ESA (the European one, not the Elbonian one) has some satellite data that validates sailors’ reports of
ship-killing waves.
Mariners who survived similar encounters have had remarkable stories to tell. In February 1995 the cruiser liner Queen Elizabeth II met a 29-metre high rogue wave during a hurricane in the North Atlantic that Captain Ronald Warwick described as “a great wall of water
All weekend I’ve been hearing the sound of loud prop planes here (in Redondo Beach–still getting the house ready to rent). A quick web search reveals that there’s an air show at Hawthorne airport this weekend. At the sound of the most recent one, I went out on the balcony to see what it was. It was a Mitchell bomber, similar to the one in which my father was shot down in Italy (though it may have been a different series–I couldn’t tell at that distance).
There were only two survivors–him and one other, and his crewmate was captured behind the German lines, spending the remainder of the war in a POW camp. My father was the second one out because he was a radio gunner at the waist of the plane, and he came down in Allied territory, breaking his leg on landing. The rest of the crew didn’t have time to bail, or at least to do so and get a chute open. Reportedly, you couldn’t get him in a plane again for many years after that (though he’d gotten over it by the time I was old enough to remember). He’d flown his plane, with his crew, over to Europe (stopping at Ascension Island), but he came home on a troop ship.
It was also the aircraft type that performed the Tokyo raid after Pearl Harbor under Jimmy Doolittle’s command.
It’s only a twin engine plane. The sound of this single one made me wonder how awesome it would have been to hear whole squadrons of B-17s flying over.
Via ESA (the Elbonian Space Agency).
[Thanks to Andrew Gray for the tip.]
He’s not gay. He’s bi.
True (male) homosexuals don’t create children, except through artificial insemination. He can clearly get it up for a woman, even if he may prefer men.
I don’t have a “preference” myself. The word preference implies that one can go either way, just that one is better than the other. Given a choice between a man and Rosie Palms, I’ll take the latter every single time.
I haven’t said much about the McGreevey situation (anything, come to think of it), but it’s clear that it was a clever PR ploy to come out of the closet, allowing him to play victim in our PC culture, and misdirect us from the real issues of his corruption. To really understand the situation, and put it in its proper perpective: what if Bill Clinton had made Monica Lewinski his National Security Advisor? Actually, now that I think of it, he did come close to this, in naming Craig Livingstone as Chief of White House Security. Though I’m pretty sure he wasn’t shtupping him.
Anyway, that’s the equivalent of what McGreevey is attempting to distract us from.
Kathy Kinsley, who unexpectedly ended up being very close to the path of the storm, is all right, but she needs some help.
If you don’t want to tip her, hire her to update your web site. She does good work for reasonable rates.
Ed Morrissey says that one of the vets who claims to have “served” with him, “on his boat,” didn’t:
He and Alston conspired to deceive people about Alston’s service under Kerry. That conspiracy was intended to give John Kerry cover against exactly the kind of campaign he faces from the other Swiftvets….
…This isn’t just a guy embellishing his war record — this is a deliberate and longstanding attempt to mislead and defraud people by creating his own witnesses after the fact. That he could have done such a clumsy job should disqualify him for higher office on that basis alone.
That point aside, if true, this knocks the legs out from under the dumb argument that one had to be on Kerry’s boat in order to have “served” with him. Alston would have no more (and no less) credibility than any of the other, less complimentary, Swift Boat Vets. I wonder if the Reverend Alston would sign an affidavit?
[Update at 11 AM PDT]
Kathleen Parker describes what the real issue is with this (at least for me):
Like many Americans, I’m reluctant to second-guess anyone’s wartime performance. None of us knows how we’d perform under the unique stress of battle. Whether Kerry was indecisive or heroic so long ago doesn’t much interest me. Stories get told about war; details get lost or distorted by time and memory.
There’s something near tragic about this latest political turn of events–brother warring against brother–but also revelatory on a level that even Kerry critics might not have anticipated. What is revealed isn’t so much Kerry’s lack of consistency in reporting personal history as his studious pursuit of power and an insatiable need for attention.
[Monday morning update]
Byron York says that Alston did serve under Kerry, though perhaps for as little as a week, and that many of the stories about their service together seem to be embellished or exaggerated. Ed Morrissey concedes the point. The Swift Boat Vets were right to tell people to cool it on this particular issue.
Ed Morrissey says that one of the vets who claims to have “served” with him, “on his boat,” didn’t:
He and Alston conspired to deceive people about Alston’s service under Kerry. That conspiracy was intended to give John Kerry cover against exactly the kind of campaign he faces from the other Swiftvets….
…This isn’t just a guy embellishing his war record — this is a deliberate and longstanding attempt to mislead and defraud people by creating his own witnesses after the fact. That he could have done such a clumsy job should disqualify him for higher office on that basis alone.
That point aside, if true, this knocks the legs out from under the dumb argument that one had to be on Kerry’s boat in order to have “served” with him. Alston would have no more (and no less) credibility than any of the other, less complimentary, Swift Boat Vets. I wonder if the Reverend Alston would sign an affidavit?
[Update at 11 AM PDT]
Kathleen Parker describes what the real issue is with this (at least for me):
Like many Americans, I’m reluctant to second-guess anyone’s wartime performance. None of us knows how we’d perform under the unique stress of battle. Whether Kerry was indecisive or heroic so long ago doesn’t much interest me. Stories get told about war; details get lost or distorted by time and memory.
There’s something near tragic about this latest political turn of events–brother warring against brother–but also revelatory on a level that even Kerry critics might not have anticipated. What is revealed isn’t so much Kerry’s lack of consistency in reporting personal history as his studious pursuit of power and an insatiable need for attention.
[Monday morning update]
Byron York says that Alston did serve under Kerry, though perhaps for as little as a week, and that many of the stories about their service together seem to be embellished or exaggerated. Ed Morrissey concedes the point. The Swift Boat Vets were right to tell people to cool it on this particular issue.
Ed Morrissey says that one of the vets who claims to have “served” with him, “on his boat,” didn’t:
He and Alston conspired to deceive people about Alston’s service under Kerry. That conspiracy was intended to give John Kerry cover against exactly the kind of campaign he faces from the other Swiftvets….
…This isn’t just a guy embellishing his war record — this is a deliberate and longstanding attempt to mislead and defraud people by creating his own witnesses after the fact. That he could have done such a clumsy job should disqualify him for higher office on that basis alone.
That point aside, if true, this knocks the legs out from under the dumb argument that one had to be on Kerry’s boat in order to have “served” with him. Alston would have no more (and no less) credibility than any of the other, less complimentary, Swift Boat Vets. I wonder if the Reverend Alston would sign an affidavit?
[Update at 11 AM PDT]
Kathleen Parker describes what the real issue is with this (at least for me):
Like many Americans, I’m reluctant to second-guess anyone’s wartime performance. None of us knows how we’d perform under the unique stress of battle. Whether Kerry was indecisive or heroic so long ago doesn’t much interest me. Stories get told about war; details get lost or distorted by time and memory.
There’s something near tragic about this latest political turn of events–brother warring against brother–but also revelatory on a level that even Kerry critics might not have anticipated. What is revealed isn’t so much Kerry’s lack of consistency in reporting personal history as his studious pursuit of power and an insatiable need for attention.
[Monday morning update]
Byron York says that Alston did serve under Kerry, though perhaps for as little as a week, and that many of the stories about their service together seem to be embellished or exaggerated. Ed Morrissey concedes the point. The Swift Boat Vets were right to tell people to cool it on this particular issue.
…whether or not this blog is serious, or if it’s a put-up job by someone to make the anti-war types seem even dumber than many of them are. It drips of stupidity from every corner, even to the title itself (“…the most important issue of all time, ever: The Iraq war being wrong”).
Either way, it’s entertaining reading.
[after reading a bit more]
The more I read, the more I’m compelled to believe that it’s a spoof. If it’s not, the author is (as one commenter noted) suffering from some site-specific brain lesion.
[Update a little later]
I should warn that reading too much of this site will have a deleterious effect on your IQ. I think mine plunged about twenty points in as many minutes. It was fun, though.