Author: Kevin

Another Request

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Reader David Smith sent me a link to a Harvard Magazine article by Craig Lambert entitled Death by the Barrel with the suggestion:

Being a scientist myself, I take particular offense to the editor’s claim of using the scientific method. Anyway, I thought you might enjoy fisking a Harvard PhD for all he’s worth.

I guess I should be flattered for a reader to suggest that I’m qualified to fisk a Harvard PhD, so I read the article. It’s a review of David Hemenway’s book Private Guns, Public Health: A Dramatic New Plan for Ending America’s Epidemic of Gun Violence. Very skillfully done with virtuoso talent at misdirection, spin, suggestion and exaggeration mixed with just enough accuracy to make it all seem perfectly reasonable. In all, very fiskworthy, so I shall, David. So I shall.

Let us begin:

This particular gun story took place, ironically enough, at the 1997 convention of the American Public Health Association in Indianapolis. There, among a group of white-collar professionals and academics, a seemingly minor incident quickly led to mayhem. While eating dinner at the Planet Hollywood restaurant, a patron bent to pick something up from the floor. A small pistol fell from his pocket, hit the floor, and went off. The bullet struck and injured two convention delegates waiting to be seated; both women went to the hospital.

“Why manufacture guns that go off when you drop them?” asks professor of health policy David Hemenway ’66, Ph.D. ’74. “Kids play with guns. We put childproof safety caps on aspirin bottles because if kids take too many aspirin, they get sick. You could blame the parents for gun accidents but, as with aspirin, manufacturers could help. It’s very easy to make childproof guns.”

Logic like this pervades Hemenway’s new book, Private Guns, Public Health (University of Michigan Press), which takes an original approach to an old problem by applying a scientific perspective to firearms. Hemenway, who directs the Harvard Injury Control Research Center at the School of Public Health (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc ), summarizes and interprets findings from hundreds of surveys and from epidemiological and field studies to deliver on the book’s subtitle: A Dramatic New Plan for Ending America’s Epidemic of Gun Violence. The empirical groundwork enables Hemenway, whose doctorate is in economics, to sidestep decades of political arm-wrestling over gun control. “The gun-control debate often makes it look like there are only two options: either take away people’s guns, or not,” he says. “That’s not it at all. This is more like a harm-reduction strategy. Recognize that there are a lot of guns out there, and that reasonable gun policies can minimize the harm that comes from them.”

Let’s start with the first obvious misdirection. Hemenway goes from the question “why manufacture guns that go off when you drop them” – a reasonable question, by the way – to the contention “It’s very easy to make childproof guns.”

This is called “bait and switch.” They’re entirely separate and unrelated questions, and the second one is largely bogus, but because it involves “the Children™” it immediately draws a sympathetic reaction from the average reader. Could “manufacturers help” make guns “childproof”? Probably, but the comparison isn’t a reasonable one. The “childproof cap” law was first passed in 1972 as the Poison Prevention Packaging Act. It mandated that not only drugs, but any poisonous substance be provided in a package

…that is designed or constructed to be significantly difficult for children under five years of age to open or obtain a toxic or harmful amount of the substance contained therein within a reasonable time and not difficult for normal adults to use properly, but does not mean packaging which all such children cannot open or obtain a toxic or harmful amount within a reasonable time.”

First problem? Well, according to this article reviewing the 1995 revision of the act,

While the old caps kept children out, many older people had so much trouble opening them that they either left the caps off or put their medication in non-childproof containers, posing even more of a danger to children, says Jo Reed, senior coordinator of consumer issues for AARP.

That’s known as “The Law of Unintended Consequences.” If I recall correctly, after passage of that law, the number of child poisonings went up for a while. People reasoned “it’s not dangerous, it’s childproof. I don’t have to keep it in the medicine cabinet or store it on a high shelf.”

With guns, the same “unintended consequence” might very well occur. Because the gun is “childproof,” might the owner/parent leave it more accessible? And in a defense gun, what if the gun cannot be made fireable at time of need? Smith & Wesson, for instance, now manufactures their revolvers with an internal lock that requires a key. When locked, the hammer cannot be moved and the cylinder cannot be rotated. That makes the gun “child safe,” (if you actually do lock it) but what if you cannot find the key in the dark when an intruder is attempting to break down your bedroom door? That’s a situation not encountered when discussing the normal use of household poisons.

The next question becomes, “how long would it take for design changes to affect child safety?” Chemicals are consumeables and their containers are disposable. It didn’t take very long after child-protective caps were mandated for them to supplant non-safety caps in circulation. Yet there are over 60 million handguns in private hands today, and they aren’t going to end up in landfills as soon as the owner empties the magazine or fires all the shots in the cylinder. Any law requiring new handguns to be equipped with “child safety” features would be essentially ineffective for decades because of those 60+ million handguns already out there.

And finally, “how big is the problem of children being accidentally shot, anyway?” From this March 19, 2000 Whitehouse press release,

In 1962, almost 450 children died of poisoning after swallowing medicines or household chemicals. By 1996, that tragic statistic had been reduced to 47.

Well, the Centers for Disease Control’s WISQARS tool says the total in 1996 was 60 for children 5 years old and younger, but let’s not quibble. What was the injury mortality for children in that same age bracket by accidental gunshot? According to WISQARS, 19.

Obviously poisoning was a significant problem for very young children that was addressed with some effectiveness by the Poison Prevention Packaging Act, but could we expect a similar reduction in accidental deaths by a “Childproof Gun Act”? There is no reason to believe so. As noted, older guns would still be in circulation, and since an an there are only an additional one million or so new handguns added each year it would take quite a while for them to represent a significant percentage of available guns. Second, people irresponsible enough to leave loaded firearms around where children can access them cannot be expected to be responsible enough to engage the “child safety” feature, can they? Third, “child safety” caps were designed to protect toddlers. Remember, the law was directed to make it “significantly difficult for children under five years of age” to access poisonous substances. Older children were recognized to have the necessary skills to defeat them, but were expected to have the necessary knowledge of the dangers of doing so. The same would be true of firearms. (Anybody remember the joke that “Only kids can open the damned Childproof caps”?)

So Dr. Hemenway has attempted to deceive you by suggesting that “childproof caps” and “childproof guns” would be equivalents, and would prevent many unfortunate accidental deaths. What he doesn’t expect you to understand is that “childproof caps” were only designed to address the accidental poisoning of very young children, and that “childproof guns,” under the same criteria, still wouldn’t “solve” what is, in fact, a statistically very small problem. What Dr. Hemenway also does not tell you is that without “childproof” features, the number of accidental deaths by gunshot has been decreasing ever since we’ve kept track. The WISQARS tool only goes back as far as 1981, but that year there were 51 accidental gunshot deaths of children 0-4 years old. In 1985 there were 43. In 1990, 34. In 1995, 20. In 2001, 17.

Author Craig Lambert tells us that “logic like this pervades Hemenway’s new book”. Of that I have no doubt.

This is long enough as an opening piece. I’ll continue the deconstruction later, if I get enough interested feedback.

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Santayana was Right: “Those Who Forget History are Destined to Repeat It.”

Unbelieveable. I’ve had a couple of short email exchanges with Michael D. Bryan, author of the (formerly pro-Dean, now Pro-Kerry) Blog for Arizona.

Let me put it this way: In the new dictionary under “Barking Moonbat” it will have an excerpt from this blog. His most recent piece is Voting for the Middle East. Let me give you some excerpts:

Despite criticism of the approach of all out assault of urban areas by former Marine command officers, such as Lt. Gen. James Conway, former commander of the Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq which assaulted Falujah, the Administration appears to have issued orders to prepare for renewed assaults on ‘no go’ urban areas immediately following the Presidential election. The likely result will be extremely high casualities among American troops and civilians in target areas which would be unacceptable to voters prior to an election.

Major policy shifts in Iraq, like this one, are in the cards if Bush is re-elected. We will continue to kill innocents and battle insurgents without any clear rationale beyond compete military, political, and economic dominance of Iraq. Richard Clark posed a very salient question tonight on the Daily Show. Why are we killing these people? For 9/11? No. Because they have WMD? No. Because they support Saddam? No. Because they oppose democracy? No, they want democratic governance, too. So why? Because the terms under which they want democracy would not leave us in control. Simple as that – we are killing these people because they do not wish us to control them. Is that who we are as a nation? November 2nd will answer that question.

Like that? Try this:

Meanwhile an Iran ‘regime change’ resolution makes its way through Congress, we are selling bunker busters to Israel for use on Iran, and the Pentagon and Israel are wargaming first strike options. Sanctions are also fraught with danger of misstep and miscalculation, they are as likely to cause Iran to accelerate any weapons program as to abandon it, but unlike military action, nobody gets vaporized. The future of our relationship with Iran will also be determined by our Presidential elections. Bush seems firmly on a course of purposefully escalating the crisis with Iran in hopes of a decisive step by Iran giving the NeoCons the pretext they need to gain UNSC approval, or to be able to claim an eminent threat exists for a pre-emptive strike. Kerry will attempt to rachet down the crisis and gain oversight of nuclear fuels in Iran while engaging the Iranian regime constructively and then pressing for democratic reform. The Iranians have legitimate security and commericial interests in the region, if we deny them the ability to pursue those interests legally, they will do so illicitly.

Now, the conclusion:

This election will largely determine these very important questions of war and peace in the Middle East. The equation is really very simple:

Bush = war, death, isolation, catastrophic failure

Kerry = peace, life, alliances, planning for success

I believe we’ve been in a similar position before. Let me see if I can illustrate his error, at the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law:

Bush = grasp on reality, plan to deal with it, difficult and dangerous but necessary course of action, “blood, toil, tears, and sweat:” Winston Churchill



Kerry = “Peace in our Time:” Neville Chamberlain

We cannot allow the Left to regain their grasp on the levers of power. We dare not. They see Iranian acquisition of nukes as an exercise in their “legitimate security interests.” But the Mad Mullahs aren’t interested in invading a Sudetenland for lebensraum they want nukes so that they can obliterate Israel and spread Islam by conquest, as that religion specifically requires.

Mr. Bryan is just one more example of the mindset of the Left, and a textbook example at that.

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Eric S. Raymond on the MSM and the Falling Cost of Communications

Well, Eric is back with a vengeance with his essay MSM Loses its Power to Swing Elections . Interesting as always, here’s some of the highlights:

There are many reasons besides Rathergate that Kerry is losing so badly. He’s a pathetically weak candidate — a lousy stump speaker with no program and a nearly nonexistent legislative record, who ran on his Vietnam service only to have that prop knocked out from under him by former crewmates and superiors who accuse him of having been cowardly, opportunistic, and unfit for command. In fact, Kerry has no discernable political base of his own at all; his entire appeal comes from not being George W. Bush.

But Kerry’s weaknesses, glaring though they are, are not the interesting part of the explanation. It’s the MSM’s inability to cover them up and make them a non-story that is really interesting. The attempt to present Kerry and Edwards as “dynamic”, “optimistic” and “young” to which Evan Thomas admitted has mostly made them look vacillating, frivolous and jejune instead. CBS, the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the other centers of the MSM had also been trying very hard to bury and discredit the Swift Vets; nevertheless, Unfit For Command is now the #1 nonfiction bestseller in the United States.

Nor were the MSM, despite a visible effort to do so, able to suppress the evidence that Dan Rather’s anti-Bush memoranda had been forged. In fact, as I write they are proving unable to defend even the exculpatory fiction that Rather was an innocent dupe. The fact has come out that CBS was told in advance that two of the six documents it had were almost certainly bogus by its own examiners, and then witheld the other four from expert scrutiny and ran with the story anyway. The implications of that fact are being now dissected not just on partisan right-wing websites but out where the general public can see it.

—

Before the Internet and cheap long-distance phone calls, pulling together a cooperative network large enough to produce and back Unfit For Command, or to perform forensic analysis on the Rather memos, would have been an extremely expensive and long-drawn-out operation. The market for ideas had a much longer clearing time then. In fact it is rather unlikely these sorts of organization would even have been attempted more than a decade ago — everybody’s perception of the time and money cost would have been prohibitive.

Other forces are in play as well. One is that people are less willing than they used to be to derive their identities and a static set of political affiliations from the things about themselves that they can’t change. Your family’s politics is a far less important predictor of your vote than it was a generation ago (which, among other things, is why conservative talk of a “Roe effect”, of liberal abortion supporters selecting themselves out of the population, sounds so much like wishful thinking). Union membership stopped being predictive sometime in Ronald Reagan’s second term. Even traditional racial and ethnic interest blocs seem to be crumbling at the edges.

Increasingly, political power is flowing to consciously-formed interest groups that arise to respond to individual issues and survive (if they survive) as voluntary subcultures. The Swift Vets and MoveOn.org are highly visible examples of the trend. Internet hackers organizing against the DMCA and for open-source software is another. Indeed, the blogosphere as we know it is a voluntary subculture formed largely from the reaction to the trauma of 9/11.

To people in these subcultures, traditional party and ideological labels are less and less interesting. Case in point: Glenn Reynolds (aka InstaPundit), the pro-Iraq-war, pro-gay-marriage, anti-gun-control, pro-drug-legalization king of the bloggers. Is he a liberal Democrat with some conservative positions? A South Park Republican? A pragmatic libertarian? Not only do Glenn’s own writings make it difficult to tell, he seems to determined to flirt with all these categories without committing to any of them. Other prominent bloggers, including those who broke Rathergate, exhibit a similar pattern. The MSM, looking through a left-wing prism, sees it as conservatism — but most bloggers despise the Religious Right and Buchananite paleoconservatism as heartily as they loathe Noam Chomsky.

Hear, hear! RTWT. And be sure to read the comments, such as this one from Allan Yackey

It is my belief that communications is what brought down the iron curtain. I see the blogs as a logical extension of the explosion of communications. Although I had heard of the blogs earlier. I only really discovered them as a result of John Kerry and Dan Rather. But I more than like what I see here. My own political positions leave me where it is difficult to identify me with a label. I have an example that I have been using recently. In a small town it is difficult for anyone to be a sucessful thief or to commit adultry. Everyone knows everyone else. Anything that an individual does or says is seen or heard by a member of the community who will communicate it to someone else, etc. As the world grew it became possible to do or say something in one place and something exactly different someplace else. You could do this with confidence that no one in location one would likely know or communicate with someone in location two. That condition no longer exists. What I have posted on one web site can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Whatever I have written anywhere, anytime is accessable to anyone anywhere. We are indeed in the “global village”. As my grandmother used to say, “be certain that your sins will find you out”

The internet has a looooong memory, and Google is its retrieval device. Kerry has tried to say one thing in Poughkeepsie and another in Long Island, and been unable to get away with it, even with the MSM covering for him.

We are living in interesting times.

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Please, DO Call Your Congresscritters!



The Violence Policy Center is a bit worried. It’s issued this email alert:

Dear Violence Policy Center Action Network Member:

PLEASE CALL THE U.S. CAPITOL SWITCHBOARD AT 202-224-3121 AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND TELL YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVE TO VOTE AGAINST EFFORTS TO REPEAL WASHINGTON, DC’S GUN LAWS!

TO IDENTIFY YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS, OR FOR DIRECT-DIAL INFO, VISIT http://action.vpc.org/ctt.asp?u=3059891&l=56690 FOR THE U.S. SENATE AND http://action.vpc.org/ctt.asp?u=3059891&l=56691 FOR THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

The effectiveness of the District’s current ban on handgun possession is demonstrated by the fact that virtually none of the guns used in crime in the District originated here. Gun dealers in the District accounted for only three percent of recovered crime guns in 2000. In contrast, 59 percent of traceable D.C. crime guns were first purchased in Virginia and Maryland. Another 18 percent of D.C. crime guns were bought from gun dealers in North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. All of these jurisdictions have gun laws far more lenient than the District of Columbia’s.



PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO AS MANY OTHERS AS YOU CAN!

Thank you!



http://action.vpc.org/ctt.asp?u=3059891&l=56687

Now, I highlighted that one paragraph to illustrate a point: DC has traded places as “murder capital of the U.S.” with Chicago – another gun control utopia – for years. What this illustrates is not “the effectiveness of DC’s current ban,” but the fact that all it’s done is create a pool of unarmed victims. It hasn’t hindered criminal access AT ALL. That’s all that “effective gun control” can do – disarm the people you don’t need to worry about.

So, by all means, please call or write your congresscritters, and tell them you’re in favor of overturning DC’s draconian gun laws. It’s time and past time.

KevinLeave a comment

What a Complete and Utter Crock of a Retraction.

Kerry obviously needs to directly hire CBS‘s newswriters. They obviously know “nuance” and spin. Let me fisk their own report on RatherGate:

CBS: Bush Memo Story A ‘Mistake’

(CBS/AP) CBS News said Monday it cannot prove the authenticity of documents used in a 60 Minutes story about President Bush’s National Guard service and that airing the story was a “mistake” that CBS regretted.

CBS News Anchor Dan Rather, the reporter of the original story, apologized.

CBS News claimed a source had misled the network on the documents’ origins. The network pledged “an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken.”

In a statement, CBS said former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett “has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents” and “admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents’ origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source.”

Rather spoke with Burkett about the deception:

Dan Rather: “Why did you mislead us?”
Bill Burkett: “Well, I didn’t totally mislead you. I misled you on the one individual. You know your staff pressured me to a point to reveal that source.
Rather: “Well, we were trying to get the chain of possession.”
Burkett: “I understand that.”
More of Rather questioning Burkett.

The network did not say the memoranda — purportedly written by one of Mr. Bush’s National Guard commanders — were forgeries. But the network did say it could not authenticate the documents and that it should not have reported them.

“Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report,” said the statement by CBS News President Andrew Heyward. “We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret.

“Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting,” Heyward continued. “We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust.”

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush had seen the CBS statement.

“There are a number of serious questions that remain unanswered and they need to be answered. Bill Burkett, who CBS now says is their source, in fact, is not an unimpeachable source, as was previously claimed,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters Monday.

“Bill Burkett is a source who has been discredited in the past. So this raises a lot of questions. There were media reports about Mr. Burkett speaking with senior — or having senior-level contacts with the Kerry campaign. That raises questions,” McClellan said.

In a separate statement, Rather said that “after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically.

“I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers,” he said.

“We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry,” Rather added. “I feel like hell,” he told WCBS reporter Marcia Kramer.

The authenticity of the documents — four memoranda attributed to Guard commander Lt. Col. Jerry Killian — has been under fire since they were described in the Sept. 8 broadcast of 60 Minutes.

CBS had not previously revealed who provided the documents or how they were obtained.

Burkett has previously alleged that in 1997 he witnessed allies of then-Gov. Bush discussing the destruction of Guard files that might embarrass Mr. Bush, who was considering a run for the presidency. Bush aides have denied the charge.

In the statement, CBS said: “Burkett originally said he obtained the documents from another former Guardsman. Now he says he got them from a different source whose connection to the documents and identity CBS News has been unable to verify to this point.”

Questions about the president’s National Guard service have lingered for years. Some critics question how Mr. Bush got into the Guard when there were waiting lists of young men hoping to join it to escape the draft and possible service in Vietnam.

Some people have answered that charge in that Bush volunteered for a six-year stint in order to be a pilot. The waiting list for that was not as long. Again, nobody holds Clinton accountable for outright lying to avoid the draft, so what’s the big freaking deal?

In the Sept. 8 60 Minutes report, former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes — a Democrat — claimed that, at the behest of a friend of the Bush family, he pulled strings to get young George W. Bush into the Guard.

Yet Mr. Barnes – a major fundraiser for Kerry and personal acquaintance of Dan Rather – who, by the way, Dan attended a DNC fundraiser for – has sworn under oath that he did no such thing. Lying through omission, Exhibits, “A” and “B.”

Other questions concern why Mr. Bush missed a physical in 1972, and why there are scant records of any service by Mr. Bush during the latter part of 1972, a period during which he transferred to an Alabama guard unit so he could work on a campaign there.

Yet absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Lying through innuendo, Exhibit “A.”

The CBS documents suggested that Mr. Bush had disobeyed a direct order to attend the physical, and that there were other lapses in his performance. One memo also indicated that powerful allies of the Bush family were pressuring the guard to “sugar coat” any investigation of Lt. Bush’s service.

No, the documents made it explicit that President Bush disobeyed a direct order while a pilot in the TANG. There was no “suggestion” about it. That’s what had Hurricane Dan salivating.

Skeptics immediately seized on the typing in the memos, which included a superscripted “th” not found on all 1970s-era typewriters. As the controversy raged, CBS broadcast interviews with experts who said that some typewriters from that period could have produced the markings in question.

What unmitigated horseshit. “Not found on all 1970s-era typewriters” my ass. Not found on any 1970s-era typewriters. What typewriters that did have a reduced-case “th” were not capable of superscripting them, and the only machines available at the time that could superscript weren’t typewriters at all. The only “expert” they brought in was a 1970s-era typewriter repairman. By checking the Blogosphere, they could have gotten six real experts that could prove otherwise. Lying by omission, Exhibit “C.”

Other critics saw factual errors in the documents, stylistic differences with other writing by Killian and incorrect military lingo.

Yeah, that P.O. Box 34567 was a dead giveaway, too. As was the B.S. Zip Code. But does CBS mention those? No. Lying by omission, Exhibit “D.”

Some relatives of Col. Killian disputed that the memos were real. His former secretary said the sentiments regarding Mr. Bush’s failures as an officer were genuine, but the documents were not.

Did CBS interview “some relatives of Col. Killian” for the original 60 Minutes piece?

No, it would have detracted from the strength of the attack.

Did they interview his former Secretary for the original piece? After all, she’s the one who would have typed them, and would have told them unequivocally that they were fake.

No. That would have detracted from the strength of the attack. Lying through omission, Exhibits “E” and “F.”

Some document experts whom CBS consulted for the story told newspapers they had raised doubts before the broadcast and were ignored. CBS disputed their accounts, pointing to the main document expert the network consulted, Marcel Matley.

Except Mr. Matley is a handwriting expert not a document expert, and apparently not much of an expert at any rate, as Beldar discovered. More pajama blogging.

Matley insisted he had vouched for the authenticity of the signatures on the memos, but had not determined whether the documents themselves were genuine.

And, as Jim Geraghty found, Mr. Matley violated his own rules by authenticating a signature on a photocopied document.

Some expert. Of course they “disputed their accounts.” Their accounts made CBS look like exactly what they were – partisan attack dogs for the DNC willing to ignore anything that disagreed with the Official Party Line. Lying by obfuscation, Exhibit “A.”

Last week, CBS News stood by its reporting while vowing to continue working the story. The network acknowledged there were questions about the documents and pledged to try to answer them.

Mr. Bush maintains that he did not get special treatment in getting into the Guard, and that he fulfilled all duties. He was honorably discharged.

On Saturday, a White House official said Mr. Bush has reviewed the disputed documents that purport to show he refused orders to take a physical examination in 1972, and did not recall having seen them previously.

Which he wouldn’t have since A) they were forgeries, and B) they were supposed to be personal memos in Col. Killians’ private records. CBS was playing “GOTCHA!” and got burned, but they’re still trying to spin the story frantically – ANSWER THE QUESTIONS, Mr. PRESIDENT! WE DON’T CARE THAT THEY’RE BOGUS, ANSWER THEM!

In his first public comment on the documents controversy, the president told The Union Leader of Manchester, N.H., “There are a lot of questions about the documents, and they need to be answered.”

The Bush campaign has alleged that their Democratic rivals were somehow involved in the story. John Kerry’s campaign denies it. In an email revealed last week, Burkett said he had contacted the Kerry campaign but received no response.

Meanwhile, a federal judge has ordered the Pentagon to find and make public by next week any unreleased files about Mr. Bush’s Vietnam-era Air National Guard service to resolve a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Associated Press.

Which raises the question, “Why won’t Kerry sign a Form 180, and why hasn’t the AP filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to have his records released?” No partisanship there, no sir!

The White House and Defense Department have on several occasions claimed that they had released all the documents only to make additional records available later on.

It would have been nice if CBS had shown the same interest in the delayed appearance of the Rose Law Firm billing records. And have those later-appearing records shown anything damaging? If they had, would the forged memos have been necessary?

You’ll note that not one of CBS‘s links tie to anything outside CBS, such as Saturday’s Washington Post’s graphic comparison of the forged memos with known real ones. Lying through omission, Exhibit “G.”

What they didn’t say was far more revealing than what they did.

KevinLeave a comment

Michael Moore: “Kerry Can Still Win Because HE’S NOT BUSH!”

The Kerry campaign continues its meltdown, and even Michael Moore admits it in a backhanded way in his latest missive to the Boor Collective. Money quotes:

Enough of the handwringing! Enough of the doomsaying! Do I have to come there and personally calm you down? Stop with all the defeatism, OK?

—

They are relentless and that is why we secretly admire them — they just simply never, ever give up. Only 30% of the country calls itself “Republican,” yet the Republicans own it all — the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and the majority of the governorships. How do you think they’ve been able to pull that off considering they are a minority? It’s because they eat you and me and every other liberal for breakfast and then spend the rest of the day wreaking havoc on the planet.

I thought Republicans ate hate for breakfast, but seeing as Mooristas are nothing if not filled with hate, perhaps he’s being poetic.

If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can’t win… Dammit, of COURSE he’s a lousy candidate — he’s a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic, they even lose the elections they win! What were you expecting, Bruce Springsteen heading up the ticket? Bruce would make a helluva president, but guys like him don’t run — and neither do you or I. People like Kerry run.

Yes, OF COURSE any of us would have run a better, smarter, kick-ass campaign. Of course we would have smacked each and every one of those phony swifty boaty bastards down. But WE are not running for president — Kerry is. So quit complaining and work with what we have.

Really behind his candidate, isn’t he?

This is so fun it should be criminal!

“…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

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As an offshoot of While Evils are Sufferable, I had a exchange with blogger Patton of Opinion8 in the comments to Buckethead’s piece Second Civil War at The Ministry of Minor Perfidy. One topic we touched on, briefly, was the abuse of Eminent Domain.

Well, Patton linked to this George Will piece on one glaring example of that abuse: Do we have a right to our property — or not? Excerpt:

Soon — perhaps on the first Monday in October — the (U.S. Supreme) court will announce whether it will hear an appeal against a 4-3 ruling last March by Connecticut’s Supreme Court. That ruling effectively repeals a crucial portion of the Bill of Rights. If you think the term “despotism” exaggerates what this repeal permits, consider the life-shattering power wielded by the government of New London, Conn.

That city, like many cities, needs more revenues. To enhance the Pfizer pharmaceutical company’s $270 million research facility, it empowered a private entity, the New London Development Corporation, to exercise the power of eminent domain to condemn most of the Fort Trumbull neighborhood along the Thames River. The aim is to make space for upscale condominiums, a luxury hotel and private offices that would yield the city more tax revenues than can be extracted from the neighborhood’s middle-class homeowners.

The question is: Does the Constitution empower governments to seize a person’s most precious property — a home, a business — and give it to more wealthy interests so that the government can reap, in taxes, ancillary benefits of that wealth? Connecticut’s court says yes, which turns the Fifth Amendment from a protection of the individual against overbearing government into a license for government to coerce individuals on behalf of society’s strongest interests. Henceforth, what home or business will be safe from grasping governments pursuing their own convenience?

This should be interesting.

This is Why I Hate the Left

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If you haven’t already, please go to Citizens United and watch the trailer for Celsius 41.11. Watch, as Michael Moore states that “there is no terrorist threat,” the second airliner smash into the second World Trade Center tower, images of the Pentagon in flames, images of the bombing of the USS Cole, the Khobar towers, and others.

Watch the brainless liberal as she says,

When you talk about a dictator, there’s pros and there’s cons..

as a man’s fingers are being hacked off.

Watch as her friend says

If they provide free health care, a dictator provides free health care? I like that dictator!

as you see footage of a man being beaten bloody. Listen to her further as she says

If he provides University and education for everyone, I like that dictator!

while a woman in a burkha is shot in the head on a soccer field.

There are times when I want civil war. The gene pool could use some chlorine.

KevinLeave a comment

Horsesh!t

Quizilla has a quiz up, What handgun are you? and it tells me that I’m a Sig P226:

Greatest gun ever! Feel special. Beautiful and reliable but can still scare the living bejesus outta anyone.

Sig Sauer P226. Greatest gun ever! Feel special.

Beautiful and reliable but can still scare the

living bejesus outta anyone.

Horseshit. I’m a Kimber Classic Stainless