Well He Looks Like a '70s Cartoon Character
Captain's Quarters today is following story brought up by the
O'Reilly Factor last night, in 2001 John Kerry said that he had been present at the signing of armistice that ended the first Gulf War. So far, they have been able to place Senator Kerry in Boston at a charity function seven hours before the signing in Safawan on March 3rd, 1991. The record they have of Kerry's visit to Iraq shows that he did not arrive until March 16th.
At this rate, the only way the Bush campaign will be able to produce an October Surprise will be to have Daphne, Fred, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby unmask Osama bin Laden and reveal the junior Senator from Massachusetts. "And I would have gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for you meddlesome bloggers!"
Rabble Rousing Stooge
I debated about publishing this; it is the first time I have called a candidate names in quite a few years. After weeks of intellectual analysis, I just have come to the conclusion that there are not two candidates in this election. There is a candidate and a cipher doing anything he can to get elected. Character matters and John Kerry has failed a crucial test of character by letting his campaign get in the way of his obligations as a United States Senator to treat our allies with respect. The junior Senator from Massachusetts did not attend a joint session of Congress addressed by the leader of our newest democratic ally, Awad Allawi. What flunked Kerry was not his snubbing so much as his deliberate insults afterwards. In light of this, the gloves are off.
Last week I wrote how
hecklers never drive. Yesterday John Kerry proved me right. Awad Allawi, who Roger tells me was
bludgeoned with an ax by a Ba'athist stooge in 1978, was heckled by John Kerry after his speech to a joint session of Congress. True to form, Kerry neglected to attend this historic session; he had more important things to do. While the leader of a free Iraq was thanking the United States, John Kerry was losing an election by rabble rousing.
On the plus side of all this is that Awad Allawi has experience dealing with stooges. Stooges are bullies who have abandoned their identity to those with more power. Once you know you are dealing with a stooge, all you have to do is show that you have power over them, and they will do almost anything you tell them. Awad Allawi, as leader of Iraq, has a significant amount of power over the man who will be elected on November 2nd. If Bush is elected, Allawi will use this power to work with the man in office. If Kerry is elected, Allawi will use this power to drive the stooge to doing what is needed.
Since the Republican National Convention, John Kerry has come out swinging. His attempts to energize the anti-Bush "base" have been vile and pathetic. Perhaps next week he will be throwing rocks at an anti-WTO protest to show his credentials. Rabble rousing is not statesmanship. Abandoning your obligations is not leadership. Insulting an allied leader who risks death ever day of his life for his efforts to bring better conditions to his people is not coalition building. John Kerry is not presidential; he is a stooge, and a pathetic one at that.
Going From Annoyed to Angry
I don't link to Jason Van Steenwyk's
CounterColumn enough, although I read him about every day that the atmosphere is allowing him to blog. On those days that hurricanes are trying to eradicate him from the face of the earth, I check his blog anyway.
Today he converted me from being annoyed with that twit Kerry to being furious with that son-of-a-bitch Kerry.
Ok. So you want other nation's leaders to expend political capital and treasure and send their lads to risk their lives along with theirs.
So why don't you act like it? Why aren't you trying to sell the deal?
Because right now you are calling the U.S. Government incompetent and arrogant. You're arguing that Iraq is sliding into chaos. You argue that thousands of terrorists are slipping across Iraq's borders and that it's become "a magnet for terrorism."
You dispatch your sister to tell Australia that supporting the United States in the war on terror puts them at greater risk than they were before.
You stand with a straight face and tell nations like the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Italy, who have each shed blood for the freedom of Iraq as part of the coalition, that they're members of "a fraudulent coalition."
You can't even be bothered to leave Ohio to speak with Allawi when he comes to the US to say "thank you." But you don't hesitate to all but brand this man--who lives in Iraq every day--a liar, and then have the chutzpah, the gall, the arrogance to tell him from afar that he's out of touch with the reality on the ground.
Yesterday morning I could understand undecided voters, this morning not so much.
Hey Jason, could you please set something up so that if the fourteenth hurricane to hit Florida this season finally manages to take you out something gets posted on your blog. I promise that everybody will say nice things about you. Even if you don't get up to Oregon to have beers with us. Really, at this point you are becoming a fugitive from the law of averages. On the plus side, at the current rate, your entire battalion will be volunteering to go back to Ar Ramadi because it is safer than dodging Hurricane Zebediah.
Kerry Refutes Totten
Michael, did you know that the Eskimos have over a hundred words for snow? There are terms to describe "rotten snow that is likely collapse if you walk on it." Now they can have a new word for "yellow snow that is rubbed in the face of centrist pundits:"
Kerry.
It is like the Kerry folks saw your
TCS article and built their campaign to dispute it. How in the hell can this dink suppose that he will build a meaningful alliance with anybody if he talks like this about people who like the US. "Coalition of the Backstabbing" is all he can assemble with this kind of foreign policy.
What's he going to do next week, bitch-slap Girl Scouts to get out the women's vote?
Health Care and the Cost Plus Monster
Roger L. Simon has initiated a thread on his blog that is well worth discussing, but instead of trying to fit a too-long comment, I will write a too-short essay. Additionally, by writing this in Word I can get my spelling checked and claim that I wrote this in 1972 when I submit it to CBS.
Our nation is currently facing a three headed monster with an insatiable appetite. Unlike the mythical Cerberus, though, this beast is not guarding Hades so much as dragging us down there. The first head is the insurance industry, the second is the tort bar, and the third is the medical services industry. These heads feed each other and drive each other's appetites.
The insurance industry makes a profit on the difference between the rates you pay and the medical expenses they pay for. By using actuarial prodigies, they have been able to increase profitability while accepting higher expenses. The key here is that if medical procedures are insanely expensive, insuring the risk of that procedure occurring requires more money. By driving down the acceptance of claims for insanely expensive procedures, they can net additional profits by not matching their actuarial tables to their payment schedules. But the more lucrative and safer method is just to take the same percentage on a larger bet.
The tort bar makes money the old fashioned way, they steal it. There are rural regions of the country where whole jury pools are owned by leading tort law firms. Many corporations settle for extravagant extortion rather than risk the jackpot justice of the rural south. Another magnificent fraud perpetrated is the class-action lawsuit where millions of people in a class receive lunch money and a few law firms get millions. The worst part of this is that there is so much money that long shot frivolous lawsuits are worth pursuing because there is enough venture capital to sustain them. Medical malpractice and drug failures employ tens of thousands of exceptionally well paid parasites.
The medical services industry, ostensibly the most beleaguered, is a connected head. Drug companies just add the expense of additional testing to the price of their product and make more money. In many ways the pharmaceutical giants are research finance groups more than they are research companies. Although lawsuits drive down their profits in the short term, in the long term they just drive up what the drug companies can charge.
These three heads are not at all friendly to each other, but they are connected to the same insatiable appetite that is bureaucracy. The executives in charge of each of these industries still want larger offices, more staff to control, and more institutional security. The key here is not to attack any one head, but to attack the appetite that drives them all. This is the way that Health Care can be affordable in the future.
Bush=Kerry
In perhaps the cleverest of political moves that appears to have escaped everybody's notice, the Bush campaign had already refuted the National Guard record story before it even came to light. You see, if officers were altering their service record, Bush is guilty of being a bad Guardsman and Kerry is guilty of being a fake hero. If officers are not altering their service record, Bush is a good Guardsman and Kerry is a hero.
It's like this détente between the campaigns and it explains perfectly why Bush never backed the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth. If the Democrats had not launched Operation Fortunate Son, armed neutrality would have existed. As it stands, the Kerry campaign is forced to argue losing policy already refuted by their candidate just to take attention away from the question of the service records. If this is not just idle speculation, I may have to give credit to Karl Rove for being just as scary as he is portrayed.
The Hawkish Case for Totten
I am not sorry this post went so long. If Michael and I had been talking this out...we'd probably still be talking. Please read Michael's fine article first, and then my counter-argument.
I greatly respect Michael Totten for attempting to build a
hawkish case for John Kerry, and I know he worked hard to build it. Nevertheless, I would not be a friend if I let the case he built stand unquestioned. As an intellectual exercise, his effort makes certain kinds of sense, it is all perfectly reasonable. The topic under discussion is not an abstract exercise in logic, though. We are discussing the direction, quality, and character of leadership of the United States and the free world. With that in mind, I am now going to take the friendliest meat axe in the world to his arguments.
Deflating the Anti-War Movement (a.k.a. Appeasement of the Chattering Class)
While it is true that many in the anti-war camp are active solely to oppose George W. Bush, it is also true that many people honestly believe that war is the single greatest evil in the history of the world. Regardless of the merits or sanity of this belief, it exists and for hundreds of thousands of people, the way they feel worthwhile as human beings is by opposing war. A lot of people who are very wealthy through no merit of their own actively seek out ways to show that they are of value by contributing to anti-war causes. David Frum in his book "The Right Man" describes an example the logic of these people with a quote from Barbara Streisand, "I know what I am talking about. I give a lot of money to environmental causes." The money you give makes the cause right.
Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people make their living from the largesse of people committed to the eradication of war; every tenured professor who is part of a "Peace Studies" department, for instance. Michael is presuming that a University department that has exactly zero metrics for the success of their graduates is going to be intellectually honest enough to re-evaluate the necessity for their existence. Electing John "Department of Wellness" Kerry to the highest office in the land is not going to do anything to diminish the anti-war industry in America or their need to secure funding. There are thousands of people who have no marketable skills apart from opposing war who are not going to retrain like crippled loggers just because logic dictates that infinite pacifism is suicidal.
Michael Responds:
I do not argue that the "Peace Studies" professor will find a new job if John Kerry is elected. But the "Peace Studies" professor will not be a hero to liberals if their president gets in fight with Moqtada al Sadr or the mullahs in Iran. The "Peace Studies" professors were flatly ignored during the Balkan wars. The liberal heroes of the day were those who warned against the evils of fascism and the dangers of appeasement.
Patrick refutes: During most of the Balkan wars, the United States was not involved in the war, and so the press was not covering the professors who objected to it. This doesn't mean that they weren't saying inane things in their journals; they just weren't getting any notice. Additionally, it could be argued strongly that Peace Studies professors have little, if anything, to gain from following current events. Acknowledging the mechanics of the rude world outside has the disturbing tendency of destroying their discipline. While I suppose there is some satisfaction in the suppression of these people, it hardly seems worth electing Kerry to do so.
Flipping the Media Message
Michael wrote his article before the Rather meltdown, so I'm going to give him a pass on this, except to say that there are strong indications that the media needs a lot more confrontation to stay honest than they have been getting. Electing John Kerry does not make the media more honest just because they are less stridently opposed to the Chief Executive.
Michael responds:
I did not argue that the election of John Kerry will make the media less biased. They will be biased in favor of John Kerry then as now. And because they will be biased in favor of John Kerry they will not wish to put a doom-and-gloom spin on John Kerry's efforts to stabilize Iraq. (He promised to pull troops out in four years, which is the same thing as promising not to withdraw them at all. If anything, he will send more troops.)
Patrick refutes: I can see how this could "grease the wheels" in Iraq. I am less certain that the mainstream media is going to survive the next four years intact, regardless of who is in office. Think about it this way, the faster the mainstream media disintegrates, the sooner centrist columnists will get high paid assignments. (OK, revealing my Democratic roots by holding out a patronage lure.) Honestly, electing Kerry to get positive spin on military actions is just adding another mouth to feed. Nothing is free.
Ending Bush Derangement Syndrome
A lot of people are insanely angry about Ronald Reagan and are taking it out on George W. Bush. Some people are insanely angry about Richard Nixon and are taking it out on George W. Bush. A few people are insanely angry about Calvin Coolidge and are taking it out on George W. Bush. There is a tremendous amount of transference in the political process, something that J.F. Kerry is not above taking advantage of. Electing John Kerry only defers therapy for another term; it does not treat the underlying cause. At what point in his campaign has John Kerry shown any desire to restore civility to the electoral process? The first step is admitting you have a problem, and that step becomes a lot easier on November 3rd if Kerry is on the dustbin of history.
Making the Hecklers Drive
Michael, the hecklers never drive. While there are all kinds of great stories about complainers who make good, this is not going to turn out like "My Cousin Vinny". For one thing, there is an infinite amount of distraction. The exhibitionists in New York this summer were not concerned about the genocide in Sudan; they were getting naked to support their AIDS funding. Instead of confronting clear and present dangers to the United States, the hecklers will focus on what will get them screen time. This is a class of people who define themselves by their acerbity, not their integrity.
Further, the shameful truth about liberals in power is that they have, repeatedly, turned their back on the world. For all the great experiments that liberals have tried and succeeded at, we have a disgraceful tradition of abandoning projects that got too hard or were incapable of success. Even though the need continued for some kind of action, liberals follow their enthusiasm too much. The continent of Africa exists as a bleeding testimony to the frailty of liberal conviction. Abandoning Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel to the fate of Rwanda, Somalia, and Zimbabwe is not going to be easy to explain, which is probably why John Kerry is starting now.
Michael responds:
You say "the hecklers never drive." Ah. But John Kerry is a heckler, and if he wins he WILL drive and will no longer be allowed to heckle. People will heckle him instead. Those who blindly follow Democratic presidents will stop heckling because their man is driving.
Patrick refutes: I take issue with this. Sitting behind the wheel is not the same as driving. There is no proof that Kerry will drive if put in charge, which may be the reason the DNC started backing him last year. If Kerry had driven important legislation on a regular basis during his Senate career, there would be reason to believe him a driver. Kerry has no history of driving consensus in the Senate to accomplish meaningful legislation. This may be the reason we have heard nary a peep from the Kerry campaign regarding his record. In the 19th century, the United States could afford a Chester A. Arthur "go-along, get-along" presidency. The worst refutation of your case for Kerry as a hawk who can lead is his eighteen years in the US Senate.
Reuniting the Country
Michael is incorrect when he says that anti-Americanism has been on an upward tick since the Soviet Union imploded. Anti-Americanism has been on an upward tick since the Third Reich was defeated. Because the US was the healthiest power after WWII, it was the target of tremendous resentment on the part of those nations who took it in the shorts. The failure of the welfare state hasn't made us better liked, either. The American "way" is not the only way to do things, but it has the distressing tendency of being the most effective way. I hope that someday somebody else will come up and challenge the United States so everybody can do thing better. Until that happens, people are going to be blaming the United States for their failures. Electing John Kerry might well help the US in this regard, though the cure may be worse than the disease.
When Michael talks about US power being matched, he is flat dead wrong. Write this down Michael: the ONLY way that power is shown to have been matched is by total war. This is the ultimate antithesis of non-destructive testing. Civilization can take a whole lot more anti-Americanism than it can endure full scale military power testing. Bad news: China is buying the equipment to become a 21st century superpower. Good news: China is not changing the fundamental doctrine that would allow equipment synergy characteristic of US military interconnectedness. Potentially the worst news you have ever heard: China cannot admit that they are doctrinally flawed, and so they can only find out the hard way.
Ending the UN Fetish
I am not entirely convinced that the Democrats paid attention to the first rule of demon summoning: never call up what you cannot put down. The "UN approval" demon is not one that shows sign of returning to the nether regions it came from. I am even less convinced that John Kerry has the power and the will to exorcise this demon.
Checkmating the Radicals
I am not sure that John Kerry will be able to avoid putting radical leftists into positions; the ABB candidate is riding into battle on a hydra, not a horse. After the fight, there will be a lot of mouths to feed.
(Possibly) Breaking the Strategic Impasse
Harry S Truman had a world of trouble overcoming the title of the "Senator from Pendergast" because of his connections to the Kansas City boss who backed him. Even so, he had an agenda and integrity. John Kerry has an opposition candidacy, and he lacks both agenda and integrity. On November 3rd, regardless of the results of the election, all of Kerry's political capital evaporates in a frenzy of either recrimination or patronage. This is not a result that will drive military confrontation of terror sponsors and the extermination of fundamentalist sociopaths.
Michael, you did not convince me, and I doubt you convinced yourself. I have to give you credit for a game effort at an impossible goal. I respect you even more for the intellectual honesty to admit the weakness and derivative nature of the available arguments. It all seems a bit much to hope for an undistinguished candidate to discover unexpected greatness twice in a row.
