August 31, 2004

If things start looking a little funny today

It's because I'm playing with the templates. If everything works OK, you shouldn't see any changes. Just a bit of housekeeping to make it easier for me to make changes to the site.

Posted by John Bono at 06:33 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

August 30, 2004

Now the Telegraph's done it

Back at the old homestead I once had a post about how the Independent had an editorial about a speech Bush made, which was published 6 hours before Bush actually made the speech. Now the London Telegraph's done the same thing.

Headline: 'Mayor of America' compares Bush to Churchill
Time of posting, no later than 9:38 pm EDT.

Guiliani's actual speech? 10:30pm EDT.

Posted by John Bono at 10:48 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Watching McCain

And these lovely anarchists who seem to think that free speech only applies to the left. One makes me proud, the other makes me ill.

Update: To the commenter below--Michael Moore fled the Convention.

GOP 2004: Moore May Not Return to MSG

NEW YORK Following all the commotion Monday night, Michael Moore may not return to Madison Square Garden for the Republican National Convention. According to editors at USA Today, which is publishing his daily column this week, Moore told them that he was choosing not to return again.

However, they said he would continue to write his daily column and they stressed that in no way did they second-guess their decision to have him write the commentary.

Yep--there's "courage" for ya.

Posted by John Bono at 10:26 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Four More Years!

Listening to the boos at the mentioning of a "certain disingenuous filmmaker", I don't think Michael Moore is very well liked here.

Posted by John Bono at 10:17 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

ABC News promises to not mention polls again

At the Opening of GOP Convention, Currents Shift Toward Bush

Aug. 30, 2004— The ice in the river is thick, but the currents have moved in President Bush's direction.
As his nominating convention kicks off, an ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Bush has erased most of John Kerry's gains on issues and attributes alike, retaking a sizable lead in trust to handle terrorism, moving ahead on Iraq and battling the Democratic presidential nominee to parity on the economy — the three top issues of the 2004 campaign.

Well, I guess ABC News won't be mentioning polls again. Election coverage is going to be awful dull in the next two months. No polls on the news, all the blather about "50/50" and a "horserace", all so that Bush can win 40+states in November.

Posted by John Bono at 09:44 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Exactly why

Is the GOP allowing someone from the Nation of Islam to address the Republican Convention?

Posted by John Bono at 08:00 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

August 29, 2004

Moonbats in the mist

Originally, I was going to make a long, detailed blog post about being a volunteer for the convention, and how it was a pain in the tail to volunteer, with lots of small and great slights I endured.

After today, though, all those things are a distant memory. The reason why was because, from the moment I got on the Metro-North Train, I was stuck in the Land of Moonbat, with only a small break when I volunteered.

First, my morning. I went down to Bedford Hills, and got on the inbound train to Grand Central Station. Normally, on a Sunday Morning, this train is pretty empty. It is off peak, so the train runs hourly, and makes about 10 stops from the town of Southeast in Putnam County, to White Plains, in Westchester. If I'm not running late, I board up in Southeast. If I'm running late, I'll board farther south, because I can pick up about ten minutes by going on the expressway at seventy-fivethe posted speed limit, and stopping every 3 miles the way the train would.

With that in mind, I reach the Bedford Hills station about 20 minutes before the train arrives, and I go up to the ticket machine to buy a ticket. $16.50, off peak, round trip. I sit down on a bench on the platform, and wait for the train to arrive. As soon as the train reaches the platform, I see it. BUCK FUSH! Oh shit. It seems as though the Brewster Line(In Blue) is the Connecting Line from Vermont to Grand Central Station.

Ugh.

Here I am , in my stylin' Host Committee Volunteer Golf Shirt, and I'm stuck on the Moonbat Express. Take your pick of moonbats. Commie moonbats, enviromental wacko moonbats, and Moveon Moonbats. Never, in my life, have I more desparately wanted to be able to hand out a palletload of Ivory Soap. Also, never in my life have I so desparately wanted so many braless women to put bras on. Note to Lady Moonbats: Being braless at 60 isn't a political statement, it's a method to induce vomiting.

As I'm going down, I'm being quiet, listening to the moonbats talk to each other. "Oh, he's such a unilateralist." "We're killing thousands of innocent men, women, and children." "Vegetarianism is a great way to get in touch with nature." Mr. Vegetarian, whom I heard speak often of the environment in hushed tones to his seatmate, eats a bananna and an orange. After eating the orange and bananna, having the peels left over, he(amazingly enough), does the civic minded thing, and asks the conductor where to discard the peels. After the conductor tells him to throw it out in the trash when we reach Grand Central Station, he manages to do the most appropriate moonbat thing: He throws the peels under his seat.

As we file out of the train, I took a few pictures of the moonbats as they filed out of the train. Because I forgot to get a flash, and because my camera sucked, though I did manage to snag a couple of them:

After that initial brush with moonbattery, I went to the Sheraton on 53rd and 7th Avenue. to do my bit as a volunteer. The Sheraton on 53rd and Seventh Avenue is not the Sheraton on 51st and Seventh Avenue, something that the volunteer committee could have mentioned when I signed up. They are, nonetheless, about 200 feet apart. My job, which was "valuable" according to the Volunteer committee, was to go to the airport and hold this sign:

I also got an ID, to show how important I was(sorry, no picture--my scanner sucks). We go to the airport, and stand near the baggage carosel. This was similar to what I did Friday, except this time, I was in Newark, and not LaGuardia. Each time we see someone we think might be a delegate, we're supposed to say, "Welcome to New York." Except, we're not in New York, but in New Jersey, and most of the people coming aren't delegates, since most of them arrived in New York on Saturday. We do our "Welcomes for about 3 hours, and the head volunteer guy tells us to pack it in. Nonetheless, we do bag one delegate, who rides with us on the bus back to the Sheraton.

Unlike Friday, today, the joint is jumpin'. Delegates are all over the place, in suits etc. My home state is there, though I didn't see anyone I recognized. The governor is from my home town, didn't see her either. Jodi, in case anyone from your office reads this, my dad says Hi. I went in to the hotel, bought a Viva Bush! pin, and set out on my intrepid quest to photograph the moonbat in its natural habitat.

As I leave the hotel, I stop and ask a cop how to get to the moonbat gathering. He looks at me, looks at my volunteer golf shirt, my Viva Bush! pin, and thinks I am insane. I tell him that I'm going so I can take pictures, and later mock the protesters on the internet, and we become best buds. He listens to the radio, and tells me the moonbats are hanging out around Madison Square Garden, and if I go there, I'm bound to run into them.

So, with that knowledge, I head down to the subway, and take the train to MSG. I don't actually want to go to the garden. I just want to get outside the garden so I can watch the moonbats in their natural habitat. However, it seems as if every entrance from under MSG to the outside world is blocked by cops, and there are dozens of signs which point people to exits which are also blocked. Finally, I have to completely retrace my steps, and make it to the outside world. Leaving the entrance, MSG is about a block and a half away. I hear the sound of the mating call of the moonbat(drums, you know), and walk down 32nd street to meet up with them--and this is where the fun really begins.

(A bit of a dial up warning for you folks running 56K)

When I approach the parade of moonbats, they denote the seriousness of their cause by mocking the deaths of American troops.

Of course, when moonbats hold a mock funeral, they need a mock mourner. And nothing says, "I'm an insane lefty moonbat" than wearing a pair of speedos:

And no mock funeral is complete without mock funeral drummers:

Of course, if you are going to have a mock funeral, you also need a giant puppet. A mock funeral is just no good without a giant puppet.

Of course, the Moonbats aren't just about the war. They also want to preserve the environment:

Then of course, being lefty moonbats, moral equivalence is the theme of the day:

Yep. That's right. Because GWB killed a few terrorists on the way to ending a genocidal regime, he is just the same as Saddam Hussein, who killed over a million people, and terrorized an entire nation, all so for his own power.

I don't know. I think Bush does better with the Klingon demographic:

Let them eat war. Or a badly painted cardboard sign:

Off in the distance, I saw a kindred spirit. The Protest Warriors were in town, and gave a sole note of sanity to the vast pool of insanity I saw:

The problem was that in order to get there, I had to cross under Broadway using the subway stop, though they had a few good signs:

As much as I wanted to stay and talk to these guys, that wasn't my mission today. As a Minion of the Great Satan, my mission was not to lend support, but to use my wiles to investigate and expose the moonbats. So, reluctantly, I bid adieu, and discovered yet another example of moonbat environmentalism:

Free the Protozoa Six!

I walked 15 blocks, and this was the first Che T-Shirt I saw. I felt cheated:

Dark Helmet was there:

This picture is particularly despicable. The moonbats took a flag that was over 108 years old, painted a peace sign on it, and let people walk on it. The flag had been through 7 wars, seen 6 states added to the union, and these moonbats saw fit to deface it and walk on it:

"Capitalism is evil! Bush is Evil! Want to buy a T-Shirt?"

If I spelled Hypocrisy using Anti War posters, would that have some deeper meaning?

"I'm not a transvestite. I'm just expressing my solidary with oppressed women everywhere. Oh, and I'm insane too."

Modern Moonbat Technology--inflatable puppets:

"$15 for one--$25 for two, and our Moonbat credentials are impeccable!

And you can't be an moonbat without an incomprehensible dance routine:

Hey, did someone bring the paper mache tank? Where's the paper mache tank? We can't have a protest without a paper mache tank!

Look! A moonbat environmentalist!

Look! Moonbat Environmentalism!

And Fox News had an appearance--sorta:

You can't read the shirt--but it says "Terrorism American Style". There is some significance to placement of the buttons. What, I'm not exactly sure:

Orange Jumpsuit? Check. Incoherent political slogan? Check. T-shirt sales? So-so.

"$15? We'll sell them for $5! We're Blowing them out the door! Crazy Moonbat, his prices are INSANE!"

More spoiled than Alec Baldwin.
More insane than Howard Dean.
Able to leap vast logic in a single bound.

Look! Up in the sky!
It's a bird. It's a plane. It's SuperMoonbat!

And that was my trip to New York. I don't think I'll be taking the train for a while.

Posted by John Bono at 11:28 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

August 27, 2004

Well, this is a problem

I figured it would happen eventually. My HMN/HYN posts are starting to skew
the results This isn't a big deal with the HMN number, but it might dangerously skew the HYN number. Just for those who don't understand, the HMN stands for:

h 0 l d m y n 0 5 e a n d v o t e f o r b u s h/k e r r y

and HYN stands for

h 0 l d y 0 u r n 0 5 e a n d v o t e f o r b u s h/k e r r y

The reason why I had to write in 13 year old warez speak is because if I didn't google would pick it up, and the numbers would be skewed even more. I'm not as concerned about the "mye n05e" as the "yore no5e" numbers. My site adds a serious number of false positives to the latter, and I'm trying make this as accurate as possible(though, to be frank the HYN numbers are really too small to have any value).

Posted by John Bono at 12:00 AM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

August 26, 2004

More changes in the HMN/HYN index

Well, there's been more changes in teh HMN/HYN indices. It looks like Bush has gained(lost) ground on Kerry, as Kerry's HYN(Hold Your Nose) number has dipped to an all time low of 214, and Bush's has increased to 47. Bush has also gained(lost) ground to a lesser extent on HMN(Hold My Nose) number, as Kerry's HMN has dipped to 9370, and Bush's has dropped somewhat less to 162. In any event, I'm considering changing the HMN graph to a log graph to make it a bit easier to compare the numbers. It will also give Kerry supporters a much needed ego boost, considering how badly Kerry is winning(really losing) the HMN race.

Posted by John Bono at 11:49 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Blogging will be light tomorrow

I'll be welcoming people at the airport for the convention. Just call me one of the army of luggage carriers for Bush.

Posted by John Bono at 09:46 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Blogs have no impact

Impact of blogs seen as slight

Adds Michael Wolff, who writes about the media for Vanity Fair: "If you ask me what effect blogs have had on the political season, on the conventions, on the general discussion, I would be really hard-pressed to say. My reaction is that they've had essentially no effect."

Sure. Just ask Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.. No influence whatsoever.

Posted by John Bono at 03:39 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Bush Blowout Watch

Kerry Challenges Bush to Weekly Debates

ohn Kerry challenged President Bush on Thursday to weekly debates from now until Nov. 2 on campaign issues like education, health care and national security.

"America deserves a discussion like we're having here today, which I'm prepared to have with this president every single week from now until the election," the Democratic presidential candidate said.

When a candidate is behind, they want to debate, debate, debate. That way the losing candidate and the winning candidate appear together, which makes the candidate that is behind appear to have the same standing as the winning candidate. This is the political equivalent of Godwin's law--as soon as the Candidate says he wants a debate, he has acknowledged that he is losing. The more debates the candidate calls for, the worse the candidate is doing in the polls. John Kerry wants them every week. I think that speaks for itself.

Update: Geez. I keep making little typso. I mean tippos. I mean I keep tipping stuff wnrog. Whatever.

Posted by John Bono at 03:12 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

We now interrupt our regularly scheduled blogging

For this public service message from the Kerry Edwards Campaign team:

Dear Readers:

As you know, our candidate for President, and esteemed Senator, John Kerry, has been subjected to a campaign of smear and slime by the proxies for George Bush, the so-called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth". In an attempt to make this campaign about the issues, and not about who slimed who, or who smeared who, or who called who a baby-killer, I asked my esteemed former Colleague, Max Cleland, to go Texas and deliver a letter to the President on behalf of veterans who support me, along with a puppy, a kitten, and a baby duck. First, he had one of Karl Rove's minions force a letter on my esteemed colleague, and turned him away:

Then it got worse. First, the President had his Secret Service agents throw the kitten in jail:

Then, to add insult to injury, George Bush took this baby duck,

and in an act of unspeakable cruelty fed that cute, adorable little duck to our troops, without their knowledge:

then, in the final most cruel insult, fed the puppy--TO HIS OWN FATHER!

We at the Kerry--Edwards '04 ask all concerned Americans to call on George W. Bush to stop harassing Disabled Veterans, throwing kittens in jail, feeding adorable baby ducks to our Soldiers, and to stop turning puppies into sandwiches.

We thank you for taking the time to read this message

Sincerely

Mary Beth Cahill, Manager, Kerry-Edwards '04

Posted by John Bono at 12:29 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

August 25, 2004

LA Times mentions polls for the last time

Bush Overtakes Kerry in Latest L.A. Times Poll

For the first time this year in a Times survey, Bush led Kerry in the presidential race, drawing 49 percent among registered voters, compared to 46 percent for the Democrat. In a Times Poll just before the Democratic convention last month, Kerry held a 2 percentage point advantage over Bush.

Mark the date. From this point on, the LA Times will probably never mention a poll again. Bush is not only winning among likely voters, but now among registered voters. I do find this hilarious, considering I made this prediction just about seven hours ago.

Posted by John Bono at 10:59 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Bush Blowout Watch

Yet another Democrat comes out for Bush:

Youngstown's Democratic Mayor Backing Bush

The mayor of Youngstown is an elected Democrat who is throwing his endorsement to the Republican candidacy of President Bush.

The Bush campaign in Washington confirms that Mayor George McKelvey will announce support for Bush. An announcement from the mayor is expected this afternoon.

I don't know anything about the local politics of Youngstown, but when a D endorses an R, that isn't a good sign for Kerry.

Posted by John Bono at 04:30 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Why does the blogroll constantly change?

If you've noticed, I've made a few changes to the blog, mainly in reference to this sites blogroll. First of all, the "Fellow Kafir" title is now a link to a page with RSS feeds of all the sites. The second change is that the blogroll now is randomized. The reason why I did that is because with most blogs, the sites that are linked first are either the most well known blogs, and linked by most people, or they are the blogs that have been around the longest. Often they are the same people. The reason why I randomized the list(and the RSS aggregation), is so that when someone surfs here, the links get spread out to all the sites in the blogroll. Since the newest posts are on the top of the screen, under the old blogroll, only the oldest and most established blogs get primacy of place. Now, instead, everybody gets a chance at top billing.

I know that sounds like a vaguely socialist way of allocating screen space, but links and hits are how bloggers know they exist. Feedback and comments and pageviews are important to many bloggers. Blogging is no fun when noone reads your blog, and if, by randomizing the links, a blogger gets a few more hits, and few more comments, then maybe that blogger will be less likely to give up blogging--and established bloggers will get the hits anyway. That is why there are blog alliances, and all the rest--to give small time bloggers a chance at the big time.

Posted by John Bono at 04:15 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Victory!

The Puppy Blender Flees!

Posted by John Bono at 03:58 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

IBD agrees with me

Investors Business Daily has a story about how Bush has pulled into the lead. They also have a nice graph which measures the level of support for each candidate. Note how it looks exactly like the inverse of my HMN/HYN graphs. Be prepared to see how the press, in the next few weeks, all of a sudden starts substituting "registered" voters for "likely" voters, or, even worse, stops mentioning polls at all. When you hear the press stop talking about the poll numbers, that means they've admitted the election is going to be a blowout.

Posted by John Bono at 03:45 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Major Change in Nose Holding

While Kerry has managed to win(lose) his dominant lead(lost ground) to George Bush in the Hold My Nose vote, the Hold Your Nose vote is showing a major change. For the first time Kerry has managed to drop nearly 60 Hold Your Nose websites. He started the race at 233 HYNs, peaked at 280 on 8/22, and now, 3 days later, has achieved an all time low of 225! Here are the full size graphs:

Again, a major change. I also am making a prediction that Bush's Hold My Nose number will rise a bit after the convention, and make it a horserace. Remember, the HMN number is the more important of the two, since there are far more HMN than HYN.

Posted by John Bono at 03:25 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Boston's Boomer Left Speaks

The Boston Globe Editorial:

It is hard to imagine that anyone reading the full 30 pages of Kerry's testimony would see anything but a thoughtful, anguished young man trying to come to grips with his experiences in Vietnam and spare other soldiers the same. Kerry grieves for the Americans and Vietnamese killed in the war and defends returning veterans against indifference and ill treatment by their country. He calls for more money for military hospitals to treat returning soldiers, especially those with drug addictions. He specifically says he does not presume to speak for all veterans. (The testimony is available at www.c-span.org/vote2004/jkerrytestimony.asp).

Kerry does indeed recount war atrocities described by other veterans of Vietnam -- dramatic testimony excerpted in the ad. This was shortly after Lieutenant William Calley's court martial for the My Lai massacre. It was a painful truth, but it was not an act of disloyalty to try to end the war early and bring more soldiers home. Kerry's views have been vindicated by history

"Kerry's views have been vindicated by history." Remember that. The boat people, the killing fields, the use of Kerry's words to psychologically torture POWs, all that doesn't matter. The Vietnam War was immoral. Therefore protesting the war was moral. That the protests extended the war, and ultimately made us abandon Southeast Asia to Marxism's tender mercies is immaterial. That John Kerry helped bring that about is something he should be proud of, not ashamed. That is why the mainstream press don't want to talk about this. They are composed of people who, for the most part, bought into this worldview, and now, with that worldview being openly questioned, are doing everything they can to defend it. They aren't defending John Kerry. They are defending everything they hold dear.

Posted by John Bono at 02:59 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Stan Crock shows how he got his last name

With this story about how the press leapt all over whitewater, and were appropriately skeptical of the Swiftvets.

The press -- particularly The New York Times -- is playing a far more constructive and thoughtful role than it did the last time such an issue arose in an election year: the Whitewater nonstory back in 1992.

That's right. The New York Times, the paper that waited two weeks to cover the story, is being "appropriately skeptical," even though they haven't even called for Kerry to release his military records? That is appropriately skeptical? And maybe Mr. Crock(oh, the irony of that name) may not have noticed, but people went to jail, including an associate Attorney General. Yep, nothing to see there.

I point this out because I covered this story back then with my BusinessWeek colleague Dean Foust. We did our homework and predicted -- before Prosecutor Kenneth Starr's predecessor, Robert Fiske, was appointed special counsel -- that an independent prosecutor would find no wrongdoing. Seven years and $40-plus million later, Starr reached that conclusion. Dean and I had been able to figure that out. It wasn't that difficult.

But the press failed miserably, the conspirators succeeded remarkably, and the cost was an eight-year-long shadow over the Clinton Presidency.

Yep. There was no corruption at all.

The attacks also are at variance with the recollections of Kerry's shipmates and the captain of a companion boat who's now an editor at the Chicago Tribune. The Times account also noted that many of the critics' financial backers and the critics themselves have close ties to Bush aides and Texas Republicans. The press is putting all of the allegations in context -- something it failed to do with Whitewater.

Yep. Like how Kerry was in Cambodia, but wasn't. And how he got his first purple heart for being wounded in combat, but hadn't entered been in combat yet(scroll down).

Then Mr. Crock(of what?), comes out with this whopper:

Bush supporters are shelling out substantial sums to broadcast the Swift Boat ads in areas with vital swing voters -- who don't necessarily read The New York Times or the Chicago Tribune. Kerry, belatedly, is running some counter-ads.

From LGF, via Silent Running:

MoveOn.org: 2004 Election Cycle.

527 Activity:
Total Receipts: $9,086,102
Total Expenditures: $17,435,782

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: 2004 Election Cycle.

527 Activity:
Total Receipts: $158,750
Total Expenditures: $60,403

Yep--0.3% of MoveOn's spending is big money, isn't it. And SBFT didn't even mention Adolf Hitler in their ad once.

It won't be known until November whether the Fourth Estate can provide a offsetting force against such underhanded efforts. One indication may be whether media around the country follow The Times' lead, as they did in Whitewater. If this happens, maybe the outcome in November will be determined -- as it should be -- on Bush's record for the last four years and Kerry's proposals for the next four. They're a lot more relevant than what Kerry, Bush, and Cheney did four decades ago.

Offsetting force? You mean like how the "balanced press" will carry Kerry's water enough that they'll give him 15 points in the election? You mean like how the mainstream press ignored this story for nearly a full six months plus? And maybe it would be good to focus on who John Kerry is today. But John Kerry isn't running based on who he is today. He's running based on who he was 35 years ago. It is only appropriate that we examine that record detail, and in detail, it comes up woefully short.

Posted by John Bono at 02:30 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

He saved my life too

A commenter on LGF relates how John Kerry saved his life.

Posted by John Bono at 01:08 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

August 24, 2004

All set

Well, maybe. In 15 minutes, if the chrontab works, my rss feed should work every hour, and every time I post. So it should update.

Update: And it did! Cool!

Update: And it didagain! Cool! I'm beginning to sound like the shampoo, rinse, repeat guy.

Posted by John Bono at 10:43 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Sorry, can't do it

Jeff Jarvis wishes we weren't debating Vietnam all over again.

But now, sadly, we've moved from fighting over Vietnam again to fighting over who started fighting over Vietnam again. Reynolds says Kerry violated a truce on Vietnam in American politics.

Can you say "quagmire"? Vietnam was invoked by Iraq-war opponents and they would probably say it was Bush's fault for creating another Vietnam. (Readers of this site will know I am not a quagmirist and wouldn't take the position.)

Well, my fellow Americans, it seems we need to go back on the couch to deal with this Vietnam thing.

But in the meantime, we have a President to elect. Don't we all just want to move on?

No, we can't. Because the central tenet of the Vietnam War--was it morally justified or not?--was never settled. The Boomer Left likes to pretend that the war was immoral and the protests moral. Losing the war cost millions of lives, dislocations of millions more people, and the enslavement of three nations. And the Boomer Left blamed the people who fought that war for every single one of those things, along with the phantom war crimes invented by John Kerry, among others. What the SBVFT discussion is about is the final settlement of that question. They aren't interested in letting bygones be bygones. They aren't interested in letting sleeping dogs lie. They are interested in one thing, and one thing only: vindication.

Posted by John Bono at 07:42 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Day Late. Dollar Short

Drudge has a banner headline about how Kerry has called one of the Swift vets:

KERRY: "Why are all these swift boat guys opposed to me?"

BRANT: "You should know what you said when you came back, the impact it had on the young sailors and how it was disrespectful of our guys that were killed over there."

[Brant had two men killed in battle.]

KERRY: "When we dedicated swift boat one in '92, I said to all the swift guys that I wasn't talking about the swifties, I was talking about all the rest of the veterans."

Kerry then asked if he could meet Brant ["You were one of the best"] -- man to man -- face to face.

Brant declined the invite, explaining that Kerry was obviously not prepared to correct the record on exactly what happened during Vietnam and what happened when Kerry came back.

"They hate me! They really hate me!" What goes around, comes around. Karma's a bitch.

Posted by John Bono at 07:20 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Some changes

I've made a minor change to the blog. First of all, I've built a page with RSS feeds of all the blogs in my main blogroll, which can be accessed by clicking on the Fellow Kafir link on the right. When I get to it, I'll probably include one for regular news sources as well, and perhaps the Alliance and Blogs for Bush blogrolls, though the latter two are a bit more iffy, because syndicating that many blogs may make Hosting Matters(my host) barf a lung a bit on the amount of CPU time it will take. Also, if you notice, the feeds and the list are randomized, new people I've added to the blogroll won't get cheated out of top billing. The archives right now are updated each time I post. I'm going to add a chron job so they'll get updated every two hours or so.

Posted by John Bono at 07:09 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Now there's a shock

McGovern embraces liberalism.

Uhhhh, ya think?

Posted by John Bono at 12:17 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Little change to the blogroll

I made a little change to the blogroll, to spread the linky love a bit. Now, every time I post, the order of the blogroll entries will change. That way, blogs I link to later will not be continually condemned to sitting at the bottom of the page.

Posted by John Bono at 11:25 AM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Payback

Roger Simon writes:

Some people, including a few commenters on here, have welcomed the Kerry/Swiftie controversy as an opportunity finally to exorcise the demon of Vietnam. Good luck to them - that's not going to happen. The Vietnam War is far too complex and murky a phenomenon ever to brook an easy answer, involving as it does the French at Dienbienphu, the Kennedys and the Diem regime, Papa Ho and Country Joe, Boat People and the zeitgeist of a generation. Very few have the guts to revise or even modulate their opinions about all this, even if they wanted to. Some wouldn't dare because it might cost them friends or a paycheck. Vietnam is a sleeping dog that should have been left to lie.

I don't think Vietnam was a sleeping dog that should have been left to lie. And I don't think the Swiftvets wanted to exorcise the demon. What they wanted is a much simpler word: payback. The Boomer Left, which has dominated the media and the democratic party for 30 years, is now finally getting the comeuppance it so richly deserves. They are being forced to confront the heinous acts and deeds they committed when they protested the Vietnam War, and, finally, being confronted with the aftereffects of those deeds. The only mainstream movie that took on the Boomer Left in the post Vietnam Era was the movie
The Hanoi Hilton, which took on Jane Fonda and her anti-war activities directly, and showed precisely how vile the Communists really were. Other than that, the media has never taken a hard look at how the boomer left caused us to lose the Vietnam War, either in fictionalized accounts, or in non-fiction accounts. The anti-war left was portrayed all peace and love, etc. It was also a portrayal that was pure horseshit.

The Swiftvets have forced the mainstream media to do something that they have avoided for 30 years, and tried to avoid talking about for the past 15, lest their treasured preconceptions come crashing down. The Swiftvets have forced the media to actually examine the conduct of the anti-war protesters, their affect on the conducting of the Vietnam War, and how the anti-war movement itself ruined our chances for victory, and tarnished the reputations of millions of faithfully serving veterans. The media wants to sweep this whole thing under the rug, but the blogosphere won't let them. And finally, in some small fashion, after 30 years, Vietnam veterans may get some vindication.

Posted by John Bono at 11:13 AM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

August 23, 2004

Another 8 miles on the bike today

And boy, am I tired. Yes, I know, Charles Johnson does 50 miles a day. Don't rub it in.

Posted by John Bono at 06:31 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

What's old is new again

Oftentimes, a concept that is used for military equipment will go out of favor, only to return years, even centuries later. For example, in for centuries, the infantryman wore armor into battle. By the time the 14th century rolled around, infantrymen were typically armored in full-plate armor, with steel plates covering the chest, arms, shoulders, legs, and a steel helmet covering the face and head. In the 15th century, the trend started to reverse, as firearms became more prevalent, and armorers became less able to construct armor that could stand up to a bullet. By the middle of the 19th century, virtually all personal armor had been eliminated from the battlefield, with the exception of a few cavalry units.

However, in the 20th century, personal armor made a comeback. First, soldiers were given helmets to protect their heads from shrapnel and enemy fire. Second came the construction of flak jackets, which were bulky and unweildy, protected bomber crews from AA fire. Later, with the invention of composites, body armor was constructed to protect infantrymen torsos from enemy fire, and what was old(steel armor to protect against sword strikes) became new again(composite armor to protect against shrapnel and rifle fire)

Take a look at this rifle. It is the Finnish L-39 anti-tank rifle, used in the 39-40 winter war against soviet tanks. Anti-tank rifles like this were common in the early years of WWII. As tanks became larger, heavier, and better armored, these guns became less effective, and eventually were dropped by all the major powers, in favor of shaped charge weapons, typically rockets, like the Bazooka or Panzerschreck.

Now look at this rifle. This is the Barrett XM109 heavy sniper rifle. It has a 25mm shell, a range of 2000 yds, and can penetrate 50mm of armor. Like the finnish rifle, it is semiautomatic. What is old, is new again.

Hat tip: ACE

Update: Almost forgot. If you buy the barrett, here are some helpful tips on how to most effectively use it. And remember these vulnerable areas if PzKfw III comes prowling around:

Posted by John Bono at 11:51 AM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Demonstrate at the Convention! Please!

Personally, I am looking forward to seeing demonstrators at the GOP Convention. I think Bush wants them as well. As has been copiously demonstrated, antiwar demonstrators, once exposed to the light, are going to make complete asses of themselves. Take a few thousand masked anarchists, some giant puppets, and the result will be a large display showing exactly how wacked out the modern left has become. The more radical the protesters, the better it will be for George Bush, and it will be even better if the protesters have chants that sound like speeches heard at the Democrat convention a month ago. The louder the barking moonbats scream "BUSH LIED!!", the more it will remind the middle of the country how much they sound like the primetime speakers at the Democrat Convention, minus the Prozac--and that can't help but make Bush look good in comparison.

Posted by John Bono at 01:06 AM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

August 22, 2004

Bush Blowout Alert

Bush Campaign Expects Small Convention Bounce

Campaign advisers said they expect Bush to gain at most a jump of three or four percentage points from the national attention he and the Republican Party will get during the four-day televised event.

Yeah, right. Using the "Unified Bush Misunderestimate Me Theory," expect Bush to get a 10 to 20 point bounce. Not bad for a guy the Dems portray as "Dumb".

Posted by John Bono at 01:03 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

McGreevey's going nowhere

Much talk has been made of late about how both Democrats and Republicans want McGreevey to resign now, rather than wait three months for his resignation. The main speculation has been whether McGreevey can be pressured to leave before September 3, which is the date after which no election will be held to choose McGreevey's successor. Anyone who thinks the Dems are in any way serious about getting McGreevey to leave before September 3 is in for a serious clue adjustment.

First of all, if the deadline passes, and McGreevey's still in office, a Democrat will take his place until the next general election, in '05. Therefore, by publicly condemning him, yet not taking action to remove him, the Democrats get to keep the office for another year, and hopefully sweep the multiple charges of corruption under the rug in the intervening year.

Second, if the Democrats were serious, they would call for a special session of the General Assembly to vote on articles of impeachment, which would pass by a wide margin, then vote on his removal in the state Senate, which would also vote to remove by a wide margin. However, no special session has been called, and no articles of impeachment have been drafted by anyone, and they only have two weeks to do both.

Third, the Democrats feel safe because they have George Bush running interference for them. [WHAT?!? Are you insane?!?--ed] Nope, not hardly. The big story for the last week of September will be the convention. A large number of the New Jersey Assembly and State Senate, delegation are going to be at the convention, and the convention will be the dominant story that week not only for the national media, but for all the New York Tri-State area newspapers and television. That is temporarily going to suck a lot of the wind out of the McGreevey story. However, once the convention is over, it will be too late, and the Dems strategy of protesting LOUDLY while delaying quietly will work.

Of course, by that point, even if McGreevey resigns, it will be too late. Any lawsuits by Republicans will be quashed by an amazingly compliant local court system(Torricelli option, anyone?), and the only option the GOP will have is to stew for a year, and hope for the best in '05.

Posted by John Bono at 12:15 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

August 21, 2004

Many posts have been written about Chris Matthews verbal rape of Michelle Malkin

But this one sums it up perfectly.

Posted by John Bono at 03:12 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Update on Nose Holding

If you've been following me regularly the past two weeks, I've been periodically posting updates on how many people are holding their nose when entering the voting booth this year. If you've looked at the graphs closely, there has been some changes to the numbers(though it is hard to tell on the small graph. Anyway, here is the big graph of the latest results:

Of late, there has been an increase in both Kerry's and Bush's Hold My Nose and Hold Your nose numbers. However, Kerry still mains a compelling lead, which means he is still losing badly.

Update: Oh, and one thing. I still think those graphs are neat, if I do say so myself.

Posted by John Bono at 02:57 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Psychoanalyzing the Left

Looking at the mainstream media's and the left's(but I repeat myself) reaction to the Swift Vets allegations, the level of denial regarding the story is just astounding. Even during the height of the Clinton scandals, when confronted with ugly facts or allegations, the media did report the facts, even if they did sometimes use language to obscure the more serious allegations.

This time, things are different. In almost a passive/aggressive fashion, the left has basically been whistling past the graveyard on the Swiftvets story. It is almost a mass psychosis, where the only response that the Democrats and the media seem to have is to slime the accusers, no matter who they might be, and no matter what the veracity of the charges are. It is almost as if the Swiftvets attack on Kerry is on something so personal, such part of their inner psyche, that it shakes their world view to its very core, and as a result, it cannot be true. The question is why has these series of ads, about acts that occurred between 33 and 35 years ago, creating this reaction?

When Clinton's pot use and draft dodging were exposed, it didn't create this response. Granted, the blogosphere wasn't there to fact check the mainstream media, but I don't think it would have made much of a difference anyway. Clinton's being a doper didn't really challenge the boomerleft's worldview to any extent. Even the abundant affairs, sexual pecadilloes, and various and assorted tawdry acts never really hit home with the boomerleft. Free Love, right?

But the SwiftVets allegations somehow have touched an open nerve amongst the left wing, and especially amongst left wing boomers. The reason for this, I think, is that these allegations not only attack John Kerry's conduct specifically, but, in the broad sense, they attack the entire moral stance of left wing baby boomers in general. Think about the following statements:

1. The Vietnam War was fundamentally immoral. This is the sine qua non of left wing boomerdom. It is simply established fact that the Vietnam War was a patently immoral act. The South Vietnamese did not believe in freedom, the Viet Cong were no different than the South Vietnamese Army, and Americans were dying to keep alive a corrupt militaristic regime. Kerry, along with other anti-war activists, repeatedly hammered home this point as justification. Of course, millions of Southeast Asians felt compelled to flee only after the Communists won. However, the reason for this is also simple. Nixon did it.


2. Since the Vietnam war was fundamentally immoral, protesting the war was fundamentally moral, and violent/seditious protest, while justified, was only a flawed execution of a moral protest. This is something which is still a fundamental part of the boomer left ethos. The boomer left, which now dominates Hollywood, the mainstream media, and the Democrat party, do not consider the bombings, shootings, riots etc, that were committed by leftist radicals in the '60s and '70s to be as offensive morally as the attempts of police, etc to maintain order. The Guardsmen at Kent State were evil. Robbing a bank and killing a cop to support "the resistance" was merely misguided.(A perfect example of this attitude is this episode(#92) from the series Law and Order. The DA gives a plea bargain to a leftist radical who killed a cop in the early 70s, because "times were different then)"


3. Vietnam Veterans committed unspeakable war crimes as a matter of course, and with the tacit agreement of their superiors. This was one of the key elements of Kerry's Senate testimony. Not only is it one of the key elements of his testimony, it is also one of the key bits of American folklore about Viet vets that persisted in movies for 30 years after Vietnam, and still is considered a simple and irrefutable fact by the left today.


4. Because of these war crimes that were committed, Vietnam Veterans were emotional cripples, and were psychopathically violent. Again, this is an allegation that came out of John Kerry's testimony, and was the prevailing conventional wisdom for at least 15 years, and is, to a much lesser extent, still considered true among portions of the boomer left. The prevailing one line joke during the '70s into the early '80s was about the Vietnam Vet having a flashback and and shooting up a McDonald's, which was the precursor to the "disgruntled postal worker" today.

That is why the Swiftvets are being responded to with such a virulent reaction by the mainstream media. Most of the senior editors, producers, and reporters among the national press corps came of age during Vietnam. Most were either anti-war protestors, or very sympathetic to the anti-war cause. As teens and adults, they bought into the anti-war ethos, and John Kerry's anti-war record was a big piece of that. The Swiftvet allegations not only attack John Kerry directly, they also, by using John Kerry as a proxy, attack the central tenets of the anti-war boomer left. While the Swiftvets aren't saying as much, the import of what they are saying is obvious. Not only is their attack damaging to John Kerry personally, it is also damaging to the entire argument that the anti-war boomer left has made for the past 35 years. And that is why the Swift Vets must be destroyed. If they are proven true, then the Vietnam anti-war protests were deeply wrong, and that just can't be tolerated.

Update: One other point to clarify. This reaction has little to do with John Kerry as a presidential candidate. "Hold my nose" is still true. This has to do entirely with what John Kerry as an anti-war protester means to the boomer left. They consider him morally unassailable in this regard, so attacking him on that turf attacks their own moral certitude as well.

Posted by John Bono at 01:31 AM | Link Cosmos | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

August 20, 2004

For a minute I was in sorrow, but now I'm happy

Bugmenot is back, so you no longer have to deal with annoying registration. If I link to a site, use the bugmenot link at the bottom of the page. And if you get this really ugly registration page, tell your boss that newspaper registration sucks, and he should stop the practice.

Posted by John Bono at 05:36 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did a link ask for annoying Registration? Bug me not!

Different worlds?

Pennywit says that the Matthews/Malkin fight reveals that conservatives and liberals live on different worlds:

Conservatives seem to think the treatment reflects poorly on Chris Matthews. Liberals seem to think the incident reflects poorly on Malkin.

The problem with the interview, and with what I have seen of Matthews treatment of the story, is that it is pretty obvious that Matthews really doesn't give a damn what the facts of the Swiftvets allegations are. In his interviews of both Thurlow and Malkin, and his treatment of John O'Neill, he has not given any of them a chance to lay out their allegations in a cogent manner, constantly interrupting them mid-sentence, and aping the absolute worst characteristics of Bill O'Reilley(whom I can't stand 80% of the time). That was what happened with Malkin. Many of the liberal bloggers are focusing on the "Did Kerry Shoot Himself?" canard. The biggest problem with this is that Malkin never said Kerry shot himself on purpose. Malkin repeated, multiple times, that the wound was self-inflicted according to the witnesses who were quoted in the book, and names two of them on the show.

And things brings up the most important point about why Chris Matthews is incompetent: He has never read Unfit For Duty. I can't believe that he hasn't received an advance copy, or hasn't been able to get one through back-channel means. Here is the money quote from Michele's website:

As the show broke for commercials, Matthews scrambled for his producers to see if what he said was true. And I'm irresponsible? One staffer ran to the office where I had left my copy of the book, and handed it to Matthews, who--for the first time, apparently--started flipping through it. I asked for my book back and politely said thank you. After I left, he trashed me again on the air and his scurrilous charges were repeated by his MSNBC colleague Keith Olbermann, who called me an "idiot."

Matthews has had at least two full shows worth of material on the Swiftvets allegations, and he hasn't read the book that outlines them, and this makes him a hero of the left? If anyone at Hardball or MSNBC had taken the trouble to properly investigate the charges, then I might be able to understand why lefty bloggers think Matthews did a great job. But he didn't, and it is obvious that he didn't(else why would he need to use Michele Malkin's copy of the book?)

And that is why the Swiftvets story hasn't gone away. Because, when it is all boiled down to its essence, there has been no serious effort to refute the actual charges made by the vets. Ad hominem attacks? Yes. Impugning of motives? Sure. But out and out rebuttal data? Slim and none.

Posted by John Bono at 03:16 PM | Link Cosmos | Comments (0)