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logomachy--1. A dispute
about words. 2. A dispute carried on in words only; a battle of words.
logomachon--1. One who argues about words.
2. A word warrior.
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2004-09-26
Flip-flop John from Armentières
What does John F. Kerry’s middle initial stand for? Flip-flop? François? Why be consistent? Let’s use both in a song.
A discussion on the American Dialect Society listserv of Mademoiselle from Amentières gave me the idea. Flip-flop John from Armentières! Think of the possibilities. For instance:Flip-flop John from Armentières, parlez vous
Flip-flop John from Armentières, parlez vous
Flip-flop John from Armentières,
He ain’t been right in 30 years.
Hinky-dinky, parlez vous. Of course you can do better. After a few more minutes thought, I did better:Jean François in Vietnam, parlez vous
Jean François in Vietnam, parlez vous
He bumped his head, he scratched his ass
And said "I‘ll give this war a pass".
Hinky-dinky, parlez vous.
John came back from Vietnam, parlez vous.
John came back from Vietnam, parlez vous.
John came back from Vietnam,
A purple Band-aid on his arm.
Hinky-dinky, parlez vous. So how about a contest of Hinky-dinky verses about John "Band of Mongols" Kerry? You don’t have to limit yourself to military and Vietnam references. Any part of his campaign position, his life, his career will do. Oh yeah, there is that 30-odd year dead spot in his career between the VVAW and the Democratic primary. Well, work around it.
Don't send your entries here. This blog isn't big enough. Send them to James Tarranto at the WSJ’s Opinion Journal. He’ll thank you.
Here are a few more:
Flip-flop John from Armentières, parlez vous.
Flip-flop John from Armentières, parlez vous.
When Dubya said “Clean out Iraq!”
John said, “First check with Jacques Chirac”.
Hinky-dinky, parlez vous.
Kerry kissed the Viet Cong, parlez vous.
Kerry kissed the Viet Cong, parlez vous.
He always sang the Commies’ song . . .
He’ll say we done Osama wrong.
Hinky-dinky, parlez vous.
Jean François has proved his guts, parlez vous.
Jean François has proved his guts, parlez vous.
All Dubya did was fly some jets,
But John pissed off the Swift Boat Vets.
Hinky-dinky, parlez vous. Just remember, "WMD" doesn't scan:Jean François and Jacque Chirac, parlez vous.
Jean François and Jacque Chirac, parlez vous.
Jean talked tough on Double-U Em Dees,
Until he caught the French disease.
Hinky-dinky, parlez vous.
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Poor John Kerry
From an e-mail:He throws away someone else's medals.
He drives someone else's SUV.
He marries someone else's wife and inherits someone else's money.
And he always ends up advocating someone else's foreign policy.
I think we should all vote for him to go be president of someone else's country.
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2004-09-21
Kerry Lied Rally
Logomachon booted from the rally,
Makes young girl cry
Washington, D.C. 12 September) The rally was in North Senate Park, on the North side of Independence Ave. as it goes up Capitol Hill, just opposite Union Station, where I got off the subway. I was four blocks from where I went to high school. As I walked into the rally, a man in a blazer (the only one I saw off the podium) came up and said hello. He had been an engineer attached to Special Forces in Danang and had retired as a colonel.
As we were talking, two younger guys wearing green berets with civvies came over to say they liked my signs. They were from 3rd Group and had come up with a dozen others from North Carolina. As I moved farther into the rally, another man in a rally tee-shirt and beret--with 5th Group flash--introduced himself as Ted Sampley and complimented my sign.
PicturesI wandered around in the bright sun, reading signs and taking some pictures. The crowds never came close to filling the grassy plaza of the park, but it got to be much bigger than shown here, taken at 1348 hours. Several people came up to say they liked my sign or to take a picture of it. The sun was bright in a hazy sky, a lot of people, especially women and their husbands, stayed in the shade.
There was a line at the rally information table, where signs, buttons, and gee-gaws were for sale. A lot of unofficial signs were on display, including one that answered the question, “How is John Kerry like a poodle?"
Joy of our youth
The old Latin Mass that I learned as a boy begins Introibo ad altare Dei; ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meum --"I will go to the altar of God; to God who gives joy to my youth."
Time takes God's gift of youth from every man, leaving in return what satisfaction and accomplishment he has earned, always at least memories.
We earned the right to take some satisfaction and joy in having expended some of our youth to defend our nation and protect the South Vietnamese from the groaning horror of Communism, to take some of God's joy in having turned our youthful vigor to the ways of honor, in having taken up tasks of hardship and even mortal danger to fight evil . . . and in having won. John Kerry with the lies he spread for the enemy stole that joy, stole a lot of it. We needed that joy then, Lord knows, and have missed it in the decades since.
At least we have had those decades. For those who gave their youthful lives in Vietnam, Kerry’s betrayal was much greater.
American soldiers are trained in accord with the ancient Judeo-Christian charge that the soldier exists to respect and defend the widow, the orphan, the bereaved mother. Instead, from the widows and mothers and children left by our comrades, John Kerry stole all the joy they had. He assaulted their belief that their soldier-love had served with love and honor and had died in pursuit of the good and the right. Kerry told them their lost one was a shameful butcher, debaucher, barbarian, who had died a worthless death in a hopeless, dishonest, criminal war. In his betrayal, he is truly guilty of spurning the soldier's sacred charge that he falsely accused others of desecrating.
The programThe master of ceremonies was a radio personality named “Moby”. I guess his heart’s in the right place, but he is one of these non-vets who becomes kind of a GI groupie. His appreciation was a touch on the effusive side. Also, when he led us in the singing of the Star Spangled Banner, he did some cutesy things with the melody.
The speeches were good, often eloquent or penetrating, but I’m not going to give a blow-by-blow recap. To tell the truth, I didn’t take good notes. I spent the middle part of the rally chatting with a cigar-puffing helicopter pilot from the 1st Air Cavalry Division and another vet from the 5th Special Forces Group. (The pilot told me “When I saw your sign, I thought ‘What’s he doing here?’ But then I looked again and realized what it was about.” For the record, none of the Green Berets I met tripped on the irony. Or maybe they just liked the balls of carrying a pro-Kerry sign at an anti-Kerry rally. All the way!)
Here a few things from the speeches that caught my ear. (You can stream the video of the rally from C-SPAN. ) There is a list of the speakers here.
In various ways, the speakers focused on the nature and consequences of John Kerry’s lies and betrayals: Defamation of his fellow soldiers. His fraudulent war record. The public disdain and ridicule suffered by veterans and their loved ones because of the image he created of the derelict, murderous addicted, psychologically devastated Vietnam veteran. The additional lives lost and the additional suffering by POWs caused by his alliance with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese enemy.
There were two other recurring motifs: Welcome home, Veterans, and thanks. I’m proud to be asked to address you, and you should be proud of what you have done.
Navy Captain Larry Bailey (President —VVT): The rally is not about medals, or Iraq. It is about the Truth.
Dexter Lehtinen: Kerry has said his war was one of horror, atrocity, and defeat in order to build his career. Now it is politically advantageous for him to adopt a war of medals and defending his country. His “hope is that he can change his history . . . change his war to our war”.
B.G. Burkett (author of Stolen Valor): Benedict Arnold . . . U.S. allies in RVN had 500,000 troops killed. Kerry told the Senate that our allies were worthless. “I’d like to see John Kerry go to the French and the Germans and say, ‘We don’t want Americans to die [in Iraq], we want you to die, just like [those whom] I said were worthless in Vietnam’ ”. . . Dan Rather’s “National Guard memos” . . . Years ago, when Burkett showed that “Vietnam vets” in a CBS documentary were frauds, Rather and CBS refused to admit error, but they quietly withdrew the video from circulation. . . . Rather, by the way, has claimed to be a two-tour Marine, but he was “kicked out of the Marines after four months” because he couldn’t handle the physical demands. Speaking of being kicked out, there was a small group of shouting protesters on the street behind the stage. The occasional Kerry supporter--or Bush hater, actually--who slipped in, like this guy in a Moveon.org tee-shirt, was removed by the Hill police.
Claude Newbie, Chaplain: Asked for and got respectful silence for his tribute to both the fallen and the ones who came back . . . . Those who “answered the call of their friends and neighbors, and chose to serve rather than flee, to fight rather than hide . . . laid their life on the altar of sacrifice” . . . their wives, and mothers “laid their hearts on the altar of sacrifice”. . . Looked up the mothers and widows of men whose names are on The Wall. Found that the “character that made the guys what they were then came from their background and their heart”.
. . . You who survived are the same kind of person you were then. “It took far more courage to go to Vietnam than to go somewhere else . . . it took far more courage to come home, knowing--because of what was in the media—what to expect. No parades, no welcome-home signs . . . might have to wipe some spittle from your face, some feces from your uniform; or get out of that uniform just as quickly as you can, so you don’t have to kill somebody.” [applause] . . . Recently met the widow of a medic he had known in the 1st Cav. Their daughter still suffers from the trauma of being teased and ridiculed because her father had been so stupid as to get his head blown off . . . “Greater love hath no man, than he that lay down his life for his friends.“ [applause] Moment of silence. The helicopter pilot told me that when he got back from ‘Nam to his home town in Georgia, his friends, and neighbors who had known him all his life, looked at him funny and made excuses to break off any encounter. He had a month’s leave, but he went back to duty after a week. He also thought he had been turned down for jobs because he was a Vietnam veteran. Just recently, a woman at work told me about her first job out of college. She had mentioned at a meeting that her fiancé had been killed in Vietnam. A company vice-president had said “Served him right”. She slugged him.
Heave-hoAt about 1530 hours a policeman came up and told me to get out. He took my elbow in a firm but Geneva-convention-approved grip, and we headed for the North end of the park, away from the Capitol. He seemed to think I should have been expecting the ejection, but I managed to convince him that I really was puzzled.
He said something about my sign, so I showed it to him. That wasn’t controversial, so I showed him the other side of my placard.
“Do you really think that’s a pro-Kerry sign?” I asked him.
He must have started to see the point. When I asked who his supervisor was, he said his lieutenant wasn’t there and volunteered that the rally Marshal had asked that I be removed. Then he added “If there has been a mistake, I apologize”.
I sat down on the group-X bench, one down from the group-W bench where a guy with a “Bush lied” poster was talking on a cell phone. The man I had been talking to in the rally had followed us. His opinion was that I had been expelled because the irony was “off message”. I think Marshal Numbskull really thinks that John Kerry is campaigning for the war criminals’ vote, or else Marshal Numbskull is a Kerry mole.
I went around to the South end of the park. I thought I might be able to find Marshal Numbskull and at least find out what he was up to. It turned out that there was a whole platoon of rally marshals, so I tried to listen to John O’Neill’s speech. John was definitely the crowd’s favorite son. He ripped into Kerry:[paraphrasing] What kind of hero refuses to answer questions? . . . Kerry tried to hide his book The New Soldier. . . . Swiftees overwhelmingly think he is “totally unfit for command”. . . .”Has there ever been an American Presidential candidate who met with the enemy during war time?
. . . Kerry accused his shipmates of wanton disregard for life. . . . The Swift Boats motored slowly along the shore, telling the people through loudspeakers to leave the area. In one day snipers killed three men and wounded 17. . . . Kerry has a distorted, false dark view of history. Yes, we lost Vietnam. But it was a battle in a the larger Cold War. Kerry would say we lost the Alamo but forget San Jacinto, lost Peal Harbor but forget that we won WWII.
. . . The Vietnamese Communist news agency still quotes Kerry as authority for U.S. war crimes, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. I saw that a woman handing out flyers had an official ID badge. It was Amanda, the KerryLied.com Web mistress. She said she knew John Moore, but hadn’t seen him. (He was in the shade of the C-SPAN camera.)
The Kerry Kidz excellent subway adventureThe subway station was full of people leaving the rally. The first train was crowded, so I waited. I stepped onto the second train into a cluster of college girls carrying clipboards and wearing Kerry-Edwards tee-shirts. I could have found a seat, but I stood next to them, curious about what they talked about. I had left my sign on the Group-X bench, and my beret was in my satchel.
Another vet in a yellow shirt got on with his wife. They sat down in the middle of the Kerry Kidz. "We're in the middle of the enemy" said Yellow-shirt. "I hope you all aren't violent." The kids didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about, but he had their attention. One of them saw his “Vietnam Veterans against Kerry” pin. Why was he against Kerry? Because he’s a Communist.
“Oh, I don’t think Communism is so bad” said the crew leader, brightly. “I mean, in practice it’s horrible, but it’s kinda nice in theory.”
A Kerry girl with pulled-back frizzy blonde hair said slowly and sort of shyly, “My father is a Vietnam vet . . . and he’s for Kerry”.
“Then he’s a fool” said Yellow-shirt.
The frizzy-hair girl started scolding him. “Don’t disrespect my father. You don’t know him.” And so on.
A dark-haired woman, a few years older than the Kerry Kidz, slipped into the seat next to me and patted Frizzy-hair's shoulder. Yellow-shirt was letting his anger show, and was probably a bit nonplussed by the politically correct ethos. I watched him get out at a downtown stop, and turned to see that had been weeping and the dark-haired young woman was telling the Kerry crew leader “I think that what Bush has done in Iraq is the right thing”.
The crew leader was flabbergasted. “Bush lied. I mean, Saddam was a horrible tyrant, but Bush lied about WMD.” At that I had to speak up.
“The fact that Saddam was a crazy tyrant was part of the reason for going to war” I said. “After 9/11, we couldn’t take the chance that he still had dangerous weapons.”
“But Bush lied” insisted the crew leader. “There were no WMD.”
“Look at the State of the Union address in 2003” I replied. The dark-haired woman slipped under my arm and back to her friends, muttering “My work here is done”.
I went on. “Bush listed all the reasons for believing that Saddam still had WMD. There wasn’t anybody who didn’t think he did. That’s why some people opposed the war. They warned of months fighting and tens of thousands of casualties.” (The dialogue as recounted here has a coherence and pointedness that it did not have in the event and does not have in my memory. I tended to sputter a bit as I tried to talk and collect my thoughts at the same time. The crew leader was actually pretty well spoken, if not tightly logical. I’ve improved her lines, too.)
“Bush came into office planning to attack Saddam” said the crew leader, shifting the axis of attack a bit. “But all he talked about was WMD.” I demurred on the first point, trying to find a response.
“No, no. He planned from the first day to take out Saddam, but all he talked about was WMD! WMD! WMD!”
“What am I supposed to conclude from that?” I was still vamping.
“That Bush lied! All he talked about was WMD! WMD! WMD!”
Maybe I would have thought to point out that Bush didn’t bring the determination to remove Saddam with him; it was waiting for him. Clinton had made regime change in Iraq U.S policy in 1998, and John Kerry had criticized him for not being energetic enough in pursuing it. And of course it was in the SotU.
But Frizzy-hair was leaning over trying to make out the Kerry Lied Rally badge pinned to my shirt pocket. “What’s that?” she interrupted.
“Kerry Lied rally.” They looked puzzled. I suppose at the campaign mushroom level, opposition research isn’t a big feature. (And it is an awkward thing to talk about with the kids: Well, you see, dear, when daddy was very much younger, he said some things that pissed off a couple of million men . . .)
“We are coming from a rally of Vietnam veterans to protest the lies John Kerry told about us.”
“What lies?” one of them asked. I gave a quick summary of Kerry’s testimony—cutting off ears, etc.--and anti-war activities and their consequences.
The only male among the Kerry Kidz was sitting behind Frizzy-hair. He said something indistinct that sounded like “maybe he was right”. I leaned over and asked “What did you say?” He kept muttering. I was standing over him, leaning closer and repeating my question. I was just trying to hear him, but it must have seemed as though I was trying to intimidate him.
“How do you know?” challenged Frizzy-hair.
“Because I was there” I said hotly. “Eighteen months. Kerry was there four. Why don’t you ask your father about the ears he cut off.”
“Leave my father alone.” Frizzy-hair started to bawl. “He . . . didn’t . . . cut off . . . any ears.”
“Now you know how we feel about John Kerry!”
Frizzy-hair was protesting and the crew leader was berating me.
“She’s the one who brought up her father and said he is a Vietnam vet” I said. “She’s campaigning for Kerry. She’s in the game. Get used to it.”
It was my stop, and the Kerry Kidz’, too. Tenleytown. I grew up near by; we sometimes went to Mass at St. Anne’s on Tenley Circle.
On the stairs from the platform to the turnstiles, I came up with the dark-haired, pro-Bush woman. “Well,” I said, “I made her cry again”.
“She’s only 18” she admonished me (where are the uncaring, heartless Republicans when you need them?).
I considered letting the Kerry Kidz catch up with me, but high feelings might have made it an unhappy reunion. Too bad. The crew leader might have been fun to talk to and educate a bit. At least she could stand up in a discussion.
I ran all the way up the three-story escalator to the street level, just because I still can. Airborne!
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2004-09-20
Campaign blather
"Bush's go-it-alone approach has cost billions of dollars that could have been spent on jobs, schools, and health care"--Kerry campaign.
Wait a minute. Does this mean Kerry wants to increase transfer payments and the Federal take-over of the economy even more than Bush, to the tune of $200 billion? What about the deficit? How does spending money on "jobs, schools, and health care" run up the deficit any less than buying war materiel? And whenever did government spending create jobs?
What the hell does "no plan to win the peace" mean?
To start with, what does "win the peace" mean? This is a new military/sociological category. Maybe it is one of the higher modalities Kerry so likes. Are the Dems saying that the WAR is won? Does it mean that they are going to stop sneering and kvetching about "Mission Accomplished"? Doesn't setting up interim governments at all levels, opening schools, training security forces, creating an environment in which the phenomena of freedom appear--from Internet cafes to political parties--and fighting Baathist remnants, Iranian-backed insurgents, and mujihadin wet-backs count as a plan? (Remember, the Pentagon had a win the peace plan, but the diplomats and CIA junked it, because it wasn't nuanced enough.)
As though getting France and Germany involved is a good plan! As though it were ever going to happen. Half of Germany--well, you've heard of lace-curtain Irish--they're Iron-Curtain Germans and still viscerally infected with the anti-Americanism they learned as children.
France not only instinctively takes the attitude C'est un travail sale. Laisser les américains sales le font. ["Eet ezz a dairty chob. Let zee dairty Americains do it."], France is already more involved in our Iraq policy than any country other than Britain--selling weapons to Saddam, supporting his development programs, taking Oil-for-Food bribes, planting phony documents, strong-arming small countries against joining the U.S., and vetoing U.S. efforts to get the UNSC to enforce its own demands on Saddam. They are really going to jump at Kerry's appeal: "We don't want Americans to die in Iraq; we want you to die there, the way our allies in Vietnam did, the ones I said were worthless. . . not to mention the 30 allies we have in Iraq, who I say don't exist."
Heck. If Kerry can say that the allies that are there aren't there, why don't we just say that France and Germany--Hurrah! Voila Belgium!--are there?
Now, is everyone happy?
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"Any Democrat could have done pretty well . . ."
Don't try to improve on the delectable. From NRO’s Kerry spotAny Democrat could have done pretty well this year--and would be doing better than Kerry’s doing now--by arguing, “Mr. President, you bet the house on what seemed like a safe bet at the time, that we were going to find WMDs in Iraq. You made your bet, and you came up empty. Now our nation’s credibility is shot, and the buck stops with you. It’s not your fault, but anybody who makes that big a gamble and comes up snake eyes just doesn’t deserve a second term.”
. . . Of course, no Democrat could have or would have made that argument, because that presupposes that Bush is a well-meaning, almost idealistic fellow who did what he thought was right and it just didn’t turn out well. The Democratic base voters’ philosophy is that Bush is simultaneously irredeemably stupid and an evil genius, who LIED and knew that we wouldn’t find WMDs in Iraq, who deliberately destroyed his own 90 percent approval rating just to help out Halliburton.
Oh yeah, and his reelection is the end of the world.
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2004-09-18
The Vietnam Veterans for the Truth has "A message from the children of Vietnam Vets about John Kerry".
It's a video that hits just the right tone. At the Kerry Lied rally on 12 September, Dexter Lehtinen said that John Kerry stole our war, and now he is trying to turn his war into out war. But everyone gets the war he deserves.
The video reminds us that John Kerry's lies stole from the children of many Vietnam veterans one of the most important possessions of a child: confidence in his parents and the belief that they are models for what is good. It is bad enough when the parents are guilty of a heinous treachery. No one ever questioned the Left's efforts to protect the children of the Rosenbergs.
For the child of the man who died defending his country, this belief that his father was a man of honor who loved him is particularly important. See the ending of James Webb's Fields of Fire. But rather than trying to protect the innocent, John Kerry cast a pall of horror and dishonor over the memory of their fathers who gave their lives for crimes they did not commit, crimes that he knew they had not committed.
The video is dedicated to the Truth that John Kerry tried to steal from the children, the veterans, and all Americans.
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2004-09-17
Own a bit of history.
Heck, write your own history with these special “Original” CBS George W. Bush Memos, eBay item #5520955343.
Here are dozens of blank pages of paper that could become dozens of memos that CBS News just might love to have on TV . . . . One of these could become a memo that shows George W. Bush was arrested for selling dope and is signed by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy . . . . You could even have a memo that tells us that John Kerry is a War Hero and have it signed by John Kerry, too. Oh, sorry, there are some of those already on his website.
But the more the merrier.
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Obscene equivalence
From an e-mail: Fact is, Bush ducked Vietnam, just like Danny Quayle and Bill Clinton. The Democrats, with their usual breathtaking shamelessness, sneered at Quayle's National Guard service as tantamount to draft dodging. They are making the charge explicitly against George Bush and Dick Cheney. As with all Big Lies, this one involves focusing on one fact while ignoring everything else that was really happening, rather as the anti-anti-Communists portrayed U.S. Cold War policy as though the U.S. were a football team madly running plays on an otherwise empty field. This applies both to those who ended up in Vietnam, like Kerry, and those who didn't, like Bush.
There are two things to consider:
First, in the 1960s, Vietnam was not the only military show in town. While Vietnam got the headlines, and it was certainly the most exciting place, it was just one link in the Cold War containment of the Soviets. Put numerically, the US military had 2.5 million men on active duty; only 500,000 at most were assigned to the SE Asia theatre. In aggregate, 9 million men are "Vietnam-era" veterans, but only 2.6 million are Vietnam veterans (as we like to say amongst ourselves, "There's a difference", to which the response is "F***ing A"). Some even saw Vietnam as a strategic sideshow to the Cold War. The reason some in the officers' corps resisted adapting to the situation in Vietnam was the attitude expressed by one officer, "I'll be damned if I going to see this Army destroyed in order to win some pissant little war".
Second, obviously the choices that men had to make then regarding their military service obligation were more complex than Vietnam or not Vietnam. One could enlist for three to six years; you could reduce your chance of seeing Vietnam or combat by enlisting in a non-combat specialty or in a specialty or service that didn't see much in action in Vietnam (such as armor, or the Navy). One could be drafted (2 years active duty). One could get a student or other deferment. One could claim conscientious-objector status, which might get you exempted or assigned to a "non-combat" job like medic. One could be classified physically unfit. All of these were legal and honorable, unless one obtained a deferment or exemption, as the peace movement encouraged us to do, by various kinds of deceptions, frauds, and lies. More dishonor attaches to those who cheated than to those who simply left the country.
The upshot is that someone had to fill those 6.5 million slots outside of Vietnam--we couldn’t all be lucky. The 14 or so million men who reached draft age during that period didn't all have the same opportunities and choices, but we all had the opportunity to make a choice between honor and dishonor. Bush, Gore, Quayle, Kerry, and Cheney all made honorable choices; Clinton, of course, lied and broke the law.
Whether you put on your country’s uniform or not, went to Vietnam or not, let the why of what you did haunt your sleepless nights, if you like. Whether you played by the rules is all your fellow citizens need to consider. The suggestion that Bush's and Quayle's service in the Guard is the same as Clinton's lying and draft dodging is obscene and irrational; it is literally Clintonesque. It creates a lie about two men that traduces the dutiful actions of million of men.
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2004-09-16
Bob Dole...Hoo-Hah!
Bob Dole condemns Kerry for once again rooting for the enemy and and despising the U.S. soldier.I cannot believe that John Kerry, who reminds us daily of his Vietnam service, would possibly approve the disgusting and demoralizing portrayal of American soldiers fighting for us in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world.
John Kerry has raised doubts about our troops' ability to maintain security as well as Iraqi's ability to decide their own future through elections. He has called the allies in Iraq "window dressing." This is all reminiscent of his appearance before a Senate Committee in 1971 where he suggested with nothing but second hand information American GIs were committing atrocities and war crimes of the worst kind in Vietnam.
This defeatist attitude undermines the great progress and sacrifices of our men and women in the military and the contributions of our allies who are fighting against terror and standing up for freedom around the world.
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2004-09-15
Dan's documents
I think the public, even decent people who may be well-disposed toward President Bush, understand that powerful and extremely well-financed forces are concentrating on questions about the documents because they can’t deny the fundamental truth of the story. If you can’t deny the information, then attack and seek to destroy the credibility of the messenger, the bearer of the information.—Dan Rather [emphasis added]
Oh, Dan, Dan! If I’ve said it once I’ve said it lots of times, if you want to know what the liberals are up to, look at what they accuse you of doing. In their guilt-driven thought processes, they always project.
Here you are, Dan, unable, unwilling to offer any refutation of the mass of information that casts doubt on the authenticity of your supposed National Guard memos about George Bush. So you question the motives and character (in irrelevant ways) of the people providing that information and accuse them of attacking the credibility of the messenger rather than refuting the message.
What makes it especially delicious is that everything you say is a lie.
First, the people challenging the authenticity of the documents are the Pajamujihdin of the blogsphere, hardly powerful and rich, plus the purported author’s family, his former associates, and every forensic expert who has been willing to offer an opinion, including CBS’s own expert. Well, OK, I’ll give you “powerful and extremely well-financed” if you admit that the other broadcast networks, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and various other papers have questioned the authenticity.
Second, contrary to your accusation, there have been refutations of CBS’s story of favoritism and dereliction of duty. However, no argument has been based on impugning the credibility of the persons involved. All questions have been about the authenticity of the documents themselves. There have been questions raised about the unknown persons who supplied and vouched for the documents. But that, again, is a matter of the authenticity of the documents. The only credibility issue has been that raised by your refusal to provide documentation.
Third, if declaring and substantiating that the documents are forgeries is not denying the truth of the story, I don’t know what is.
Fourth, the power and financial resources of your critics are irrelevant, unless you are making the preposterous claim (read: lie) that CB-freaking-S is the David in this kerfuffle. This goes beyond tu quoque, Dan. You are giving a good imitation of the hysterical snarling of the cornered narcissist.
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“Lost” jobs
"Lost" jobs
John Kerry and his band of Mongols complain about jobs "lost overseas" and in the next breath they promise that they will create real, good-paying jobs for Americans. Apparently, they want us to think that the President creates jobs that he casts by the handful to his adoring subjects, like a Renaissance duke scattering ducats. In this they reveal how they see the United States as the heavy in a Marxist morality play.
Kerry's mechanistic, abstract economic model lets him assert with a straight face that a bad President like Bush creates only "poorer paying" jobs that he gives to corporations, so Benedict Arnold CEOs can take them overseas and use them to exploit the impoverished, oppressed masses. John Kerry for some reason wants those crumby jobs kept at home so U.S. workers can be exploited.
Democrats have a faulty idea of what a job is. They confuse it with a position, or in happy-buzz, business mumbo-jargon, an "opportunity". A job is a binary phenomenon: an employer who can gain a benefit from a good or service and an employee who is able and willing to provide that good or service at a cost that doesn't wipe out any benefit to the employer. This definition makes explicit the crucial element of price. It makes clear, for instance, how minimum wage laws destroy jobs and how education and reduced tax rates help to create them.
The definition also makes clear that jobs are not simply exported overseas. One of the necessary conditions for "creating a job" is an employee available with the required skills at an affordable cost. For the most part, those exported jobs would not exist if the foreign workers were not available, because American workers are not available. Many things price U.S. workers out of the global market for certain jobs. Cost of living is a big factor and gets all the attention, but regulations, taxes, and union restrictions (often backed by government regulation) add to the cost of employment. What's more, those imposed costs operate on the margin, which is where decisions are made.
Thus, the make-or-break factors in job creation are under the direct control of politicians. Unfortunately, for Democrats, regulations, taxes, and union rules are also articles of the Democrat faith. Besides that, for all their bemoaning the "export" of jobs, one has to wonder whether Democrats really want to lower the American standard of living. One would expect from this analysis that Democrats find it hard to create jobs, except by coercing money from unwilling purchasers by regulation and taxes. And, lo!, that is what John Kerry proposes.
The Democrats' misunderstanding is compounded of socialist economics and liberal guilt. Marx never did understand the basis of the productivity of a free economy. He just assumed that "capitalism" and its productivity naturally arose in an historical dialect out of the contradictions of "feudalism". Once the economic organization of a society reached the stage of "capitalism", he thought, its productivity would remain, whatever distortions and constraints might be imposed by the state, even a Leninist police state. Intellect, free will, creativity, and entrepreneurship had no part in Marx's historical determinism
Marx's dishwater heirs in the Democratic party have an understanding of productivity that is just as dim. They may have the education and perspicacity to know how the economy works, but their understanding is clouded by their need to infuse all goodness into their desires and to project all wickedness onto other people. Oh, they will talk about Bush's mistakes and declare they will be wise, but in the next breath they will condemn "tax cuts for the rich" and say all Bush really wants is to enrich his corporate buddies and hurt those in need.
The only economy that is real to them is the economy of guilt.
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2004-09-14
Kerry's adverbial distinctions
From an e-mail:Did you see Karen Tumulty's love-fest interview with Kerry?
I noted that all of Kerry's distinctions between himself and Bush are
adverbial: I would not have given up so soon on rallying Frog support. I
would not have gone into Iraq in the way the President did. I would not
have funded the war in the way that the President did. Etc.
Kerry calls this giving the people a "stark choice" in the election.
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2004-09-13
"Tax cuts for the rich" . . .
is like complaining that "Anti-lynching laws benefit only Negroes".
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2004-09-08
Kerry Lied Rally
To the Editor, Phila. Inquirer:
When John Kerry returned from Vietnam, he told Congress and all America that all Vietnam veterans were murders, rapists, and psychological cripples, who had ravaged Vietnam like Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes. Rather than engage in principled opposition to the war, he met repeatedly with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. Then he echoed the Soviet Union's propaganda lies about his fellow veterans, even admitting to having committed war crimes himself.
John Kerry knew he was lying when he abused his position as a decorated Navy officer to help the Communists win where it mattered, with an assault on America's soul and on the honor of America's soldiers.
John Kerry knows today that he was lying, but he has never apologized. Instead he claims his four months as a war criminal in Vietnam qualifies him to be president. He parades his "band of brothers", and forgets the millions of Vietnam vets that he likened to a band of Mongols. He used us once, to start his political career, and he thinks we should let ourselves be used again so he can be president.
That is why I am not voting for John Kerry, and why I am going to the Vietnam Veterans for Truth rally in Washington, D.C. this Sunday.
All are welcome. For more information, go to http://www.kerrylied.com.
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Navy checking Kerry's awards
The Navy is reviewing Kerry awards . The action is taken in response to a request by Judicial Watch, a bi-partisan lobby group, for a full inquiry.
In an angry statement from the Kerry campaign headquarters, Michael Meehan, Mr. Kerry's senior adviser, condemned the navy probe as an expensive waste of the Pentagon's resources.
"The facts are clear," said Mr. Meehan. "The Navy awarded John Kerry the Silver Star, a Bronze Star with Combat V, and three Purple Hearts. This is a waste of taxpayers' dollars and the Pentagon's time, especially during wartime." Especially after they lost all that time digging through George Bush’s National Guard attendance records.
Not to worry. AP is checking Dubya's Guard attendance. Is this a coincidence or a distraction?
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Chirac tried to mislead us out of warRemember the Niger uranium that Bush and Blair “lied about”? The people who made the charge of lying kept pointing to proof that turned out to be forged. Britain and the US allowed the forgeries, but maintained that there was an independent basis for the claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa.
Now the Telegraph reports that Italy blames France for Niger uranium claim. Italy charges that France (1) planted the forgeries and (2) for a while told the US that Iraq had tried to buy uranium. The article also says the French may have been behind the independent confirmation that British MI6 cited. What the article doesn’t say is that US ambassador and temporary CIA investigator Joseph Wilson discovered that the Iraqis had made approaches to buy Niger uranium.
It is no surprise that information came from the French. They control Niger’s uranium mines. What is new is that the French deliberately planted what they thought was false information, in the hope that it would collapse under the UK and US and discredit their justification for attacking Iraq.
In other words, Jacques Chirac tried to mislead us out of removing Saddam. And Kerry thinks he could have done better with these people?
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2004-09-06
Try to remember the kind of September
I have some ideas for posts about Kerry, but it may all be moot.
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2004-09-03
L'honneur de Bush
I wonder what kind of cheese they make
En 2003, il y eut 208 attentats terroristes dans le monde, il y en avait 348 en 2001, soit une baisse de 41%. Le nombre de victimes était de 625 en 2003, contre 3547 morts en 2001 ; soit une chute de 83%. Les femmes afghanes sont libres et la burka – que nos intellectuels français déploraient tant - est tombée, avec elle deux dictatures parmi les plus sombres de la planète. Et les fosses communes découvertes en Iraq, révélant les cadavres de milliers de victimes du régime saddamite, justifient à elles seules l’intervention occidentale au cœur du Moyen Orient. The Web is too much. I could fill my hard drive with links to amazing sites.
Any way, thus writes Bruno José Lebeau in "L'honneur de Bush" at Europolitica, a "Political Revue of French Neoconservatives": Those who have been indoctrinated by TV bimbos with the Chirac view of international relations are wrong, he says [loosely translated].
Then he goes on, in the paragraph above, to list some of Dubya's achievements, while French Jacques and Bohemian-American Jean "Self-Made-Up Man" Kerie have agonized over Bush's "risky" course:
Terrorist attacks: 2001-348 vs. 2003-208. Down 40% [Lebeau has trouble with rounding]
Deaths: 2001-3547 vs. 2003-625. Down 82%
Grim dictatorships ended: 2
Misc: Afghan women freed, the burka buried, and mass graves of Saddam's victims uncovered.
"Political Revue of French Neoconservatives", eh. (Who knew?) I wonder how their cheese is. The Canadian Brie from Trader Joe's just isn't doing it for me.
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Dem reaction to Bush's speech
Dem reaction to Bush's speech
Afer John Kerry listened to the second part of President Bush's acceptance speech, he discovered he had gnawed his leg off. Senator Edwards plans to sue for damages and a Purple Heart.
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