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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Thursday, September 16, 2004
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Hurricane Ivan III Let's continue to pray for the victims of Hurricane Ivan, including those who have already been killed in the storm. And please pray for my neck of the woods in the coming days. Word is out that FEMA and/or PEMA has already met with the county 911 agency with the prospect of severe flooding over the weekend as Ivan comes this way. Roscoe borders the Monongahela River in Washington County, Pennsylvania. The river rises in the hills of West Virginia and heads past us towards Pittsburgh, where it joins forces with the Allegheny River to make the Ohio River. Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 09/16/04 07:06:37 PM |
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George W. Bush Was a Fighter Pilot Who Looked Good in Uniform Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCCLXXVI Who knew? Until now........ + + + + + From a reader: Dear Jonah: Your 2 Scandals post in the Corner got me thinking. I am a disgruntled Democrat who will be voting for Bush. I voted for Gore in 2000 and paid very little attention to the Republican primaries in 2000. I had a vague idea that Bush had partied and accomplished nothing well into his 30’s. I didn’t know he was a pilot until he landed on that aircraft carrier and I didn’t really absorb that he was a fighter pilot until this memo scandal. Now I discover that Bush only managed to successfully fly fighter planes for 4 years when he should have done it for 6. Guess what? My opinion of Bush’s misspent youth just went up. Is it a good plan for the left to dwell on ‘fighter pilot Bush’ when they could be dwelling on ‘Iraq occupation debacle Bush’? + + + + + + + + + + Mrs. Rocket generally agrees with me on poltical issues, but sometimes for unexpected reasons. One opionion she has expressed that never would have occurred to me, is that the National Guard flap helps President Bush because they keep showing him in his National Guard uniform. I thought that was an eccentric view, but reader Shirley Camp agrees: I don't know if anyone has ever pointed this out to you, but I think every time Bush is shown in his Natl Guard Uniform, is a plus for him because he looks so cute in it. His image is very appealing to women. I think this helps him instead of hurting him. What do you think? Maybe others can opine. All I can say, Shirley, is that you're not alone. Maybe other readers will weigh in. DEACON adds: My 16 year-old daugther agrees with Mrs. Rocket. She writes: "I saw the cover of this week's Newsweek, featuring a picture of both Bush and Kerry in their old uniforms, and I totally agree with Mrs. Rocket. Bush was a definite cutie back in his day, whereas Kerry has always been kind of funny looking." I guess I'm not wealthy enough to have a close family member who finds Kerry attractive. Reader Ronald Nelson Brown has also weighed in with a very masculine perspective: "I like smart ladies like Mrs. Rocket! As a retired Naval Aviator, I have been amused/impressed by the constant showing of GWB in his aircraft each time the accucations are broadcast. He may be cute to many — but to me he looks fit, serious, competent and ready. Unless some aspect of the Guard services turns very negative, these shots are wonderful campaign banners." UPDATE by Rocket: We ask, our readers respond! And so far the response is unanimous. Every woman who has emailed us agrees that the photos of W. in his National Guard uniform are a plus. The most common adjectives are "adorable" and "cute," with a number of readers adding "wholesome" and "clean cut." And Bush seems to pass the ultimate test; one reader, whose name we'll protect, wrote: "Even my lesbian associate commented how cute Bush looked in his uniform just yesterday when she passed by a TV it was on." A number of readers also observed that before the current controversy, many people had no idea that President Bush once flew fighter jets — a very impressive accomplishment. And listening to the Dems would lead a casual voter to think that Bush skipped out on his National Guard service altogether, a notion that is refuted by the photos of him in a fighter plane. + + + + +
Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 09/16/04 06:58:47 PM |
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The Latest on CBSgate IV The saga of Daniel Milhous Rather continues.
Also, this is the most thorough comparison of the forgeries and Microsoft Word documents that I've seen. Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 09/16/04 06:37:00 PM |
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"How to Oppose Liberal Intolerance" A great article by Lawrence Auster at FrontPage, Aug. 11: The double standard may well be the most characteristic feature of the leftist cultural order under which we now live. A particularly revealing instance of the double standard was the media's wall-to-wall obsession with the Abu Ghraib abuses, combined with its refusal to show the tape of the savage beheadings of innocent Americans by Islamist killers. While conservatives complain endlessly (one might even say boringly) about the double standard, however, they have signally failed to understand it. One explanation may be that today's leftists deceptively describe their politics as “liberal,” a fiction to which conservatives have all too willingly subscribed. Conservatives have done this partly out of naïveté and partly out of a desire not to be polarizing, since their most basic need as conservatives is to affirm the harmony and cohesion of the existing order. Treating leftists as "liberals," they are constantly surprised and scandalized at the "liberals'" illiberal intolerance. They deceive themselves in regarding political correctness and the double standard as extraneous to liberalism, as a mistake or silly excess or regrettable hypocrisy, which, if pointed out to the "liberals," the "liberals" will renounce. On confronting any given instance of the double standard, the typical conservative will say something like this: "What would happen if a Republican had said that racist thing, or improperly taken that top secret document, or groped that woman in the White House?" He then leaves the rhetorical question hanging in the air, as if the question alone were sufficient to condemn the double standard once and for all and prevent the "liberals" from using it again. He never seems to notice that his brilliant exposure of the double standard fails to stop his "liberal" adversaries for even a single beat. Another form the double standard takes is some general rule from which only conservatives are excluded. To such unfairness, the typical conservative responds as follows: "You liberals say you believe in openness, tolerance, and diversity. Yet you want to exclude and silence conservatives. We conservatives believe in a true diversity of viewpoints that would include both liberals and conservatives." All of which is true, of course. But unfortunately, that is as far as the typical conservative ever takes the argument. Apart from accusing the "liberals" of hypocrisy or bias and calling on them to return to true liberalism, conservatives never suspect that there may be something about "liberalism's" essential nature that has generated this double standard, and that will keep generating it as long as "liberalism" itself survives. Let us therefore go beyond these futile complaints about the double standard and instead ask why the double standard is so characteristic of today's "liberalism." Once we answer that question, we may be in a position to combat the double standard effectively, instead of spending the rest of our lives complaining impotently about it.... See also Prager, Liberals, and Leftists. Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 09/16/04 05:56:59 PM |
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CBS Statement Yesterday It's fisked here. The text follows (HTML output from Adobe Acrobat). I have a few remarks at the end.
The best response I've seen to "the documents may be phony but the story is true" line came from Pat Caddell last night on Hannity & Colmes. He said it's like the czar's secret police having claimed that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion may have been forged but what they said was true. Touché. I'll also add that many alleged defenses of the forgeries miss the forest for the trees. The question isn't whether some typewriters existed in 1972-3 that had some of the capabilities of modern word-processing software and modern printers. The question is whether a high-ranking TexANG officer who couldn't type would have had a typewriter with all the modern capabilities apparent in the documents. And would have actually used it to type a personal memo. To himself. Without typographical errors. Duh. (Thanks, Matthew.) Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 09/16/04 05:36:37 PM |
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Was Kerry Complicit in Winter Soldier? I have long been willing to give John Kerry the benefit of the doubt concerning his involvement in the "Winter Solder Investigation": he could have been a useful idiot, a more-or-less unwitting dupe. High praise, no? ;-) Now I have my doubts. One Steve Pitkin, who "testified" at Winter Soldier has recanted. And not merely recanted: he has charged John Kerry with being among those who coerced him into lying. Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 09/16/04 07:28:11 AM |
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