If you can bring yourself to delve once again into John Kerry's fanciful war record, Just One Minute has a good rejoinder for the media's nth attempt at debunking the truth.

A little taste. A major dispute concerns whether Bob Schachte was on the skimmer with Kerry; he disputes Kerry's (varying) accounts of how he got wounded in one engagement. Two men, Runyon and Zaladonis, back Kerry and claim that Schacte wasn't there, so couldn't know.

The media, of course, takes this as dispositive. Schachte wasn't there; he's a liar; two guys say so.

They don't consider the possibility that perhaps Runyon and Zaladonis weren't there.

Now, I don't imagine the Times will follow up on a point they raised in the story when they wrote this:

"The three guys who in fact were in the boat all say he wasn't there and will tell you he wasn't there," he said. "We know he wasn't there, and we have all kinds of ways of proving it."

However, if they do have an investigative reporter to spare, they might ponder this - there is precious little evidence, beyond their say-so, that Zaldonis and Runyon were on that skimmer with Kerry.

These skimmer crews were put together on an ad-hoc basis, and Runyon never served with Kerry before or after that night. Zaladonis, however, ended up on Kerry's boat (PCF-44) a week later.

But puzzle over this - Kerry did not remember the names of the two men in the skimmer with him when he discussed it with the Boston Globe in 2003. And Douglas Brinkley, who wrote Keery's "Tour of Duty" did not identify the two men either, even though he interviewed Zaladonis for the book.

I find that odd - here is Zaladonis being interviewed about his personal history with Kerry and he never mentions that he was with Kerry when Kerry had his first combat and got his first Purple Heart? How did that not come up?

That is quite odd indeed. Zaladonis now has such a vivid memory of the engagement, but didn't mention it all when interviewed about Kerry's war record previously. Kerry is quite certain that Schachte wasn't on his skimmer, and yet couldn't remember who was on the boat when interviewed before.

Now, of course, he's quite certain that the men who back his war (fish) stories were the guys on that boat.

This is what the media means when it says stuff like "the Swift Boats' claims have been throroughly discredited."

It's also amusing that the media sets up a Swift Boaters vs. Kerry controversy regarding his Silver Star, when in fact no Swift Boaters were present for that engagement, and say so-- the controversy actually concerns Kerry's inconsistent reports about the engagement. So it's a Kerry vs. Kerry dispute, not a Kerry vs. Swift Boaters dispute.

Obviously, either John Kerry or John Kerry is lying about about it. But the media don't really like that dilemma, so they simply make the dispute between the Good Guys (Kerry and his supporters) and the Bad Guys (everyone else).

Just One Minute snarks:

John Kerry wants to re-fight the Swift Boats wars. My goodness, that is the only thing that could get the Times to cover this - during his campaign they stayed about as far from this story as Kerry was from Cambodia at Christmas time.

The charges -- detailed, substantiated, and sworn to -- are entirely ignored. The rebuttals, however, are painstakingly reported.

Posted by: Ace at 10:43 AM | Comments (47)
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Sounds like a damn good idea.

The Pentagon is seeking congressional approval for development of a new weapon able to strike distant targets an hour after they are detected, a newspaper reported on Monday.

The International Herald Tribune said the weapon would be a non-nuclear version of the submarine-launched Trident-2 missile and be part of a president's arsenal when considering a pre-emptive attack.

The report quoted military officials as saying it could be used to hit terrorist camps, enemy missile sites, suspected caches of weapons of mass destruction and other urgent threats.

General James Cartwright, head of the U.S. Strategic Command, said the system would allow U.S. forces to attack targets conventionally and precisely and "limit the collateral damage".

The Pentagon would like the system available in two years, the report said.

Why haven't they done this already? Cruise missiles are nice and all, but they have teeny-tiny little warheads. You can put a much bigger explosive load on top of a Trident.

But the program has run into resistance from lawmakers concerned it could increase the risk of an accidental nuclear war. Under the Pentagon plan, both non-nuclear and nuclear-tipped variants of the Trident-2 missile would be loaded on the same submarines.

...

"It would be hard to determine if a missile coming out a Trident submarine is conventional or nuclear," the Rhode Island Democrat said.

What a shock that resistance comes from Democrats.

Well, Mr. Reed, here's the thing: stealth fighters and stealth bombers can also carry nuclear weapons. Indeed, they were designed with that mission in mind. And yet we do not shy away from using some of our best first-strike planes in combat simply because they could carry nukes, and someone could get the wrong idea.

Why would Russia assume that a ballistic missile sub is launching a nuclear weapon, when they know the sub also carries conventional-warhead tridents? Wouldn't they sort of realize that's it's far more likely a conventional weapon is being launched?

And why would they then attack us with nuclear weapons, just because we may or may not be launching nuclear weapons against a third country?

The Left's attempt to cast themselves as The Company of the Fearless sure doesn't squre very much with their constant fretting.

Posted by: Ace at 10:03 AM | Comments (26)
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It's about as decent a movie as could be made from the book, which is to say, not terribly good at all.

The movie is not terribly offensive -- its anti-Christian zealotry has been greatly toned down by the art-by-committee system that is Hollywood. That doesn't mean it's a good movie, or interesting, or fun, or exciting, or stimulating, or even something you should pay $4 to see on DVD. You probably shouldn't. But it is far less offensive to Christians than the book it's based on.

This review is, as usual, way too long and disorganized. I've put the theology stuff first because that's what I figure most people care about. I've probably spent too many words comparing the book and the movie, but I just experienced both, so, well, that's what I was mostly taking note of.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 05:54 PM | Comments (97)
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Here, at Digital Brownshirt, who first noted it.

They've now corrected the story. Without, of course, acknowledging the error that stood on their site for hours and hours.

Posted by: Ace at 05:18 PM | Comments (15)
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Obviously, a man caught red-handed with a $100,000 bribe, with aides under investigation or indictment, presents a problem for Democrats attempting to accuse the GOP of having a "culture of corruption."

But that' a problem that the Democrats' liberal media spirit squad can fix rather easily, so that the public doesn't become "confused" about the "deeper truths" of corruption:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI director Robert Mueller signaled they would resign this week rather than give in to Congress in a dispute over an FBI raid on Rep. William Jefferson's Capitol Hill office, an administration official tells CBS News.

Top law enforcement officials at the Justice Department and the FBI indicated to their counterparts at the White House that they could not, and were unwilling to, return documents to the Louisiana Republican which were seized as part of a bribery investigation.

A Ra^ther large typo from CBS, eh?

Multiple layers of caretaking editorial fact-checking... with some consultations with the DNC.

Thanks to Digital Brownshirt.

Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (35)
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MacBeth released his "discharge paper" on his MySpace page. You will not be shocked to hear it is forged. It seems to be a real dischage paper, but he's (crudely) used a paint-program to block out the real information and replace it with false information, using a different font.

Ra^ther transparent, eh?

Once again, he displays his complete cluelessness by failing to even concoct a passable forgery. He fails to include key entries which should be present were he actually a Ranger.

His forgery says he's "Ranger qualifiyd" (sic). This kid is so stupid he gives you morons a bad name. He's doing a forgery, and he can't even be bothered to look up the correct spelling of "qualified."

Q & O got a hold of his real dischage sheet. He was a boot-camp washout, and spent exactly one month and thirteen days in basic training before being kicked out for failure to adapt.

Allah has a big round-up. This idiot was so clueless that he didn't even adequately paint over the blocks of information that gave the game away-- you can read through his attempt to white-out his true dischare information.

Euphoric Reality peeks through the white out to read:

From end of second line onwards: “PERIOD OF DELAYED ENTRY PROGRAM [SEVERAL WORDS OBSCURED] LESS LEAVE (CREDITABLE FOR ALL PURPOSES EXCEPT PAY AND ALLOWANCE – 49.00 DAYS [SEVERAL WORDS OBSCURED] MEMBER HAS NOT COMPLETED FIRST FULL TERM OF SERVICE // NOTHING FOLLOWS”

As if this couldn't get more absurd, in some poetry forum, he claimed to have been a Navy SEAL, too.

Wow. He was really racking up the elite-forces training, wasn't he?

Allah's post links an awful lot of stuff, including the law on forgery. I'm not sure if MacBeth is guilty of a crime; the law specifies the alteration must be done with an intent to "defraud," which I would imagine has a definition like "likely to cause someone to change his position adversely due to the false information." As in getting someone to pay you money based on the forgery. I'm not sure that MacBeth's attempt to change political opinions would count.

He also links what may or may not be a bogus comment from MacBeth's sister (or half-sister, depending on which post of hers you read), stating that he's a lunatic (as in, officially committed) and a nasty little thief who steals from family members.

Finally, if it's not all sad enough, there is his incoherent defense of himself at MySpace and Indymedia. The kid is, it seems, borderline mentally challenged. I don't think his IQ could be far north of 80, tops. It's a a little disturbing that this drooling imbecile was even able to get into boot camp at all.

It hardly needs to be said that the lefty blogs and websites that pimped this little lunatic thief's "war stories" are now in distancing mode. I give them all the Fox Mulder The Truth Is Out There Award For Credulity Above And Beyond The Call Of Duty.

"I Want To Believe!"

Posted by: Ace at 10:51 AM | Comments (37)
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The best blog on what is happening in Iraq continues to outpace the MSM by a mile. If three Sunni brothers in the heart of Baghdad can tell the truth, why can't the degenerates at CNN do the same?

Yesterday Iraq's and Iran's foreign ministers had a joint press conference in Baghdad after which the CNN ran a headline that reads "Iraqi minister defends Iranian nuclear program" and wrote:

Iran has a right to develop nuclear technology and the international community should drop its demands that Tehran prove it's not trying to build a nuclear weapon, Iraq's foreign minister said Friday.

"Iran doesn't claim that they want to obtain a nuclear weapon or a nuclear bomb, so there is no need that we ask them for any guarantee now," Hoshyar Zebari said after meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki.

And now for something completely different...

I wasn't there at the press conference but I was able to find an audio clip of the same part of minister Zibari's statement through Radio Sawa, and what he said here is so much different from what the CNN claimed he did (my translation):

We respect Iran's and every other nation's right to pursue nuclear technology for research purposes and peaceful use given they accept [giving] the internationally required guarantees that this will not lead to an armament race in the regionÂ…

Listening to the 2nd version of the story (in Zibari's own voice) it is clear that Iraq recognizes Iran's right to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes exclusively and is moreover asking Iran for guarantees, not the other way around CNN!

Rot in hell Ted Turner, rot in hell.

Posted by: Tanker at 09:18 AM | Comments (11)
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Connecting the dots used to be a good thing, but here I'm sure it's racist. Or something.

Padilla has told authorities that his direct Al Qaeda supervisor was Ammar al-Baluchi who obtained flight simulators that the 9/11 hijackers used in training. According to Padilla, Baluchi was the right-hand man of Khalid Sheihk Mohammed—considered the architect of the 9/11 attacks.

In documents filed during the recent death penalty hearing for Al Qaeda terrorist Zacharias Moussaoui, Moussaoui described Baluci as a “key travel and financial facilitator for the Sept. 11 hijackers.”

Posted by: Ace at 10:18 AM | Comments (23)
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The list isn't all that bad, though it does skew heavily towards a conception of conservatives as prudes.

Wake Up Little Susie is conservative? Gimme a break. It's not even really pro-sexual-restraint. It's a thinly disguised bit of sexual titillation for an era when such was considered scandalous.

I wondered about this some time ago, and decided that Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It was the most conservative rock anthem.

No, seriously. Check the lyrics. Sure, it's superficially an adolescent rage against teachers and such. But what is the liberal establishment, even in its own self-conception, than an organization of unaccredited professors seeking to lecture the intellectually unformed through a never-ending series of "teachable moments"?

It doesn't make the list, of course.

Thanks to Oregon Muse.

Whoops! It was National Review's list, reprinted by the New York Times. I've edited out my previous statements about the NYT's occasional cluelessness in compling the list, because they make little sense now, don't they?

The errors were, yes, evidence of my jumping to conclusions and twacking liberal straw-men and all that good stuff. Guilty as charged.

I have to change my take on the list a bit. Before I thought it was okay, but a little infused by stereotypical liberal conceptions of conservatives. Now that I know it comes from NR, I have to say its okay, but a little infused by a somewhat stodgy conception of what the mostly-blue-state conservative staff of NR thinks religious conservatives would appreciate on the list.

Either way-- Wake Up, Little Susie is about a couple who had sex, but they've got their story about "just falling asleep all night" and they're sticking to it. Even if the Everly Brothers didn't mean it that way, I'd guess that most teenagers who heard the song at the time so interpreted it.

Posted by: Ace at 09:56 AM | Comments (127)
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On Madonna's "courage" and "shocking" behavior:

Pity the pop star that ages unwell. What must she do to get noticed? For the 47-year-old Madonna Ciccone, known to her fans simply as Madonna, the bag of circus sideshow geek tricks looks emptier all the time.
On Monday night, fans in Los Angeles got to watch her latest attempt at outrageousness. She decided to hang from a mirrored crucifix while singing one of her oldies, "Live to Tell."

Upon hearing of MadonnaÂ’s latest plea for attention, Catholic League President Bill Donohue told The Associated Press, "Poor Madonna keeps trying to shock. But all she succeeds in doing is coming across as a boring bigot."

...

Blaspheming the crucifixion even earned a federal subsidy once. Andres Serrano put a small plastic crucifix in a jar of his own urine, photographed it, and won an award that was sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Hey Madonna, that was the 1980s.

Now mocking Christian beliefs rates what? A couple of AP reporters desperately calling every Catholic organization they know looking for someone to be offended. I bet Madonna doesnÂ’t even get a mention at the MTV music awards for this stunt.

It's been my prediction -- and hope -- that Madonna would do this, more or less. Age very badly and very loudly to boot. I remember seeing Shelley Winters on Carson as a kid. Her beauty had long departed her, and she was reduced to telling about all the men she'd had sex with on books and national TV. It was sad and pitiable, trying to cling to an image of potent sexuality that almost everyone else refused to indulge.

Madonna will make Shelley Winters look like the most graceful woman who ever lived.

On Saint Cindy, Useful Idiot:

Cindy Sheehan's maudlin narcissism has already been extensively examined, but for those unfamiliar with her philosophy, Dear President Bush is a good primer. “Was it freedom and democracy?” she asks rhetorically about the purpose of her soldier son Casey’s death. “Bulls**t. He died for oil.” This comes a few pages after her solution for problems in the Mideast: “We need to be more fair with policies that way too heavily favor Israel.”

But did Casey die for oil or Israel? Because if it’s Israel, then the obvious Peace Mom solution would be to do whatever those oil-producing, Israel-hating countries want. But if Bush only cares about oil, like she says, then why does he “way too heavily favor Israel”?

Saint Cindy questions that whole unilateral war-of-choice against Hitler, by the way.

Changed: I put these into their own post because posters were only discussing the Duke rape case when they were included with that story.

Not saying you have to discuss these or anything. Just providing an opportunity to do so without comments being lost in a sea of discussion of the Duke rape case.

Posted by: Ace at 09:25 AM | Comments (10)
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