All posts by Rand Simberg

Political Commentary

Not So Lucky Any More

Somehow, this headline takes on an irony that wouldn’t have been discernable when it first appeared, over three weeks ago, right after the Dem’s convention.

It will be quite amusing, and poetically just if, after raising hundreds of millions for these Dem-supporting groups to disseminate spin and lies, Kerry’s campaign is sunk by a small group of dedicated Navy veterans and a few hundred thousand dollars. By the way, their fund raising has apparently been going great guns since the story has gained traction. They reportedly raised almost half a million yesterday alone.

Campaign finance laws are a disaster, and I agree with Andrew Stuttaford that signing McCain-Feingold was one of George W. Bush’s more shameful acts as president. Even Michael Kinsley on NPR said this morning that the situation is hopeless, and that we need to get rid of all the rules, and just have full disclosure. I agree.

[Update a little after 11 AM PDT]

Power Line has a nice roundup of reader commentary on the Swiftboats, almost all of which is more intelligent than what we read in the vaunted mainstream press. Example:

The men who were best able to observe and judge John Kerry’s performance in combat were the men who had the same level of training and expertise that he did; and those are the young officers and noncommissioned officers who commanded the boats operating in close proximity to his, young men whose very lives depended on the coordinated action of all units participating in any particular mission. Successful riverine combat maneuvers require inordinate observational skills. So were these officers and NCO’s, all of them skilled observers, asleep at the wheel while some pillaging preppie ravished the countryside unbeknownst to all but himself?

Well, if you will but listen to them, no, they weren’t. These men, these Swiftvets, several dozens of them, who ate, slept and fought with John Kerry will tell you that, no, they were quite aware of what was going on around them, and that their recollection of events is far different from those attested to in Congress by their onetime comrade in arms. They are as befuddled as the rest of us that a man who launched his political career on claims of being duped into committing war crimes in an unjust war wants to now use his service in that war as the foundation of his campaign for the presidency.

Think about this: John Kerry had to know that his fabrications were ultimately unsustainable and that the men he falsely condemned would not remain silent were he to run for the presidency. Yet he has ignored that reality and attempted to build his whole campaign on his wartime service and his questionable awards. It would be interesting to hear what a psychiatrist might conclude from such bifurcated reasoning. Which brings us, unavoidably, to this question:

Does this sound like the kind of judgment we want in a Commander in Chief in this time of terror?

Political Commentary

That Will Help

According to Brit Hume’s show, Kerry is being defended by a group of expatriate Americans. In Hanoi.

[5 PM update]

Here’s the link.:

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam veterans supporting John Kerry for president made their case Friday in the heart of what was once enemy territory.

Calling President Bush a draft dodger, the veterans in Hanoi donned T-shirts emblazoned with “Americans Overseas for Kerry” and showing Bush’s face with a line crossed through it.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. Maybe they can help elicit more support for Senator Kerry from “foreign leaders.”

Political Commentary

Full Melt-Down Mode

It’s being reported that the Kerry campaign is going to petition the FEC to pull the Swift Boat ads.

[voice=”Jack Nicholson”]
The truth? You can’t handle the truth.
[/voice]

This bespeaks desperation. And these folks call Republicans Nazis.

I wonder what their grounds for this egregious violation of the First Amendment will be?

Economics

Here’s The Inevitable Article

…on “price gouging” (otherwise known as the law of supply and demand) in the wake of Hurricane Charley. The Mises Institute preemptively responded to this, but it never slows down the economic ignoramuses at the New York Times:

Janet Snyder, a pharmacy technician in Cape Coral, said several men in two pickup trucks spotted her roof damage and offered to lay down a temporary covering of plastic sheeting. They wanted $600, about four times what she figured was the right price, based on 15 rolls of plastic that usually sell for $10 each.

OK, so Janet is clearly no business major, but how dumb is the reporter to pass this on without comment? She seems to think that the men’s labor should be free, and that she should only have to pay for materials. In the real world, even with no hurricane, she wouldn’t get free labor. She certainly can’t expect it when there is so much to be done.

Economics

Here’s The Inevitable Article

…on “price gouging” (otherwise known as the law of supply and demand) in the wake of Hurricane Charley. The Mises Institute preemptively responded to this, but it never slows down the economic ignoramuses at the New York Times:

Janet Snyder, a pharmacy technician in Cape Coral, said several men in two pickup trucks spotted her roof damage and offered to lay down a temporary covering of plastic sheeting. They wanted $600, about four times what she figured was the right price, based on 15 rolls of plastic that usually sell for $10 each.

OK, so Janet is clearly no business major, but how dumb is the reporter to pass this on without comment? She seems to think that the men’s labor should be free, and that she should only have to pay for materials. In the real world, even with no hurricane, she wouldn’t get free labor. She certainly can’t expect it when there is so much to be done.

Economics

Here’s The Inevitable Article

…on “price gouging” (otherwise known as the law of supply and demand) in the wake of Hurricane Charley. The Mises Institute preemptively responded to this, but it never slows down the economic ignoramuses at the New York Times:

Janet Snyder, a pharmacy technician in Cape Coral, said several men in two pickup trucks spotted her roof damage and offered to lay down a temporary covering of plastic sheeting. They wanted $600, about four times what she figured was the right price, based on 15 rolls of plastic that usually sell for $10 each.

OK, so Janet is clearly no business major, but how dumb is the reporter to pass this on without comment? She seems to think that the men’s labor should be free, and that she should only have to pay for materials. In the real world, even with no hurricane, she wouldn’t get free labor. She certainly can’t expect it when there is so much to be done.

Political Commentary

Well, Now We Know

We now know why the Paper Formerly Known As The Paper of Record has waited so long to report on Senator Kerry’s Excellent Southeast Asia Adventure. They had to gather enough chaff to thoroughly obfuscate the issue. Reading this piece, it’s clear that the primary motive is not to report all the available facts, but to put up a solid phalanx against anyone standing in the way of John Effing Kerry becoming the next president. I’m sure that bloggers with much more time than I will dissect it line by disingenuous-and-one-sided line.

And so the media suck up to the Democrats, and associated decline in its credibility, continues.

[Update on Friday morn, and ignoring the brouhaha in the comments section]

The dissection begins. And Patterico lays off the LA Times momentarily to go after the Gray Lady as well:

The article accomplishes something that I would have thought impossible just two days ago. It makes the L.A. Times’s coverage of the Swift Boat Vets look (almost) like responsible journalism.

That’s gotta hurt.

Space

Flawed Premises

Thomas James mildly fisks a clueless space policy op ed.

By the way, I just got a complaint in the previous post that I’m doing too much politics, and not enough space stuff.

Maybe. I just don’t see that much going on in space right now worth commenting on, and if you browse through some of the space related blogs to the left, you’ll see that there’s not much activity there either (other than at the always-prolific Clark Lindsey’s site).

Maybe it’s just the dog days of August (and my continuing travails in getting the California house rented and finally getting to Florida), but I’m also getting a little burned out on space commentary. After almost three years of this, and a couple years of Fox News columns, I start to feel like I’m repeating myself. In addition, I just finished up a several-thousand word essay for The New Atlantis (in the mail to current subscribers, probably on line about the beginning of September, at which point I’ll put up a link to it), and I’m expanding it into a book, so I don’t have a lot of space energy remaining to blog about it unless something really topical pops up.

And I find the story of how the press is AWOL on Mr. Kerry’s tall tales, and clearly desperate to prop up his candidacy, the most fascinating thing going on right now.

Maybe Andrew can pick up the slack, but I suspect he’s busy as well.

[Evening Update, with thanks to Glenn for the link]

Per Bill Maron’s comment, I don’t think that space is an unimportant issue for this election. I think that, at least for those interested in space, it’s a very important one and an important election, and that Kerry would be a return to the stagnation of the nineties. But there are still over two months to the election, and most people aren’t really paying attention yet. To the degree that I’m going to invest much energy, mental or otherwise, in the subject, I think that it would be a better investment to do so in October rather than August.