QandO

August 28, 2004

Weekly QandO Roundup
Posted by Jon Henke

The best posts of this past week, linked and excerpted in one convenient place. Read the excerpts and--if it interests you--follow the links. Even if you don't follow the link, I think you'll enjoy the excerpts. And, as usual, check the lower right-hand sidebar for Quick Links to other interesting posts around the 'sphere.
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* Swifties and Rood (McQ) - If I were Kerry, I don't think I'd be touting this Rood fellow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cause that's just different.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because, it would be, you know, wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, where have I heard that before?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The rest of that sentence will not....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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