Crowd takes over high bar competition
This is Russian Olympic gymnast Aleksei Nemov tonight thanking the spectators of the high bar competition for their support at his ripoff by the judges.
Nemov performed a spectacular, nearly flawless routine with six separate catch-and-releases, more than any other competitor. Four of them were nonstop. It was an awesome performance, only slightly marred by a very near miss of the "stick" on dismount.
And the judges gave him a 9.725, ranking him last of competitors who had performed until then. The crowd immediately came out its seats, loudly jeering and catcalling the judges.
The crowd's protests continued for about 10 minutes - so long that American Paul Hamm, rostered next, could not take the bar. Finally judging officials conferred and Nemov's performance was rescored. It rose to 9.762.
The crowd didn't like the new score, either, and continued to jeer until Nemov stepped forward and motioned for them to calm down. Then Hamm performed and was incredibly (in my view) given a 9.812, which at the end earned him silver. Gold was won by Italy's Igor Cassina, whose score was aloso 9.812, but who won on the complicated numerical tiebreaking system. Nemov finished fifth.
Dole told Kerry, "I'm not trying to stir anything up, but I don't believe every one of these people who have talked about what happened are Republican liars.
"And very frankly, Bush is my guy, and I'm tired of people on your side calling him everything from a coward to a traitor to everything - a deserter."
Dole said he urged Kerry, "Why don't you call George Bush today and say, 'Mr. President, let's stop all this stuff about the National Guard and Vietnam - and let's talk about the issues."
Dole said Kerry responded, "I haven't spent one dime attacking President Bush."
But the Republican war hero shot back, "You don't have to. You've got all the so-called mainstream media, plus you've got MoveOn.org and all these other groups that have spent millions and millions of dollars trying to tarnish Bush's image."
"Don't tell me you don't know what some of these people are doing," he told Kerry.
"Everybody likes quiet heroes," Dole added, saying he told Kerry, "John, everybody knows you were in Vietnam and the less you say about it, the better."
Dole said he tried to end the tense conversation cordially by telling Kerry, "I wish you good luck, up to a point."
I suspect things will be fairly icy between Dole and Kerry for some time to come.
The real conspiracy afoot
Geitner Simmons alerted me via email to the real conspiracy of the 2004 presidential race: the fact that 75 percent of the two tickets are United Methodists (only Kerry is not).
Peals of cackling laughter....
Not only that, Methodists constitute only three percent of the American population, but account for 12 percent of the U.S. Congress.
...after he was released from the Hanoi Hilton in 1973, McCain publicly complained that testimony by Kerry and others before J. William Fulbright's Senate Foreign Relations Committee was "the most effective propaganda [my North Vietnamese captors] had to use against us."
"They used Senator Fulbright a great deal," McCain wrote in the May 14, 1973, issue of U.S. News & World Report. While he was languishing in a North Vietnamese prison cell, Kerry was telling the Fulbright committee that U.S. soldiers were committing war crimes in Vietnam as a matter of course.
He also points out that Kerry has been campaigning against "Benedict Arnold CEO's," who outsource American jobs, ironic in light of the fact that Vanessa Kerry has accepted a taxpayer-funded Fulbright scholarship to study in London.
Update: Harmon Dow emails to point out that most of the funding for a Fulbright comes from private British contribution, and that American taxpayers kick in less than 20 percent.
Hear, hear! about one-sport specialization
High-school teacher Patrick Welsh writes in USA Today of a troubling trend,
... one of the worst aspects of athletics today [is] the growing phenomenon of coaches and parents pressuring kids to specialize in one sport.
The day of the three-sport high school athlete is rapidly disappearing as coaches tell even 10-year-olds who show some promise in a particular sport to stick to that sport year-round. There are no hard statistics on the decline of multi-sport athletes, but anecdotal evidence from across the USA reflects an unmistakable trend.
This is a scathing and, IMO, well-deserved critique. Two of my three kids are athletically talented, my second son, T, and my daughter, E. Both were repeatedly recruited for travel soccer teams. Neither much wanted to do it, and the fact that Sunday travel and Sunday games were universal put the kabosh on it.
They have excelled in several different sports. Had my son, 16, become a year-round swimmer at an early age as many kids often do he would never have discovered his gift for track and field, in which he qualified for the state tournament in discus last spring.
Welsh identifies a bad trend. One of his former students is Mike Porterfield, "who coached the U.S. women's rowing pairs to a bronze medal in the 2000 Sydney Olympics."
Porterfield, a former student of mine who played football, rowed crew and wrestled at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., in the mid-1980s, says kids often follow a parent's or coach's dream, not their dream.
"That's why so many kids burn out or peak too early," Porterfield says. "They can't take the pressure from overbearing adults trying to live their lives through them."
The problem has become so prevalent that psychiatrists have given a name to the condition of a person who obsesses over a child's achievement: the "Achievement by Proxy" syndrome.
Now before you start growling about the innumerable syndromes and mental disabilities shrinks can find, there is a long-established criminal syndrome well known to doctors and investigators, the "Munchausen by proxy syndrome." Baron Munchausen was a German mercenary who retired in 1760 and told all manner of tall tales until he died in 1797. It was widely believed then that he told the tales mostly to make himself the center of attention and be invited to fancy dinners by leading citizens.
Munchausen by proxy syndrome, then, uses someone else as the attention-getting object, the proxy.
In MBPS, an individual - usually a mother - deliberately makes another person (most often an infant or toddler) sick or convinces others that the person is sick. She misleads others into thinking that her child has medical problems by lying and reporting fictitious episodes. She may exaggerate, fabricate, or induce symptoms. As a result, doctors usually order tests, try different types of medications, and may even hospitalize the child or perform surgery to determine the cause.
Typically, the mother knows that these procedures are not needed, but she feels satisfied when she has the attention and sympathy of doctors, nurses, and others who come into contact with her and her child.
Children have died because of this syndrome. The risk Welsh and Porterfield describe is not death, but probably does include increased risk of injury to the child and certainly makes it more likely that a child will come actually to despise athletics rather than enjoy them.
It also decivilizes what is, at bottom, merely recreation. Folks, it's only a game. Just ask Astros pitcher Roger Clemens. Let your kids be kids and decide for themselves what sports they want to play.
Boy, this hurts my feelings
James Joyner got a mass emailing from Mary Beth Cahill, John Kerry's campaign manager, and I didn't. Hah, she can kiss my vote goodbye!
OTOH, I did get a mass email from DefeatKingGeorge.com, offering to sell me bumper stickers saying, "Defeat 'King George' In 2004."
Really, isn't it time to leave the Revolutionary War behind?
Alan Keyes' reparations blindness
If Congress votes reparations, everybody will be black
So Alan Keyes wants the feds to pay or subsidize reparations for descendants of slaves held in the Old South.
He's pretty obviously gone off the deep end because he (and other reparations advocates) have forgotten a basic law of economics: that which is subsidized, increases.
Trust me, when the word gets out that there is free money for black people, you'll be astounded at how undercounted blacks have been for decades. Tens of millions of new black people will emerge with their hands out.
But Keyes is simply trying to kick a race-based political football around. Bluntly put, he's trying to pander to the black vote in his belated Senate race in Illinois.
Bush condemns Swift Boat Vets for Truth ads
Sort of. In Crawford, Texas, today, President Bush called on John Kerry to join him in "condemning" the advertisements sponsored by 527 organizations. Asked by a reporter whether his comments included the ads by Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, Bush answered yes.
Dem mouthpieces immediately scoffed at the president's remarks, saying that they would accept nothing less than Bush specifically denouncing the SBVT's ads and calling for them to be discontinued.
Out of the top-ten-funded 527 groups, nine are openly pro-Kerry, anti-Bush. A Democratic Congressman said this morning on FoxNews that there was no problem with Democratic 527s because SBVT "are liars and Democratic 527s are honest." (I heard it, but wasn't able to get his name - anyone out there see this? Leave a comment with his name if you did, please.)
Personally, I think there's some hypocrisy on Bush's part here, because the 527s were created by the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act, which became law over Bush's signature, when he had been urged by conservative voices to veto it. Sorry, George, these groups are children of your own creation.
"Tougher than woodpecker lips"
I've posted before that former Marine Matthew White has been explaining what Marine boot camp is like, tracking the training that my son, Stephen, has been going through since July 26, his first day there.
I posted Saturday of a 4:45 a.m. call Stephen made on his company commander's cell phone to let us know that he had taken so ill that he was being transferred to the Medical Rehabilitation Platoon for recovery. Diagnosis was pneumonia with fever and shakes.
Don emailed me two weeks ago telling me that Stephen wasn't feeling well. (I think he posted on it as well.) I believe he was put on bedrest for a day or two. Two weeks later Stephen goes to MRP. What does this tell me?
Stephen is tougher than woodpecker lips. He's been fighting a serious illness and training through it for two weeks. I can't say for sure, but I would bet Stephen hasn't said a word about feeling ill since they pulled him off bedrest. [Note: this is true; Steve so wrote us a week-plus ago - DS] He's only being recycled because his illness was probably giving him away.
His Company Commander gave Stephen his cell phone to call home. What does this tell us?
First, the Senior Drill Instructor usually makes the decision to recycle a recruit. Stephen was probably told that the decision was made to send him to MRP. If he doesn't like that decision, he can appeal it to the CO. Which I'm guessing he did. Gutsy, very gutsy.
Second, Stephen was allowed to call home. Do you know how often that happens when someone is recycled? Never.
Third, he used the CO's cell phone. There are pay phones all over Parris Island and in the rare instance they are allowed to call home, recruits are given a "phone chit" and sent to the pay phone to make a collect call. Instead, the CO (a 1stLt or Capt.) handed a recruit his personal cell phone and told him to call home.
My guess...Stephen was being rewarded for something. Probably his toughness.
I gotta say that this lifts my morale here on the home front.
Update: Got a letter from Stephen dated Friday, the day before he was sent to MRP. He said that Thursday he fell out of PT run, was diagnosed as dehydrated and had a measured body core temperature of 104+ degrees. That is less than one degree short of heatstroke incipience and two degree above what Parris Island considers emergency level.
The "Bush accomplishment" challenge
One of my readers issued a challenge to compare Bush's term so far with "the actual accomplishments ... of the George W. Bush Administration to ANY four years of Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Nixon/Ford, Reagan, or George H.W. Bush."
Tom Donelson lists three he thinks are pretty significant, and has a few other questions for the Kerry camp.
Does the date of the award matter?
John Kerry rescued Army Lt. Jim Rassman from a river on March 13, 1969, a deed for which he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal.
Letters authorizing the award are posted as a PDF file on Kerry's web site. Bob Redman wonders why the Secretary of the Navy who signed the citation was John Lehman, who served as the SecNav under President Reagan. Kerry had entered public office by the time Lehman was the secretary. Bob sees a little conspiracy afoot - "awards of medals for bravery in combat to politicians are always suspect" - but I think not. The letter immediately prior (in the PDF file) is signed by Adm. Elmo Zumwalt on the leetterhead of Command, US Naval Forces Vietnam, which had obviously long been disbanded by the time Lehman became the secretary.
It is curious that neither letter displays a date, but someone more familiar with navy executive correspondence than I should address that.
Because the BSM ranks at practically the bottom of US combat awards, the authority to award it was pushed down pretty low in the chain of command. I am pretty certain (using an Army paradigm, I admit) that Zumwalt did not personally approve the award, he just signed the citation letter based on the approval of Kerry's captain-level commander. Anyone know who had approval authority back then?
Swfit boat crewman will confirm Cambodia mission
According to John Hurley, chief of Veterans for Kerry, a member of John Kerry's own swift boat crew will soon confirm that Kerry and the boat sailed into Cambodia, as Kerry has alleged since at least 1979. There is, however, an enormous body of evidence that the allegation is false.
Speaking on FoxNews today, interviewed by Chris Wallce, Hurley admitted, there is no document that backs Kerry's claim, but then said,
John Kerry was in Cambodia. They have requested to drop off various operations group and deliver various supplies. They were in there. His crew will say the same thing. CW: Well, you say the crew. He's had crew members who have stood up and defended him on almost everything else. Do you have a single crew member who's come forward to say he was five miles inside Cambodia? JH: This hasn't been an issue until really recently. And why we're going back now and revisiting where John Kerry was on a single night in 1968 is beyond me. The same questions can be asked of President Bush. Where was he when he was supposed to be reporting for duty in Alabama. Those questions need to be raised and asked as well. John Kerry acknowledges he was in Cambodia. Where he was on any given night is not part of this discussion. It should not be part of this discussion. CW: I take it then the answer is "no" you don't have a single crew member who will say he was in Cambodia, five miles inside Cambodia, on December, Christmas Eve, 1968 or any other night. JH: On other nights, yes, they will say that. On December 24th they will not say that, because CW: Who's (crosstalk) say that? Because I haven't heard a crew member who's JH: It was the 94 boat. This issue hasn't come up. It's the reason why it hasn't been addressed. On Christmas Eve he was on the 44 boat, they were near the Cambodian border. They may or may not have crossed over. On a different occasion on the 94 boat they were five miles deep into Cambodia. It was a month later, a month and a half later. The crew will testify to that.
When this crewmember comes forward, I'll let you know. Don't hold your breath.
Bob Dole weighs in on Kerry's service
Former Senator and 1996 Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole has denigrated John Kerry's Vietnam record and postwar protests. He said on CNN's Late Edition today,
"But what I will always quarrel about are the Purple Hearts. I mean, the first one, whether he ought to have a Purple Heart -- he got two in one day, I think. And he was out of there in less than four months, because three Purple Hearts and you're out. And as far as I know, he's never spent one day in the hospital. I don't think he draws any disability pay. He doesn't have any disability. And boasting about three Purple Hearts when you think of some of the people who really got shot up in Vietnam."
Dole is., of course, a bona fide war hero from Word War II, grievously wounded in Italy and still handicapped from it. However, Kerry's three PHs came from three different days, not two in one day as Dole says. Kerry was not out of Vietnam in less than four months, but four months and (IIRC) 12 days.
Does Kerry draw military disability pay? I think that's a fair question and I think as a voter I have a right and need to know what the physical condition a candidate is in. Kerry should release this information. Dole called on Kerry to release his military medical records, too.
But this was Dole's scathing comment on Kerry's Senate career:
But Senator Kerry's record in the Senate, I served with him for 14 years, I can't remember a single piece of legislation that bore his name. And maybe he did a lot of good work, but it wasn't very obvious.”
The Kerry-supporter challenge, part II
I am somewhat bemused by the comment responses to my challenge to Kerry supporters to submit to me a guest post explaining in positive terms why they support Kerry (rather than merely oppose Bush).
No one yet seems willing to give it a go. Joseph Marshall, for example, responded by issuing a counter-challenge:
I'd like to see you do a head to head comparison of the actual accomplishments (and I mean REAL accomplishments--not just things proposed and not started, or started and not finished) of the George W. Bush Administration to ANY four years of Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Nixon/Ford, Reagan, or George H.W. Bush.
Nice dodge, Joseph, but sorry, that dog don't hunt, as James Carville was so fond of saying. Long-term readers of my blog know that I have never endorsed Bush for reelection and in fact have made more than one argument against it (here and here and here, for example.
Besides, the issue at hand is not whether Bush stacks up against Eisenhower or Lincoln or Reagan. Clearly he doesn't. Unfortunately, Honest Abe can't run. But neither can the original JFK, and whatever the present JFK is, he ain't JFK.
The invitation stands: Give me positive reasons to vote for Kerry, based on Kerry's own record and words. Please see all the terms for submissions before writing. (Basically they say to be published the essay must be reasonably well written, no more than 1,500 words, and submitted with intact, revealed html code. Also, "Bush is lousy, Kerry is good" is not convincing, since gratuitous assertions may be just as gratuitously denied. Just explain why and how Kerry is right, with links to Kerry's speeches or campaign releases to back up your claims.)
Luke 13:10-17 10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11 And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14 But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” 15 But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” 17 When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
I’ll bet that many of you grew up with certain sets of Sunday rules as I did. In my family, for example, we did not play cards on Sunday, not even a card game as innocuous as Rook. We did not go to the movies on Sunday. Many of my friends had similar rules. One Sunday afternoon a friend’s parents saw us in their front yard pitching a baseball. They told us that since it was Sunday we should throw the ball in the back yard, not the front. To which my friend innocently asked whether it might be Sunday in the back yard also. He went inside and I went home. It was Sunday in my front yard, too.
When Cathy and I lived in South Carolina in the late 1970s, the laws governing Sunday commerce were dizzying. We could buy gasoline on Sunday, but not motor oil. We could buy paper cups, but not Styrofoam cups. There was a whole list of mercantile activities that were on- or off-limits, and some could be done after twelve noon, but not before – Sunday rules.
So here we have Jesus on the Jewish Sabbath, teaching at a synagogue. A crippled woman caught his eye and Jesus healed her. She broke into praise of God, certainly a proper thing to do on the sabbath. But the religious leader there, something like a modern rabbi, I guess, was shocked – shocked! – that Jesus had labored at the healing arts on the sabbath. He admonished Jesus to heal people on the other six days of the week.
Jesus answered that Jewish religious law permitted a man or woman to untie an animal and lead it to water to drink on the sabbath, so it was rather idiotic to tell him he could not untie the woman from her physical bondage of eighteen years. Jesus’ opponents slunk away and all the people there gave Jesus three cheers.
There are actually two crippled persons in the story. The woman is crippled from what one commentary says was probably a fused spine. But the man who accosted Jesus was crippled, too. He was spiritually crippled and socially crippled. He had allowed himself, a descendant of slaves brought by God from Egypt, to be enslaved again to almost mindless religious rule keeping. And he was oblivious that doing good on the Sabbath might be spiritually beneficial rather than religiously wrong.
Jesus honored the Sabbath and urged others to do so. But in this story and others like it, Jesus simply laughed at how religious rule makers had turned Sabbath observances into another form of bondage. This state of affairs was sadly ironic. As the children of God followed Moses to the promised land, one of their observances was to rest at leisure on the Sabbath, in commemoration of the fact that as slaves in Egypt they were never allowed to rest. Resting was a sign of freedom, an important mark of their relationship with God. God was the one who had brought them out of unending toil in slavery to freedom. They understood that one mark of a free people was being able to rest and take leisure.
How tragic that we Americans, who call ourselves free, have become enchained again. While it is still possible to rest at leisure on Sundays, the day has become almost indistinguishable from any business day of the week. We have become ever more in slavery to profits and revenue streams and cash flow. It started with department stores and malls being open on Sundays, but now I know businessmen who routinely drive to the office on Sundays, where they labor, hidden from public view or contact, on spreadsheets or marketing plans. It’s slavery. We who don’t go to work on Sundays often go out to eat after the worship service or shop at stores or go to a movie. And by doing so we help forge more links in the chains of persons who must labor to serve us. How proud of America Pharaoh would be!
We need to do as much work as possible during the week so that we can reserve Sunday for rest and worship. I am not an absolutist about this, circumstances can intervene. My grandfather owned a dairy farm. He and his men had to milk the cows on Sunday, but my grandfather forbade other farm work unless it was essential to the health or safety of the herd. Jesus understood that sometimes work on the Sabbath just has to be done and the Jewish law said it’s okay to get your ox out of a ditch on the Sabbath. However, said Billy Graham, “If your ox gets in the ditch every Sabbath, you need to either get rid of the ox or fill up the ditch.” Try to get done as much work as you can before Sunday. Don’t make a habit of Sunday work.
In another passage Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). God’s intention in designating a Sabbath day was for our benefit, not the day’s. Sundays are supposed to serve us, not we who serve Sundays. But we can serve our ordinary needs any day of the week. Sundays serve us by giving us a time to deepen our relationship with God. Sundays serve our need to worship God, and to bond ourselves together as children of God in his family. Even we Christians should pause at rest to remember that we, too, once were slaves to the ways of sin and death. Jesus announced that he came to give freedom in a new covenant of living.
One way the Sabbath serves us is to give us pause from everything else. In fact, the Hebrew word for Sabbath means “cessation.” The Lord admonishes us in Psalm 46, “Be still and know that I am God.” Warren Wiersbe wrote, “The ability to calm your soul and wait before God is one of the most difficult things in the Christian life. Our old nature is restless . . . the world around us is frantically in a hurry. But a restless heart usually leads to a reckless life.” Let’s face it; it’s a challenge to find ways from Monday through Saturday to be still and know that the Lord is our God, and very rare that we gather for communal worship except on the Sabbath. Once a week it is a good thing to disconnect ourselves from worldly routines and get reconnected with God’s divine presence. And oddly, only if we do that will we find that God’s presence can be discerned and invited into our worldly affairs day to day. To walk with the Lord Monday through Saturday, we need the Sabbath. That’s when the walk begins.
A colleague of mine observed that people tend to worship their play and play at their worship. A modest amount of recreation on Sundays is good. It is part of relaxing and getting the rest for which the Sabbath is designed. Yet, if see Sunday chiefly as a day for recreation, we miss God’s whole point of the day. Americans have become addicted to recreation and entertainment. This isn’t good. I’m not a prude about this: I play tennis once in awhile on Sundays and once attended a Titans game on a Sunday. (It was not a noon game, obviously.) It is fine to seek recreation or entertainment on Sundays, but Sunday should never simply be our special day for recreation or entertainment. Let us strive to keep it primarily a day for worship and rest.
The early Jewish Christians continued to observe Saturday as the Sabbath, but also commemorated Christ’s resurrection on Sunday. In not too many years, followers of Christ, whether Jewish or not, began to observe Sunday as their only Sabbath. Some of them fell right back into the same sort of legalism that Jesus encountered in the synagogue. Other Christians didn’t seem to be hung up on Sabbath regulations at all. This may have been quite an issue among the Christians in Rome, to whom the apostle Paul wrote his finest letter. To Paul, keeping the Sabbath in specific ways was a matter for which one opinion was not clearly better than another. He wrote in Romans 14:1-10 to, “Accept those whose faith is weak, do not judge them on disputable matters.” For example, some Christians saw no problem with eating meat sacrificed to pagan idols, other Christian wouldn’t do it. Paul said they shouldn’t argue about it because either is okay with God.
As for a Sabbath day, Paul observed that some Christians considered one day more sacred than other days, other Christians treated every day alike. But Paul went on to teach that keeping the Sabbath required a conviction of the heart rather than simple conformity to rules. We belong to God even whether we live or die, so whether we set aside the Sabbath day or not, Paul said, we still belong to God. After all, that is the very reason Christ died and was raised. So, Paul asked, “Why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you look down on them? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat.”
I suppose that’s where I finally settle on the matter of “keeping the Sabbath.” I am far less interested in whether people follow certain rules on Sunday than I am in whether they have the conviction, wrought in their hearts, that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and is now the Lord of their life. Anyone who is so convinced should prayerfully keep Sundays as the Spirit of the Lord leads them. But they may seem a little odd to people who are in bondage and don’t even know it, who do not rest from their labors.
We are free by the blood of Christ, so let’s rest one day a week.
"Nothing accomplished"
A challenge for my Kerry-supporting readers
Went to Nashville the other day for a funeral. On the way home I saw a Ford Fiesta emblazoned with a bumpet sticker on the lower-left, rear window. It said:
Mission Nothing Accomplished
Anybody but Bush
That's it. I thought of this sticker when I read Matt Welch's piece in the Daily Star:
Whenever I'd ask [DNC] delegates what made them particularly excited about John Kerry, the average pause was four seconds, and the response was never convincing. After his triumphant speech, the chant outside the Fleet Center was not "John Kerry!" it was "No More Years!"
Kerry's campaign is more intent on convincing voters who Kerry isn't (Bush) than informing us who Kerry is.
And that's why the Fiesta's bumper sticker was ripe with double entendre. After all, "nothing accomplished" also describes John Kerry's record since he stopped trashing his country, after he returned from Navy service in Vietnam.
We know more - from Kerry and his campaign staff - about his four months in the Mekong than we do his 20 years in the Senate.
Hence my challenge: If you support Kerry for president, I invite you to write a guest post for this blog explaining why. Here's why it's a challenge:
To be published, you must explain why Kerry is to be preferred in terms that do not simply say he's not Bush. This is not an invitation to rage about Bush; it is an invitation to be positive about Kerry.
It will be insufficient merely to declare that Bush is wrong on Iraq, taxes, education, etc. You must explain why and how Kerry is right.
You must cite and provide links to Kerry's speeches or campaign releases to back up your claims. These cites can reach all the way back to when Kerry declared his candidacy for the 2004 race.
Citing the Dermocratic platform will be unpersuasive, since neither party pays a lot of attention to its own platform once the election is over, even if they win.
Length limit is 1,500 words. That's a long post, by the way.
I will not rebuild your html code, so when you email your entry to me, you MUST email it in plaintext format (not an html email) with html coding revealed intact. Do not email me asking how to do that. You may write the essay as a *.txt document and send it as an attachment if you wish, but I won't take responsibility if my security software alerts and sets phasers to kill.
Your subject line must read OHC KERRY CHALLENGE ENTRY. I get pretty well buried in email every day, and unless it's obvious your entry is there, I may well miss it and even delete it.
I do not have time to be your editor. If you can't spell or use good grammar and syntax, I won't help you. Your essay must be publishable in style and readability!
I am not promising to publish anyone's essay. I will publish no more than one essay. I will not fisk any essay that I do publish, I will present it unedited and unabridged with your byline. You MUST include your real name; I will delete pseudonymous essays without reading them.
I reserve the right to publish (maybe with attribution, maybe not) excerpts of any essay submitted.
No - "means no" - profanity. Using the first and last letters of a cuss word with *** in the middle counts as profanity. When quoting someone else, delete profanity used in the quote.
ABSOLUTE DEADLINE is Saturday, Aug. 28 at 7 a.m. CDT.
Boat commander backs Kerry
William Rood, who commanded a swift boat in the February 28, 1969 action for which John Kerry was awarded the Silver Star, has gone public to back Kerry and say that Kerry's critics are "armed with stories I know to be untrue."
Update: Tomorrow's Washington Post (already online) confirms that the damage listed for Kerry's boat (see here) actually occurred the day before Kerry pulled Army Lt. Jim Rassman from the water on March 13, 1969. This fact mitigates against (well, pretty much disproves) Kerry's account that his boat struck a mine in the river.
But, perhaps just as damaging to SBVT's account that there was no small-arms fire directed against the boats on March 13, the Post spoke to a previously-silent crewman, Wayne D. Langhofer, who was on the boat just behind Kerry's boat.
"There was a lot of firing going on, and it came from both sides of the river," said Wayne D. Langhofer, who manned a machine gun aboard PCF-43, the boat that was directly behind Kerry's.
Langhofer said he distinctly remembered the "clack, clack, clack" of enemy AK-47s, as well as muzzle flashes from the riverbanks. Langhofer, who now works at a Kansas gunpowder plant , said he was approached several months ago by leaders of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth but declined their requests to speak out against Kerry.
Yet a basic questiuon remains: why no damage to the boats except for mine damage to PCF-3, which all sides agree struck a mine? The river at that point was only about 50 meters wide. If enemy fire was coming from both sides of the river, the boats literally would have been sitting ducks at short range, just impossible to miss. Remember that recovering PCF-3 and its crew took about 90 minutes. No one and no boat sustained wounds or damage from enemy firing. Neither the NVA nor the VC were that inept with weapons.
John Kerry's Mae West campaign strategy
Mae West was a glamour star of the golden age of film. She was an imporant figure in not only the obvious way. Her first film, for example, was based on a stage play she had written. It was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and launched Cary Grant's career. Within three years Mae West was the highest-paid woman in the United States.
She was eminently quotable, sort of a sexy version of the Yogi Berra quotes of today. For example:
"I believe in censorship. After all I have made a fortune out of it."
"When women go wrong, men go right after them."
"Marriage is a great institution. I'm not ready for an institution."
"It's not the man in your life that counts. It's the life in your man."
"When caught between two evils, I generally pick the one I've never tried before."
What, you may well ask, does all this have to do with John Kerry's presidential campaign?
One of Mae's pithy observations was, "It's better to be looked over than overlooked," a kind of precursor to Brendan Behan's later admonition, "There's no such thing as bad publicity" (the full quote continues, "except your own obituary").
Compared to the IRS section 527 organizations that are carrying Kerry's water, Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth is in poverty. They can afford to buy ads in only select markets. Furthermore, the major media were studiously ignoring them almost without exception.
But thanks to John Kerry and campaign, SBVT and its allegations are now a lead story on CNN (Aug. 21). Why the change of focus by the media? Only because Kerry and running mate John Edwards started personally attacking SBVT, and anything the pair do the media cover.
NZ Bear reports that the day after Kerry opened fire against SBVT, a Google search for the words kerry swift boat jumped 900 results to 4,110 (it's now at 4,830).
There's no way SBVT could have paid for that kind of publicity. Only Democratic hit machines like MoveOn.org or Joint Victory Campaign 2004 could afford to buy that kind of media exposure.
Speaking of well-funded political groups, federal law requires campaigns to make a "best effort" to "report the name, address, occupation and employer of each contributor who gives more than $200 in a calendar year."
One presidential candidate has a compliance rate of 93 percent, the other's rate is 76.4 percent. Who do you think owns the higher figure? Just guess.
US basketball team makes history
Team USA made Olympic history today by losing twice in one Olympiad. They fell to Lithuania.
They also doubled the total number of games the US squad has lost in all Olympic competition. Until this month, the US teams had lost only two games total in all Olympics.
Bad news from Parris Island
Our phone rang at 4:45 this morning. It was our Marine recruit son, Stephen, calling on his company commander's cell phone to let us know that he had taken so ill that he was being transferred to the Medical Rehabilitation Platoon for recovery.
Diagnosis was pneumonia with fever and shakes. We knew that he had been sick beginning about two weeks ago but his recent letters said he was better (though not well). Apparently not.
Don't know how long he'll be in MRP; that's a doc's call. Afterward he'll be assigned to the Physical Conditioning Platoon to get him back in shape for resuming training. My guess is not less than two weeks altogether, perhaps as many as four, and most likely three.
He sounded just awful, not only from the illness, but from screaming sounding off all the time, and also because he was obviously very demoralized by this development.
Our concern, of course, is for his health first of all. I think the commander made the right decision. I pray Stephen will recover fully before resuming training.
Next week would have begun five days of swim training for his platoon, and you can't throw a guy suffering from pneumonia into the water for five days. I'm sure that was a big factor in transferring him to the MRP.
I told him to ask the CO whether I could see him if I came down there, but the answer was no.
I called his recruiting sergeant today to let him know the news. He was very surprised that the CO gave Stephen his cell phone to call us. He said the usual routine is for the Senior Drill Instructor to call the recruit's recruiting sergeant back home so the recruiter can tell the family. Whatever, the CO's reason for breaking routine, my wife and I are very grateful.
Sometimes all you can do is tell yourself, "It's all good for 20," and drive on.
An exegesis of Kerry's Navy documents
A hard look at both sides' claims and Navy records yields tough questions for both
John Kerry's senior campaign manager Ted Devine said today on FoxNews that Kerry and his boat came under fire three separate times on Christmas Eve 1968, the third time after nightfall. "And that's three more times that one day than Bush or Cheney came under fire at all," Devine added. He also said that Kerry's boat was "somewhere" around the border with Cambodia that day, having started out 40 miles away (presumably at Sa Dec, where Kerry's own journal places him all day that day and which is actually more than 50 miles from Cambodia).
If you go to Kerry's campaign website you will find a set of after-action report (AAR) summaries written by Kerry. The page says all the actions took place "near the south end of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam," meaning far away from Cambodia. Yet this is the time frame Kerry's apologists claim that he was conducting missions into Cambodia.
Why does his own campaign site not include AARs for the Cambodia missions that are alleged to have taken place?
For that matter, where is the AAR for Kerry's action near Cambodia on Dec. 24/25, 1968? After all, according to Devine, Kerry's boat came under fire three different times. No report? Why not?
Everyone who has been even idly following the charges made by Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth about Kerry is aware of the action on 13 March 1969 involving Army 1st Lt. Jim Rassman, whom Kerry pulled from the Bay Hap river. Rassman and Kerry - and Navy documents - say that this deed was done under fire. SBVT says there was no fire, there was only a mine that put another boat dead in the water.
In any event, Kerry was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart for this day. According to para. 7 of the official personnel casualty report, posted on Kerry's campaign website, Kerry suffered a "shrapnel wound left buttock and contusion rt. forearm (minor)." A contusion, btw, is a bruise. Page 8 of the report states Kerry was, "treated by medical officer aboard USCGC [US Coast Guard Cutter] Spencer (WHEC-36) and returned to duty." (This report begins on p. 7 of the posted PDF document, with Kerry's information on p. 8; there is more than one report in the whole PDF document.)
Now it gets interesting. The official citation for Kerry's Bronze Star awarded for that day, also found on his campaign web site, states,
Shortly after LTJG KERRY was informed that he had a man overboard [Rassman], he immediately turned his boat around to assist the man in the water, who by this time was receiving sniper fire from the river banks. LTJG KERRY, from his exposed position on the bow of the boat, managed to pull LT RASSMAN aboard despite the painful wound in his right arm.
If the AAR is to be believed, the arm bruise was "minor." I have been terribly bruised twice. I was hit by a truck that ran a yield sign while I was riding my motorcycle, turning my body jet black over my entire left and right sides (impacted the truck and the road, respectively). The other was when my car lost traction on a chemical-spilled road and struck a tree at my door (had broken bones and lacerations on that one, too).
In my experience, bruises are themselves not very painful nor restrictive of mobility unless they are very severe. A minor bruise results from damages only to the capillaries of the skin. It takes a very hard blow to damage the muscle tissues to the point of persistent pain in movement and restriction of mobility.
Certainly any shrapnel wound in the buttocks would be hugely more painful than the worst bruise that could possibly be called minor.
So there is a real discrepancy between the description of Kerry's wounds in the casualty report and in the BSM recommendation, which makes no mention of the shrapnel wound at all.
The BSM recommendation is signed by Lt. Cmdr. George Elliott, Kerry's commander at the time of the action.
The casualty report is not "signed" because it was sent as a standardized report (as casualty reports always are), but the "from" line reads NSA DET AN THOI, meaning Naval Support Activity at An Thoi, South Vietnam. This was the US base from which Kerry's unit operated. This kind of report would routinely have been prepared by clerical personnel and reviewed either by a senior rating or an officer.
Why there is a significant discrepancy between the BSM paperwork and the casualty report I don't know and really can't even realistically imagine.
But it gets even more interesting. SBVT has insisted that on 13 March 1969, the "Rassman rescue day" as it were, that there was no enemy fire from either river bank, that only one mine exploded, and that under PCF-3 (Kerry's boat was PCF-94) and that no damage was sustained to any boat except PCF-3. These allegations are so well documented across the internet by now that I don't think I have to link to citations.
Kerry and Rassman (and I presume some others) equally insist that there was heavy small-arms fire and that another mine exploded "close aboard" Kerry's boat, according to the BSM recommendation.
However, we find that on 14 March, the day after, COMCOSDIV ONE ONE (abbreviation for "Commander Coastal Division 11," Kerry's unit commander) sent to higher headquarters a status report on Kerry's boat, PCF-94. It reports (abbreviations written out here for clarity),
Two starboard and one port main windows blown out. VRC-46 radio and all remote units pilot house inoperative. AC wiring shorted out, onan [?] generator inop. Steerage control after helm inop. Starboard bilge pump broken. Screws curled and chipped, radar gear box frozen, main engines experienced RPM drop.
The report specifically attributes this condition to battle damage and states that the boat is "not capable of executing Market Time patrol," which I presume was an upcoming operation.
So questions:
1. For SBVT:
a. If only one mine detonated, and that under PCF-3, how does SBVT explain Lt. Cmdr. Elliott's report that Kerry's boat sustained this kind of battle damage? As I have said before, the burden of proof rests on SBVT here, and in my mind they have not met it. (Update: I see in this interview that SBVT spokesman John O'Neill says that Kerry's authorized biography, Tour of Duty, states on p. 304 that the damage was sustained the day before Rassman's rescue.
Update, Aug. 21: The Washington Post confirms that the damage was sustained the day before the Rassman rescue.)
b. Kerry's BSM recommendation, signed by Elliott, states that after pulling Lt. Rassman from the water, Kerry ordered his boat to the disabled PCF-3, had his crew attach a line, and "towed the boat clear of danger." Yet SBVT insists that Kerry sped away from the scene when PCF-3 was damaged, returning only to fish out Rassman, and did not assist PCF-3. Was Elliott telling the truth in the BSM recommendation? What boat towed PCF-3 from the scene if not Kerry's?
2. For Kerry:
a. Did Lt. Cmdr. Elliott personally inspect the battle damage of your boat, or did you submit a report that he accepted and sent on?
b. With the kind of damage the report says your boat sustained - wiring shorted out, broken communications, steering control inoperative, curled screws, lost-power engines - how were you able to tow PCF-3 anywhere, much less under the "heavy fire" your site says was being directed at you?
c. Other than your boat and PCF-3, was battle damage suffered by any other PCF boat at the scene? If so, will you post the battle-damage reports for it/them? If not, can you reconcile your claim that enemy fire was heavy from both banks with the fact that in a 90-minute action on the narrow river, not one enemy bullet or RPG found its target?
d. Dick Cheney has been shot at an equal number of times as John Edwards. If you insist that combat experience is so vital for a successful presidency, why did you select Edwards as the man to be one heartbeat away from the office? Why not another war vet?
e. And again, where are the after-action reports for your three occasions under fire on Dec. 24, 1968, and for the covert missions you made into Cambodia delivering CIA, SF and SEAL missions?
Update: Additional question for Kerry:
f. On what date did your boat sustain the damage listed as I have described above? If on the day you rescued Rassman, how do you account for the report's utter absence of damage from small-arms fire when you say the fire was "heavy"?
g. Why does Jim Rassman say he was aboard your boat before he went into the water, which agrees with your BSM recommendation, but you say that he was in the boat behind yours?
Kerry's shrapnel-filled leg
John Kerry's senior campaign advisor, Ted Devine, said on FoxNews to Andrew Napolitano this afternoon that to this day John Kerry carries shrapnel in his leg from a wound suffered in Vietnam.
Thirty years ago, official Navy reports and every person there documented my service in Vietnam and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. Thirty years ago, this was the plain truth. It still is. And I still carry the shrapnel in my leg from a wound in Vietnam.
Yet for none of the three injuries for which he was awarded a Purple Heart each did Kerry lose a single day of duty.
Since Kerry has provably lied about sailing five miles into Cambodia on Christmas 1968, let me just say this about his claim of carrying shrapnel in his leg: I don't believe him.
I am not denying he was wounded in the left thigh as this Navy message says he was, on Feb. 20, 1969. But I am skeptical that he still carries shrapnel there.
Doctors leave wound-causing missiles in a patient's body only if it is located in a place so that removing it is more risky to the patient's health than leaving it there. This almost always means that the fragment or bullet is so close to (or perhaps within) a major organ or artery that removal surgery is itself potentially lethal.
Possibly, but very unlikely, a small fragment might have been left in the leg because it wasn't worth the trouble to remove it.
I call upon Sen. Kerry to release all medical records pertinent to all his wartime wounds or injuries. They are conspicuously absent from his campaign's index of other records.
SBVT is a 527 organization, as defined by the McCain-Feingold act. That law prohibits political candidates and their campign organizations from coordinating with 527 groups. The law is new and there is no case law on what constitutes coordination.
John Cole documents through open sources that of the top-10-funded 527 groups, nine are openly pro-Kerry, anti-Bush. Their funding comes to $195,186,845. SBVT's funding as of Aug. 15 was $158,750.
From this, we can learn two things:
1.) No wonder John Kerry thinks the Swift Boats for Vets are a 'Republican front.' [Almost] every other 527 is a Democratic front, so if there does exist one 527 opposing Kerry, logically it must be a Republican one.
2.) No wonder Kerry is calling only for the Swift Boat Vets to be silenced, and wants Bush to do the same. Of course the hypocrite is unwilling to condemn all of the 527's as Bush has- he stands to lose two hundred million in attack ads against Bush.
And remember, this is common knowledge in the media. Remember, it is the very same NY Times who just several weeks ago was gleefully reporting that these 527's would be actively working to fill the void for Kerry during the month of August.
Nonetheless, the SBVTs are not without their own problems, such as video resurfacing of member George O'Neill (not John, the groups principal spokesman) standing next to Kerry while glowingly endorsing him for the Senate a few years ago.
Swift Boat Truth Vets and $$$$$
Kerry's defense is long on attack and short on Cambodia
James Joyner reports that the Noo Yawk Times is shocked - shocked! - to report that the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth have received money from known Republican backers. The paper reports, that "... veterans with longstanding anger about Mr. Kerry's antiwar statements in the early 1970's allied themselves with Texas Republicans."
As if billionaire George Soros is going to bankroll both the pro-Kerry, Bush vitriol Moveon.org and SBVT.
Yes, purity of heart, soul and motive runs waist-deep around Democratic MoveOn, but those satanic SBVTs are evil because of the names on their donor list.
But the Kerry camp's argument has been circular:
1. The SBVTs are lying about Kerry's record.
2. You can tell they're lying because they are backed by rich Republicans.
3. Republicans lie about Kerry.
4. Therefore the SBVTs are lying.
The only thing I've heard or read Kerry reply that has any merit as a defense is that official Navy records back him against the SBVT's charges concerning his combat decorations. Whatever the actual merits of SBCVT's contentions, that defense is simply going to be too difficult to overcome in the public mind.
They say that Kerry wrote up his own recommendations for medals. Well, maybe, but so what? I once wrote my own officer efficiency report, the most critical document in an officer's advancement potential. I was told to do so by my rater. I wrote his narrative and my senior rater's narrative, too (a lieutenant colonel and a colonel). They read it and signed it without changing a word.
Anyone reading that OER will come away convinced that I was the greatest soldier since Achilles. Come to think of it, I recall writing the recommendation for one of my own medals, too, at direction of my commander, who read it and signed it.
This happens a lot more than you might think. Anyway, James seems to agree with my point.
... the fact that [SBVT's] allegations as to the circumstances of Kerry's medals contradict Navy records is rather a given. In order to get medals from the Navy, one must have paperwork from the Navy. The paperwork would reasonably be expected to correspond with the outcome. If the Navy had records saying John Kerry was a lying weasel who submitted false reports to get medals and yet still gave him medals, that would be amazing indeed.
And I agree on the whole with James's conclusion:
... my strong instinct on this is to believe that Kerry earned every medal awarded by the Navy and completed his service honorably. I am highly dubious of charges that emerge with convenient timing 30-odd years after an event, regardless of my view of the target of the charges. The burden is definitely on the Swifties here. I am, however, inclined to believe that Kerry has distorted his own record and that of his fellow veterans when it has suited him to do so: Winter Soldier, Cambodia, atrocities, and so forth. His anti-war activities deserve more scrutiny than they've had in this campaign, especially in light of his constant use of his service in Vietnam as a cloak.
I have never taken much note about the validity of his decorations ... . I really don't too much care whether Army Special Forces Capt. Jim Rassman got blown out his boat by enemy fire and then was rescued by Kerry, or had one beer to many and fell out.
The central issue for me of Kerry's wartime service is the one that cuts directly to the heart of his credibility and trustworthiness: his reports, repeated over decades, that he led secret missions into Cambodia when every shred of evidence and eyewitness testimony shows that this is a baldfaced, deliberate lie.
This also happens to be the one charge made by SBVT that Kerry is studiously ignoring. He cites support of Navy records for rebutting other accusations, so let him release all his military records as well, and request the Navy release all records pertaining to his cross-border exploits.
I'd also like Kerry to name the units that he claims sent special-forces soldiers or SEALs on his boat into Cambodia. I'd also like him to publicly call for any members of those expeditions to come forward to confirm them.
<crickets chirping> </crickets chirping>
Glenn Reynolds takes a synoptic look at the issue with many links, and at the end of James's piece is a link index as well. All good stuff.
End game in Najaf?
Allawi's task is greater than suppressing al-Sadr's rebellion
According to cable news reports, the US commanders in Iraq have no clear idea of what kind of operations Iraqi forces are conducting against Moqtada al-Sadr or his "Mehdi army," a force of many hundreds (at least) of armed insurgents.
Iraqi government forces were reported to have gained control of the key Imam Ali Mosque, the centerpiece of al-Sadr's rebellion, but more recent reports quote eyewitnesses on the scene as saying it is not so.
However, there are also reports that al-Sadr's rebels have removed their weapons from the mosque. The mosque's grounds include one of the world's largest cemeteries, the scene of very heavy fighting between the Mehdi rebels and US forces in recent weeks.
One Arab news source says that the removal of the weapons was a precursor to carrying out an agreement between al-Sadr's insurgents and the Iraqi government for the handover of the mosque to government control.
The Washington Post also reports such an agreement, saying that
... a spokesman for Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr said the keys to the embattled shrine of Imam Ali had been turned over to representatives of Iraq's most influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
But a WaPo reporter on the scene cited by FoxNews said that active fighting is going on at the mosque or its immediate environs.
The situation, as they say, appears "normal."
The rebellion at Najaf is a severe test for the legitimacy of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's government.
What's at stake is not just the control of Najaf, but perhaps Iraq's territorial integrity. Key territories in Iraq are controlled by armed groups opposed to central government control from Baghdad. Kurdish militias in the north are vying for control of the crucial oil field town of Kirkuk; Sunni insurgents, many of them loyal to Saddam Hussein, control much of the center and the Northwest, including the transit link to Jordan. And now, as Shiite militias in the south and Baghdad turn to armed confrontation, Prime Minister Allawi, a Shiite, has chosen to exert power where it seems most likely the government will prevail. In Shiite Najaf, a religious tourist and university city where many residents support the interim government, defeating Sadr would be a small but significant step toward preserving the Iraqi nation-state.
What about Fallujah, heavily Sunni? Shiite Allawi cannot afford politically to suppress even an unpopular Shiite rebellion under al-Sadr and then not deal decisively with the rebellion in Fallujah.
What Allawi's government must do is establish that the recognized national government has a monopoly on the use of force, especially organized, politically potent force. Gaining and keeping such a monopoly is in fact one of the central things any government must do to be a legitimate government.
I wrote 14 months ago how this issue was key in the formation of the state of Israel, and how resolving it required actual combat by David Ben-Gurion's troops against Menachem Begin's Irgun militia.
Allawi does not have a long time to establish his government's monopoly. Not only is prolonged indecision never a just aim of armed conflict, but delays, temporizing, indecisiveness or plain incapability to enforce the government's will means that the anarchists will be emboldened and grow stronger.
Joe Gandelman sees the end game coming in Najaf now that al-Sadr has rejected the truce that he said he would accept. Hmm . . . "I voted in favor of the truce before I voted against it."
Les Jones asks why John Kerry wants Swift Boat Vets for the Truth to stop questioning his military record when he himself has been casting aspersions on President Bush's service since April.
If the Washington Post can file a FOIA request and get the military records of Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside John Kerry, why can't they file a request for Kerry's records? Oops, wrong question. It should be, Why won't they file a request for Kerry's records?
It is a shame so many people have missed the point that we all know so well and hold so dear. This is not about whether Iraq is worth it. It is about the character of America, and individual Americans and their families who have always been willing to sacrifice and suffer, even for the unworthy, just because it is the right thing to do. As the men and women of Task Force 3/7, we owe our deepest respect, thanks and love to all of you at home for so courageously and faithfully standing with us in doing what is right.
A Georgia bicyclist will bike from Los Angeles to Savannah starting in six weeks to raise money for the Last Wish Foundation , "a non-profit, non-partisan organization which provides funds to help support and educate the children of American service men and women who have died during Operation Iraqi Freedom." You can donate online atb his web site.
Canadian journalist David Warren surveys the war in Iraq and approves of the quagmire it may have become. "Or to put it another way, it is time to create a few more quagmires." He also applauds,
Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister, who is reversing his country's 30-year experiment in "multiculturalism", after a parliamentary report concluded that it is an unambiguous disaster, responsible for institutional collapse, ethnic ghettoes, terrorism, hatred, and violence. He is using the current Dutch presidency of the European Union to spread the word that free Europe is threatened not by Americanization, but by Islamicization.
What ho, Bronze Star?
Army veteran James Joyner explains why the Bronze Star Medal (note, all three words are the proper name) isn't that big a deal.
Indeed, it's not usually even awarded for valor; usually, it's for "Meritorious Service" or "Meritorious Achievement." They were awarded by the bushel in Vietnam, so there was a lag in getting them out. Award citations at lower levels tend to be rather boilerplate "Great credit on the United States Navy and the United States of America" and so forth. Until you get to Silver Star, Navy Cross, or Medal of Honor territory, they don't really say much.
In fact, regulations prescribe that it is the operations-theater equivalent of the peacetime Meritorious Service Medal, of which I have three. The BSM is awarded in lieu of the MSM to troops (almost always only officers or senior NCOs) serving in a defined operational theater.
For actual combat actions, the BSM is awarded with V Device, noting valor. That is a "real soldier" medal and is accorded immeasaurably higher respect than a bare BSM.
The real key to how much respect awards and decorations are accorded is the weight promotion boards give them. Word I got from my Personnel Command friends (one of whom actually managed officer promotion boards) was that anything less than a Silver Star was pretty much ignored. That may have changed in the years since, but I doubt it.
The official Army online page about the BSM and eligibility requirements is here.
Bullets, not, uh, "bouncies"?
MSBNC reports porn star Mary Carey is trying to lead a protest against the Army because it offers free breast augmentation to female soldiers (and, I have read elsewhere, dependent wives of soldiers). Carey favors the natural look.
The Army’s rationale is that, as a spokeswoman said, “the surgeons have to have someone to practice on.” “The benefit of offering elective cosmetic surgery to soldiers is more for the surgeon than for the patient,” [Dr. Bob] Lyons [chief of plastic surgery at Brooke Army Medical Center] said. “If there’s a happy soldier or sailor at the end of that operation, that’s an added benefit, but that’s not the reason we do it. We do it to maintain our skills”—skills that are critical, he added, when it comes to doing reconstructive surgery on soldiers who have been wounded.
But the report also quotes a civilian surgeon who says that cosmetic and reconstructive surgery are two separate skills, and there's no doubt that some women have availed themselves of the opportunity to get tens of thousands of dollars worth of self-improvement free. All manner of surgeries are performed, not just breast surgery. But I say, so what? Doctors stay sharp and troops benefit. Sounds like a good deal to me.
I want to veto war!
There is a blog called The Iraq War Was Wrong Blog, whose motto is, I am not kidding, "A wrong war like during the Iraq war was cannot just be sitted idly by by."
... ministers and other types of holy guys - it doesn't get much higher then that when it comes to whether or not something Just War.
When I read that I laughed so hard I almost spewed my coffee. I am glad to see that someone, at last, has such an elevated regard for ministers and other holy guys (sexist language alert!), but really, on the subject of foreign policy, and especially war decision, ministers and other holy guys are about the most ignorant class on the planet. And the higher their office, usually the more profoundly ignorant they are.
But wait! There's more! "What about this," the anonymous blogger says,
A Constitutional amendment prohibiting the United States from entering into ANY war unless it is deemed to be a Just War by appropriate theologicans (i.e. we could start by using the ones who told us as how The IRaq War was not a Just War - assembled into a kind of Council/Chamber (I'm flexible on termonology here)). I know a Constiututional amendment is usually considered extreme but I think a Just War amendment may be necessary at this point, How else are we going to stave off this worrying mixture of religion and state that Bush has ingendered)?
(All spelling errors are original.) Anon wants to "stave off" mixing politics and religion, so his solution is to give clergy - but only the clergy who agree with him - veto authority over the most serious issue ever to face the country.
At first I thought this blog was really a parody of the foolishness of Leftism today, but no, it seems Anon is serious. And I'm still laughing.
Take a virtual tour
My church has just completed a streaming video to introduce readers of our web site to our congregation.
The video was entirely produced by Select Imaging, a subsidiary of Career Imaging in Brentwood, Tenn.
Please take a look at the video here, and leave a comment what you think! NB: This is a nine-meg WMV file, so broadband connection is best. For dialup, recommend you right click and select "save as."
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I have a pretty packed day, so I'll be back online late this afternoon and tonight. Lots of good stuff!
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This is Russian Olympic gymnast Aleksei Nemov tonight thanking the spectators of the high bar competition for their support at his ripoff by the judges. 
Sort of. In Crawford, Texas, today, President Bush called on John Kerry to join him in "condemning" the advertisements sponsored by 527 organizations. Asked by a reporter whether his comments included the ads by Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, Bush answered yes.
Mae West was a glamour star of the golden age of film. She was an imporant figure in not only the obvious way. Her first film, for example, was based on a stage play she had written. It was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and launched Cary Grant's career. Within three years Mae West was the highest-paid woman in the United States.
