...well, at least to me. It was a small hole in the ground. I was amazed to see a squirrel pop out and regard me with what I took to be a wary eye. Turns out I came across a little home he/she had made for themselves in preparation for the coming winter. Since then I've left a few peanuts every day to help the little chap out in his/her labours.
Last year a family of squirrels had tried to build a home in the timbers that forms the base of a small shed in the backyard. I watched one day as a parent came out and then looked inside to see three baby squirrels. They left soon after. Perhaps they found a larger space with the same rent.
While I'm posting pictures, here's a picture of my sister with crooner Matt Dusk who visited Sudbury late last month. They are sharing a laugh because he's pinching my sister's butt in front of my amused brother-in-law. I don't know if my American readers know who Dusk is (he was on the Fox series The Casino recently) but he's a Sinatra-esque singer who is big in Canada with a cover of U2's "One Shot of Happy", a song Bono wrote for Sinatra in the early 1990s.
I'm usually suspicious of singers who do standards these days because I prefer the Nelson Riddle orchestration that Sinatra used during his best days in the late 1950s to late 1960s but I have to say that Dusk's album is pretty good. Some people accuse him of being a Sinatra clone -- as if that were a bad thing -- but I have to say that the cat has his own sound. He could be the next Harry Connick Jr., and I mean the "Blue Light, Red Light" era Connick Jr. (which was the soundtrack to my life for about a year and a half), not the "I'm gonna act on Will and Grace!" era Connick Jr.
Posted by steve @ 07:20 PM EST [Link]
~ RACE REMAINS A NAIL BITER: George W. Bush is maintaining his lead over John Kerry but it remains a pretty tight race, according to a Fox News poll released today.
The new national poll of likely voters shows Bush ahead of Kerry by 45 percent to 43 percent. In the three-way matchup Bush is backed by 46 percent of voters, Kerry 42 percent and independent candidate Ralph Nader one percent. The results are well within the poll's margin of error, and show just how divided the national electorate continues to be.
The poll finds Bush not only receives strong support from his core constituencies such as Republicans (92 percent), those living in the South (52 percent), and men (48 percent), but that he also cuts into his challenger's support among women — a voting group that has traditionally backed the Democratic candidate.
I hate races like these. I'd either prefer the candidate I want to win either well in front or behind (remember, Reagan was behind Mondale by 8 points back in 1984). I doubt I can take the strain of sitting at the edge of my seat for two more months.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:53 PM EST [Link]
~ MORON REPUBLICAN TACTICS: We're leading the other candidate! Let's do something stupid! Michelle Malkin blogs about a new GOP tactic: Warn that liberals will ban bibles. Yeah, that should put the right over the top in November.
What is it about the right that always wants to shoot itself in the foot?
Posted by steve @ 02:31 PM EST [Link]
~ MY RESPONSE TO DOUG CASEY
Dear Mr. Farah,
Doug Casey's column today is an gross insult to every man or woman who has ever served in our military. As a retired Navy officer who served his country for over 27 years, I take his attack on me and my colleagues very personally.
I'm so mad I could spit! Casey needs a strong lesson in "character". That he characterizes military people as "the dregs of society" infuriates me beyond belief. Casey insults me and every other military person when he compares our service in uniform to garbage men. To say that soldiers and Marines are brainwashed to blindly follow orders is absolute nonsense. The US military of all branches spends a great deal of time training servicemembers about what is acceptable and what is not. The military leadership trains us in Rules of War, the Geneva Convention, the Hague Convention, and provides us with clear rules of engagement. Our military people do not go out to the battlefield and indiscriminately kill. Our military people are not in Iraq shooting and killing just because they were told to. Our military is tasked with following lawful orders, not arbitrary, illegal commands from anyone. Does Mr. Casey believe the military is filled with morons?
I don't know if Casey has military experience, or if he ever served his country in a military uniform. If he did, he didn't pay attention to the lessons in character, honor, and duty to country. He has not studied history nor has he reflected on the freedom he enjoys because of the sacrifices of others.
The military does not serve a political party, as Casey alleges. Our oath of office has us swear to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
I will agree with Casey on one point -- military service is not a necessary prerequisite to be President. So what? I am not basing my choice for President on the 30 year old military records of either candidate.
If Casey wants to know the truth about military service, about the motivations and reasons behind the willingness of servicemembers to put their lives on the line, about the sacrifices others make to preserve the freedoms that Casey and all Americans enjoy, I strongly recommend the Casey go spend a few months with the soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen that are now serving in Iraq or Afganistan. He just might learn something.
But I won't hold my breath.
Charles Bloomer, LCDR USN (Ret.)
Posted by clbloomer @ 09:30 AM EST [Link]
~ ANOTHER REASON I HATE THE LATE 60S TO EARLY 70S: Cat Stevens. Man, never could dig that...errr...cat. Anyhow, ole Yusuf got himself on a watch list after giving money to groups like Hamas -- you know, that organization that kills people -- and everyone got into stink over the fact that he couldn't enter the United States.
Over at The Hatemonger's Quarterly -- which updates daily -- the crack young staff says that Cat/Yusuf should be banned for a more prosaic reason: his music.
I do not support, however, their future campaign against Peter Frampton. He did have some good songs and he's always seemed a rather decent sort.
Posted by steve @ 12:46 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, September 23, 2004 WANNA SPIN ME UP?
Doug Casey over at World Net Daily managed to do it in less than 30 seconds. Here's an example: "Is it that people believe that military training makes a better human being? That notion probably got started in ancient days. As the Chinese say: "Good steel is not used to make nails. And good men are not used to make soldiers." Then, as now, the enlisted ranks have always been the dregs of society, suitable mainly for use as cannon fodder." Another: "In fact, the sanctimonious idea that soldiers "serve their country" any more than any other class of workers is fatuous. In the first place, soldiers serve their government, not their country. The purpose of their training is to get them to follow orders, regardless of their personal views on a situation. Like trained dogs, they're expected to do as they're told, without regard to risk or moral distinctions."
There's more. Take a look here.
I'll post my letter to him (via Joseph Farah, WND Editor) later.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 06:30 PM EST [Link]
~ SWIFT BOAT VET TO DEBATE MATTHEWS: Tonight at 7 p.m. EST, tune into MSNBC’s Hardball where host Chris Matthews will debate John O’Neill, member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and author of Unfit for Command.
And in case you hadn't heard the group has launched a new round of advertising which you can find at their web site.
Posted by steve @ 04:56 PM EST [Link]
~ THANKS MATES!: Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi spoke to Congress today and gave what I thought was a bloody good speech.
We Iraqis know that Americans have made and continue to make enormous sacrifices to liberate Iraq, to assure Iraq's freedom. I have come here to thank you and to promise you that your sacrifices are not in vain.
The overwhelming majority of Iraqis are grateful. They are grateful to be rid of Saddam Hussein and the torture and brutality he forced upon us, grateful for the chance to build a better future for our families, our country and our region.
We Iraqis are grateful to you, America, for your leadership and your sacrifice for our liberation and our opportunity to start anew.
Posted by steve @ 02:53 PM EST [Link]
Wednesday, September 22, 2004 CBS LAUNCHES INVESTIGATION INTO KILLIAN MEMO CONTROVERSY: CBS today announced an internal investigation into the memo controversy in a bid to find out why they rushed to air a story that it took a blogger and Microsoft Word about 5 minutes to reveal as a fake.
Answer? My favourite suspect is Mary Mapes, the primary reporter on the story. She despises the Bush family, is so politically left she turns off other liberals and is "not the sort of person who went into journalism to report the news and offer an array of commentary," according to a previous co-worker. A liberal reporter that doesn't believe in balance! I'm shocked. Next you'll tell me that the New York Times is fair and balanced.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 07:04 PM EST [Link]
~
SO WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO GET THE PHONES: A man in Florida bought his child a toy cellular phone a few days ago not noticing that "a toy cell phone with a picture of Osama bin Laden on it with one word above it, 'King.'"
So like I asked, the Chinese manufacturer made these phones for someone -- who and where are they being sold to happy parents? Why is an American company importing and distributing them? So many questions. Also noteworthy, the company that made the toy has a history of turning out anti-American toys.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:38 PM EST [Link]
~ GONE FISHIN': Sorry for the lack of blogging the past couple of days. I've been busy with some outside projects -- must make money to eat -- so posting is likely to be sporadic this week. My apologies but a man's got to eat.
Posted by steve @ 01:57 PM EST [Link]
~ RATHER NUTS: Although I disagree that being a liberal hack and totally bonkers are necessarily mutually exclusive, I think this item from Slate on the whole saga of Dan Rather and Memogate is otherwise right on the money.
Posted by antle @ 12:45 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, September 21, 2004 IT'S ALMOST FUNNY: Rather than report about their own complicity in the Killian memo controversy, USA Today interviews Bill Burkett. Sean Hackbarth discusses the story here.
Posted by steve @ 04:09 AM EST [Link]
~ TRAJECTORY OF A FAKE: Sean Hackbarth has an interesting timeline involving Bill Burkett and the investigation into Bush's Air National Guard service. He believes that Burkett served as the source for both CBS and USA Today.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:02 AM EST [Link]
~ MONDAY NIGHT QUARTERBACK: It's amazing how half a day can change everything. Up until Sunday afternoon I was the stupidest clod when it came to picking winners but when 4:05pm rolled around I became Mr. Perfect.
In the morning games I only picked Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit and Indianapolis to win while in the afternoon and Monday night I was perfect.
Seriously though, I love my Bears but who thought they'd beat Green Bay? Hey Kansas City, remember when you didn't suck last year? What was the deal with the Denver-Jacksonville game? Oi vey. Still, it was a remarkable improvement over the horrific opening I had last week.
Week 1 - 8 out of 15
Week 2 - 11 out of 16%: 61.2 (+7.7 per cent)
You know, Monday night's game presented a dilemma for me considering I dislike Terrell Owens and Randy Moss. That said, I have to give the Eagles their due and give Cheerleader of the week to them for a good game over the Vikings. This week CotW is Tia, a rookie member of the squad who enjoys fudge brownies and thought Kill Bill was a great movie. Good enough for me.
Posted by steve @ 01:05 AM EST [Link]
Monday, September 20, 2004 IT'S ALWAYS THE FRENCH -- PART 2
'A French official said Saturday that even if Sen. John Kerry defeats President Bush in November's election, his country won't provide troops to help the U.S. in Iraq - the same policy France has under President Bush.
"If Kerry is elected, we wouldn't send troops either," the unnamed official told the New York Daily News. "We don't need any more targets in Iraq." '
The story is at Newsmax.com.
I guess that pours some cold water on Kerry's promise to strengthen our ties with historic allies. It comes as no surprise.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 04:01 PM EST [Link]
~ IT REALLY IS A SMALL WORLD: As some of you may know, Enter Stage Right began as a weekly newspaper column back in the early 1990s at my university newspaper.
I happen to be a member of Slashdot, the news site for geeks, and posted on a thread concerning an interview with Libertarian Party nominee Michael Badnarik. Out of the blue, a former reader of my newspaper column responds asking me if I'm the same Gord Gekko that wrote those essays.
You never know where you're going to bump into a Voyageur!
Posted by steve @ 03:35 PM EST [Link]
~ ABOUT TIME: CBS finally admitted today that it was misled about the authenticity of the Bush memos.
CBS's concession was a major blow to the credibility of the news organization and anchor Dan Rather, who reported the story and issued his own apology Monday.
"We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry," he said. "It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism."
Bull. A good faith mistake in journalism is when you properly investigate a story and then you turn out to be wrong. It happens and you move on. CBS didn't spend 60 seconds to authenticate the memos. Without fear or favoritism? Right.
You can find CBS' statement here.
Sean Hackbarth wants to know why USA Today isn't taking it on the chin for their role in the controversy.
Posted by steve @ 01:59 PM EST [Link]
Sunday, September 19, 2004 IT'S ALWAYS THE FRENCH, ISN'T IT?: "The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France.
"The man, identified by an Italian news agency as Rocco Martino, was the subject of a Telegraph article earlier this month in which he was referred to by his intelligence codename, 'Giacomo'.
"His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that - by commissioning "Giacomo" to procure and circulate documents - France was responsible for some of the information later used by Britain and the United States to promote the case for war with Iraq."
Read on.
So even as the French said they also believed Hussein possessed WMDs but still opposed the war against the dictator, they were lying the whole time.
Posted by steve @ 06:36 PM EST [Link]
Saturday, September 18, 2004 KERRY'S HOUSE OF KETCHUP: It's a very special episode of Kerry's House of Ketchup! There are no mentions of Memogate! Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:57 PM EST [Link]
~ VOTE EARLY, VOTE...: Jeff Jacoby has an interesting column in the Boston Globe discussing how easy it is to register to vote in multiple jurisdictions.
This is the first election year where I've had addresses in two states since I was in college; I only vote in Massachusetts. I did, however, consider also registering to vote in Ohio during my student days. My intent was not to commit vote fraud, but to participate in two competitive gubernatorial primaries that appeared likely to take place that year so I could support the more conservative candidate. That year, Paul Cellucci squared off with Joe Malone for the corner office in Massachusetts and there were rumors of an emerging Bob Taft-Ken Blackwell fight in Ohio. I wanted to be able to vote for both Malone and Blackwell.
As it turned out, Blackwell ran for secretary of state rather than governor, so I never ended up registering in Ohio and only cast my futile conservative protest vote in the Bay State.
Via Hit and Run.
Posted by antle @ 01:45 PM EST [Link]
~ SUPERMAJORITY LEADER FRIST?: I agree with the gist of Bruce Walker's piece in ESR this week - if present trends continue, Republicans are likely to enjoy a net gain in Senate seats and the GOP's prospects have brightened in recent weeks (it appeared much more likely that the Democrats would retake the Senate when my piece on this subject appeared in the August 30 issue of The American Conservative).
But I'd still quibble with a few of a his takes on specific races. There is, for example, virtually no chance that Alan Keyes will win in Illinois, though Bruce may have a point about his candidacy effect on black voter turnout (recent polls show that Keyes certainly hasn't hurt Bush in Illinois). Harry Reid is indeed beatable, but unfortunately the GOP did not recruit a candidate capable of winning that race. In fact, Reid is so confident he will be reelected that he has donated $1 million from his campaign war chest to other Democratic candidates.
I don't see any evidence that John Edwards will help John Kerry shift North Carolina into the blue-state column. But he might help keep Bush's margins down just enough to allow Democrat Erskine Bowles, who has consistently led his Republican rival Richard Burr throughout this race, to eke out a victory. It will take a Bush win approaching landslide proportions to push GOP candidates over the top in Wisconsin and Washington. And remember, he needs to prop up endangered GOP seats in Alaska and Colorado.
Since Bruce went out on a limb and made solid predictions, I guess I'll follow: GOP picks up seats in Florida, South Carolina and Georgia while losing one in Illinois. That's a net Republican gain of two seats. The wild card is South Dakota. My prediction is that if there is a national Bush landslide - and after three presidential elections where no candidate won a majority of the popular vote, 53 percent will be considered a landslide - Daschle falls, but he hangs on by the skin of his teeth if Bush wins more narrowly or Kerry pulls off an upset.
Posted by antle @ 01:34 PM EST [Link]
Friday, September 17, 2004 KERRY FANS SHOW THEIR CLASS: I missed this yesterday but apparently Kerry supporters tore up a three-year old girl's Bush sign during a rally yesterday and made her cry. I wouldn't know much about his motives because he'd be too busy swallowing his own teeth to tell me if he did the same to my Alex.
See the picture here and read a Washington Times story about it here.
Michelle Malkin has more about it here.
Posted by steve @ 04:16 PM EST [Link]
~ AL-QAIDA FUNDED THROUGH OIL-FOR-FOOD?: Investigators are looking at whether Saddam Hussein used money he received through the corrupt Oil-for-Food program (Hey, UN, how's that investigation going? Right, just as I thought.) to help fund al-Qaida.
Now, buried in some of the United Nation's own confidential documents, clues can be seen that underscore the possibility of just such a Saddam-Al Qaeda link — clues leading to a locked door in this Swiss lakeside resort.
Next to that door, a festive sign spells out in gold letters under a green flag that this is the office of MIGA, the Malaysian Swiss Gulf and African Chamber. Registered here 20 years ago as a society to promote business between the Gulf States and Asia, Europe and Africa, MIGA is a company that the United Nations and the U.S. government says has served as a hub of Al Qaeda finance: A terrorist chamber of commerce.
In a recent interview, U.S. Assistant Treasury Secretary Juan Zarate described MIGA as "a very good example of an investment company that is used as a shell to hide and move money."
As is typical of terrorist financial webs, the details surrounding MIGA quickly become bewildering — part of the point being to camouflage the illicit flow of funds with legitimate business. Part of the problem in finding the truth is that cross-border transactions out of such financial havens as Switzerland are smothered in banking secrecy.
But even with that secrecy — and shortly after the Sept.11, 2001, attacks on the United States — both MIGA and its chief founder and longtime president, Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, landed on the U.N. watchlist of entities and individuals belonging to, or affiliated with Al Qaeda.
Nasreddin is a member of the terror-linked Muslim Brotherhood.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:36 PM EST [Link]
~ DID THEY ONLY POLL THE SEATTLE MARINERS?: USA Today reports that George W. Bush now enjoys a commanding 13 point lead over John Kerry.
President Bush has surged to a 13-point lead over Sen. John Kerry among likely voters, a new Gallup Poll shows. The 55%-42% match-up is the first statistically significant edge either candidate has held this year.
Among registered voters, Bush is ahead 52%-44%.
The boost Bush received from the Republican convention has increased rather than dissipated, reshaping a race that for months has been nearly tied. Kerry is facing warnings from Democrats that his campaign is seriously off-track.
Seriously off-track? A 13 point lead at this stage is practically a death sentence. That said, I don't buy those numbers. I realize other polls have shown a 10 point lead but I still think this race is much closer.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:31 PM EST [Link]
~ HARD TO BELIEVE: In a report that will be issued soon, the U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq will declare that Iraq had no stockpiles of WMDs.
According to people familiar with the 1,500-page report, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, will find that Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining a dual-use industrial sector that could produce weapons.
Duelfer also says Iraq only had small research and development programs for chemical and biological weapons.
As Duelfer puts the finishing touches on his report, he concludes Saddam had intentions of restarting weapons programs at some point, after suspicion and inspections from the international community waned.
Not different from what people have been saying but it places people like me, who justified the war on the basis of those WMDs, in an uncomfortable position.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:35 AM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: I have a piece in the upcoming issue of The American Conservative on the conflict between conservative immigration reformers running in Republican primaries and the GOP establishment. It will be available electronically to subscribers this weekend and out on the newsstands next week. If it is posted on the website, I'll link to it here. Otherwise, subscribe.
Posted by antle @ 12:01 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, September 16, 2004 DUKAKIS II: A new 527 associated with GOP consultant Stephen Marks takes a look at John Kerry and asks if he has some of the same Willie Horton-like problems his former boss Michael Dukakis did. What do you think?
Read on.
Posted by antle @ 11:54 PM EST [Link]
~ BIG GOVERNMENT BUSH: Michelle Malkin sees the president's criticism of Kerry's government-expanding initiatives and wants to know who he is trying to kid.
Posted by antle @ 11:50 PM EST [Link]
~ NO TEAM HAS BEEN THIS CONSERVATIVE SINCE THE PADRES OF THE 80S: (via Brothers Judd Blog) An unofficial poll of American born players with the Seattle Mariners shows George W. Bush clobbering John Kerry.
In a completely unscientific poll with a margin of error of 100 percent, we polled Mariners who are U.S. citizens and were handy, and asked who they supported for president. The results: Bush 13, Kerry 2, undecided 2.
"A lot of it is money, taxes, and I think most ballplayers are conservatives," Scott Spiezio said. "I think if I were making $50,000 a year, I'd still be a conservative, though."
Taxes are certainly an issue for major league baseball players, who make an average of about $2.5 million a year. Athletes also tend to come disproportionately from the South, which traditionally votes Republican.
Interestingly, Bobby Madritsch, a left-hander, and Randy Winn, who bats mostly left-handed, were the only left-leaners polled.
"I wouldn't say I'm a hard-core conservative, but I don't like a lot of Democratic views," second baseman Bret Boone said. "I don't like big government. I like small government."
"I think about what happened on 9/11, and I think about what would have happened if Al Gore had been in charge," said reliever J.J. Putz, who hails from the important swing state of Michigan. "This country would be in shambles."
The M's aren't the only conservative team in baseball either past or present. As Brother Orrin Judd told me once, the San Diego Padres team of the 1980s was practically a John Birch Society chapter. More recently my beloved New York Mets were also quite conservative. Catcher Mike Piazza once told a reporter that the players would hold bull sessions on politics all the time.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 08:37 PM EST [Link]
~ SECOND AMENDMENT LESSON
"There are fools like Bill Clinton and John Kerry who try to con the people into believing that the second amendment is little more than a hunting license. It isn’t. It is what federal judge Alex Kocynski calls a ‘doomsday’ provision. Meaning, when government moves to take away those freedoms guaranteed by the constitution the people will have the means to resist.
"...But why do we need assault weapons if we’re not soldiers or cops? Well, probably we don’t. But there a at least a couple of things to consider. First you take away the assault weapons. Next the rifles and shotguns. Next the pistols. Next the cap guns. Pretty soon there ain’t nothing left except, maybe, slingshots and spit wads. It’s called a slippery slope.
"Second, assault weapons in the hands of citizens are the great equalizers. When these are available to the people...the power-hungry people who run government will be just a little more reluctant to misuse their authority. Am I paranoid? Perhaps. But it is a truism that even paranoids have enemies. And it is also true that any government, no matter how benevolent, can and will misuse its power and authority if there are no restraints on it."
- Lyn Nofziger’s “Musings,” 9/15/04
Posted by clbloomer @ 03:03 PM EST [Link]
~ CONNECTIONS: Ace of Spades has an interesting post about David Van Os, lawyer for Bill Burkett -- the chap in the middle of the Bush memo scandal, and what you can infer from the people he knows.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:19 PM EST [Link]
~ THE PRICE YOU PAY: Matt Drudge has reported that CBS ratings in major markets have collapsed since the scandal over the Bush memos has surfaced.
NIELSEN numbers released this week show Rather fading and trailing his rivals in every Top 10 city, other than San Francisco, with audience margins in some cities running more than 6 to 1 against CBS!
Executives fear many voters inclined to vote for Bush are now switching off Rather.
"The audience appears to [be] polarized," a top CBS source said from LOS ANGELES on Thursday. "Rightly or wrongly, we're being perceived as 'anti-Bush,' which I do not think is fair to Dan, who is a fine journalist... of course we do not like to see the ratings coming back the way they are this week."
Rightly or wrongly being perceived as anti-Bush? Heavens to Betsy, whatever would have gave us that impression? I mean, no questions have ever been raised about Dan Rather's apparent bias against the right before? James Lileks was right.
Posted by steve @ 02:10 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE LEFT: Interesting article by Richard Cohen in today's New York Daily News about people who don't merely dislike Bush, they hate him. Cohen is himself a liberal but what's going on over on his side of the political fence isn't making him happy.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:01 PM EST [Link]
~ REAGAN RAMONE DIES: Johnny Ramone, guitarist for punk band The Ramones and a staunch financial conservative, died last night of prostate cancer.
"In my opinion ... he was the greatest guitar player ever," Marky Ramone told The Associated Press in a phone interview Thursday. "He was the leader of the band when things got tough. To me, it's like losing a brother. I'll never forget him."
Ramone, whose birth name was John Cummings, had been hospitalized in June at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for cancer treatment.
He was one of the original members of the Ramones, whose songs "I Wanna Be Sedated," "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker," and "Blitzkrieg Bop," among others, earned them an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
Sleep well Johnny.
Read on.
[Update - 3:50pm] LA Voice has some thoughts about Johnny's passing. Warning, some minor bad language. Hey man, it's punk, what do you want?
Posted by steve @ 01:49 PM EST [Link]
Wednesday, September 15, 2004 BORDERS EMPLOYEES HATE YOU: If you're a conservative. Michelle Malkin blogs a link over to a Border's employee union web site that features posts urging employees to avoid selling books like Unfit for Command and instead sell books by Michael Moore, et. al.
The only people more arrogant than jazz fans are people who work in book stores.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:46 PM EST [Link]
~ VET RECANTS ATROCITIES CLAIMS: A Vietnam veteran has recanted claims of atrocities and says that John Kerry put him up to it.
Steven Pitkin, an Army combat veteran, told FOX News that Kerry coached him and others to say they had witnessed war crimes, even after Pitkin told Kerry that he had not.
"Before they started the camera, they told me, 'We need you to speak about the atrocities that happened over there.' The whole company line that I initially came out and said, I was coached to say that over and over again," Pitkin said.
Kerry's former brother-in-law, David Thorne, attended that Winter Soldier investigation, in which more than 100 Vietnam veterans told anti-war activists that they had either committed or witnessed unspeakable war crimes. Thorne flatly denied Pitkin's charges.
We do know one thing: John Kerry never witnessed any of the alleged atrocities that he testified about. In fact, the only atrocities he may know anything about may be the ones he committed.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:55 PM EST [Link]
~ CBS TO ISSUE STATEMENT ON BUSH MEMOS: Looks like CBS' contention that the Bush Memos are real will collapse sometime this afternoon. The network will release a statement after two experts it hired to authenticate the memos both refused to vouch for them.
Read on.
[Update - 1:16am] Way for me to follow up so quickly eh? Hey, I have work to do outside of this web site. At any rate, CBS not surprisingly defended themselves but did acknowledge that the memos may have been forged. Duh.
Posted by steve @ 01:51 PM EST [Link]
~ TYPING MEMOS VS HANDWRITING
Let me throw in another two cents worth in the military word processing technology debate. I'm a retired US Navy submarine weapons officer. I was assigned to SSBNs -- Poseidon missile submarines. These submarines were an important component in our Nuclear Defense Triad. As such, SSBNs were the only ships in the Navy that were permitted to order parts and supplies in the "Priority 1" category. We had great technology to support our mission. Nothing reasonable was denied us.
For word processing we had one -- ONE -- fancy word processor. As I recall it was a Lanier brand. It was located in the ship's office, used by the ship's Yeomen (clerks) to do official documents. If I, as a department head, wanted something typed, I had to submit the written draft to the Executive Officer (XO, who was the submarine Admin Officer). The XO would determine if it was important enough to be typed on the high-tech machine. If not, he would send it back. I could either try to find an available typewriter (we had 2 or 3 as I recall), or give it to one of my troops to type. Otherwise, I kept the handwritten copy.
I'm not talking about WWII here. As late as 1988, my last year on a boat, I was still writing memos to file by hand. I was a department head, a senior Lieutenant, and did not even have a typewriter.
My point here is that if a high-tech word processor was not available to me as a department head on a high priority submarine in 1988, just how likely was it that the Texas Air National Guard had some fancy word processor in the 1970s? The chances are slim to none.
CB
Posted by clbloomer @ 01:23 PM EST [Link]
~ I GUESS YOU PLAYED NO ROLE IN IT, EH PUNCH?: Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times stated earlier this week that public debate is just plumb degenerating and that the public is increasingly skeptical of the press. No way! Did he just get the memo?
Punch, the Times' credibility isn't slipping because of the odd Jayson Blair scandal, it's slipping because the paper's reporting is demonstrably biased.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:57 AM EST [Link]
~ FUN WITH DISTRICTS: Bob over at Don'tmoveon.org has a story up about a new congressional district in Georgia, one that so mocks the notion of contiguous and rational districts that it looks like a blot from a Rohrschach Test.
It is the new 13th Congressional district of Georgia, and it snakes around the city of Atlanta to the South and East, gathering up “Democrat performing voters” as it goes. You see, the U.S. census of 2000 determined that Georgia’s population had increased sufficiently since the census of 1990 to entitle it to an increase from 11 congressional districts to 13, and this particular district was carved out of former cohesive districts in order to create an absolutely safe Democrat seat.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:31 AM EST [Link]
~ MORE ON THE DRAFT DODGER MEMORIAL: Well, it looks like we Canadians aren't completely to blame for the Vietnam War draft-dodger memorial that is to be built in British Columbia. I received this letter today from reader Mike Stuart who clarified some details:
Your article has raised a lot of hackles south of the border, judging by the venal comments on many online chat boards that have linked the title. A minutes worth of detective work however, reveals that the 'B.C. activists' the article mentions are not native B.C.ers but are actually the draft dodgers themselves, looking to airbrush their own history and rewrite their past as 'courageous' at the cost of Canadas reputation with our neighbours to the south.
"Isaac Romano, the director of the Our Way Home festival", it turns out has his own website that contains his 'resume'. The artists to perform at the festival are also American.
It is unfortunate that loyal Canadians are getting a black eye today, due to the actions of these history-revisionist expatriot Americans who have enjoyed Canadian hospitality for the past thirty years.
Dude, we aren't that loyal to our friends. Remember, they got hospitality, not contempt.
Posted by steve @ 12:22 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, September 14, 2004 I HEAR DUBYA KILLED HIS WAY TO VICTORY IN 2000: The left pretty well only serves one purpose for me these days: a source of amusement. David Talbott, Salon's editor in chief, interviewed "author" Kitty Kelly in today's Guardian and we now know that the Bush family is really The Sopranos.
As Kelley tells it, the dynasty had respectable origins - in the form of family patriarch Prescott Bush, the distinguished, moderate Republican senator from Connecticut - but rapidly slid into cynical opportunism, skulduggery, and a mean-spirited sense of entitlement. The first President Bush is presented as a weak yes man, driven not by political vision but a savage preppy spirit of competition instilled in him by his whirlwind of a mother. But it is his wife, Barbara (whom the ex-wife of White House counsel C Boyden Gray calls "bull-dyke tough"), and their eldest son, George, who are the true pieces of work in Kelley's book, a mother and son team brimming with such spite and ambition they would give the ruthless duo in The Manchurian Candidate the shivers.
If these are the types of interviews that Salon and The Guardian run, is it any wonder why increasing numbers of people consider the left and the media (wait, I repeat myself!) to be irrelevant? Even if I was anti-Bush I'd want to see him win in November just to see the frothing hatred of the left get grow even worse over the next four years.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:46 PM EST [Link]
~ ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN SCREWS UP DEMOCRATS: John Kerry finally broke his silence over the assault weapons ban Monday night and blasted George W. Bush for allowing it to expire. Pure politics because Democrats made sure to shut their yaps over the issue after the drubbing they've been taking at the polls after publicly supporting increased gun control.
As an AP story illustrates, although Kerry is playing the tough guy over the expired ban, other Democrats are lauding the fact that it wasn't extended. Well, to the press anyway.
Ultimately this isn't going to hurt Bush. Everyone in favour of gun control is already in the Kerry camp.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:02 AM EST [Link]
~ MONDAY NIGHT QUARTERBACK: I wish I could have used the excuse of being soused when I decided on my picks for the various football pools I participate in but truth be told I was sober. That means I have no explanation for the awful weekend I had.
I picked Baltimore to win over Cleveland over my better judgment and Dallas to win on the road against Minnesota but I didn't see San Diego beating Houston. Other "surprises"? Buffalo, Chicago and Carolina losing. Even with Chicago's misguided move to the West Coast offense I figured they could beat Detroit, a team that sets new standards for playing poorly on opening day. Ah well.
How about those Panthers tonight? Okay, well perhaps not. Carolina had a bloody good defence last year but Green Bay ran through them tonight like they were playing against a college football team. Even worse for Carolina was the offensive side of the ball. I'm rather surprised they even managed to muster 14 points because they just looked lost out there. Hard to believe this is the same team that played for the Super Bowl earlier this year.
Week 1 - 8 out of 15
%: 53.5
I have some serious work ahead of me to dig myself out of this poor start.
In honour of San Diego's win over Houston I offer Charger Girl Ashley as our Cheerleader of the Week. A rookie member of the squad, Ashley happens to have the same major in university, Psychology, that I did. I don't remember, however, any of my classmates looking like her. She describes herself as "patient" -- a good trait when it comes to dealing with men -- and loves working with children. My kind of women.
Posted by steve @ 01:42 AM EST [Link]
Monday, September 13, 2004 WELL, AS LONG AS IT WAS A MOUNTAIN: Last week's nuclear-esque blast in North Korea appears to have been part of a construction project.
North Korea said Monday that an explosion that raised a huge mushroom cloud last week was the planned demolition of a mountain for a hydroelectric project, and the reclusive government invited a British diplomat to visit the site to confirm the story.
The North's explanation came as a number of officials and experts from the United States and elsewhere said they did not believe the blast Thursday near the Chinese border, which raised a cloud more than three kilometres wide, was a nuclear test.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:32 PM EST [Link]
~ IT'S ALL ABOUT THE ELECTION: The American Enterprise has a collection of good stories this month about the presidential election including ones by Karl Zinsmeister and Chris Weinkopf.
James Glassman has a good story about Egypt's anti-Americanism in the same issue.
Posted by steve @ 02:22 PM EST [Link]
~ CBS ISN'T THE ONLY ONE: Sean Hackbarth says some harsh words should be aimed at USA Today. While CBS took six weeks to investigate the Bush memos (well, so they say), the newspaper apparently didn't even bother with it.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:27 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, September 12, 2004 TIME IS NOT ON THEIR SIDE: CBS' "memo story" is falling apart faster than a Lada (how about that for a dated joke!) but not many people realize the ramifications of what's happening. An interesting post over at Belmont Club explains all.
Posted by steve @ 06:08 PM EST [Link]
~ NEOCONS FOR CHECHNYA: (via Brothers Judd Blog) Many have declared that the neoconservative view of the world is simplistic, a charge I always thought unfair, so it should surprise many that the neocon establishment are backing the Cechen separatist movement.
WHY would a group of leading American neo-conservatives, dedicated to fighting Islamic terror, have climbed into bed with Chechen rebels linked to al-Qaeda? The American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC), which includes Pentagon supremo Richard Perle, says the conflict between Russia and Chechnya is about Chechen nationalism, not terrorism.
The ACPC savaged Russia for the atrocities its forces have committed in the Caucuses, said President Vladimir Putin was “ridiculous”, claimed Russia was more “morally” to blame for the bloodshed than Chechen separatists and played down links between al-Qaeda and the “Chechen resistance”.
The ACPC’s support for the Chechen cause seems bizarre, as many of its members are among the most outspoken US policymakers who have made it clear that Islamist terror must be wiped out. But the organisation has tried to broker peace talks between Russia and Chechen separatists.
The ACPC includes many leaders of the neo-conservative think-tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which advocates American domination of the world.
ACPC members who are also in the pro-Israeli PNAC include Elliott Abrams, head of Middle East affairs at the National Security Council; Elliot Cohen of the Pentagon’s Defence Policy Board; Frank Gaffney, president of the conservative Centre for Security Policy; Robert Kagan and William Kristol of The Weekly Standard, the house journal of Washington neo-cons, and former CIA director James Woolsey. Former Reagan defence secretary Caspar Weinberger is also in the ACPC.
ACPC executive director Glen Howard said the continuation of the “brutalising tactics” of Russian forces would only lead to “the resistance employing more brutal tactics” like the assault on School Number One in Beslan. He claimed one of the so-called “Black Widows” decided to become a suicide bomber after being forced to watch Russian troops “boil her three-year-old child alive”.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 05:58 PM EST [Link]
~ IF YOU'RE EMAILING ME, DON'T EXPECT A RESPONSE SOON: It is, after all, the opening Sunday of the NFL season. Instead of responding to your emails I will be spitting nails at Buffalo for not being able to hold a lead with only seconds left and at myself for picking Baltimore to win over Cleveland. I knew Cleveland was going to win and yet I still picked the Ravens. Gah.
Back to the Giants-Eagles game. I'm rooting for Kurt Warner to have a good game but let's be realistic, the line favors Philadelphia by as much as 9 points.
[Update - 4:37pm] Hey Chicago, how did that West Coast offence work out for you today? Right. The only reason I picked you to win was that occasionally stupid faith I put into my favourite team. Won't happen again.
Posted by steve @ 04:32 PM EST [Link]
~ NUCLEAR BLAST IN NORTH KOREA?: A South Korean news agency has reported that a massive blast occurred in North Korea earlier this week.
The Yonhap news agency, citing an unidentified diplomatic source in Seoul, said the explosion happened at 11 a.m. local time Thursday in Yanggang province near the border with China. The blast in Kim Hyong Jik county left a crater big enough to be noticed by a satellite, the source said.
"We understand that a mushroom-shaped cloud about 2.2 miles to 2.5 miles in diameter was monitored during the explosion," the source said. Yonhap described the source as "reliable."
Thursday was the anniversary of the 1948 foundation of the communist regime. Leader Kim Jong Il uses the occasion to stage performances and other events to bolster loyalty among the impoverished North Korean population.
Read on.
[Update - 4:00am] The U.S. says it likely wasn't an atomic blast but doesn't say what it might have been.
Posted by steve @ 01:14 AM EST [Link]
Saturday, September 11, 2004 WE REMEMBER: On behalf of my fellow Canadians I'd just like to say that we remember what happened this day and we still stand with you.
Posted by steve @ 03:21 AM EST [Link]
Friday, September 10, 2004 WHEN MOMMY AND DADDY NO LONGER LIKE EACH OTHER: Julian Sanchez pulls together a collection of links that concern the continuing rift between libertarians and Republicans.
Jim Antle has covered this for ESR several times. You can find stories here, here and here. We're always ahead of the curve.
Posted by steve @ 06:44 PM EST [Link]
~ CLIPPY RETURNS: David Janes has a rather funny post.
Posted by steve @ 04:25 PM EST [Link]
~ BUSH AIR NATIONAL GUARD SMEAR STORIES FALLING APART: It's Fox News so most Bush critics won't give it much credence but the network has picked up from the blogosphere and has reported that the Bush memos are being questioned. The network is also reporting that other attempts to smear Bush's Air Guard record are being revealed for what they are.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:44 PM EST [Link]
Thursday, September 9, 2004 WHY NOT ADD A MEMORIAL TO ALL THE WARS CANADA DIDN'T FIGHT IN?: I'm only 33 but I feel jaded beyond my years. That's why I barely registered a rise in temperature when I learned that activists in British Columbia plan to erect a memorial to Vietnam War draft dodgers.
"This will mark the courageous legacy of Vietnam War resisters and the Canadians who helped them resettle in this country during that tumultuous era," Isaac Romano, the director of the Our Way Home festival told a news conference in Nelson Tuesday.
The event will honour people who came to Canada and resisted war efforts, from burning their draft cards during the Vietnam War to leaving the army to protest the war in Iraq, Romano said.
Musicians -- many of who participated in the anti-war movement -- will play at the festival, scheduled for July 8-9, 2006. Historians and critics of U.S. foreign policy will speak and a documentary about American war resisters by director Michelle Mason will be screened.
It usually takes most people decades to turn as jaded as I feel some days.
Posted by steve @ 06:19 PM EST [Link]
~ IT'S BETTER THAN NOTHING: Seems neither candidate received much of a boost from their convention but it appears Bush's numbers have improved slightly. The latest FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll shows Bush leading by three points but more importantly he has stronger numbers when it comes to trustworthiness and leadership.
Interestingly:
Though overall support is evenly divided, the reason behind each candidate's support is somewhat different. A large 82 percent majority of Bush supporters describes their vote as "for Bush;" however, Kerry supporters are more divided in how they describe their vote — a slim 51 percent majority says their vote is "against Bush" and 41 percent "for Kerry."
Not a good sign when a lot of your support isn't based on you but dislike of your opponent. Not what we would call a strong endorsement.
Posted by steve @ 06:11 PM EST [Link]
~ NATIONAL GUARD DOCUMENTS FORGED?: So says Charles over at Little Green Footballs. He states that he duplicated one of the documents perfectly in Microsoft Word, presumably not available in 1973, while others have investigated and determined that one of the characters used in the document -- specifically the superscript "th" -- aren't even available on an IBM Selectric typewriter.
Dirty tricks in politics? Oh my.
Posted by steve @ 06:05 PM EST [Link]
~ THE DISSENT AGAINST OUTSOURCING: Judging by some of the email I've received the last couple of days you'd think that every economist before September 7, 2004 was in favour of free trade. I say this because I've received a pile of email calling my attention to an article about Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Samuelson and his recent dissent against free trade. Well actually if you want to be specific it seems to be mostly aimed at outsourcing but why split hairs?
That untruth, Samuelson asserts in the article for the Journal of Economic Perspectives, is the assumption that the laws of economics dictate that the U.S. economy will benefit in the long run from all forms of trade, including the outsourcing of call-center and software programming jobs abroad.
Sure, Samuelson writes, the mainstream economists acknowledge that some people will gain and others will suffer in the short term, but they quickly add that "the gains of the American winners are big enough to more than compensate for the losers." That assumption, so widely shared by economists, is "only an innuendo," Samuelson writes. "For it is dead wrong about necessary surplus of winnings over losings."
Trade, in other words, does not always work to all parties' advantage, according to Samuelson.
You can also read about Samuelson's thoughts in today's New York Times. The story has received so much play that even Slashdot has posted the story.
The argument he's making essentially states that even if the American economy grows due to trade and outsourcing, American workers may suffer regardless and not just those who have lost their jobs. Now I'm not going to pretend that I know one-tenth (and I'm being generous) as much as Samuelson but I haven't seen any data that suggests American workers are worse off today then they were twenty years ago. Of course, I guess we'll have to wait for this month's Journal of Economic Perspectives to hit the newsstand before we can judge Samuelson's case. Errrr....where do you buy the Journal of Economic Perspectives?
[Update - 5:54pm] See, this teaches me to go to obvious sources before I blather on. Dan Drezner kicks the tires of Samuelson's case (he hasn't read his essay either) and comes up with some early thoughts about it.
Posted by steve @ 05:51 PM EST [Link]
~ HOW DOES THIS FIT UNDER THE KYOTO PROTOCOL?: French Premier Jacques Chirac's official plane flew an extra 1,200 miles just so he could have a longer sleep.
On August 31, Chirac was due to fly from Paris to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, to meet the German and Russian premiers.
The only problem was that the flight to the summit would not be of sufficient duration for him to get a full night's sleep.
The answer was simple: the French air force, which operates the presidential Airbus 319, was ordered to tack another 1,200 miles on to its flight so that Mr Chirac could sleep undisturbed.
Mon dieu!
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:37 PM EST [Link]
~ ABOUT TIME: The U.S. said today (finally) that genocide has taken place in Sudan's Darfur region.
"We concluded that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the
Janjaweed bear responsibility and genocide may still be occurring," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in testimony prepared for delivery to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.Ahead of Powell's testimony, Sudanese lawmakers said a genocide ruling would hurt peace moves throughout Africa's largest country and could trigger Somalia-style chaos in the oil-exporting nation.
"It will break everything. And the consequences will be so shameful," Angelo Beda, deputy speaker of Sudan's parliament, told a news conference on Thursday on a visit to neighbouring Kenya.
"The U.S. is acting like a bull in a china shop."
See, it's America's fault. I can't wait until someone in Europe attacks Powell's declaration as showing a lack of nuance.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:47 PM EST [Link]
Wednesday, September 8, 2004 IF PEOPLE WHO LIVED IN DICTATORSHIPS COULD EVEN VOTE, THEY'D VOTE KERRY!: (Via Brothers Judd Blog) According to a global poll, if the world could vote in the U.S. presidential election, they'd vote for Kerry.
If the world could cast a vote in the United States presidential election, John Kerry would beat George W. Bush by a landslide, according to a poll released on Wednesday that is described as the largest sample of global opinion on the race.
"It is absolutely clear that John Kerry would win handily if the people of the world could vote," said Steve Kull, director of The Program on International Policy Attitudes of the University of Maryland, a co-sponsor of the survey. "It is rather striking that just one in five people surveyed around the world support the re-election of President Bush."
The poll of 34,330 people older than 15 from all regions of the world found that the majority or plurality of people from 32 countries prefer Kerry to Bush.
Asia was the region showing the most mixed results, although Kerry still did better than Bush. Kerry won clear majorities in China, Indonesia and Japan, but slipped past Bush by only a slight margin in Thailand and India.
The most negative attitude toward the U.S. came from France, Germany and Mexico, where roughly 80 percent of those surveyed thought that the foreign policies of President Bush had made them feel worse about the United States.
It tells you a lot that people living under tyranny and nations that love to deal with tyrannies are backing Kerry. He should use that in his press releases: Kerry: Tyranny's first choice!
Posted by steve @ 02:36 PM EST [Link]
~ OKAY, WE GET IT: The problem with being one of those people who thinks they're so smart is that they also think we're so stupid. That's the only explanation for John Kerry's speech in Cincinnati this morning, a speech which uses the word "wrong" so often you think Kerry is pounding in nails, not making points. If that wasn't enough, we also learn the war has cost $200 billion to date. How do we know this? Kerry repeats it a dozen times in a speech that's only 2 200 words in length.
Way to go with that subtlety John.
Read the speech after the break.
[more]Posted by steve @ 02:26 PM EST [Link]
~ SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: Given the comparisons some in the media are making after Zell Miller's speech, Nick Schulz decides to set the record straight http://www.techcentralstation.com/090704F.html over at Tech Central Station.
Posted by antle @ 09:30 AM EST [Link]
~ BASTARDS: I'd like to formally condemn Spike TV for their all day CSI: Crime Scene Investigations marathon on Tuesday. Because of that I wasn't able to finish reading a book on FDR's dreams of a second bill of rights dealing with economic and social rights or a write piece on Gen X and marriage. In fact, my addiction is so bad I'm watching it as I type this.
On the positive side, I saw some today I hadn't ever seen before.
Unfortunately their marathon continues on Wednesday.
Posted by steve @ 02:07 AM EST [Link]
~ NOT QUITE A SELF-PROMO ALERT: Thanks Izzy! Although I don't think I deserve to be singled out for my relatively minor contribution given the hard work so many other people did - not least of all, the author - I'm glad to see that you are reading the book closely!
And I guess I still qualify as a local boy, since I am still technically a Massachusetts resident.
Posted by antle @ 01:04 AM EST [Link]
~ RED CARPET FOR TERRORISTS? NAH: If you haven't listened to Jeremy Lott, read Colby Cosh's take on the Chechnya atrocity.
Posted by antle @ 12:52 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, September 7, 2004 JOINING NAMD: David Janes argues over at Ranting and Roaring that Canada should join the North American Missile Defense system being proposed by the United States for a number of good reasons. I'm biased in favor of joining NAMD but I'd say he builds a convincing statement in support of it.
Back in January for the Kitchener Waterloo-Record I agreed.
Posted by steve @ 06:50 PM EST [Link]
~ STUPIDITY IS CHEAP, THAT'S WHY IT'S EVERYWHERE: Just when I thought the American education system couldn't become more wussified, teachers race to prove me wrong. The latest stroke of brilliance to protect your child's self-esteem? Purple markers.
A growing number of the nation’s educators are stocking up on purple pens for grading papers and passing on the traditional red, which they say can be intimidating and damaging to a student's self-confidence.
"Teaching should always be a positive practice. Red seems to stand out in such a negative way," said Dorothy Porteus, school support specialist with the New York Charter Schools Association. "Little guys internalize the red and it doesn't make them feel good."
Porteus, who taught elementary school for 20 years, said a teacher should coach kids to do their best, not scare them into thinking they'll never be good enough. She equates using red ink with drawing a frowning face on a student's work.
I can't roll my eyes enough...or despise people like Dorothy Porteus.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:44 PM EST [Link]
~ KERRY WITH A FIREARM LOOKS LIKE A DUCK WITH PANTS: Matt Drudge ran a picture today showing John Kerry with semiautomatic shotgun that he was presented with a gift today. So? The shotgun would have been banned under legislation Kerry once co-sponsored. Professor Glenn has a big round-up of links responding to the picture, Kerry's comments and the firearm itself.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:39 PM EST [Link]
~ THERE'S HOPE FOR ME YET: (via Brothers Judd Blog) Laura DeMarco reports that Generation X, that cohort painted as a bunch of rootless slackers waiting for their next bong hit, are turning out to be better parents then their Baby Boomer predecessors.
And when reality finally did bite the 60 million Americans born between 1965 and '79, they didn't react as might be expected. Gen-Xers are embracing family life with a vigor not seen in baby-boomers.
Generation-X includes more stay-at-home dads, fathers working from home and dads cutting back long hours than previous generations, say analysts.
Gen-X moms are distinguishing themselves from baby-boomers by embracing traditional roles. Though they're more college-educated than any previous generation, more Generation-X moms than boomers are staying home or working part time.
Actually, none of this shocks me at all. Over a decade ago when my age cohort was tagged with the Gen X label a lot of people also noticed that we tended to be quite conservative. Many of my friends are married and some of them live in circumstances that are very traditional. Perhaps the family has a chance after all.
Posted by steve @ 02:35 PM EST [Link]
~ LILEKS STRIKES AGAIN: Well, we're just days away from the anniversary of September 11, 2001 and James Lileks takes it upon himself to mutter (once again) about those exasperating knuckleheads who still don't get it. I'm surprised all he does is roll his eyes when he bumps into these morons.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:15 AM EST [Link]
Monday, September 6, 2004 SO WHY NOT BAN EVERYONE WITH A BAD HABIT?: It's hard to believe these days that the British once had the cojones to pull together a world empire that had a third of the world's land and one-quarter of its population. I say this because a new poll shows that a quarter of Brits want to ban smokers from receiving public health care.
So are meat eaters next? How about drinkers? Motorcycle riders? People who don't look both ways before they cross the street?
I said it before and I'll say it again: When government launches a public health care system they become de facto owners of your body.
Posted by steve @ 06:43 PM EST [Link]
~ WHY THE DIFFERENCE?: Time/Newsweek show George W. Bush with an 11 point lead, others -- like Rasmussen -- show a smaller gap. What's up? Rasmussen explains.
There are two basic explanations, one involving our polling data and one involving the newsmagazines. For those who need to know the answer before the explanation, the bottom line is that the President is ahead by 4 to 5 points at this time. That's a significant improvement over the past few weeks, but not a double digit lead.
Posted by steve @ 04:32 PM EST [Link]
~ CONSERVATIVES AND THE GOP CONVENTION: In an addendum to my piece this week, let's look at a few things regarding the performance of some of the moderates I mention at last week's Republican National Convention.
All of them stayed within the mainstream of the party's conservative wing in their speeches, emphasizing their support for President Bush and his administration's policies rather than areas where they are to his left. This is in sharp contrast to previous years, when Colin Powell emphasized his disagreement with the party on key social issues and Govs. Bill Weld and Christie Todd Whitman tried to jettison the pro-life plank from the party platform. McCain and Giuliani devoted much of their speeches to the war, Schwarzenegger to free enterprise and Mitt Romney called for the defense of traditional marriage. Rush Limbaugh makes this point in an Opinion Journal piece here.
So let me make this clear: I have no problem with tapping their star power for national conventions, using them to reach out to swing voters and supporting them for office when appropriate. But at the same time, there's no reason to surrender to them on the policy front where conservatives predominate now.
Posted by antle @ 01:27 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, September 5, 2004 THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR BOTHERING WITH POPULAR CULTURE: I find it hard to watch television these days. Heck even movies -- which I could disappear into for two hours -- are becoming more difficult to sit through. Pat Buchanan was right, there is a culture war except it was declared by the left on us. It's not that I mind my beliefs being challenged, it's that I mind that there isn't even the pretense of exploring both sides of an issue.
I mean seriously, what's the last major Hollywood release or television show that challenged the left's assumptions? Okay, what was the last one before that? It gets harder to name more examples without having go back years. I can name two dozen dogmatically liberal television series in under one minute that are all running this season. Can you name two dogmatically conservative ones?
At any rate, Brian Tiemann's remote control is in danger of breaking. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:57 PM EST [Link]
~ REVIEWING THE REVIEWER: Back in May we ran a review of Thomas Barnett's The Pentagon's New Map. A couple of days ago Barnett did us the favor of reviewing both my review and the interview. Bonus feature: Some French web site grabbed my interview and translated it into French. You can find them all here. (Scroll to the bottom of the page for links)
Posted by steve @ 06:09 PM EST [Link]
~ DISAGREES WITH ME? MUST HAVE ALZHIEMER'S: A real gem of a column from Susan Estrich attacking Zell Miller. I agree that there are some valid questions about the dramatic nature of his shift from Clinton Democrat to conservative Democrat for Bush, and that a few lines of his speech were hard to defend. But Estrich here drops a number of doozies, including a suggestion that Miller's judgement might be impaired due to a minor stroke.
The real reason for this hostile reaction, of course, was that Miller's speech - and I write this as someone who opposes the Iraq war - was effective, well-delivered and reinforced voters' concerns that John Kerry is weak on national defense.
Read on.
Posted by antle @ 02:24 PM EST [Link]
Saturday, September 4, 2004 CONVENTION BOUNCE?: Polls conducted for Time and Newsweek each show President Bush with a double-digit lead over John Kerry coming out of the Republican National Convention. The Time poll has Bush at 52 percent and Kerry at 41 percent; Newsweek reportedly finds Bush with 54 percent support and Kerry with 43 percent. Both amount to 11-point gaps.
UPDATE: USA Today reports that Bush has opened up a lead in state polling that predicts the far more relevant Electoral College vote count.
Posted by antle @ 06:03 PM EST [Link]
Friday, September 3, 2004 BUSH IN BADGER COUNTRY: Sean Hackbarth reports from a Bush campaign stop at Wisconsin State Fair Park in West Allis, WI.
Bush's speech repeated many of the lines and most of the themes from last night's acceptance speech. If you heard him last night you weren't surprised with what he said today. What was different was the ratio between domestic and foreign policy was almost 50/50. That seemed like more emphasis on his domestic agenda than in his acceptance speech. Some of it had to do with today's release of new jobs data showing 144,000 new jobs were created in August which marked a full year of monthly job growth. Adjustments to the June and July figures show 59,000 additional new jobs were created in those two months. He talked about medical savings accounts and partial privatization of Social Security--dressed up in compassionate conservative rhetoric. He only offered a few sentences about education.
Yes that reminds me. Jeff Greenfield on CNN last night said that we could expect a horrible jobs report today. Guess not, eh Jeff? Nice sources.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 07:06 PM EST [Link]
~ ARAB NEWS EDITOR ENDORSES BUSH: Yeah, I had to read that twice to make sure I wasn't seeing things.
"We are with President Bush who has said, 'I am the man who makes history.' Who, other than President Bush, can launch a war against terrorism? Who else will come to the rescue of people suppressed by dictators? Who else was there to build and develop nations? And above all who made democracy the new international system for all the people in this world?
"None of the Middle Eastern countries could face terrorism alone. Some of them went to the extent of making compromises and allying with terrorist organizations. These countries were afraid to kick out terrorists until the United States arrived on the scene, heading a coalition of the willing to root out terrorism. Some people may be skeptical about what the U.S. has achieved. But we know it has not only liberated Afghanistan from Taliban and its ally Osama Bin Laden but also created a modern democratic country with its own police, army and other civil institutions. The United States has also liberated the Iraqi people and created a modern country from the ruins of the former regime. There are some people who still call the war to liberate Iraq as 'baseless,' citing the failure of Americans to find any weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
"What they forget is the Americans did find many mass graves where millions had been buried alive. This alone is enough to prove Saddam's regime was more lethal than any WMD man has known. "
Some people get it.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:31 PM EST [Link]
~ IT'S A BIT EARLY TO PUT HIM ON MONEY: A woman managed to successfully pass a "$200 bill" at a Pennsylvania clothing store that featured none other than George W. Bush.
Posted by steve @ 04:27 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT WAS HE THINKING?: Brian Tiemann has some thoughts about John Kerry's response to George W. Bush's speech: Eh?
And from there one just has to wonder whether Kerry actually researched any of the barbs he flung at midnight, or if he knows full well that he's being disingenuous, but trusts the American people to be too stupid and the news media to be too biased for him ever to get called on it. For instance, Kerry must understand that Cheney is not on Halliburton's payroll; he has deferred compensation, on terms that were laid out at the plan's inception such that the amount he gets paid cannot change regardless of Halliburton's corporate fortunes; and on top of that, he gives all his deferred compensation income to charity. Does Kerry not know this? Or does he just hope people will blindly believe him without looking up the facts?
Eh indeed.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:16 PM EST [Link]
~ SMALL "L" LIBERTARIANS FOR BUSH: I was kind of meh about Dubya's speech last night but others liked it. Vodkapundit (I should get ryepundit.com), a small-l libertarian thought it was a good speech.
There was no overriding theme to President Bush’s speech, except for the unspoken one: “This is who I am.” No, wait -- let me amend that. The unspoken theme was, “This is who we are.” As Americans.
For all its faults, for all its overtly- and overly-religious tones, this small-l libertarian prefers George Bush’s America to John Kerry’s. I don’t care for NASCAR. I’m not much for country music, Sundays at church, blue-eyed soul, or faith-based initiatives.
But Bush made me feel welcome all the same. No, wait – let me amend that statement, too. Bush made me feel like his place is somewhere I’d like to spend some time and get to know the locals. You know -- down a few beers, chat up the natives and learn their quaint customs.
James Lileks gave it a B minus plus which is a little higher than I would have gone while Andrew Sullivan thought it "was the second best speech I have ever heard George W. Bush give..."
[I]ntelligently packaged, deftly structured, strong and yet also revealing of the president's obviously big heart. The speech writers deserve very high grades for pulling it off, to find a way to get the president to deal substantively with the domestic issues he is weak on and to soar once again on the imperatives of freedom in the Middle East. I will be very surprised if the president doesn't get a major boost from the effort, and if his minuscule lead in the race begins to widen.
But Sullivan won't be voting for Bush in November and his reasoning will strike a cord with conservatives (well, except on the gay marriage issue). As I said earlier today, Dubya sure likes that government thing and the attendent spending. Sullivan says Dubya marks the end of conservatism and the start of big spending Republicanism. It's hard to disagree with him.
Posted by steve @ 01:36 PM EST [Link]
~ QUOTING SOLDIERS: During his speech Dubya quoted a soldier who had served in Iraq. That soldier happened to be U.S. Army Specialist Joe Roche. You can read his entire essay here.
Posted by steve @ 02:05 AM EST [Link]
~ I'M FROM THE GOVERNMENT AND I'M HERE TO HELP: Hoowee! That president sure likes government! After Zell Miller's speech Wednesday night Dubya didn't have a chance to have that same slam-bam effect though I suppose the last thing you want is a sitting president coming out and making fiery speeches. Err, yeah.
At any rate, it was a decent speech though I found it a little meh. Praise for federal government intervention in areas where the federal government doesn't have much business going -- more money for education! More health care! -- but balanced by good stuff concerning the ongoing war against terrorism.
What I did like was his promise of personal retirement accounts -- which I had hoped for during his first term -- and tax code simplification. Add me to the list of people in favour of tort reform (unlikely to ever happen) and permanent tax relief.
Overall, though, I think conservatives (as opposed to Republicans) are quietly worried about Bush's second term after this speech. Granted he's trying to appeal to Americans as a whole but there are more than a few signs that he's going to be more liberal if he's re-elected. It wouldn't surprise me if 2008 saw a markedly more conservative Republican candidate.
Read his speech here if you missed it.
Posted by steve @ 12:16 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, September 2, 2004 THE PARTY OF THE RICH: It's been fashionable for years to decry the Republican Party as the home of the wealthy -- apparently they don't deserve representation -- but Karl Zinsmeister argues in an essay today that it's the Democrats that deserve that reputation.
No more. Starting in the 1960s and '70s, whole blocs of "little guys" -- ethnics, rural residents, evangelicals, cops, construction workers, homemakers, military veterans -- began moving into the Republican column. And big chunks of America's rich elite -- financiers, academics, heiresses, media barons, software millionaires, entertainers -- drifted into the Democratic Party.
The extent to which the parties have flipped positions on the little-guy/rich-guy divide is illustrated by research from the Ipsos-Reid polling firm. Comparing counties that voted strongly for George W. Bush to those that voted strongly for Al Gore in the 2000 election, the study shows that in pro-Bush counties only 7% of voters earned at least $100,000, while 38% had household incomes below $30,000. In the pro-Gore counties, fully 14% pulled in $100,000 or more, while 29% earned less than $30,000.
As Daniel Henninger has noted on this page, it is "becoming harder by the day to take the Democrats seriously as the party of the common man." The financial pillars for Democrats are now super-rich trial lawyers, Hollywood entertainment executives, and megabuck financiers. Both parties have their fat cats, obviously, but Federal Election Commission data show that many of the very wealthiest political players are now in the Democratic column.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:25 PM EST [Link]
~ HEY, THEY'RE JUST BLACK PEOPLE: Retired Canadian general Romeo Dallaire slammed the Western world today for allowing, once again, a mass slaughter in Africa.
The muted international response to Sudan's plight is rekindling painful memories for Romeo Dallaire 10 years after the retired lieutenant-general led the ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping mission during the Rwandan massacre. "It makes me sick," Dallaire said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
"It burns inside and the sentiments or the feelings that I had of abandonment in Rwanda are exactly the same that I feel today in regards to the Sudan."
Dallaire is haunted by his experience in Rwanda. His 100 days there reduced the former commander to a suicidal, pill-popping civilian, according to his best-selling memoir, Shake Hands with the Devil.
I'm only 33 but at some point I wonder if the world will ever learn from its mistakes.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:17 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, September 1, 2004 RANDOM CONVENTION OBSERVATIONS: Here are just a few things I've taken away from the Republican National Convention coverage I've watched on television:
If Bush is denied a second term - a prospect I am starting to find increasingly unlikely - look for a big push to amend the Constitution to allow foreign-born American citizens to seek the presidency, paving the way for Ahnuld to vie for terminating the Democrats.
Who would have ever thought that Liddy Dole would be the one to make the strongest socially conservative arguments I've heard from a major political figure during this convention?
Schwarzenegger, Giuliani, McCain, and Romney have all given good speeches, but the best speech thus far has been given by Democrat Zell Miller.
I'm not hearing a lot of support for smaller government at this convention, notwithstanding some criticism of Kerry's spending proposals.
Posted by antle @ 10:43 PM EST [Link]
~ I THINK WE HAVE THE WINNER FOR BEST SPEECH: Wow. I don't know about you but I'm pooped out after listening to Sen. Zell Miller's speech. I mean the guy literally picks you up and forces you cheer. Why don't Republicans have this same kind of energy when going after Democrats? He was kicking tail and taking no prisoners. Like Dick Cheney said, I'm glad Miller is on our side.
Here's Miller's speech:
Since I last stood in this spot, a whole new generation of the Miller Family has been born: Four great grandchildren.
Along with all the other members of our close-knit family — they are my and Shirley's most precious possessions.
And I know that's how you feel about your family also.
Like you, I think of their future, the promises and the perils they will face.
Like you, I believe that the next four years will determine what kind of world they will grow up in.
And like you, I ask which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower and, yes, the backbone to best protect my family?
The clear answer to that question has placed me in this hall with you tonight. For my family is more important than my party.
There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future and that man's name is George Bush.
In the summer of 1940, I was an eight-year-old boy living in a remote little Appalachian valley.
Our country was not yet at war but even we children knew that there were some crazy men across the ocean who would kill us if they could. President Roosevelt, in his speech that summer, told America "all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger."
In 1940 Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee.
And there is no better example of someone repealing their "private plans" than this good man. He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time.
And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue.
Shortly before Wilkie died he told a friend, that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between "here lies a president" or "here lies one who contributed to saving freedom", he would prefer the latter.
Where are such statesmen today? Where is the bi-partisanship in this country when we need it most?
Now, while young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrat's manic obsession to bring down our Commander-in-Chief.
What has happened to the party I've spent my life working in? I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny.
It was Democratic President Harry Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city.
Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Democrats and Republicans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. But not today.
Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.
And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.
Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers.
Tell that to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers.
Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers.
Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.
For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.
No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.
But don't waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking America is the problem, not the solution.
They don't believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.
It is not their patriotism - it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking. They claimed Carter's pacifism would lead to peace.
They were wrong.
They claimed Reagan's defense buildup would lead to war.
They were wrong.
And, no pair has been more wrong, more loudly, more often than the two Senators from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.
Together, Kennedy/Kerry have opposed the very weapons system that won the Cold War and that is now winning the War on Terror.
Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security but Americans need to know the facts.
The B-1 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, dropped 40% of the bombs in the first six months of Operation Enduring Freedom.
The B-2 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hussein's command post in Iraq.
The F-14A Tomcats, that Senator Kerry opposed, shot down Khadifi's Libyan MIGs over the Gulf of Sidra. The modernized F-14D, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered missile strikes against Tora Bora.
The Apache helicopter, that Senator Kerry opposed, took out those Republican Guard tanks in Kuwait in the Gulf War. The F-15 Eagles, that Senator Kerry opposed, flew cover over our Nation's Capital and this very city after 9/11.
I could go on and on and on: Against the Patriot Missile that shot down Saddam Hussein's scud missiles over Israel, Against the Aegis air-defense cruiser, Against the Strategic Defense Initiative, Against the Trident missile, against, against, against.
This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?
Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than twenty weeks of campaign rhetoric.
Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are. How you vote tells people who you really are deep inside.
Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.
Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide. John Kerry, who says he doesn't like outsourcing, wants to outsource our national security. That's the most dangerous outsourcing of all. This politician wants to be leader of the free world.
Free for how long?
For more than twenty years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure. As a war protestor, Kerry blamed our military.
As a Senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harms way, far-away. George Bush understands that we need new strategies to meet new threats.
John Kerry wants to re-fight yesterday's war. George Bush believes we have to fight today's war and be ready for tomorrow's challenges. George Bush is committed to providing the kind of forces it takes to root out terrorists.
No matter what spider hole they may hide in or what rock they crawl under.
George Bush wants to grab terrorists by the throat and not let them go to get a better grip. From John Kerry, they get a "yes-no-maybe" bowl of mush that can only encourage our enemies and confuse our friends.
I first got to know George Bush when we served as governors together. I admire this man. I am moved by the respect he shows the First Lady, his unabashed love for his parents and his daughters, and the fact that he is unashamed of his belief that God is not indifferent to America.
I can identify with someone who has lived that line in "Amazing Grace," "Was blind, but now I see," and I like the fact that he's the same man on Saturday night that he is on Sunday morning.
He is not a slick talker but he is a straight shooter and, where I come from, deeds mean a lot more than words.
I have knocked on the door of this man's soul and found someone home, a God-fearing man with a good heart and a spine of tempered steel.
The man I trust to protect my most precious possession: my family.
This election will change forever the course of history, and that's not any history. It's our family's history.
The only question is how. The answer lies with each of us. And, like many generations before us, we've got some hard choosing to do.
Right now the world just cannot afford an indecisive America. Fainthearted, self-indulgence will put at risk all we care about in this world.
In this hour of danger our President has had the courage to stand up. And this Democrat is proud to stand up with him.
Thank you.
God Bless this great country and God Bless George W. Bush.
One thing though, the good senator should learn to pause to give the audience time to cheer.
Posted by steve @ 10:25 PM EST [Link]
~ HEWITT TAKES ON MCAULIFFE: Hugh Hewitt interviews Terry McAuliffe at the Republican National Convention and posts the transcript. I say "interviews" in the theoretical sense because McAuliffe apparently doesn't know a damned thing. Read for yourself and judge.
Posted by steve @ 06:32 PM EST [Link]
~ SHOULD KERRY APOLOGIZE?
The Swift Boat Veterans have called on John Kerry to apologize (among other demands – see Steve’s earlier post). Sean Hannity has said repeatedly that Kerry should apologize to all Viet Nam veterans for Kerry’s disgraceful, dishonest, insulting slander and libel before the senate committee in 1971.
But what would an apology accomplish? Answer: Nothing. John Kerry not only made the insulting statements 33 years ago, he has never recanted them. He did irreparable harm to the honorable reputations of 2.5 million Viet Nam veterans. An apology now will do nothing to reverse the damage that he did. This late in the game, it would be nothing but a hollow gesture.
While the Swift Boat Vets’ letter to Kerry is a good start, I don’t think it goes far enough. I think that, at a minimum, Kerry should resign from public office and promise never to run for a taxpayer funded office ever again. Instead of an apology, Kerry should be willing to pay $1,000,000 to each and every Viet Nam veteran to compensate for the insulting, slanderous comments he made. Kerry should be required to deliver the payments in person to every former Viet Nam POW, and admit that the communist enemies who held them used his own comments to torment prisoners. He should either admit he lied about committing war crimes himself, or turn himself in to federal authorities for prosecution, with a written confession (there is no statute of limitations on war crimes). Kerry should immediately, along with his resignation letter, submit a signed for that will release all his service records, then post every page, unedited and unaltered.
I will never forgive Kerry for his disgusting, un-American, anti-military performance over the past 33 years. John Kerry is no hero. He created a wound in 1971 and has been scratching at the scab ever since. Only by submerging himself in obscurity will the wound ever heal.
cb
(The opinion expressed herein is the writer's opinion and does not necessarily reflect to opinion of Enter Stage Right, its editor or other contributors. The author remains solely responsible for the opinion expressed. -- cb)
Posted by clbloomer @ 01:59 PM EST [Link]
~ “I RESPECT HIS WAR RECORD, BUT….”
I’m tired of hearing it.
I realize that most writers tend to say similar words about Kerry -- I expect in order to prevent the inevitable attacks from Kerry sycophants that will detract from the main point of a column.
I may be too cynical, but I don't think that Kerry's motivation in going to Viet Nam was to "do his duty", to protect America, to fight communism, or to show what a patriot he was. I think that Kerry was more interested in "punching his ticket" for his political future.
Remember that JFK is Kerry's hero. Much was made of JFK's PT109 adventures when he ran for president. Kerry no doubt felt that a similar adventure would make him a hero and improve his chances when running for office. Kerry took a calculated risk by going to Viet Nam as a Swift boat commander. Yes it was a dangerous job, but the vast majority of Swift boat sailors survived the war.
If Kerry were really serious about doing his duty, he would have stayed for a normal tour length rather than accumulating 3 Purple Hearts (under dubious circumstances) in 4 months and bolting for home.
Kerry is a political weathervane. He blows with the prevailing wind at any given time. When he returned from Viet Nam and got an early out from the Navy, he realized that the loudest opinions were opposed to the war in Viet Nam. He would not be able to use his war hero status to run for office. So he became a loud, extremist spokesman for the anti-war movement, going so far as to slander the real honorable Viet Nam veterans (who actually did their duty) by lying outright about the actions those real veterans took. Again, his position was that which he felt would maintain his political viability, and one that showed his total lack of core beliefs.
Now that being a hawk is more likely to please the electorate, Kerry is once again touting his Viet Nam service -- to the exclusion of his other history in office. He has wet his finger and stuck it up into the wind and found that the American people want a strong leader who can effectively fight the war on terrorism. Bush has shown his mettle since September 11. Since Kerry has no other card to play in his deck, he is trying to convince the voting public that his 4 months in Viet Nam (but nothing since) trumps Bush's successful actions to date.
A real, honest man who went to Viet Nam to do his duty honorably would not come back and proceed to tell the lies that Kerry has told. There are other Viet Nam vets who became anti-war, but they did so out of honest conscience. They protested the war without dishonoring the men and women that did the fighting.
So, in my view, John Kerry deserves no respect for his Viet Nam service. He did not do his duty for America, for freedom, or for the victims of communism. John Kerry did whatever he thought was in the best interest of John Kerry -- whatever he thought would promote the cause of John Kerry's political fortunes.
cb (The opinion expressed herein is the writer's opinion and does not necessarily reflect to opinion of Enter Stage Right, its editor or other contributors. The author remains solely responsible for the opinion expressed. -- cb)
Posted by clbloomer @ 12:55 PM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: I have a piece in today's Kitchener-Waterloo Record about the latest pronouncement by the provinces that more health care funding is needed. My argument? If we really want a system in Canada that works we can consider other avenues besides simply dumping more money into it. Pick it up at the newsstand or read it after the break.
[more]
Posted by steve @ 12:29 PM EST [Link]
~ SIGNS OF DESPERATION
With only 61 days left until the Presidential election, John Kerry is beginning to feel his uncontrollable slide down the slippery slope to oblivion. Very late in the game, Kerry is revamping his campaign staff. Is it too little, too late? Probably. It is too late to convince voters that his lying, deceitful nature is not the "real" candidate.
Read the story here.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 11:01 AM EST [Link]
~ "WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?"
James Taranto of Best of the Web found this entry on the Democratic Underground
website:“I had a horrible experience canvassing today. We went out canvassing Democrats
today to ask them to support Kerry and our local candidates. We were in
apartment complexes and lower middle class housing. The young Democrats living
there told us they were voting for Bush! We even met a young marine who said he
was just back from Iraq and supports the war, which is why he is voting for
Bush. These people have nothing and they are the ones Bush is hurting the most,
and yet they support him. And they are registered Dems and young. Why is this
happening. I thought our base was solid. This is very frightening. We walked for
five hours and only met two people who supported Kerry on our Democratic list!
What does this mean?”
It means the Dems are losing. It means the American voters are smart enough to realize that the War on Terror is far and away more important than socialist government promises. It means the Dems don't have a clue. It means that no one believes John Kerry will protect the country better than George W. Bush. It means that on Novermber 2nd, the Dems will be cast into the outer darkness for a very long time. It means that Liberalism is a losing cause. It means that Liberals Democrats need to crawl out of their Polyannaish-Utopian-Socialist-Victimhood-Government-is-the-Solution dream world and face the realities of a threatening world that contains vicious people who want to destry us and our way of life.cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 09:32 AM EST [Link]
~ POLITICAL PRISONER?: Shawn Macomber shows us why we should not get caught up in a group of anarchists.
Read on.
Posted by antle @ 12:33 AM EST [Link]
~ LUCKY FOR 2008 PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFULS THAT ARNIE CAN'T RUN: Well, it appears the big hit so far at the RNC are the moderates. Arnold Schwarzenegger channelled some Ronald Reagan tonight and did what I thought was a damnably good job promoting the idea of optimism and the war against terrorism. I think, however, that Arnold needs to lay off the movie taglines. I wasn't counting but I think he referenced his movies three times during his speech. And Richard Nixon was the reason Arnold became a Republican? Weird. That said, I think Der Governator has made the best speech at the RNC. We'll see if Zell Miller can top him Wednesday night.
I'm going to cut the Bush daughters some slack. At 22 I would have been a sweating, stammering moron while speaking at a nominating convention so I'll go easy on the ladies' speech. They tried to be funny but with a conservative crowd you aren't exactly going to go Don Rickles on people. Still, they had some good lines and set it up nicely for their mother. Professor Glenn has some links to varied opinions on their performance.
Laura Bush had a tough act to follow after Arnie but I think she did a nice job. ABC says she polled well among women and that never hurts a Republican candidate. A man could do so much worse than Laura Bush as a wife.
Ann Althouse has a roundup of Day 2.
[Musings Archive Index] [Back to New Musings]