I’ve complained about this before, but it continues, and it continues to irritate.
I think the president’s doing a lousy job. I think the country’s on the “wrong track.” So according to conventional wisdom, I should be voting for Kerry, right?
Wrong, because I think that he’d be even worse on most issues of concern to me. Am I weird, or are all these so-called analysts misinterpreting poll internals, mistakenly assuming that unhappiness with Bush automatically translates to a Kerry vote?
…why Kerry continues to refuse to sign SF 180 and release all of his military records. There have been rumors swirling about this for a while, but it’s looking more and more like his discharge from the Navy may have been less than honorable.
And much of his subsequent political career has been spent in attempting to repair that blot on his vital narrative of “John Kerry, Vietnam Hero”
There are a number of categories of discharges besides honorable. There are general discharges, medical discharges, bad conduct discharges, as well as other than honorable and dishonorable discharges. There is one odd coincidence that gives some weight to the possibility that Mr. Kerry was dishonorably discharged. Mr. Kerry has claimed that he lost his medal certificates and that is why he asked that they be reissued. But when a dishonorable discharge is issued, all pay benefits, and allowances, and all medals and honors are revoked as well. And five months after Mr. Kerry joined the U.S. Senate in 1985, on one single day, June 4, all of Mr. Kerry’s medals were reissued.
[2:30 PM EDT update]
More thoughts over at the Beldar Blog.
Even if this isn’t the issue, the question won’t go away–why is Kerry and his campaign stonewalling on the service records? If this isn’t what he’s hiding, is it something else? Something worse?
The anti-First-Amendment types are siccing the FEC on the web. How long before they shut down this site because I occasionally have harsh words for Senator Kerry and his blow-dried running mate? Signing McCain-Feingold was one of the most shameful acts of this administration, and that Supreme Court ruling that it was constitutional was a disaster for free speech.
If they really try to regulate the blogs, it may finally start the needed revolution against all of this campaign finance nonsense.
…about Mount St. Helens. At Free Republic.
The comments are hilarious.
The foreign fighters are wearing out their welcome.
Relations are deteriorating as local fighters negotiate to avoid a U.S.-led military offensive against Fallujah, while foreign fighters press to attack Americans and their Iraqi supporters. The disputes have spilled over into harsh words and sporadic violence, with Fallujans killing at least five foreign Arabs in recent weeks, according to witnesses.
“If the Arabs will not leave willingly, we will make them leave by force,” said Jamal Adnan, a taxi driver who left his house in Fallujah’s Shurta neighborhood a month ago after the house next door was bombed by U.S. aircraft targeting foreign insurgents…
…U.S. and Iraqi authorities together have insisted that if Fallujah is to avoid an all-out assault aimed at regaining control of the city, foreign fighters must be ejected. Several local leaders of the insurgency say they, too, want to expel the foreigners, whom they scorn as terrorists. They heap particular contempt on Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian whose Monotheism and Jihad group has asserted responsibility for many of the deadliest attacks across Iraq, including videotaped beheadings.
“He is mentally deranged, has distorted the image of the resistance and defamed it. I believe his end is near,” Abu Abdalla Dulaimy, military commander of the First Army of Mohammad, said.
The French are arrogant, rude and surly, particularly in Paris. Imagine that.
He says they’re way too small.
According to Drudge:
John Edwards: ‘When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk. Get up out of that wheelchair and walk again’…
Yes, and He shall cast the loaves upon the waters, and walk out upon them to gather up the fishes, to feed the long-suffering victims of Republican tax cuts. He shall make the blind see, and the deaf hear, and the dumb speak, and cure the afflicted of their poxen. No one will need Viagra.
Feel the power! Let it course through your body!
The lion shall lay down with the lamb, and the Jew with the Jihadist.
Though I walk through the Valley of MOAB and PGMs and missile defense, I shall fear no evil, because The Beast in simian form, George W. Bush, will no longer be president.
Testify, Brother Edwards! Testify!
Truly, these clowns are becoming a parody of themselves.
[Update a few minutes later]
It just occurs to me that, given Mr. Reeve’s current body temperature, Senator Edwards isn’t just claiming that Senator Kerry will cause the crippled to walk–he’s going to raise the dead.
I found a dumb letter to the editor in my new hometown paper this morning (scroll down):
Use money for space travel to develop alternate fuels
Commercial space travel is a dubious and dangerous prospect for mankind (“Private rocket wins $10 million prize,” Oct. 5). It is bad enough that governments are devoting scarce resources to space travel while there should be an intensive program to develop nonpolluting energy sources. All would benefit if a replacement were found for nonrenewable fuels.
Commercial space travel as well as governmental space programs will benefit only the very few and the very rich. Each venture pollutes and helps to destroy the upper layers of Earth’s protective atmosphere. The few who will partake in space travel will leave the rest of God’s creation choking on rocket fumes.
RABBI NASON GOLDSTEIN
Royal Palm Beach
Even ignoring the scientific ignorance about “rocket fumes” (it’s quite possible and even likely that most rocket exhaust in the future will be di-hydrogen monoxide, or a combination of that and CO2), the good rabbi manages to combine the fallacy of false choice (the notion that money not spent on space will be spent on alternative fuels, particularly absurd in the case of private space travel), ignorance of economics (all innovations initially benefit the wealthy, who provide the initial markets needed to drive down the price to those less so), and the mistaken notion that there will be “few” going into space, and that there is no benefit to anyone doing so.
Jay Manifold has a long, but interesting series of posts on a recent seminar on evolution versus “intelligent design” in Kansas.