Monday

Post Convention Quick Thoughts

The Democratic National Convention is over. No surprises. The networks decided to limit their coverage, and it cost them. Ratings were up in the time slot when the convention was on the air. Ratings were down for the networks and up for cable during the prime time speeches. Kerry already had a bit of a bounce announcing Edwards while the convention itself will take a while to percolate through the distraction of another terror alert and fearmongering by the goppies. Here are some random and not-so-random musings.

Once again, it's proven that Republicans believe lies and don't believe the truth. They were so quick to hang Sandy Berger on a bunch of old accusation that they had to make stuff up to make it seem worse. And now he's been completely exonerated. No documents are missing. Nothing hiding in his sock. He inadvertently took a few copies of his own memos (he was National Security Advisor under Clinton, and a good one) and returned them and destroyed one. Republicans desperately need to apologize to Sandy Berger, but they just don't have the guts. The Sphincter Conservatives have alreay judged him and facts simply won't unclench their butts. Sad, really.

The Berger exoneration is buried in the subscriber section of the Wall Street Journal. WSL is too far under Rove's thumb to practice real journalism and break a big story like this one to a larger audience. It's up to bloggers like Eschaton and a brief KYW New Radio piece.

Write your newspaper demanding that they spend as many column inches apologizing to Sandy Berger and excoriating those who found him guilty just from the RNC accusations. Don't let incompetent journalism distract them from the National Security Advisor who is the major screw up: Condolezza Rice.

Joke seen on the net:

We knew it. Bartcop knew it. Bloggers knew it. Heck, the Iraqis knew it. But the conservative news media went out of it's way to avoid the truth about the most talked about photo-op of the Iraq War:

More proof that Reagan Republicans are fleeing in panic from the lying cowardly weasels in the oily Bush administration

Reagan Defense Secretary Confirms Legal Analysis That Bush was AWOL.

 

By John Byrne | Raw Story Editor

 

Lawrence J. Korb, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations and Logistics under Ronald Reagan from 1981-1985, confirmed RAW STORY's legal analysis of President Bush's Guard Service in a telephone call Friday afternoon.

 

The analysis, which proves that President George W. Bush was absent without leave from the Texas Air National Guard in 1972, is available here.

 

Given proof that Bush missed five months of Guard training sessions, he said that Bush would be considered AWOL

 

"If you don't show up, you're absent without leave, by definition," Korb said.

And, as we long suspected, Bush is simply bonkers. Capitol Hill Blue has this book review.

Prominent DC Shrink Diagnoses Bush to be a Paranoid, Sadistic Meglomaniac

 

By Staff and Wire Reports Jun 14, 2004.

 

A new book by a prominent Washington psychoanalyst says President George W. Bush is a "paranoid meglomaniac" as well as a sadist and "untreated alcoholic." The doctor's analysis appears to confirm earlier reports the President may be emotionally unstable.

 

Dr. Justin Frank, writing in Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, also says the President has a ""lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions ... [and] pumping his fist gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad."

 

Even worse, Dr. Frank concludes, the President's years of heavy drinking "may have affected his brain function - and his decision to quit drinking without the help of a 12-step program [puts] him at far higher risk of relapse."

Sliding away from the oily Bush administration for a moment, lets look at some of the core beliefs of the sphincter conservatives. Just how politically correct is the right? How solid are they in things that just aren't true?

I was around in the late 60s and early 70s when the anti-war movement occasionally turned anti-soldier. Yet even the most vehement anti-war protester I knew was respectful of the individual soldiers they encountered. There might be sharp words over policy and whether to support Nixon or not, and sometimes those remarks got personal (on both sides), but I never saw anyone yell "baby killer!" at a man in uniform or anything like that.

I grew up 25 miles from West Point. There were a lot of soldiers in our area, in uniform, and a lot of peace protesters to talk to them. Over the years, I had plenty of opportunity to see any of these actions, and I didn't.

Still, I was just a kid who had registered for the draft. You hear, to this day, just how badly vets were treated when they returned home. I thought my experiences were not wide enough and didn't say anything. On the other hand, through the years, vet friends of mine railed againt the anti-war protesters but didn't have their own story to tell. It was always "This happened! No question!" "A buddy of mine says...". I believed them. Well, it turns out not to be true, or at least very much overblown.

Drooling on the Viet Vets

Last week, both the New York Times and U.S. News & World Report reprised the horrific accounts of Vietnam War protesters spitting on returning servicemen. In a piece about West Point's post-Vietnam mood (April 28), timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, Times reporter John Kifner writes:

 

Much has changed since Lt. Col. Conrad C. Crane ('74) watched on television here as the war wound down, a time he remembers as "almost a siege mentality" at West Point, when cadets could not wear their uniforms off campus for fear of being spat on.

 

Amanda Spake of U.S. News quotes (May 1) Terry Baker of the Vietnam Veterans Association about the disgraceful behavior:

 

"When the WWII guys came back," Baker adds, "they were able to talk about the war. With Vietnam, vets had to change their clothes in the bus station because people would spit on them."

 

Although Nexis overflows with references to protesters gobbing on Vietnam vets, and Bob Greene's 1989 book Homecoming: When the Soldiers Returned From Vietnam counts 63 examples of protester spitting, Jerry Lembcke argues that the story is bunk in his 1998 book The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (click here to buy it). Lembcke, a professor of sociology at Holy Cross and a Vietnam vet, investigated hundreds of news accounts of antiwar activists spitting on vets. But every time he pushed for more evidence or corroboration from a witness, the story collapsed--the actual person who was spat on turned out to be a friend of a friend. Or somebody's uncle. He writes that he never met anybody who convinced him that any such clash took place.

 

While Lembcke doesn't prove that nobody ever expectorated on a serviceman--you can't prove a negative, after all--he reduces the claim to an urban myth. In most urban myths, the details morph slightly from telling to telling, but at least one element survives unchanged. In the tale of the spitting protester, the signature element is the location: The protester almost always ambushes the serviceman at the airport--not in a park, or at a bar, or on Main Street. Also, it's not uncommon for the insulted serviceman to have flown directly in from Vietnam. In the most dramatic telling of the spitting story, First Blood (1982), the first installment of the series about a vengeful Vietnam vet, the airport is the scene of the outrage.

In other words, the "spitting on vets" story is largely mythical. The vets wanted to be Rambo, they weren't spit on. If a vet ever says that returning soldiers were treated disrespectfully -- and they will, it's almost a point of honor for the corps to have stood alone, above those they protected -- ask for specifics. If it didn't happen to them, get a name of who it did happen to. Track it down. Say you'll print the story on the web, but only from the original source. Let's practice some real journalism! And show our brave men and women in uniform that the people who they should be mad at are the conservatives in the Bush administration who have cut their combat pay, reduced benefits at home and sent their buddies into a danger zone for political purposes.

The military is learning, slowly, that the Democrats are their friends and the Republicans are not. The contrast between the heroic John Kerry and the cowardly George W. Bush could not be greater. Let's support our troops and elect the man who has three Purple Hearts.

Bully

Another Bumpersticker

Re: Bill Maher's Realtime

Roger Ebert

Re: Frontline

from that Mad Cat, JD

Last Night

Moose & Squirrel

Clinton Book

'Outfoxed'

Cable Networks

Randolph S. Webster

Norma Khouri

Princess Diana Fountain

Rare Instruments

Sam Edwards