The Opinionated Bastard

In the Boston Globe

It's all about how/why Kerry chose to make Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. For some perspective on that, when I talked to my wife about the Swift Vets thing, she was pretty underwhelmed. I think the voting public has been pretty well immunized against negative attacks.

However, she said "Kerry was only in Vietnam for 4 months?"

The effect of the swift vets ad may not have been what all the blog writers think. I suspect many people are ignoring it, but they would have expected to hear more from Kerry by now. Since they haven't, there's this assumption that he must have been this really incredible war hero. He wasn't on say, the Patton, Powell, or Eisenhower level. He was an ensign, and he only saw 4 months of combat. Intense combat, sure, and he gets points for that. But we require our Presidents to have more then just a one-line resume.

So now the Kerry Campaign is trying to regroup

The problem is, they were never "grouped" in the first place.

In an expansive conversation, Mr. Clinton, who is awaiting heart surgery, told Mr. Kerry that he should move away from talking about Vietnam

The problem for Kerry will be that reading that the Campaign is on the rocks is probably worse for him then any of the Swift Boats stuff. Well, not the problem, _a problem.

The problem for Kerry is that none of his platform makes sense. He's going to provide health care for every American by getting the government into the health insurance business? Please. One of the reforms Bush did for Medicare (which has only partially taken affect) was that Medicare was willing to pay for a $29,000 operation, but not $5 worth of preventative care. Not even HMO's are that stupid.

States that have implemented medical tort reform have had their health care costs rise 10-15% vs. the 44% for states without tort reform. If you do the math, medical costs are high because of John Edwards. So Kerry can't fix the real problem, which is to kill all the lawyers.

Now he's claiming Bush is a liar because Medicare went up by $12/month. Maybe Bush could lower it if he took the $60M Edwards made suing doctors and gave it seniors.

Here's Kerry on Foreign Policy: If I Were President—Addressing the Democratic Deficit

Americans’ security depends on helping the people of the Middle East see and act on a legitimate vision of peace.

Yeah, we should have democracy in the middle east so that can happen! Oh, wait, that's Bush.

I often fantasize about what would happen if I was the questioner at the Presidential Debates…

From FindLaw a legal website.

Here are some choice bits:

14-year-old girl rendered quadriplegic from neck injury resulting from improperly supervised dive into shallow end of defendants’ pool.

Ok, don’t allow other peoples kids to swim in your pool, because Edwards might sue you.

Infant born with cerebral palsy after breech birth via vaginal delivery, rather than cesarean.

Which is pretty much why doctors try to talk all their patients into cesareans now even when its unnecessary.

38-year-old female committed suicide after psychiatrist discontinued suicide watch.

Oh, yeah, clearly it wasn’t her fault for being suicidal, it was the psychiatrist’s fault.

There are some very anti-Edwards links at the bottom of the page. FindLaw’s analysis is positive, but they’re lawyers, so they think its good to drive people out of business.

Ok, it was a cheap shot. but I thought it was funny, and that’s what matters.

Plenty of details at these sites:

indcjournal

example of how to reproduce this in Microsoft Word

Powerline broke the story

Basically, the CBS documents were really bad forgeries…someone typed them into Microsoft Word. Its stupidly obvious.

Which I think only highlights the importance of having each candidate sign a Form 180 so that we can be sure that all documentation of their service comes forward. Oh, wait, Bush did that already. Well, I guess Kerry needs to sign this form now.

So I was talking to someone about Kerry from Blogs For Bush. He and his girlfriend were having an argument about how important Kerry really was in the anti-war movement.

I wrote him back and said it probably doesn’t matter to the veterans, that they were upset with the whole movement and Kerry just represents that.

From BlackFive some confirmation. For many veterans, Kerry has become the poster child for the anti-war movement. It may not be fair, but frankly, Kerry’s real problem for me on Vietnam is his obliviousness. He has yet to apologize for any of his anti-war activities. The best he’s said is that “he regets some of the words he used.

They’re two words John: “I’m sorry”.

From Captains Quarters:

When you look at the action on the spot report, it reflects well on the young Lieutenant Kerry. Although it’s difficult to see how this action should have resulted in a Silver Star, it would seem a commendation of some sort would be appropriate. It’s all of the exaggeration, lies, and paperwork alterations after the fact that calls Kerry’s character into serious question.

The only reason this news is interesting is that it shows that the report correlates with the SVBT guys say, not what “Tour of Duty” or the Kerry Campaign says. My take on all this is still “fog of war”, but if the Kerry campaign gave voters a real agenda, no one would care.

From Winds of Change:

This would be great advice for Kerry:

Confronting the coyote mind head-on only locks us into internal conflict on a battleground favourable to our yetzer ha-ra. If you want to begin freeing yourself from your coyote mind, you must take a different path entirely and draw yourself toward the divine presence instead. Then it will simply fill your life until there is no room for yetzer ha-ra. Still, beware; when more obvious forms of the yetzer ha-ra are crowded out, more subtle forms will take their place. One breakthrough is not the end.

Read the whole thing

From Andrew Sullivan:

"Just a personal observation about campaign organization which I think HAS to reflect on general organization(or lack of) as well: went to see Kerry the day after the convention in downtown Scranton. Showed up over two hours past scheduled start time, in the heat. Many people pissed off due to the caste structure of proximity to the stage. Had water trucks but ran out of cups. EVERYONE from Ben Affleck through Teresa through the Edwards' and finally Kerry, blathered on endlessly. Bush comes to Scranton day after convention at the local baseball stadium. Scheduled for 9:30. He and Laura step out of the dugout at exactly 9:30. Beverages and Krispy Kreme donuts for sale. Everyone happy because it is set up so everyone can see either from the seats or on the field." And people wonder why Bush is winning.

Bush is famous for always being on time. Kerry was 2 hours late to Flagstaff.

I used to think I was moderate.

Then I was talking the other day to a local teacher about No Child Left Behind because while I support the law, its a huge, ambitious piece of legislation and I expect it to have teething problems. (not that I trust Kerry to fix them, only Bush, but I digress)

She started on this long, granola-and-Birkenstocks rant about how children shouldn't be "forced to learn to read".

I was just dumbstruck. I couldn't have been more shocked if she pulled off her head to reveal she was a space alien. How do you even talk to someone who lives in such a bizarro land that they don't think that schools should do, well, their freaking job? This was from a schoolteacher? Arrgh! I'll say it again. Arrgh!

I just wanted to smack her. Its my goddamn tax dollars that pay her friggin' salary, and if she doesn't want to teach kids to read, I'd like my money back please.

Then I had to hear about how testing kids "stigmatized" the ones who didn't pass.

Let's see, which is worse. Getting an "F" once and having to get a tutor, or spending the next 80 years saying "Would you like fries with that?"

Then I came home and realized that if that's the friggin' left, then I must be way over on the right. "Should'nt be forced to learn to read." It still makes me shudder. I thought that many of the people who disagreed with me on politics must be lefties. Now I know that the people I was talking to must have been liberal Republicans or something, because we could still actually communicate as human beings.

Arrgh! I'll say it again. Arrgh!

Do you believe in evil? I do.

Kerry thinks all will be well if we just get France and Germany to help us, huh?

The problem is the European armed forces are in sad shape. I've said before that they don't have the right type of troops (we need policemen in Iraq, and civil affairs troops mostly), but they also have outdated equipment.

From the New Yorker

The Opinionated Wife can't stand Teresa. In fact, the first time I heard her say "I'm not going to vote for Kerry" was right after hearing Teresa's speech at the convention on NPR.

This startled me, as the Opinionated Wife leans to the left a bit, so I asked why. It seems that my wife feels that a good marriage requires teamwork. One of the things that really impressed my wife about Laura Bush was when after 9/11 she dramatically reduced the number of "First Lady" things she was doing in order to support her husband. My wife had heard the rumblings about Teresa but the convention speech was the kicker. She didn't hear a teammate, she heard a woman who was more concerned about herself then her husband. My wife thinks its good to have opinions (obviously), but she also thinks its important to shut up if you're a politicians wife.

Quote: "She probably figures that since she's paying for it anyways, she might as well have her say."

Ouch.

Anyways, the article is more bio then anything else, and tries to be balanced. Its worth the read.

Kerry has been saying that Bush will reinstate the Draft. That's a damn lie.

The short and sweet answer:

We have 140,000 soldiers in Iraq.

Hypothetically, say we want to bring that up to 200,000. That's 60,000 more people.

We have 1.4 million soldiers on active duty. Why would we need to draft anyone?

The long answer:

What we need in Iraq is not soldiers, we need policemen. Most of our soldiers are trained to be soldiers against the Soviet Union (which doesn't exist anymore). Its even worse for NATO soldiers because the Europeans have been much slower to adapt to the end of the Cold War then we have (and we adapted too slowly as it was). So the reality is that while it might be nice to have more soldiers, of a certain type, those people don't exist. A draft wouldn't help that.

We need policemen who speak Arabic, and who understand the Iraqi culture. It turns out there's a whole country full of people willing to be policemen in Iraq. It's called...Iraq! President Bush's plan isn't to send more soldiers to Iraq, President Bush's plan is to train more Iraqis to be policemen.

This has some advantages beyond the obvious ones of language and culture. If an American soldier loses his temper and hits an Iraqi with a nightstick, its a war crime that reflects badly on America. If an Iraqi does it, its a personal crime that reflects badly on that policeman.

Bringing back the draft is just a damn lie by a damn fool.

Check my Stats

About that global test...

1. Is there an old copy of it floating around we can get our hands on?
2. Is it multiple choice or essay form?
3. Is the test written in French, German or English?
4. Who determines if we can retake the test?
5. Is it pass/fail or is it more like the SAT?

Hat Tip to Instapundit.

An American Soldier who's actually fought in Iraq describes what bugs me about Kerry and his war criticism better then I ever could.

Read it here.

Just go read his latest. He doesn't blog very often, but when he does, WHAMMO!

Over the last week.

Kerry’s Blog: 45 Negative entries 52 Positive entries. That’s 46% negative. Kerry’s actually usually even more negative, but this week had lots of “Kerry won the debate” entries.

Bush’s Blog: 17 Negative 44 Positive. That’s 28% negative.

In general, I find Kerry’s blog, negative and whiny. It’s not as bad as Atrios but its not much better, and has the same sort of factual errors and logical errors that Atrios shows. Bush’s blog on the other hand tends to be more focused on making positive statements about Bush. Unlike the whining on the Kerry blog, the negative pieces tend to be better reasoned and presented. He’s a little more negative this week with 3 ad announcements that were negative ads.

So this week, Bush was more more negative, but still predominantly positive, while Kerry was more positive, but still hugely negative.

I find this interesting, because one rule of marketing is to never mention the competition, yet Kerry is doing it constantly. Of course, marketing isn’t politics. If it were, you wouldn’t be seeing President Bush repeating Kerry’s line about “wrong war, etc.”

Overall, President Bush did much better. If you ask me he won, but I’m a pretty informed voter so most of what Kerry said just made me scream at the TV.

In no particular order:

• Does it bother anyone else when a Democrat invokes Republic presidents? (Ike and Reagan)
• As is typical, Kerry didn’t answer a single question on his plan. One thing I particularly noticed was he said his spending wasn’t really going to cost 2.2 trillion, but didn’t come back with his own number.
• On that theme, Bush was great when he said, “they say 800 billion, we say 600 billion, that’s still not enough”.
• Thinking about it, it was very weird when Kerry talked about how Rubin was going to help him make the numbers add up, that he’d scaled back on the things he’s promised. Er, ok, then what is is plan for America then? Bush has the Agenda for America, I guess Kerry has the “Secret Plan”? I’ve read his book, its just quotes from stump speeches…
• The President gave a great answer on the draft. A draft isn’t the right answer for the new kind of wars.
• The part where he cut off Charles Gibson just seemed to me like he was jumping to respond. They both did that.
• In the previous debate, President Bush lost his center after the question where Kerry accused him of shortchanging our troops on body armor. That really pissed him off. I was glad to see him come back with the obvious rejoinder that Kerry had voted against that body armor.
• In general, Bush did much better. His “I own a timber company? Anyone want some wood?” line was pretty funny.
• I think Bush is going to force Kerry to spend October defending his Senate record, which is a loser for Kerry, since its either underwhelming, or bad.
• Kerry thinks that “Equal Pay” is in the Constitution? Shudder…

Bottom line:

You could have replaced Kerry with a tape recorder to playback his canned responses, it would have been the same.

There is a clear difference between the two candidates.

After September 11th, President Bush had a choice. Did he focus on Al Queda, or did he focus on all terrorists organizations. In other words, was the enemy Al Queda, or was it terrorism as a whole?

President Bush decided that terrorism as a whole was the enemy. It was a tough decisions, one with far reaching consequences.

Senator Kerry thinks differently. To Senator Kerry, we were attacked only by Al Queda, so we should only go after Al Queda.

Senator Kerry is wrong.

Osama’s organization was dedicated not just to promoting and training their own terrorists, but training and funding terrorism all over the world. Some of the Chechyen terrorists were trained by Al Queda. Not because they were particularly followers of Osama, but because that’s what Al Queda did. Osama’s true ideology was hatred, not any particular cause. To fight Al Queda, we really have to fight against all terrorism.

I used to be one of those people who felt that the Presidential candidates were almost identical. Now I feel that our decision in November is one of the most important choices we’ve ever had as voters. It is our chance to make the same choice that President Bush made. Its important for us to choose correctly, because if we don’t, more Americans will die.

On September 11th, we were attacked not by Al Queda, but by terrorism. So we must fight not just Al Queda, but terrorism and the hatred shared by terrorists. If Senator Kerry would acknowledge this fact, perhaps it wouldn’t matter who we voted for this election. Since he has chosen not to, I can only conclude that he cannot make the tough decisions a President must make.

I plan to vote for Bush.

I call it the “Bush Plan”.

I wrote my Clear Choice piece before I ever read this. (This is the article where Senator Kerry called terrorism a “nuisance” like prostitution or gambling.)

Here’s the conclusion (and remember, this is the New York Times, not exactly a bastion of conservatism):

When Kerry first told me that Sept. 11 had not changed him, I was surprised. I assumed everyone in America — and certainly in Washington — had been changed by that day. I assumed he was being overly cautious, afraid of providing his opponents with yet another cheap opportunity to call him a flip-flopper. What I came to understand was that, in fact, the attacks really had not changed the way Kerry viewed or talked about terrorism — which is exactly why he has come across, to some voters, as less of a leader than he could be. He may well have understood the threat from Al Qaeda long before the rest of us. And he may well be right, despite the ridicule from Cheney and others, when he says that a multinational, law-enforcement-like approach can be more effective in fighting terrorists. But his less lofty vision might have seemed more satisfying — and would have been easier to talk about in a political campaign — in a world where the twin towers still stood.

September 11 didn’t change Kerry? I guess that means that he’ll continue his 20 year history of downgrading our military and intelligence services in favor of more meetings? sigh, I really pray he doesn’t win

Kerry, still my best argument for voting Bush.

So I’ve watched three debates now, and typically, the town hall debate had the best questions, while the two mainstream media representatives didn’t ask Kerry any tough questions at all?

However, I have a question for the mainstream media: Is Kerry really such a lightweight that you can’t ask him any tough questions? I don’t think you’ve done him any favors.

Overall, Kerry came out ahead. President Bush should have spent the day of the first debate relaxing, instead he visited the hurricane victims. If he had been rested like he was for the last two debates, he would have cleaned Kerry’s clock, and the election would be over. Since President Bush went into the debates with a strong lead, Senator Kerry really had to look “presidential” in that first debate, and he did so. He was therefore able to convince people that he was a “real” candidate.

The debates after that were enough of a tie that they probably didn’t shift opinion of the general populace one way or another. The townhall debate, as usual, was the best, because the general populace asks better, more informed questions then your typical pretty boy anchormen. What surprises me is that anyone is still surprised at how insipid anchormen can be.

From my perspective though, I now dislike Kerry even more. He had two debates where the moderators refused to give him any tough questions at all, and frankly, he didn’t do that well on substance. In general, he completely ducked the questions to claim “he has a plan”, which he doesn’t explain. Then, last night, reviewing Kerry’s website, I found out that he has an completely meaningless legislative record. His “plan”, which you can download from his website, is mostly quotes from his stump speeches, constrast that with the President’s highly detailed “Agenga”.

The man is an empty suit. He looks good, but he hasn’t authored a single interesting piece of successful legislation in 20 years. He is obviously not a leader. Looking at his voting record, his votes aren’t even courageous, they’re just weird. He has no accomplishments outside of the political arena, he’s never built anything or created anything. The only thing I can say in his favor, is that he was in Vietnam, and even that was only for 4 months.

You know, when I get hit by a Democratic troll, I always ask them to say 3 positive things about Kerry, without referencing Bush in a negative way, and without mentioning Vietnam. I have yet to get an answer.

Kerry’s blog claims:

Once again, the president is misleading America. I have passed 56 individual bills that I have personally written.” – John Kerry

It then goes on to list 56 “bills and resolutions” Kerry got passed. Except reading this list, it turns out that Bush is right. Kerry’s record is completely underwhelming.

First off, a resolution is not a bill, its not a law, its just a non-binding statement.

Here’s a resolution Kerry passed as an example:

S.CON.RES.62: A concurrent resolution expressing solidarity with the Sakharov family in their efforts to exercise their rights of freedom of expression, of travel, and of communication, as guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

So Kerry’s statement above is not true, he hasn’t passed 56 individual bills. Also, Senator Kerry needs to read his constitution again, as not all of the 56 “bills and resolutions” Kerry is listing passed both houses of Congress. So filtering Kerry’s list for bills that actually passed to become law, we get:

100th Congress:

S.2365: A bill authorizing the release of 86 USIA films with respect to the Marshall Plan.

101st Congress:

Nothing

102nd Congress:

S.1563 : A bill to authorize appropriations to carry out the National Sea Grant College Program Act, and for other purposes.

103rd Congress:

S.1206 : A bill to redesignate the Federal building located at 380 Trapelo Road in Waltham, Massachusetts, as the “Frederick C. Murphy Federal Center”.

S.1636 : A bill to authorize appropriations for the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 and to improve the program to reduce the incidental taking of marine mammals during the course of commercial fishing operations, and for other purposes.

104th Congress:

Nothing

105th Congress:

S.469 Title: A bill to designate a portion of the Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord Rivers as a component of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

106th Congress:

S.791 : A bill to amend the Small Business Act with respect to the women’s business center program.

That’s 6 bills passed. But all of these are pretty underwhelming legislation. Releasing some films? Renaming a building? This, from Kerry’s own website, is his legislative legacy? Give me a break! In 20 years, he managed to rename a building. Jeesh, I bet that was really controversial and he really had to fight hard to get that through both houses…

Update: I said it first! Nyaah to the Official Bush Blog

It’s a given that President Bush has made mistakes.

It’s a given that a “President Kerry” would make mistakes.

My issue with Kerry is that he seems in many ways to be dead set on repeating President Bush’s mistakes, and making new, possibly worse ones.

Our fundamental problem in Iraq seems to be too much top-down imposition of “big projects” with “big goals”. In other words, all the things that bug me about the US government at home. America in civilian accomplishes most tasks with a sort of “positive chaos”. That is, you have millions of people every day making decisions that move us forward at a breathtaking clip. Mistakes get fixed quickly, and things move well. This even applies in our military: We run our military in such a way that we have more sergeants per soldier then any other army. That’s because we expect our sergeants to make decisions that normally only officers in other armies make.

The government on the other hand, being huge and unwieldy, tries to accomplish everything from the top down with huge, overly structured “positive order” campaigns. Its slow, and mistakes drag out for months, years, or decades.

Well, given that I had a Saturday deadline, I’m going to assume The Noise (the local paper I write for) is out in print, so here’s the long version of the article I wrote for it. (I’m limited to 900 words and no web links on paper…):

Since I got interested in politics, I get lots of strange emails from both the right and the left. About a month ago, I got this strange email claiming that Kerry was ineligible to be President due to the fourteenth amendment, specifically section 3. Now I didn’t take it too seriously, for one thing, the email had edited the fourteenth amendment down to be shorter. It seemed kind of silly to be saving electrons in an email, so that made me suspicious. I went to a Constitution website and got the full text of the 14th amendment:

Theresa just lost Kerry the election! You never dis Laura, everyone loves Laura, even Liberals, even Alec Baldwin! And then to same something that isn’t true about Laura but is true about Theresa!

That’s what I woke up to, my liberal wife ranting about Theresa…

A metaphor even a Bush hater can understand.

President Bush is a crazy suit.

Senator Kerry is an empty suit.

I’ve worked for crazy suits, and I’ve worked for empty suits.

It was better working for a crazy suit, because they made the right decision about half the time, and the wrong decision about half the time, but they always made a decision. An empty suit wouldn’t make any decision (which is usually worse then making the wrong decision), and would blame everyone else when things went wrong because he couldn’t make up his mind.