Itar-Tass is now reporting the two missing Russian Tupolev aircraft have crashed and that terrorism may be involved:
The incidents may have been the result of terrorist attacks, Itar-Tass cited unidentified air traffic controllers as saying in Moscow. Yevegeniy Khorishko, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Washington, said in a telephone interview Russian reports said the aircraft left Moscow's Demodedovo airport within three minutes of each other.
I flew out of Demodedovo (Moscow's second airport) a year and a half ago on my way to Khanty-Mansisk, Siberia (yes, you read that correctly). I remember thinking the airport was on the disorganized side at the time.
Not much more than a month ago, the media was reporting a rift in the Cheney household on the gay marriage issue:
Lynne Cheney, the vice president's wife and mother of a lesbian, said Sunday that states should have the final say over the legal status of personal relationships.
That stand puts her at odds with the vice president on the need for the constitutional amendment now under debate in the Senate that effectively would ban gay marriage.
Well, not anymore, apparently, if we're to believe this "developing" Drudge Report. Evidently the Vice President said the following when asked "What do you think of homosexual marriage?" out on the hustings today:
"Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it's an issue our family is very familiar with. With the respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone... People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to.
"The question that comes up with the issue of marriage is what kind of official sanction or approval is going to be granted by government? Historically, that's been a relationship that has been handled by the states. The states have made that fundamental decision of what constitutes a marriage."
Doesn't sound too far from his wife. What does this add up to? The obvious - gay rights in our society, even among supposed conservatives, are rocketing ahead as well they should. Sure ups and downs will occur, but the barriers in this last battle of the civil rights movement are coming down. The Cheney are acting like good parents of an obviously terrific daughter. [But what about Halliburton? -ed. Oh, gimme a break!]
UPDATE: The more complete coverage on CNN is very interesting. It pits Cheney against Bush on the issue, to some extent. I, of course, am on Cheney's side here.
Omar writes a restaurant review. Definitely sounds vaut le detour, as they say in the Guide Miche. I wouldn't mind an order of that grilled maskoof myself. Omar adds:
You sit in a restaurant like this one and see families relaxing with their children playing and having fun late at night and you feel that there's 'something' wrong in the way MSM is dealing with the Iraqi issue. I watch TV and I see hell breaking around me then I go outside and see enough normalcy AND progress to make me believe that the people in the media are not here to report how's life going but rather they are here reporting pre-prepared stories and to be faced with something that contradicts the picture they have in their minds would be really annoying and will mean more hard work to try to find the truth or something close to it.
Because of the Kerry/Swiftie conflagration, to a surprising extent the blogs may end up driving this election. Instapundit is not the only blog with his stats at new highs. This one too. And I imagine there are a number of others.
We are on Internet Time and the mainstream media and cable television, although they may pretend otherwise, will be watching us like the proverbial hawks. Heady as this is, it is incumbent on us to be responsible and to fact check others and ourselves. Partisanship will reign as it always does, here and elsewhere, but we must set an example by being up front about our biases. Bloggers are human and therefore not impartial. MSM may act as if they are, but everyone knows better. We must set an example too in correcting our mistakes. Don't bury them the way the major newspapers often do. Put them on top for all to see. And remember this above all - we are all going to have to live with each other on November 3.
...and gets the gold on the floor exercises and the parallel bars today with its featured editorial on Kerry's Vietnam Boomerang:
The irony here is that a main reason Mr. Kerry has focused so much on Vietnam is to avoid debating Iraq and the rest of his long record in the Senate. He wants Americans to believe that a four-month wartime biography is credential enough to be commander-in-chief. But a candidate who runs on biography can't merely pick the months of his life that he likes--any more than a candidate who makes Vietnam the heart of his campaign can confine the resulting debate to his personal home video.
No, he can't.
UPDATE: JPod with another take on "Christmas in Cambodia." This one particularly jibes with my memory of that time.
MORE: OOPS... from Drudge (yes, I know, but so far he seems to have been relatively accurate on this story... More accurate than the NYT):
Kerry's campaign now says is possible first Purple Heart was awarded for unintentional self-inflicted wound...
# Kerry received Purple Heart for wounds suffered on 12/2/68...
# In Kerry's own journal written 9 days later, he writes he and his crew, quote, 'hadn't been shot at yet'... Developing...
MORE: Fred Kaplan's embarrassing blather on Slate is completely decimated here and here. I have some unsolicited advice for people like Kaplan. They should think twice about what they're writing now. It doesn't matter if their candidate loses, but if he wins, their propaganda will not easily be forgiven. It will contribute to a truly ugly America driven by lies from quarters that claim to be "responsible." I, for one, am being pushed further into the Bush camp by them. That is also my reaction to people who comment on here, particularly anonymously, without reference to facts. They truly hurt their own cause. I'm sure others feel that way.
... here between Bob Dole and John Kerry, another indication to me why this election is about character. Apropos of which, I just watched Paul Galanti on Hannity & Colmes. Galanti is the ex-POW (six years in a North Vietnamese prison) who worked on the McCain Campaign and now finds Kerry dishonest and "unfit to command." What interested me about Galanti, who seemed entirely credible whether you agree with him or not, is that he recognized the Senator from hearing the young Kerry's testimony in Congress broadcast inside Galanti's Vietnamese prison. Kerry was the only person Galanti ever heard pronounce Ghengis Khan with the pretentious locution Djenn-jus Khan. I haven't heard this elsewhere either. It made me think of the old marxist term "Class Privilege." That's what Kerry carries with him. It may be why he was able to forget about all the POWs and swallow the Winter Soldiers' rhetoric whole while testifying.
Turns out NJ Governor James McGreevey, who just came out as gay, trumpeting his "courage" as a step forward in gay rights, does not support Gay Marriage. According to the New York Daily News, he made that clear last March when the first gay couple got married in Asbury Park, NJ:
McGreevey supports domestic partnership measures but not gay marriage. "The governor believes that the domestic partnership law is the best way to protect people's basic human rights," Rasmussen said. "We're working hard to implement that law now. The issue of marriage is one that is before the courts."
I apologize for blogging about McGreevey again, because he's so creepy and reprehensible he's scarcely worth the bandwidth. But sadly he's all too typical of American politics today. And we deserve better. People ask what I mean about the New Reactionaries. Well, this is an example. (hat tip: Fausta)
Forget the megaphones. Police will have a much more high-tech - and louder - option to make themselves heard over the din of Manhattan traffic and noisy protesters outside the Republican National Convention.
It's called the Long Range Acoustic Device, developed for the military and capable of blasting warnings, orders or anything else at an ear-splitting 150 decibels.
Authorities on Thursday unveiled a mini-arsenal of devices and counterterrorism equipment they're getting ready for the convention, which opens a week from Monday.
The sound machines are being tested at an airfield in a remote section of Brooklyn along with other devices such as hand-held radiation detectors - for a possible "dirty bomb" - and mechanical barriers strong enough to stop a moving vehicle in its tracks.
Now doesn't that make you feel better? (via Tim Blair, who will be holding his ears too.)
Some people, including a few commenters on here, have welcomed the Kerry/Swiftie controversy as an opportunity finally to exorcise the demon of Vietnam. Good luck to them - that's not going to happen. The Vietnam War is far too complex and murky a phenomenon ever to brook an easy answer, involving as it does the French at Dienbienphu, the Kennedys and the Diem regime, Papa Ho and Country Joe, Boat People and the zeitgeist of a generation. Very few have the guts to revise or even modulate their opinions about all this, even if they wanted to. Some wouldn't dare because it might cost them friends or a paycheck. Vietnam is a sleeping dog that should have been left to lie.
Only John Kerry wouldn't leave it alone because he wanted to get elected. One man's overweening ambition is now exacerbating the polarization in an already polarized nation. I guess we should have seen it coming. Kerry is the kind of man for whom self-regard is a lifestyle. What other "anti-war" undergraduate would enlist in the very war he was condemning because, according to one of his own explanations anyway, he had been unable to get a deferment for foreign study in France? Talk about courage of your convictions! Then this same "war hero" comes back to join the most intemperate and logically impaired part of the anti-war movement. And this is the man the Democrats want us to back for President?
Well, here's the sad thing. He may win. And in that case, the wounds will only widen. The endless internecine culture war of our society will continue and possibly worsen. Had the Democrats nominated some traditional apparatchik like Dick Gephardt... who might have won more easily anyway... most likely no such thing would have occurred. Power would have been transferred in the traditional manner and government would have gone about its compromising business with far less vitriol, Vietnam left as fodder for historians' doorstoppers, as it should be. But instead we are left with Kerry's coiffure. It is far too expensive for me.
UPDATE: Hitchens, nor surprisingly, rolls his eyes at Kerry's strange Vietnamese obsession as well:
I have no idea whether John Kerry is or is not telling the unvarnished truth about his service in Vietnam. (I am pretty sure, though, that he was unwise to prompt the release of the photograph of himself with his latest long-silent defender, William Rood of the Chicago Tribune. The shot of Kerry awkwardly shouldering a rocket launcher for the camera makes him look like a complete poseur.) It's obviously ridiculous for either side to accuse the other of using their recollections for "partisan" purposes. What else? Kerry himself didn't make a fetish of this until he sought a party's nomination (which is what "partisan" means) and his nemesis John O'Neill has been silent since the last time this all came up, which was in the Nixon era. Did Kerry imagine that if he dressed up in his old uniform again, his former critics would decide to keep quiet? What, if anything, was he thinking?
On that previous occasion, though, Kerry was using his service as a warrior to acquire credentials as an antiwarrior. Now, he is cashing in the same credentials to propose himself as alliance-builder and commander in chief. This is not a distinction without a difference.
Americans over fifty (and most others in reruns) grew up on those immortal words from Tonto to the Lone Ranger -- and they may come back to haunt John Kerry, especially now that Bob Dole, whose wounds were most obviously not of the "flesh" variety, entered the fray:
"One day he's saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting off their ears, cutting off their heads, throwing away his medals or his ribbons," Dole said. "The next day he's standing there, 'I want to be president because I'm a Vietnam veteran.' Maybe he should apologize to all the other 2.5 million veterans who served. He wasn't the only one in Vietnam," said Dole, whose World War II wounds left him without the use of his right arm.
Dole added: "And here's, you know, a good guy, a good friend. I respect his record. But three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds. Three Purple Hearts and you're out."
I think Dole gets to the heart of it. Kerry sounds like a man who acts as if he were the only one who served in Vietnam. And for that matter, the only one who protested the war.
In the same AP report, the man I voted for in the primary and well might have supported were he nominated, John Edwards, ends up carrying water for a cause I suspect he strongly doubts -- that is that Swiftie's ads should be taken off the air.
"This is the moment of truth for President Bush," Edwards said in North Carolina. "The American people have to hear directly that these ads need to come off the air." Kerry also fought back in another new ad.
It's certainly odd to see a former trial lawyer calling for suppression of speech. (Well, maybe it's not.) But I wish he had stuck to the arguments, such as they are, although thus far there has been no response to the Swiftie's most susbstantial charge, the "Christmas in Cambodia" issue. And of course the second ad is mostly Kerry's own words. Does Edwards want to suppress that? Well, trial lawyers have tried time and again, but somehow I suspect the North Carolina Senator is thinking.... I didn't bargain on this.
UPDATE: I didn't think the Kerry Campaign was going to implode over all this, but reading this report from the Boston Globe on Command Post, I'm beginning to wonder. I guess this is what happens when somebody finally questions The Braggart Soldier in the ale house.
MORE: One last thing for the moment, it strikes me that Kerry is one of those who inadvertently subscribes to Hans Vaihinger's fascinating "Philosophy of As If." As a personal survival strategy, it has it points. But in the White House... whoa!
Am I the only one to see New Jersey Governor McGreevey as just another reactionary wolf in progressive sheep's clothes? He has an oped today in the NYT in which he again wraps his personal angst and political activites in the mantle of the Gay Rights Struggle.
While there are many different and sometimes competing influences, it is my humble hope that my "coming out" could, in some small way, help those gay Americans who have yet to become open with their sexuality. To be gay, for me, was not a choice, but simply stating a reality. Now at peace with arguably one of the most important truths of my life, it is my prayer that I will now be free to live openly and integrate my sexuality with my daily life. This integration will hopefully help my actions, my thoughts and my heart to be in alignment going forward, keeping me from the pitfalls of a divided self or secret truths.
Let's leave aside for the moment that this is about the governor of the state with the second largest number of citizens killed on 9/11 choosing his paramour for Home Security Advisor... that might be enough to charge a man with treason whether the paramour was man, woman or zebra... and examine whether McGreevey is a help or hindrance to the gay rights movement.
Well, we are in the year 2004. That is already thirty-five years since gays courageously fought off cops trying to bust the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, thus launching the modern American gay rights movement. It is thirty-one years since the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Out Magazine itself is decades old. We have reached a point where in polite society, anti-gay is deemed Neanderthal, as it should be. Equal legal rights for gays are recognized in many and increasing areas. There are openly gay members of Congress and more sure to come. Gay marriage is in the air and seems inevitable in some form, again as it should be.
Yet, Governor McGreevey chose to hide his gayness. Ah, but it was New Jersey, you say, land of The Sopranos. He couldn't have run for office as an "out" homosexual and have won. Really? Well, maybe, maybe not, although I'd wager five to ten years from now hardly anyone in Joisy would give an RA, assuming they do now. No, what we are dealing with here is ambition in its most naked form (no pun intended). In reality, Jim McGreevey set back gay rights by choosing to live, and therefore ratifying, a white picket fence lifestyle as the road to the governor's office. The Gay Community and therefore gay rights was the last thing on his mind. The only thing on his mind was power -- and continues to be.
Commenter Mark Moore alerted me to more sad news from La Douce France again today. Arsonists have destroyed a Jewish center in Paris, leaving behind anti-Semitic graffiti. From another report, Paris police chief Jean-Paul Proust, who visited the scene, vowed: "We will find those responsible and take them before the courts." [You couldn't resist that name, could you?--ed. Eh, bien.]
For the francophone, Le Monde coverage of the "social center" burning is here. In truth, it seems French authorities are quite concerned about the recent rise in anti-Semitism and taking it seriously. How much they can do is another question. Incidents have skewed way up in the first half of 2004 and they weren't that low to begin with.
Munch's famous "The Scream" stolen in Olso. Countless screenplays and novels have been written about stealing the "Mona Lisa." Maybe that's why they went for this one first.... Actually the ML was stolen back in 1911. (hat tip: Matthew W. Sheffield)
Some of you may have noticed that Adam Nagourney had some nasty things to say about blogs this morning. Thomas Lifson demurs:
The dogmatic insistence by Nagourney in the unreliability of the new media is sour grapes, indeed. The newspaper which brought Jayson Blair to national attention is in no position to look down its nose on anyone. Even today, a peer of the Times, The Washington Post has been outed by this websitem for repeating misinformation.
The public has caught on to the false pretensions in number sufficient to counter-balance the bias of the large establishment media outlets. Read the rest.
UPDATE: Beldar addresses the latest press salvo from the Chicago Trib.
This blog [Are you going to brag now?-ed. After what you said about John Kerry? Okay, okay]... This blog, which has made some minor, completely unnoticed and insubstantial contributions [Now you're talking.-ed.] to the Free Iran movement, was suprised to see that that same movement has some friends in surprising places. (via the always interesting and modest Imshin).
UPDATE: Be sure to scroll down on Imshin to the "Affaire du lycee Montaigne." This is an fascinating case I was going to fictionalize for a novel (I even visited the school last December), but decided against because my knowledge of French culture, despite many trips, didn't feel sufficient when I began writing. [Hey, you'll write about anything on this blog.-ed. For three pargraphs.]
Those who have been following the Kerry/Swift Boat controversy on this blog know that I agree with Glenn and am not especially concerned with the medals argument. It's not that I don't think the Swifties are right. In the end, I just think it's an unwinnable argument. To put it in a context many of us have been watching of late, the medals controversy is not like the 100-meter butterfly where there is (usually) one discernible winner. It is like the 10-meter dive where there are too many judges handing out conflicting and biased 6.7s, 7.2s, etc. (at least the East Germans are gone!).
The crux of this discussion is what it reveals of the character of a man aspiring to be President of the United States who used his Vietnam service as the basis of his campaign. Two problems have been revealed.
1. Kerry's so far unexplained braggadocio about being under fire in Cambodia (based on several assertions, including one on the Senate floor) is highly disturbing because it indicates either a liar or someone out of touch with reality.
2. His willingness to testify before Congress on behalf of the Winter Soldiers, likening his former comrades to "Ghengis Khan" without seeming to question whether his sources (those same Winter Soldiers) had gone off the deep end (boy, had they ever!)raises significant questions about Kerry's ambitiousness, values and loyalty. Speaking personally on that one, I was completely anti-war at that time, but thought the Winter Soldiers were nuts (to put it bluntly). And I wasn't the only one on the anti-war side who felt that way. I can assure you.
UPDATE: Mickey K. is predicting "a big Sunday paper** pro-Kerry eyewitness hit (on the Silver Star incident--that's the one with the beached boat and the fleeing VC)" --- the double stars, I take it, are from the Chicago Trib. To me that is all spin, whatever it is, and a perfect example of why the medal issue is beside the point. No one can prove whether someone really deserved a medal under fire thirty-five years ago or whether he didn't. That is subjective in the end. Who cares? [Don't you have a framed Academy Award nomination on the wall of your office?--ed. Yes, and I'm just showing off, still am by mentioning it.]
What is genuinely important is that Kerry appears (at least so far)to have lied on the floor of the Senate during a foreign policy debate. He also repeated that self-congratulatory lie (Cambodia) on several other occasions. It is also important that he hugely over-stated the supposed war crimes of his comrades in front of Congress. He can have all the medals he wants. Il Capitano always has.
UPDATE: Mathew Continetti appears to strike the right balance so far.
...are the facts of Kathmandu," Kipling famously wrote in 1895, but I suspect even the great adventure writer would have been disenchanted by the new facts on the ground in Nepal. According to The Guardian "Maoists tightened their grip on Kathmandu yesterday when two powerful bombs were detonated and a policeman seriously wounded by suspected guerrillas who have blockaded Nepal's capital for a third day."
Maoists in 2004, who'd have thought it? But who'd have thought our election would be revolving around Vietnam? All the world's a flashback.
I visited Kathmandu in 1989 on the way to go trekking in the Himalayas with some friends, but I found the city itself relatively uninteresting compared to the mountains and the Sherpa/Tibetan Buddhist culture of the high country (and I do mean high). Kathmandu itself suffered from a retro sixties feel (still does in another way, obviously) with a neighborhood of backpackers dealing hash. I won't say whether I indulged, but if I did, I promise you I inhaled (but did not bogart). I did have a great trip and always wanted to go back with my family, have Sheryl and Madeleine see Annapurna, just as I wanted them to see Luxor and Abu Simbel, the nubian villages of the Sudan, all places I got to visit. I wonder now if that is meant to be? What's happening to the world?
But one place we know not to ask for help is the UN.
Not surprisingly, the new ad from the Swift Boat Veterans gets to the heart of the controversy and takes us back to the days of Vietnam in ways that I never dreamed would happen in 2004. These veterans are furious with Kerry for implying, essentially, that they were all William Calleys. I am really conflicted about the war itself, but I certainly don't blame the veterans for feeling this way. Some of them evidently had declined to say the very things Kerry did, although they were tortured by the North Vietnamese to do so. Kerry's words in the ad are extremely harsh. Now I wonder... even more than I previously did... why the Senator chose to base his campaign on his Vietnam service. Why would he want to do that, other than the obvious innoculation against Bush's anti-terror record? (There are other ways to handle that.) It seems particularly odd for a man who once compared American servicemen to Genghis Khan to call attention to this. The only explanation I can offer is he is wrestling with private demons and has secret wishes only his analyst could know. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell if this analysis is "terminable or interminable," as Freud would say. And we are left picking up the bill.
UPDATE: Amateur Kerry analysts (who, moi?) might want to have a look at this. Much of it makes sense.
MORE: I notice some debate on here whether the Swift Vets are getting traction with voters. I certainly don't know... and I don't think the story is written yet, El 'Awrence... but this report would from the AP would indicate they are beginning to. But speaking of Lawrence of Arabia, I would just like to remind everybody of the corny truth from that movie: "Nothing is written."
It's time for bloggers to watch our backs. I'm not kidding. If the Jayson Blair Scandal resulted in a wholesale reshuffling at The New York Times, where will the Kerry/Swift Boat Vets Scandal lead? One of the most important elections of modern times hangs in the balance and we are in the middle of it.
Who'd a thunk it? Certainly not me. But consider this: the Blair Affair was about some extreme neurotic making up stories in a newspaper and getting away with it. Pathetic, but oddly excusable if you think about the nightmare of trying to get a giant paper to bed every night. The partisan obscurantist reaction to the Kerry/Swift Boat affair is completely different because it is deliberate. The mask is off the "impartiality" of the mainstream media as never before. The meetings in the editorial rooms of NYT, WaPo and LAT are not hard to imagine, the coded discussions. A war is on, ladies and gentlemen, and as with most semi-normal people involved in a war, I don't feel particularly comfortable in it - and not, obviously in this case, because I might get shot. I have friends and colleagues at those institutions. I wish them to remain so. But that cannot stop me from telling the truth. They are wrong. Their avoidance of this story was unconscionable. Their treatment of it now... as if the messenger were more important than the message... is worse.
If it turns out the Swift Boat Veterans were right in many of their accusations... and there probably will be more, stronger ones, to come... and Kerry does get elected anyway because the truth was blunted... that same truth will come out eventually and we all (on every side of the tetrahedon-like political spectrum)will pay for it.
Who can be shocked anymore by the oddly defensive partisanship of The New York Times? When the accusations by the Swift Boat Veterans were first made several weeks ago, one issue above all stood out, not just with the blogosphere, but with large numbers of concerned citizens from both parties, that is John Kerry's statment before the US Senate -- "seared" in his memory, as he said -- that he had spent Christmas Eve of 1968 under fire in Cambodia. He made this assertion during an important policy debate on War in Nicaragua -- a serious matter indeed. It wasn't a question of mere medals (who cares?). It was national security, life and death. (He also made similar statements in print, as we know.)
But The New York Times, writing for the first time on this scandal they have so assiduously avoided, buries what surely deserves to be the lede in the fourth to last paragraph of a 3500 word article!
This week, as its leaders spoke with reporters, they have focused primarily on the one allegation in the book that Mr. Kerry's campaign has not been able to put to rest: that he was not in Cambodia on Christmas Eve in 1968, as he declared in a statement to the Senate in 1986. Even Mr. Brinkley, who has emerged as a defender of Mr. Kerry, said in an interview that it was unlikely that Mr. Kerry's Swift boat ventured into Cambodia on Christmas or Christmas Eve, though he said he believed that Mr. Kerry was probably there shortly afterward.
One wonders why they even bothered to print the measly paragraph (CYA perhaps?). One thing is certain, few will read it because the article itself is a tedious recitation of the obvious -- that the Swift Boat Veterans are heavily backed by Bush supporters. (Talk about dog bites man.) You would think a newspaper with Times' aspirations would be interested in why a man running for the most powerful position on Earth would find it necessary to trumpet-- up until quite recently -- seemingly bogus involvments with Cambodia and the CIA. It wouldn't take Freud, Jung or Adler to tell them that this might speak to the man's personality. Surely the Times people must know that. In fact, I wouldn't doubt they do. And that's the problem.
UPDATE: More on the Cambodia story from The Augusta Free Press. Also, don't miss Patterico's chart in which he lays bare his own nefarious connections. [Don't you dare do that.-ed. Don't worry.]
Instapundit has it just right this morning when he writes that mainstream media coverage and accuracy is a bigger issue than the election itself.
Elections come and go, politicians come and go, and pretty much all of them turn out to be disappointments one way or another. But the "Fourth Estate" is a big part of the unelected Permanent Government that in many ways does more to run the country than the politicians. And it's unravelling before our very eyes, which I think is the biggest story of the election so far.
Is this blogger triumphalism? Maybe, but a chink in the armor of information control has been created -- and it's growing. "Information control?" you ask. Isn't that a bit of an exaggeration? Well, consider this: the major television networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) and The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times (not to mention others less important) all work from substantially the same world view with only the most minor variations. Some would call this "liberal." I don't at all, but never mind. It is nigh onto monolithic (with obvious exceptions) and it is protecting jobs, status, etc. as much as ideology. In fact, more than ideology, which seems to shift from day to day for pragmatic reasons. In that sense, these groups reflect the major political parties, which also appear more intent on winning, creating jobs for themselves, etc., than projecting specific policy.
This makes John Kerry the perfect modern candidate for the media because he is willing to switch views at the drop of the hat to preserve victory and his "culture." The most recent example is his attack yesterday on Bush's troop withdrawal plan, an idea which Kerry himself was backing less than a month ago. One wonders if he even remembers. Meanwhile, the major media continue to ignore the substance of the Swift Boat veterans accusations about Kerry's "grade inflation" in Vietnam. They do this despite the almost universal belief that a presidential election is greatly about the candidate's character and this speaks to that question in the most specific manner. Which makes the mainstream media propagandists, essentially, if you think about it.
So that leaves us renegades on the Internet. We're propagandists too. Big time. But at least we admit it. Judge us how you will. But judge the mainstream media the same way. And, yes, there is probably a war on between us of sorts. Let's hope it stays non-violent.
UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt has more on press malfeasance here.
MORE: Just for the record, the WaPo and others are casting aspersions on one of the Swift Boat Vets Larry Thurlow. They may be right. But frankly I don't care. That's about medals, arguably a pompous and silly side issue. (In warfare, they're given out by the bucketful anyway). What is not pompous and silly is a Senator lying on the floor of that institution in order to advance his foreign policy position. Cambodia, Mon Amour... Until the WaPo et al deal with that, they remain reified. And if they don't know what that means, they can look it up.
Several political and student activists and family members of some of the imprisoned dissidents, such as the maverick Behrooz Javid-Tehrani, were brutalized and arrested, this afternoon, in front and around the UN offices located in NE of the Iranian Capital.
The brutal attack of the regime's militiamen and plain clothes officers, against the peaceful demonstrators, happened after a formal request for the UN's immediate intervention for making respect the human rights, in Iran, was remitted to a UN official.
I was fascinated by the OJ Case... even braved the lines to attend a court session. Watching it was like watching the train wreck of train wrecks. You couldn't believe a defendant so obviously guilty of multiple murder.. with blood evidence everywhere but up his nostrils (maybe it was).. was going to get off. And he did! The Kobe Case is just the opposite. Almost all the evidence available so far points to his innocence, remarkably so, but who knows what will happen?
The best anaylsis of the case I have read so far is by attorney Joanna Spilbor who writes on her excellent site The Kobe Bryant Case Why Prosecutors Should Dismiss It. She even urges the prosecutors to apologize to Bryant. But she doesn't expect that. That would be, as she says, a "Hollywood ending." And she even sees a downside in dismissal (which many are now predicting) for Kobe:
For one thing, he has invested a year of his life - and probably immense sums of money - in the hope of vindicating himself. Odds are, at trial, he would get that vindication. Granted, juries are unpredictable - but he could always waive his right to a jury trial and request that he be tried in front the judge. And there is just too much evidence for Bryant's innocence, I believe, to convince twelve jurors he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
There's another advantage, too, to going to trial: The accuser would have to take the stand, reluctantly or otherwise, and tell her story -- thereby preserving her testimony for all eternity. Every discrepancy, every misstatement would be recorded for use against her in her civil trial. If her testimony was weak enough, the civil suit might disappear - or be settled for a pittance.
Will Kobe be on trial in Colorado on August 27? (People like me think he's more needed in Athens.) The clock is ticking.
Mirabile dictu! Yasir Arafat has finally admitted to 'Some corruption' in the Palestinian Authority. But don't get too excited. The Red Sea is not about to open again or green gila monsters to descend from Mars. According to the Guardian...
Mr Arafat, who has been resisting intense pressure to halt official corruption, reform the security services and relinquish some of his near-absolute powers, did not outline what the mistakes had been or how he planned to correct them.
UPDATE: Perhaps this amusing (unless youre a poor Palestinian) account of Suha's Travels will explain some of Yasir's recent travails. What interests me is that only now are the Europeans beginning to investigate this massive fraud, which was evident to the casual observer for years. (hat tip: Fausta... in the comments)
I'm getting mighty sick of this subject... Kerry in Cambodia (or not)... and the idea that a man could base a Presidential Campaign in 2004 around four months' participation in the Vietnam War in 1968, no matter what he did, is absurd and pathetic... maybe we should call it the Boar War (or rather the Bore War)... but this latest salvo from sometime Kerry supporter Michael Kranish in The Boston Globe deserves some comment.
Now I had never heard of Kranish before this dustup began. So I have no knowledge of the journalist's previous work or reputation, nor any opinion of his introduction (if any) to Kerry's campaign bio, a genre of literature I find slightly less inspiring than supermarket giveaways (it contains no stamps). But if this article is the best Kranish can do in the support of Kerry, the Senator is in deeper trouble on the issue than I thought. Capitalisation alert: KERRY'S DEFENSE CONTAINS ABSOLUTELY NO FACTS, ONLY ASSERTIONS. [I thought you swore off capitalisation on your blog.-ed. I also swore off camembert too.] But it seems, not too far from the surface, that Kranish is actually reputation salvaging here (his), not Kerry excusing, distancing himself from the statements of the Senator's supporters, which he carefully encloses in quotes.
Carrying the water in this article... and in the world... for the Senator on this matter is longtime Kerry associate Michael Meehan found here in the aptly-named Disinfopedia. This is the man whose recent response to attacks on Kerry is "no longer found" -- not a hopeful state of affairs. In Kranish's piece, Mr. Meehan tells us:
"During John Kerry's service in Vietnam, many times he was on or near the Cambodian border and on one occasion crossed into Cambodia at the request of members of a special operations group operating out of Ha Tien," Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan said in a statement. The statement did not say when the cross-border mission took place.
No mention of "Christmas in Cambodia" yet. But Meehan's wooden nose keeps growing:
"On December 24, 1968, Lieutenant John Kerry and his crew were on patrol in the watery borders between Vietnam and Cambodia deep in enemy territory. In the early afternoon, Kerry's boat, PCF-44, was at Sa Dec and then headed north to the Cambodian border. There, Kerry and his crew along with two other boats were ambushed, taking fire from both sides of the river, and after the firefight were fired upon again. Later that evening during their night patrol they came under friendly fire."
Oh, really? We could call this Meehan's Pirandello Defense... "It Is So If You Think So." Kranish's article goes on, however:
James Wasser, who accompanied Kerry on that mission aboard patrol boat No. 44 and who supports Kerry's candidacy, said that while he believes they were "very, very close" to Cambodia, he did not think they entered Cambodia on that mission. Yet he added: "It is very hard to tell. There are no signs."
Another crewmate who said he was with Kerry on Christmas Eve, Steven Gardner -- who is a member of the veterans group opposing Kerry's candidacy -- said Kerry was 50 miles from Cambodia at the time. He accused Kerry of lying about being in Cambodia or by the border. "Never happened," Gardner said.
Separately, according to Meehan's statement, Kerry crossed into Cambodia on a covert mission to drop off special operations forces. In an interview, Meehan said there was no paperwork for such missions and he could not supply a date. That makes it hard to ascertain or confirm what happened. Kerry served on two swift boats, the No. 44 in December 1968 and January 1969, and the No. 94, from February to March 1969.
No paperwork? No date? I'm shocked. Frankly, this is embarrassing. Why don't we admit the truth - Kerry Lied - and move on? He won't be the first politician to pad his resumé, even if it is in phony blood.
The New York Times still has no report on this controversy, branding it, I suppose, as peripheral. Instapundit's Dad, a Democrat, takes it more seriously, seeing in what I call Kerry's "braggart soldier"-like behavior the roots of more dangerous LBJ-like military overcompensation. Who knows? But what I do know is the most risible aspect of today's Boston Globe article is its headline: "Kerry Disputes Allegations on Cambodia." Talk about desperation in the copy editing department! It should have read: "Kerry Hack Offers No Facts!" or some such.
UPDATE: Donald Sensing reports that Sen. Tom Harkin, who recently attacked VP Cheney as a coward, trumps Kerry in the whopper department: Harkin himself claimed to have battled Mig fighters over North Vietnam while a Navy pilot. He was a pilot, but never went to Vietnam.
If this is true, we're back in the schoolyard with infant politicians. As Sensing accurately puts it:
When I was a kid I learned that the only kids who always talked tough were either bullies or were in reality just chicken. The real war heroes I have known hardly ever talked about it and certainly didn't want to be heroic again.
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