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Winter Soldier Event Discredited?

From Factcheck.org -

Kerry critics have long disputed that atrocities by US forces were as prevalent as Kerry suggested.

Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam (1978): But the most damaging finding consisted of the sworn statements of several veterans, corroborated by witnesses, that they had in fact not attended the hearing in Detroit. One of them had never been to Detroit in all his life. He did not know, he stated, who might have used his name.

Kerry's critics point to that as evidence that he was irresponsibly passing on false atrocity stories. However, there's no question that events such as Kerry described did happen, as Lewy himself stated:

Lewy: Incidents similar to some of those described at the VVAW hearing undoubtedly did occur. We know that hamlets were destroyed, prisoners tortured, and corpses mutilated.

And since Kerry testified, ample evidence of other atrocities has come to light:

Son Thang: In 1998, for example, Marine Corps veteran Gary D. Solis published the book Son Thang: An American War Crime describing the court-martial of four US Marines for the apparently unprovoked killing 16 women and children on the night of February 19, 1970 in a hamlet about 20 miles south of Danang. The four Marines testified that they were under orders by their patrol leader to shoot the villagers. A young Oliver North appeared as a character witness and helped acquit the leader of all charges, but three were convicted.

Tiger Force: The Toledo Blade won a Pulitzer Prize this year for a series published in October, 2003 reporting that atrocities were committed by an elite US Army "Tiger Force" unit that the Blade said killed unarmed civilians and children during a seven-month rampage in 1967. "Elderly farmers were shot as they toiled in the fields. Prisoners were tortured and executed - their ears and scalps severed for souvenirs. One soldier kicked out the teeth of executed civilians for their gold fillings," the Blade reported. "Investigators concluded that 18 soldiers committed war crimes ranging from murder and assault to dereliction of duty. But no one was charged."

"Hundreds" of others: In December 2003 The New York Times quoted Nicholas Turse, a doctoral candidate at Columbia University who has been studying government archives, as saying the records are filled with accounts of atrocities similar to those described by the Toledo Blade series. "I stumbled across the incidents The Blade reported," Turse was quoted as saying. "I read through that case a year, year and a half ago, and it really didn't stand out. There was nothing that made it stand out from anything else. That's the scary thing. It was just one of hundreds."

"Exact Same Stories": Keith Nolan, author of 10 published books on Vietnam, says he's heard many veterans describe atrocities just like those Kerry recounted from the Winter Soldier event. Nolan told FactCheck.org that since 1978 he's interviewed roughly 1,000 veterans in depth for his books, and spoken to thousands of others. "I have heard the exact same stories dozens if not hundreds of times over," he said. "Wars produce atrocities. Frustrating guerrilla wars produce a particularly horrific number of atrocities. That some individual soldiers and certain units responded with excessive brutality in Vietnam shouldn't really surprise anyone."

From the War Nerd -

The first and biggest lie is that you can do counterinsurgency (CI) warfare without torture. Bullshit. No army ever fought a CI campaign without resorting to torture. Goes with the territory. At most, it's like holding by your offensive line: you don't want them doing it where the ref can see it, but if you had an OG or tight end who refused to do it, you'd fire his ass.

Because you can't win without it.

posted by Charles Tupper at 8/25/2004    |

 
The New Soldier

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that there were a few used paperback copies of John Kerry's 1971 anti-war book The New Soldier available on Amazon.com starting at $450. The book is out of print, but used copies are occasionally made available for sale. Instapundit notes today that there is now a waiting list and points to a website that has published the full text of the book (in violation of copyright, it would seem). From what I can tell, John Kerry wrote only the epilogue, excerpted below under the doctrine of fair use.

And so a New Soldier has returned to America, to a nation torn apart by the killing we were asked to do. But, unlike veterans of other wars and some of this one, the New Soldier does not accept the old myths.

We will not quickly join those who march on Veterans' Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the "greater glory of the United States." We will not accept the rhetoric. We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars-in fact, we will find it hard to join anything at all and when we do, we will demand relevancy such as other organizations have recently been unable to provide. We will not take solace from the creation of monuments or the naming of parks after a select few of the thousands of dead Americans and Vietnamese. We will not uphold traditions which decorously memorialize that which was base and grim.

It is from these things the New Soldier is asking America to turn. We are asking America to turn from false glory, hollow victory, fabricated foreign threats, fear which threatens us as a nation, shallow pride which feeds off fear, and mostly from the promises which have proven so deceiving these past ten years.

[...]

I think that, more than anything, the New Soldier is trying to point out how there are two Americas -- the one the speeches are about and the one we really are. Rhetoric has blinded us so much that we are unable to see the realities which exist in this country.

We were sent to Vietnam to kill Communism. But we found instead that we were killing women and children. We knew the saying "War is hell" and we knew also that wars take their toll in civilian casualties. In Vietnam, though, the "greatest soldiers in the world," better armed and better equipped than the opposition, unleashed the power of the greatest technology in the world against thatch huts and mud paths. In the process we created a nation of refugees, bomb craters, amputees, orphans, widows, and prostitutes, and we gave new meaning to the words of the Roman historian Tacitus: "Where they made a desert they called it peace."

The New Soldier has come back determined to make changes without making the world more unjust in the effort to make it just. We have come back determined that human will can control technology and that there is greater dignity and power in human spirit than we have yet been willing to grant ourselves. In Vietnam we made it particularly easy to deny that spirit. We extended an indifference which has too often been part of this country's history and made it easy for men to deal in abstractions. "Oriental human beings" -- "gooks" -- "body count" -- "Nape" -- "Waste 'em" -- "free-fire zone" -- "lf they're dead, they're VC" -- the abstractions took command from the commanders themselves and we realized too late that we were the prisoners of our own neglect and callowness.

By discussing crimes committed in war, the New Soldier is trying to break through the callowness and end the neglect. Regardless of whether crimes have been committed in other wars or even by the other side in this one, America must understand how our participation in Vietnam and the methods and motives used by American fighting men are part of a continuing national moral standard. As New Soldiers we are seeking to elevate that standard as well as to demonstrate where it has been part of a significant illusion. Individuals are trying, by denying themselves the luxury of forgetting about their acts, to spare others the agony of having to commit them at some time in the future.

This is not to say that all soldiers have departed Vietnam with the same feelings about their military service. Certainly not all veterans of this war are New Soldiers. Not all want to be or even understand what many of their veteran contemporaries are trying to say.

[...]

I myself went into the service with very little awareness of the people in the streets. I accepted then and still accept the idea of service to one's country. But because of all that I saw in Vietnam, the treatment of civilians, the ravaging of their countryside, the needless, useless deaths, the deception and duplicity of our policy, I changed. Traditional assumptions and expectations simply were not enough. I still want to serve my country. I am still willing to pick up arms and defend it -- die for it, if necessary. Now, however, I will not go blindly because my government says that I must go. I will not go unless we can make real our promises of self-determination and justice at home. I will not go unless the threat is a real one and we all know it to be so. I will not go unless the people of this country decide for themselves that we must all of us go.

J.K.

On the whole, I think this is less potentially damaging to Kerry than his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he categorically smeared his fellow veteran contemporaries as war criminals. The cover of the book is rather offensive, however, and that may be a large part of why the Kerry campaign has been buying up available copies. Perhaps also, Kerry might not want to be embarrassed by all the New Soldiers' statements that he put in his book, many of which are quite despicable.

UPDATE: A former military lawyer who served as a Marine in Vietnam comments on Kerry.

posted by Lawrence Haws at 8/25/2004    |

 
The unauthorized biography

Jonah Goldberg takes a one-eyed look at John Kerry's biography.

He went to Vietnam out of a mix of ambition and patriotism -- hardly an uncommon mix. He idolized JFK and he was a good liberal off to fight what was, until then, a liberal war. He was disillusioned by what he saw, but eager to get his credentials while there (hence the rather rapid accumulation of Purple Hearts of dubious merit). When Richard Nixon was elected, he suddenly saw that that the war was a loser for aspiring liberal politicians. I base this point almost entirely on the fact that not once have I heard Kerry refer to Vietnam as LBJ's or JFK's war but I've heard him denounce Nixon ad nauseum. Indeed, the "I was in Cambodia" line usually seems framed as a slap against Nixon, even though he wasn't even sworn in yet.

Kerry comes home and, partly because he's from Mass. partly because he has horrendous political instincts and partly because all of his liberal friends back home have turned anti-war, he assumes that being anti-war is a great career move. So he switches and switches hard. Obviously, real conviction is part of the story too. But since he seems to have wanted to be president from the womb, his conviction is always shaped through the prism of his ambition. So for the better part of two decades, Kerry runs on his anti-war, anti-military credentials. It slowly dawns on him that anti-Vietnam credentials may have played well to get him elected in the most liberal state, they don't win that many points in the states necessary to become president. Indeed, neither does the 20 year Senate record he amassed. So, suddenly, he's running for president as if his entire career is nothing but a parentheses and his qualifications are based almost entirely on the fact he "reported for duty" thirty years ago. Now that that duty is being scrutinized, he's getting the flop-sweats because he has absolutely nothing else in his record or his personality that would help him get elected president in 2004.

That's my perception as well, for what it's worth.

posted by Lawrence Haws at 8/24/2004    |

 
The righteous truth?

Xymphora suggests that Matt Taibbi writes the righteous truth regarding the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, "We F***ed Up on Iraq" piece. Taibbi suggests that this "was the latest in what is likely to be a long series of tepid media mea culpas about pre-war Iraq reporting."

The problem with these newsprint confessions is not that they are craven, insufficient and self-serving, which of course they are. The problem is that, on the whole, they do not correct the pre-war mistakes, but actually further them. The Post would have you believe that its "failure" before the war was its inability/reluctance to punch holes in Bush's WMD claims.

Right. I marched in Washington against the war in February 2003 with about 400,000 people, and I can pretty much guarantee that not more than a handful of those people gave a shit about whether or not Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That's because we knew what the Post and all of these other papers still refuse to admit—this whole thing was never about weapons of mass destruction. Even a five- year-old, much less the literate executive editor of the Washington Post, could have seen, from watching Bush and his cronies make his war case, that they were going in anyway.

Xymphora takes it further -

...this was a very deep and very high conspiracy, going up to the level of the publisher, to intentionally deceive the American people into a war that was desired for extreme Zionist reasons.

Bush used the weapons of mass destruction as a trick to fool Americans into war, and now the Post is using them as misdirection away from the Post's real problem, which is its fawning acceptance of the actions of those in power. You will never - never! - find the Washington Post speaking truth to power. Bush has managed, with the help of his crooked 9-11 commission, to portray the weapons fiasco as a problem of intelligence. This is nonsense, as the intelligence was completely irrelevant. Bush was going to go to war regardless of what his intelligence said or didn't say, and the Post and the Times knew it.

If you think you get the truth reading either the Washington Post or the New York Times, you are a fool.

The question then arises, do you get the truth by reading Xymphora?
posted by Charles Tupper at 8/24/2004    |

 
A Pound of prevention

Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post calls Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, an officious, bias, bellowing buffoon.

That phony careerist and human necktie Dick Pound should promptly remove himself from public life and quit trying to enlarge his reputation by wrecking the reputations of others.

It is plainly unethical and prejudicial for a head of WADA to make pronouncements about an ongoing and supposedly confidential investigation such as BALCO, and the guilt or innocence of those involved. And yet there was Pound on the eve of the Opening Ceremonies, accusing USA Track and Field of being "largely responsible" for doping and again attacking Marion Jones by name.

Among Pound's remarks and insinuations: Anyone who takes exception to his methods or those of WADA is either a guilty athlete, or part of their team. "Everyone else thinks we're doing exactly the right thing," Pound told the Canadian Press.

No, actually, they don't. Jon Drummond said during the U.S. trials, "Find out about Dick Pound and why he's coming down so hard on the United States. He's the WADA chair, he's the big man on campus. The athletes are doing what they're supposed to do. Dick sits in his office and passes out accusations."

Why is Pound beating up on the U.S. track federation, when it doesn't even control American drug testing? Why is he screaming?

Pound responded:

If I am able to discern a theme in Jenkins's article, amongst the proliferation of prejudicial and intellectually lazy assertions, it seems to amount to this:

1. There is a serious drug problem in sport today, including track and field;

2. This problem affects U.S. track and field athletes;

3. One such athlete on whom the media have recently concentrated is Marion Jones, who has not been charged with any doping offense;

4. I have commented on the Jones case, apparently in a manner that will prejudice Jones's right to an impartial decision on the facts of her case; and

5. I have unfairly pointed a finger at USA Track and Field for its lack of leadership in the fight against drug use in its sport.

I do not know, and Jenkins certainly does not know, whether Jones is innocent. What I do know (and what Jenkins should know) is that should any notification of a doping charge be raised against Jones, the matter will be heard by independent arbitrators who, in reaching their decision, will rely on the evidence before them, not on anything the media may have published or by statements made anyone else. There is no denial of due process in any respect.

Regarding USATF, Jenkins has, again, not got her facts right. I have been critical of USATF for several reasons. It was USATF that accredited C.J. Hunter at the Sydney Games, even though it knew he had tested positive four times earlier in 2000. It was USATF that entered Jerome Young in the 4x400 relay, knowing of his positive test and the wholly unconvincing exoneration of him, thereby tainting the whole relay team and exposing it to a loss of the gold medal. It was USATF that fought for years to prevent disclosure of Young's identity to the IAAF, in the face of clear rules requiring such disclosure, on the flimsy pretext that U.S. law prevented such disclosure.

Michael Johnson has warned U.S. women's head track and field coach Sue Humphrey not to run Jones in the women's 4x100 relay. SI's Tim Layden suggests that where there is smoke there's fire.

"All I've is heard is gossip and rumors, and I don't deal in gossip and rumors,'' said Humphrey.

It is clearly a grey area. There's a lot more out there than gossip and rumors. Jones is innocent until proven guilty, but the Young case shows that painful collateral damage can result from running an athlete in a relay who later is found to have tested positive or used drugs. To wit: Michael Johnson might lose a gold medal because of Jerome Young.

Will Jones run or won't she? As Gail Devers' says, "It might come down to the athlete."


posted by Charles Tupper at 8/24/2004    |

 
People who deserve a beat down II

Further to Lawrence's earlier post, Ivins has the question wrong. She views it in the perspective of post 9/11. The question should be if Bush knew there were possible WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda and attempts to purchase uranium from Africa, why was Powell, in February 2001, saying that containment and sanctions had worked? In addition, why was the Bush administration seeking ways to employ 'smart sanctions' against Iraq in an effort to mitigate the impact of sanctions on the Iraqi people and garner support from anti-sanction governments like France and Russia?

...the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place, but we are always willing to review them to make sure that they are being carried out in a way that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect the Iraqi regime's ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and we had a good conversation on this issue.

Could it be that the allegations, at least in the light of the pre 9/11 world, did not rise to a level of a just war?

Iraqi, Al Qaeda links -

But the commission ultimately concluded it had seen "no evidence" that the contacts "ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship." Nor was there evidence that "Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States."

From the Butler report regarding the attempted acquisition of uranium -

497. In preparing the dossier, the UK consulted the US. The CIA advised caution about any suggestion that Iraq had succeeded in acquiring uranium from Africa, but agreed that there was evidence that it had been sought.

and does not contradict their conclusion

that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that:

The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought signi?cant quantities of uranium from Africa.

was well-founded.

However, saying "We did the right thing, and the world is better off for it", does not rise to any Christian or Western historical definition of a 'just war.'

[Note: Lawrence responds in the comments.]

posted by Charles Tupper at 8/23/2004    |

 
Stem cells and the politics of pessimism

Michael Kinsley writes -

Maybe I missed it, but it seems as if Laura Bush has not had her Lady Macbeth Moment. This is the period, hallowed by tradition if not actually written into the Constitution, when the media discover that a president's wife is the power behind the throne. Then, last week, she suddenly popped off about stem cells...making the same argument — an argument so embarrassingly silly and disingenuous that it could only be an official campaign talking point. Anyone thinking for herself would have a hard time getting it out without giggling.

As Laura Bush put it, her husband "is the only president to ever authorize federal funding for embryonic stem cell research." She noted that "few people know" this. Few may have known it, but many might have guessed.

However, that is not exactly what Mrs. Bush said.

Q Mrs. Bush, do you have any reaction to Ron Reagan, Jr.'s, announcement to -- stem cell research at the Democratic National Convention?

MRS. BUSH: Well, I think that is a very important issue to discuss. The fact is the President is the one who actually authorized federal spending for embryonic research, stem cell research.

A fact which is corrobrated by the director of the National Institute of Health.

Kinsley continues -

It is true indeed that Bush's predecessors, from George Washington to Bill Clinton, failed to fund embryonic stem cell research. Even Abraham Lincoln. Not a penny for stem cell research from any of them. Historians believe this might have been because it didn't exist yet. But that's just a guess.

Kinsley's criticism unravels into a mocking disingenuousness that does nothing more than harm to the argument put forward by supporters of embryonic stem cell research.

Mrs. Bush continues -

But I do think it's one of those issues that we do have to be very, very careful about. There's a moral implication in it, do we want to create life for research purposes, to destroy for research purposes? And I think that's an implication.

I also want to say that one thing that I think has happened in the discussion of embryonic stem cell research is that you all and other people who talk about it have given people around the United States who are watching a loved one suffer with Alzheimer's or with some other very severe disease that a cure is right around the corner, if only we could do embryonic stem cell research or more embryonic stem cell research.

Clearly, embryonic stem cell research is in its very early stages. However, the allure of embryonic stems cells is the fact they are totipotent. The have the ability to become any one of the cells in the human body.

Mrs. Bush again -

But the fact is, that's not right. There isn't a cure around the corner, sadly, for Alzheimer's with embryonic stem cell research. It's much, much -- embryonic stem cell research is much more preliminary than that, we're not about to come upon a cure. And the fact is there's adult stem cell research which has been more promising in regenerative medicine. So there are a lot of sides to the issue. And it's another one of those issues that I think needs to be treated very carefully and with respect.

Adult stems cells, while showing promise in some areas of regenerative medicine, have had mixed results and their potential may be limited according to researchers in both Sweden and the U.S.

Disputing earlier findings, a new study suggests that there is little, if any, evidence that adult stem cells can convert to heart muscle cells to treat damage following a heart attack.

While recent studies have suggested that adult stem cells can become different types of cellsLund University than those of their respective organs, researchers from the Stem Cell Center at in Sweden have found that they have little or no ability to form cells in other organs.

"Both we and two American research teams have used various methods to replicate a study from three years ago that appeared in Nature," says Stem Cell Center researcher Jens Nygren. "It was about transplanting blood stem cells to create new heart muscle cells to repair a heart after a heart attack. But all of our results univocally indicate that this is not possible."

Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was interviewed by PBS recently.

SUSAN DENTZER: Now, a great deal of the controversy that has ensued since August of 2001 has been around the question of how many lines, in fact, were--

DR. ZERHOUNI: Right--

SUSAN DENTZER: --had earned presidential authorization, because they had been derived before--

DR. ZERHOUNI: Well, I think it's important to go back to the genesis of it. I mean I always like to be factual about things, and let's remember where the president was when that happened. There had never been funding of human embryonic stem cell research before. The prior administration, no one had funded this field, and for the reasons that you know, there's a tremendous amount of polarization about the issue of embryos and using embryos for research.

The question, obviously, is, is this enough, or can we sustain the research that needs to be done at this point? That's the core issue. Right now what we see is, we see a marked increase in the activity of stem cell research here. I think we've funded about $10 million in 2002; $25 million in 2003 alone, and growing as we go forward in making commitments or expending the investments.

Under Bush, funding for embryonic stem cells is increasing. The issue is not the funding, as is so often portrayed in the press, but whether the 71 stem cell lines made available will fulfil the scientific demand.

DR. ZERHOUNI: At the time when the 71 embryos were--had been destroyed, they had not expanded into cell lines. I think you've seen with Dr. McKay how, what it takes to do it, I mean to multiply them. And you need to have enough of them to be able to send. So in 2002 we had one line that was available for research. Today we have 21 lines. Of the 71 that we have identified as eligible for federal funding, 16 did not expand successfully because it happens, you know, these culture techniques are very difficult, very experimental, and 21 did, and we have two more, and about 31 are still in preserves waiting for new developments to occur.

But the problem is, you know, this issue that comes at the intersection of science and society, and I think the president wanted to walk before anything else and understand that he has an interest in advancing the basic science and feels that it's important also not to force the use of taxpayer funds for something that many people object to.

It is not at all clear that the majority of Americans object to stem cell research.

Views on stem-cell research
	June 24		July 30
	Support	Oppose	Support	Oppose
Evangelical white Protestants	50%	40	47	47
White Catholics	54	35	65	33
Non-evangelical white Protestants	70	18	77	19
Conservatives	44	44	53	42
Moderates	63	26	64	32
Liberals	76	14	75	23
Republicans	49	37	60	36
Independents	62	26	67	29
Democrats	65	27	60	36
Whites	60	29	65	31
Blacks	48	44	50	47

However, there is ambivalence in the groups that are considered core Bush supporters. Has Bush advanced the cause of embryonic stem cell research? Definitely. Will Kerry enhance stem cell research significantly? It's unclear.

posted by Charles Tupper at 8/23/2004    |

 
People who deserve a beat down

First up, syndicated columnist Molly Ivins, for writing this yesterday:

John Kerry is running such a cautious campaign that George W. Bush can get away with falsely claiming that Kerry would have supported the war even if he had known then what he knows today. This does, of course, raise the awkward question of whether Bush -- had he known then that there were no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear program, no ties to al Qaeda and no imminent threat -- would have gone to war himself.

Where is Molly Ivins getting her news? Kerry has in fact said that he would have voted for the Iraq War Resolution even knowing that WMDs would not be found. Furthermore, Iraq did have ties to al Qaeda, it had tried to purchase enriched uranium from Africa and Bush never said Iraq was an "imminent threat" (he said we should not wait until the threat becomes imminent). As for Ivins' "awkward question," Bush is way ahead of her: "I have given my answer. We did the right thing, and the world is better off for it."

Next, singer Janet Jackson, for claiming that Bush used her breast to distract people away from the war in Iraq.

More to come. . .

posted by Lawrence Haws at 8/23/2004    |

 
Race to the swift or swift to the race II

The critics of Sailer and Entine's theory are many and vociferous.

"The gold medal in track's 800 meters, (Summer Olympics 2000) the race where the twain of speed and stamina most vividly meet, went to the Germany's Nils Schumann, who succeeded the very pale Atlanta champion, Vebjorn Rodal of Norway. The 200-meter sprint that was supposed to be a showdown between Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene ended up being dominated by Greece's Konstantinos Kenteris."

Sailer's chart shows that whites have 5% of the best 100 times at this distance. Blacks of West African descent have 9% of the 100 best times at 800 meters and the Kenyans have 19% of the best times. 19% of the fastest times at this distance, no matter how you slice it, is hugely over-representative. The question Entine and Sailer pose is why? Schumann's time is not in the top twenty-five times ever recorded for the 800m and Kenteris is also not in the top twenty-five times for the 200m. However, Sailer does indicate that Europeans have posted 2% of the top 100 performances in the 200m race.

"And the women's 5000 meters, which, according to Entine, should be dominated by athletes from Africa's Rift Valley, turned out to be a duel between Gabriela Szabo of Romania and Sonia O'Sullivan of Norway."

Sailer and Entine's focus are on the male performances, so to throw in an anomaly, the result of the 2000 women's 5000m race does not distort the performance chart at all. If the best times for the men's 5000m are examined it shows a huge predominace of East Africans.

"In 2001, Lee Bong-Ju from South Korea won the Boston Marathon. Since 1980, Kenya did win the Boston marathon 13 times; however, it's because the Kenyan winners were the same winners who won multiple times, so there were 8 unique Kenyan athletes who won since 1980. Asians (all unique athletes from Japan or Korea) won the Boston Marathon 3 times since 1980. An 8 to 3 comparison does not signify a staggering genetic superiority Steve and Jon would like to portray."

The fact alone that 73% of the eleven unique Boston marathon winners were Kenyan is, again hugely disproportionate considering that Kenya has approximately 8.8 million men in the 15-64 year age bracket. Again, if you examine the best times posted for the Marathon the list of runners from Kenya is hugely disproportionate.

Sailer and Entine are examining an aspect of sport which is still largely taboo, which is apparent by the treatment Rush Limbaugh received last October, even though John Lott's analysis lent some credibility to the statements. However, that analysis is debunked here.

At the end of the day many questions are still left to be asked. Kenan Malik asks -

Is athletic talent at least in part inherited? Undoubtedly. Are there genetic differences between populations? Clearly. Are West Africans and Kenyans genetically built for running? Possibly. Are blacks naturally better athletes than whites? Not necessarily.

However, is that the question that Sailer and Entine are really asking?

posted by Charles Tupper at 8/22/2004    |

 
Race to the Swift or Swift to the Race

Steve Sailer points out the fact, once again, that "the 16 semifinalists in the world's fastest man competition are all of West African descent (a couple of the 16 appear to be of mixed black-white background)." Sailer studied male running talent in nine running events and published the following chart in 1997.



The Women's final saw Belarus' Yuliya Nesterenko squeeze out American Lauryn Williams at the finish line, in a time of 10.93 seconds. It's the first time since the boycotted Olympics in 1980 that a U.S. woman (of West African descent) has not won the 100 meters. Is this a harbinger of the rise of European female sprinters that portends to displace African American women? Probably not.

Nesterenko's time of 10.93 is not even in the top twenty-five best times posted by a female sprinter in the 100m. In other words, the Athens 100m women's final was in relative terms, run at a snail's pace. American Florence Griffith-Joyner still holds the world's fastest mark at 10.49 seconds accomplished in Indianapolis July 16, 1988. Two European women have cracked the elite top twenty-five 100m times, Russian Irina Privalova and Bulgaria's Ivet LaLova with times of 10.77. In additon, just outside the elite group, China's Li Xuemei ran a 10.79 one hundred at Shanghai in 1997, however, did not qualify for the Athens final.

posted by Charles Tupper at 8/22/2004    |

 
Auf Wieddersehen



Like Tex, I, too, have liberal friends who often cite U.S. military bases in Europe and Asia as an example of American imperialism. I usually respond by noting that, unlike actual imperialists, we lease those bases at the invitation of the host nations' governments and when we are asked to leave, as the Philippines did in 1992, we leave.

This rarely seems to have much effect, though. Invariably they will say we bring political pressure to bear on those governments to gain the leases against the will of their people. But, as German blogger David Kaspar points out, Germans, for their part, are not thrilled at the prospect of a planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Germany. Anti-Americanism may be fashionable, but so is the American dollar. I imagine the sentiment is much the same in South Korea and Japan.

Tex asks a good question: "Did the Poles and Czechs regret the adverse economic impact arising from departing Soviet troops?"

posted by Lawrence Haws at 8/19/2004    |

 
QUOTE THE BIBLE: GO TO JAIL?

Self described libertarian, conservative, and patriot, British writer, Dr. Sean Gabb, is stunned and appalled by what he calls the Swedish governments engagement in religious persecution. Ake Green, a Pentecostal pastor in Sweden preached a sermon describing homosexuals as "abnormal, [and] a horrible cancerous tumour in the body of society." He backed up his assertions with quotes from the bible. The Swedish authorities charged him with a hate crime for which he was recently convicted and is spending time, according to Dr. Gabb, in a Swedish gaol.

Le Quebecois Libre outlines the libertarian position -

We believe in the right to freedom of speech. This includes, though is not limited to, the right to say anything about public policy or alleged matters of fact. If someone wants to say that homosexuals are the spawn of Satan, or that black people are morally or genetically inferior to whites, or that the holocaust did not happen (but should have), or that the Prophet Mohammed was a demon-possessed, epileptic paedophile, that is his right. If he causes offence, hard luck on those offended. They have no right to legal protection against such views.

The libertarian position of homosexuality is equally predicable. We believe that consenting adults have the right to do as they please without intervention by the law. But freedom for homosexuals does not mean legal privilege against the hatred and contempt that others – however unjustly – may feel for them.

Christian fundamentalists in the US are also concerned that their freedom to preach and practice their religious beliefs will be curtailed. So much so that Christianexodus.org designated South Carolina as a new homeland for thousands of Christians “for the express purpose of re-establishing Godly, constitutional government.” The greatest fear, for the fundamentalists, is that "preaching Christianity will soon be outlawed as "hate speech" 1 2

In addition, to some degree at least, because of last year's British prosecution of the extremist Muslim cleric Abdullah el-Faisal for soliciting the murder of Jews, Hindus and other non-Muslims, a precedent has been set to prosecute Jamaican reggae stars Beenie Man and Buju Banton for their alleged use of homophobic lyrics, by the British courts. The songs allegedly include lyrics such as "Hang chi chi gal wid a long piece of rope" [Hang lesbians with a long piece of rope] and "Tek a bazooka and kill batty-f....r" [Take a bazooka and kill gay men].

According to gay activists, Jamaica's apparent homophobia, is fueled by more than the compelling rhythmic reggae sounds of the descendants of the most famous Rastafarian, Bob Marley.

But songs are not the only place where homophobia is blatant. At a state level, article 76 of the nation's offences against the person act criminalizes the "abominable crime of buggery" with up to 10 years imprisonment, while article 79 punishes any act of physical intimacy between men in public or private with up to two years in jail and the possibility of hard labor.

A recent poll showed 96% of Jamaicans were opposed to any move to legalize homosexual relations. And while the police do not condone homophobic violence, they are often unsympathetic to the victims.

Few can agree on the source of such homophobia. But most agree the church plays a crucial role. "Evangelical Christianity is very strong, and there is a prudishness and hypocrisy that comes with that," said a representative of J-FLAG. "They ignore the part that says don't have sex out of wedlock and focus on gays.

Is there some speech just not worth protecting or is this an effort by a special interest group to put forth an agenda to suppress criticism of the homosexual lifestyle?

posted by Charles Tupper at 8/18/2004    |

 
If You Ain't Groovin' Best Get Movin'

Steve Sailer points to a great piece by Charlie Rosen at Foxsports. The outspoken Darryl Dawkins, a.k.a. Chocolate Thunder of the 1977 Sixers, analyzes why the US basketball team is struggling at the Olympics. It's basically black and white according to Darryl.

"The game is the same," says Dawkins. "The object is for the good guys to score and to keep the bad guys from scoring. But there's a big difference between black basketball and white basketball."

"Black basketball is much more individualistic," he says. "With so many other opportunities closed to young black kids, the basketball court in the playground or the schoolyard is one of the few places where they can assert themselves in a positive way. So if somebody makes you look bad with a shake-and-bake move, then you've got to come right back at him with something better, something more stylish. And if someone fouls you hard, you've got to foul him even harder. It's all about honor, pride, and establishing yourself as a man."

Once the black game moves indoors and becomes more organized, the pressure to establish bona fides increases. "Now you're talking about high school hoops," says Dawkins. "So if you're not scoring beaucoup points, if your picture isn't in the papers, if you don't have a trophy, then you ain't the man and you ain't nothing. Being second-best is just as bad as being last. And if a teammate hits nine shots in a row, the black attitude is, 'Screw him. Now it's my turn to get it on."

"White basketball means passing the hell out of the ball," says Dawkins. "White guys are more willing to do something when somebody else has the ball — setting picks, boxing out, cutting just to clear a space for a teammate, making the pass that leads to an assist pass. In white basketball, there's a more of a sense of discipline, of running set plays and only taking wide open shots. If a guy gets hot, he'll get the ball until he cools off."

Why is white basketball so structured and team-oriented?

"Because the white culture places more of a premium on winning," Dawkins believes, "and less on self-indulgent preening and chest-beating. That's because there are so many other situations in the white culture where a young kid can express himself."

As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. When Dawkins and the Sixers squared off against the Portland Trail Blazers for the NBA championship in 1977, Philadelphia's most dynamic players were Julius Erving, George McGinnis, World B. Free, and Dawkins.

"They beat us in six games," Dawkins recalls, "and the series marked the most blatant example of the racial difference in NBA game plans. We were much more flamboyant than Portland, and certainly more talented. We had more individual moves, more off-balance shots, more fancy passes, more dunks, and more entertaining stuff. But everybody wanted to shoot and be a star (including me), and nobody was willing to do the behind-the-scenes dirty work."

Meanwhile, the white players at the core of Portland's eventual success were Dave Twardzik, Bobby Gross, Larry Steele and Bill Walton. Dawkins notes that "Even the black guys like Lionel Hollins, Mo Lucas, Johnny Davis, Lloyd Neal played disciplined, unselfish white basketball. Credit their coach, Jack Ramsay, for getting everybody on the same page."

Darryl is still pissed at Walton from all those years ago -

"The guy was a good player who could really pass and had a nice jump hook," Dawkins opines.

"What made Walton so effective was that he was surrounded by talented players who wanted to win and weren't concerned with being stars. Personally, I think that Walton was, and still is, full of baloney. Back then, he had this mountain-man image, he smoked lots of pot, and I don't think he bathed regularly. And the league let him play with a red bandana tied around his head. To say nothing of his involvement with Patty Hearst.

"If a black player ever tried any of that kind of stuff he would've been banished from the NBA in a heartbeat. Yet in spite of all the messed up things Walton did as a player, now that he's a TV announcer all he does is tear down everybody else. The guy still ticks me off."

Ok Darryl, so Dr. J and McGinnis were just a couple of bums? Right!?

Jack Ramsay said that Walton was the best player he ever coached and when he was at UCLA, playing under the auspice of the Wizard of Westwood, that team set a college win record that has still not been broken.

Denny Crum had been an assistant to UCLA coach John Wooden when he first saw Walton play in 1968. Crum had gotten a tip about Walton, then a high school sophomore in San Diego. The coach was dubious, but he scouted him anyway. "I came back and told Coach Wooden that this Walton kid was the best high school player I'd ever seen," Crum recalled.

"We were sitting in Coach Wooden's office, and he got up and closed his door and said, 'Denny, don't you ever make that stupid statement again. It makes you look like an idiot to say that some red-haired, freckled-faced kid from San Diego is the best high school player you've ever seen. First of all, there's never, ever been, since I've been here, a major college prospect from San Diego, let alone the best player you've ever seen.'"

In three years of varsity competition, Walton led UCLA to two NCAA championships and 88 consecutive wins, smashing the 60-game streak set by Bill Russell's teams at the University of San Francisco. Walton also set UCLA's career assists record, which left observers declaring him the best passing center in the history of the game.

Anecdotally, a humorous story about Ramsay surfaced when he was with the Trailblazers. The Coach, (like many of us including yours truly) perspired heavily. His shirt underarms would be soaked early in games and in an effort to be more presentable he took to wearing women's sanitary pads under his arms in order to absorb the perspiration. Unfortunately, Coach Ramsay was also excitable. During a game when he was gesticulating wildly at the referees for a bad call the napkins popped out onto the floor much to the Coach's chagrin and the hysterical laughter of both players and fans.

Posted by Charles Tupper
posted by Charles Tupper at 8/18/2004    |

 
Re a more sensitive war on terror

History Professor Juan Cole takes issue with Dick Cheney's sarcastic criticism of John Kerry.

...as a historian, I have to say that Cheney's statement is bizarre and uninformed. Let me just give one example. The practice round for World War II was fought in North Africa, then controlled by the Vichy French. Dwight Eisenhower developed Project Torch, involving the landing of US troops in Morocco and Algeria.

It was essential to the US effort that the French colonial soldiers be quickly won over and convinced not to put up stiff resistance to the invasion. The original plan would have explicitly used British naval power. But the Free French objected loudly to this plan, since they did not want the British Empire's ships anywhere near their North African possessions. The French and the British had old rivalries in this regard. Moreover, there were still French bad feelings about the British attack on the French fleet at Mers al Kabir in Algeria in 1940.

So Roosevelt and Eisenhower asked Churchill to keep the British navy in the background off Gibraltar and out of sight of the Moroccan coast. Churchill agreed.

That is, Roosevelt and Eisenhower had their successful landing in North Africa precisely because they were entirely willing to bend over backward to be sensitive to French feelings.

Writer Kelly Bell suggests the only sensitivity shown by FDR was to the collaborationists of Vichy France.

When Anglo-American armies invaded North Africa in November 1942, the objectives of Operation Torch far exceeded merely clearing the region of operational Axis forces. Besides the crucial objectives of obtaining a jumping-off point for the later invasions of southern and western Europe, and establishing a secure base for the strategic bombing offensive, there was the matter of heading off any establishment of revolutionary leftist movements or governments that might prove a prickly postwar problem. With the international tide finally beginning to turn against the Axis, the emergence of the opposite, Communist extreme in newly de-Nazified countries was a disagreeable possibility.

The situation moved American President Franklin D. Roosevelt to recognize the collaborationist (but right-wing) Vichy French government of Marshal Philippe Petain, and to assert to his allies that the United States would assume the dominant role in the reconstruction of postwar Europe.

Of course, FDR had good reason to engage Vichy. The threat of a communist France in a postwar Europe did not appeal to the US or Churchill and the British. Roosevelt's animosity toward DeGaulle was arguably well-founded. The General had attempted to establish a land base for his Free French forces and looked to French Africa to fill that need. His efforts, however, were disastrous.

'Menace' turned into a fiasco. The plan was based on the hope that local French forces in Dakar would rally to de Gaulle as soon as they saw the combined British and Free French fleet draw near. Instead they stayed loyal to the regime of Vichy France which Petain had now established in the unoccupied zone of France. A civil war between Frenchmen was the last thing de Gaulle wanted and the expedition withdrew. 'Menace' hugely damaged de Gaulle, particularly in the eyes of Roosevelt.

While Churchill had stayed loyal to de Gaulle and the Free French, Roosevelt had continued to cultivate Vichy and ignore de Gaulle. A fortnight after Pearl Harbour de Gaulle launched a Free French coup against the tiny, Vichy controlled islands of St Pierre and Miquelon, just off the coast of Newfoundland. His unauthorised action infuriated the American government and Roosevelt began to see de Gaulle as an untrustworthy nuisance. The dispute deepened during the British and French invasion of French North and West Africa in late 1942, Operation 'Torch', from which Roosevelt insisted that de Gaulle be excluded. Roosevelt hoped that as soon as allied forces arrived on French African soil, the local Vichy commanders would switch from collaboration with the Nazis to collaboration with the British and French.

It was the Vichyites that Sir Winston had alienated through the British destruction of part of the French fleet not the Free French as Professor Cole alleges.

Unfortunately, the British had irretrievably alienated themselves from the Vichyites on July 3, 1940, when Churchill unleashed the Royal Navy on the French fleet moored at Mers el-Kebir, to prevent its falling intact into Axis hands. Furthermore, the British blockade of Vichy ports raised hackles on both sides of the Atlantic; Roosevelt's indignation increased when his ambassador to Vichy, Admiral William Leahy, erroneously reported that the French populace was united behind Petain and opposed to de Gaulle.

While Washington wined and dined the double-dealing Admiral Darlan, the Brits and the Free French were plotting his demise.

While Darlan rode the fence, the British counterintelligence and sabotage organ, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), began plotting his demise. In June 1942, an internal memorandum circulated within the organization outlining its subversive action policy. "One of the really great virtues of this new instrument of war [SOE] is that you can use it without committing His Majesty's government," the paper said. "Even if there is a suspicion that HMG may be behind any subversive movement, there is usually no proof to that effect; even if there is proof that British authorities are responsible the necessary gestures of repudiation can be made." The essence of SOE is easily gleaned from the standard pronouncement given new recruits: "You shouldn't object to fraud--and you mustn't object to murder."

Finally, Bell proclaims, that a Free French assassin put two bullets into the duplicitous Darlan's belly and removed once and for all the threat of Vichy France in North Africa. Professor Cole's assertion, that FDR was sensitive to the Free French, is at least debatable and his pedantic, simplistic assertion that this example of history refutes Cheney's claim really strikes at the heart of his credibility on other issues.

Posted by Charles Tupper
posted by Charles Tupper at 8/17/2004    |

 
Caskets? Aisle 7

The American consumer is in for another shock.

In a shift of marketing strategy and cultural style as big as when doctors, lawyers and drug companies began advertising to drum up business, Costco Wholesale Corp. has begun selling coffins directly to its customers.

Monday, the discount store chain, better known for bulk chicken and cases of soda, started test marketing caskets alongside mattresses at a North Side Chicago store. They're also being sold at a suburban Oak Brook store.

"This is certainly something that can be an easy value," said Gina Bianche, a buyer in Costco's corporate office in Issaquah, Wash. "I don't want to say cheap value, but it just needs to be done."

What do you do with your casket once you've bought it? Do you take it to the checkout and they scan the barcode, charge it to your debit card, load it on your shopping cart and roll it out to the minivan or SUV? What happens when you get home? Where do you store a coffin? The lawn mower, the snowblower, the lawn furniture, the power washer and the pool equipment entirely fill the garage and shed now. My father-in-law says his neighbour built his own casket and keeps it in his garden shed. And what happens if in ten years Costco offers new models with better features and the old casket just ain't what it used to be.

After all, you'd want all the bells and whistles because as one Costco customer points out, "It says eternal rest."

Posted by Charles Tupper
posted by Charles Tupper at 8/17/2004    |

 
‘Curmudgeonly Canuck in kind Matthew’s Court’

The inimitable Mr. Haws has very graciously whistled me aboard his seagoing venture, Hawspipe, as a guest writer. It's both an honour and a privilege to help him out and I'll do my best to make sure I don't damage his hard earned reputation.

Most are aware of Twain’s delightful medieval fable, ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’, well thanks to Matt’s generosity it appears I will be the ‘Curmudgeonly Canuck in kind Matthew’s Court’, not that Mark Twain’s good natured tongue-in-cheek parodies of Camelot will ever be matched here. However, like my namesake, Sir Charles Tupper, my family does possess an American lineage. Apparently Uncle Charlie’s (figuratively speaking) family originally emigrated from old Blighty to the American colonies but despaired of the young Lockean radicals and their revolution, and peremptorily parted ways for the Burkean conservatism of Britain’s New Scotland. Sir Chuck was born in Nova Scotia, graduated from U of Edinburgh’s medical school, entered public life, was a Father of Canadian Confederation and ignominiously, was the shortest serving Prime Minister in Canadian history. (Well actually he wasn’t, at 6’1”, the shortest, but you know what I mean).

Unlike Tupp’s garrulous gaggle, our side hailed from Newfoundland (not technically
Canadian until 1949, after two referendums and a kick in the arse from the British
parliament). Pop, my grandfather, moved his wife, Theresa and family to the Bronx, in the early twenties and two uncles were born in the Big Apple. Pop, because his Newfie accent made him indistinguishable from the Irish, had no problem getting a job, he was a carpenter, repairing hardwood floors on New York subway cars. Much to my Dad’s chagrin (“The worst mistake we ever made”) Pop couldn’t resist his Mother’s request and moved to Toronto. Amusingly enough, in retrospect, with three sons volunteering for service during WW2, (two of them in the navy) Theresa pleaded with the Canadian government to release her youngest son from his obligation of military duty, only to have him declare his US citizenship and join the US Army.

Theresa hailed from a small outport in Newfoundland named Brigus, famous for its Arctic exploring native son, Captain Robert Abram Bartlett. Theresa said she was Captain Bob’s second cousin and had tea with him, while visiting Brigus in 1936, aboard his vessel the Effie M. Morrison. Of course half of Newfoundland claims familial ties to Captain Bob, however it is hard to deny the word of a God-fearing women. Although his mother hoped he was destined to be a man of the cloth Captain Bob truly was a man of the sea. His exploitations in the far North with Admiral Peary and his ability to tell a good story landed him an invitation to the Explorer’s Club. Captain Bob, in command of the icebreaker ‘Roosevelt’, dropped Peary and African-American explorer Matthew Henson within 133 miles of the North Pole. The rest is history.

Arguably, Captain Bob’s greatest adventure was the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913, the brainchild of Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Captain Bob and Kataktovick walked 500 miles through Siberia, securing the services of a vessel to rescue the scientifc expedition stranded on Wrangel Island, about 200 miles off the Siberian coast.

The Effie M. Morrisey constructed in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1894 was bought by Captain Bob from his cousin Harold in 1924. When the old man died of pneumonia, in 1946, in New York City, the ship was bought by two brothers but subsequently was destroyed by fire. The vessel was restored, dubbed the Ernestina, bestowed historical significance and resides in New Bedford Mass. However, the old girl’s story does not end there. In 1991, with 24 students and 10 crew members, the old lady was caught in a North Atlantic maelstrom that claimed at least three boats. It was the ‘Perfect Storm’.

The Ernestina still operates out of New Bedford and offers a sailing/working vacation for you landlubbers who might want to get your feet wet. Personally, wet feet are not my cup of tea.

Posted by Charles Tupper
posted by Charles Tupper at 8/17/2004    |

 
Another vet for Bush

Senator John McCain, Kerry's first choice as a running mate, has high praise for President Bush:

My friends, this president understands the challenge. He has not wavered, he has not flinched from the hard choices. He was determined and remains determined to make this world a better, safer, freer place. He has more than earned our support, he has earned our admiration and our love.

The contentious 2000 campaign has long been water under the bridge, and since Dick Cheney isn't likely to pursue the 2008 nomination, it looks like McCain has positioned himself nicely for a run at it.

posted by Lawrence Haws at 8/11/2004    |

 
Flipping toward center?

The Senator from Nuance (good one, Tex) had something interesting to say yesterday when speaking to reporters.

GRAND CANYON, Ariz. (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said on Monday he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing force against Iraq even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would be found.

Though still accusing Bush of not having a plan to win the peace, Kerry now describes the invasion of Iraq as "a brilliant military strategy, which we all adopted and supported." But here he was speaking to a gathering of reporters in Al Franken's living room before the Democratic primaries:

"I voted for the resolution to get the inspectors in there, period. ...[I]f you truly believe that if I had been president, we would be at war in Iraq right now, then you shouldn't vote for me." -- John Kerry, December 4, 2003

Probably the best advice he's ever given.

posted by Lawrence Haws at 8/10/2004    |

 
Aye Carumba

Instapundit writes that he's "something of a Gary Hart fan." I wonder if he knows that Gary Hart is something of a Che Guevara fan? That may not be entirely fair, but anyone who fictionalizes a totalitarian mass murderer into the Cuban equivalent of Thomas Jefferson hardly instills confidence in me as to his ideas on foreign policy.

posted by Lawrence Haws at 8/6/2004    |

 
Sense and sensitivity

John Kerry says he would fight "a more sensitive war on terror."

posted by Lawrence Haws at 8/6/2004    |

 
The 'un-American' charge

The National Review's Rich Lowry makes a strong case.

Before telling a reporter to "shove it" last week, Teresa Heinz Kerry complained that there were "creeping, un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits" to the presidential campaign. Few people outside of Wilkes-Barre care much about the epithet "un-Pennsylvanian," but in dropping the "un-American" bomb she highlighted an important truth about today's politics: It is the Democrats who routinely question the GOP's patriotism, not the other way around.

Hostile witnesses for the plaintiff: John Kerry, Howard Dean, Wes Clark, Michael Moore, Bob Graham, Nita Lowey and Robert Kennedy Jr.

posted by Lawrence Haws at 8/4/2004    |

 
You cannot be serious

I didn't know John McEnroe had his own talk show. I never liked the guy much as a player, throwing tantrums like he so often did, but I grew to respect him as a tennis commentator. His show "McEnroe" follows Dennis Miller on CNBC, which I caught the end of last night. As Miller was wrapping up his own show and providing a segue to McEnroe's, he asked the three-time Wimbledon champ what he had in store for viewers that evening. McEnroe replied that his guests would be Howard Dean, Al Franken and actor Thomas Jane. Miller then cracked, "Howard Dean is an idiot," not making The Mac very happy at all. I've got to watch more Dennis Miller.

posted by Lawrence Haws at 8/4/2004    |

 
A dent, not a bounce

John Kerry's speech at the Democratic National Convention apparently wasn't as impressive as some pundits believed.

WASHINGTON — Last week's Democratic convention boosted voters' views of John Kerry but failed to give him the expected bump in the race against President Bush, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll finds.

In the survey, taken Friday and Saturday, Kerry trailed Bush 50%-46% among likely voters. Independent candidate Ralph Nader was at 2%.

The survey showed Kerry losing 1 percentage point and Bush gaining 4 percentage points from a poll taken the week before the Boston convention.

More favorable to Kerry is the latest Rasmussen poll, which gives him a 4 point bounce into a 49-45% lead over Bush. Of course, the only poll that matters is the one taken on November 2 (and run through the electoral college).

posted by Lawrence Haws at 8/2/2004    |

 
On Holiday From Reality

Salim Mansur writes in the Toronto Sun:

The inescapable reality of this election season in America is the shadow of 9/11, and the war on terror in which the U.S. is engaged, with Afghanistan and Iraq as the central theatre.

Clinton will not admit, nor will any Democrat, that the eight years of his presidency were a holiday from reality during which new enemies of freedom tested America's resolve and found it lacking.

These were the years when al-Qaida terrorists escalated their attacks on American interests globally, when Saddam Hussein sent packing the UN weapons investigating team out of Iraq, and when Clinton chose to act without UN authority against Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic in defending Albanian Muslims of Kosovo from ethnic cleansing.

But then, to Democrats, whatever Clinton did or absconded from doing, or what made for Carter's failed presidency, are all good. Such thinking reflects anger and nostalgia for a holiday from reality.

Moreover, Democrats of the Carter-Clinton school believe the world is one big global village, and its problems are compounded by American insensitivities.

This is why Democrats' partisanship does not cease at the water's edge, why they do not hesitate to scorn an American president while seeking approval of foreign leaders, and why their mascot in Boston is filmmaker Michael Moore, who confesses to Europeans about the American public's insufferable stupidity.

This is also why the Democratic party is no longer a majority party.

As we now know (or at least most of us know), the "good ol' days" of the 90's were an illusion that brought us to 9/11. For that entire decade we did practically nothing to stop terrorism, only reacting to attacks against us at home and abroad with half-efforts and mostly useless indictments. I don't want to go back to the days of pretending we're safe when we're not, and I don't think most Americans do either. The threat is real no matter how much the Michael Moore Democrats mock it, and that, in a nutshell, is why I'll be voting for George Bush in November. [UPDATE: Here are more reasons.]

(via Tex)

posted by Lawrence Haws at 7/30/2004    |

 
What they mean



posted by Lawrence Haws at 7/30/2004    |

 
'Improper, unseemly, dishonorable'

John Derbyshire makes an excellent point that everyone, particularly Republicans, should pay heed.

UPDATE: A Corner reader responds.

posted by Lawrence Haws at 7/28/2004    |

 
Pretty much sums it up



The Clinton National Security Team: Secretary of Defense Richard Cohen, President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, in the holding room of the Ronald Reagan Building, April 25, 1999.

Link via J Bowen, who thinks he would have seen this photo a long time ago if the models were Republicans. I'm guessing it would have graced the cover of Time Magazine and won a Pulitzer.

posted by Lawrence Haws at 7/26/2004    |

 
Quoth the Pinhead

"It's very narrow-minded." -- Philippine National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzalez on Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer saying that the Philippines' capitulation to terrorist demands that they withdraw their troops from Iraq has encouraged more kidnappings.

posted by Lawrence Haws at 7/25/2004    |

 
Dick Butkus was luckier

Imagine the grief this guy gets from his friends.

STORM LAKE, Iowa -- Days before the Democratic National Convention, a Storm Lake, Iowa, farmer is suddenly famous.

Kerry Dean Edwards, 27, finds his name is bringing a lot of attention now that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry named John Edwards his running mate in the upcoming election.

"I guess I've seen (the names) around town on signs, but I never even thought about it," Edwards said.

But the irony of the name is that Edwards plans to vote for President George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

"I guess if Bush/Cheney called me up and said, 'We want to do a campaign stop at your farm,' I'd probably say, 'Bring it on,'" Edwards said.

They should do it! A Bush/Cheney campaign stop at the Kerry Edwards farm has so many possibilities, especially in a battle ground state such as Iowa.

posted by Lawrence Haws at 7/23/2004    |

 
No sense

Lefty columnist Eric "The Media is Conservative" Alterman writes on his web site:

I've not written anything about Sandy Berger in part because I can't make any sense out of this story, and in part because I work closely with his daughter.

I'm willing to bet just about anything that if highly classified documents relating to al Qaeda terrorism occurring during the Bush Administration had been smuggled out of the National Archives only to be "lost" by Condi Rice, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, any current or former Republican or anyone who once worked for or contributed to a Republican or the Fox News Channel, Eric Alterman would have found a way to "make some sense" of it, no matter how strained the theory.

But then he adds, "I don't think the world is suffering for the absence of my comments." Hey, when he's right, he's right.

See Instapundit, The Corner, Opinion Journal, Tom Maguire and Hugh Hewitt for plenty of links and commentary on the unfolding story.

UPDATE: The story is going to get bigger. And check out the New York Times' coverage. Sheesh!

SECOND UPDATE: Alterman breaks his silence.

Because the details of this case remain so confusing and by and large, unknown, I think anyone who draws any significant conclusions about "what it means" is clearly a partisan hack interested not in truth but in propaganda. The nasty e-mail I've received for not devoting myself to it betrays a Stalinist heart of darkness in the minds of people who think they can dictate the subject matter of what, after all, is just a Weblog, not a daily newspaper, hello.

Has Alterman ever been this cautious about news stories damaging to Bush? I think we all know the answer to that. He does, however, manage to draw at least one conclusion from the whole "confusing" mess: "I am also amazed at just how cavalier the Wall Street Journal editors—and so many conservatives—have become when it comes to protecting the national security of the United States."

posted by Lawrence Haws at 7/22/2004    |