I just watched Seabiscuit. What a fantastic movie- one of the best sports movies of all time. Dreamworks puts out some great stuff.
Archives for 2004
Like Father, Like Son
Like father:
Presidential candidate Wesley Clark on Friday complained that one of the moderators in Thursday night’s debate was carrying out a Republican agenda by questioning his Democratic credentials.
Brit Hume of Fox News Channel, who worked as both moderator and questioner during the two-hour debate with the seven candidates, pressed Clark about when he had first realized he was a Democrat.
Clark told reporters Friday, “I looked at who was asking the questions, and I think that was part of the Republican agenda in the debate.”
Like son:
Wesley Clark Jr. a 34-year-old screenwriter, in a meeting with reporters while his father called voters from a phone bank, said; “I’d like to see him win today. If he doesn’t win I don’t want to see him stay out there.
“It’s a really disillusioning experience.”
In a rare outburst by a member of the Clark family, Clark Jr. launched into a harangue about the unfairness of the media and dirtiness of politics.
“You go out and see the way politics really works. It is a dirty business filled with a lot of people pretending to be a lot of things that they are not,” he said.
“There was a lot of sneering and whispering going on by columnists and talking heads. … It is all a horse race. No-one is talking about the issues.”
Wesley Clark Jr. was clearly frustrated by the fact that the biggest Wesley Clark media story over the weekend in Oklahoma City was that the drivers of his father’s three-car caravan got speeding tickets during a late-night journey between campaign stops.
“It is a helluva way to pick a president,” he said.
Clark Jr. said the media had not been fair to his father or any of the other candidates and was giving President Bush a free run. “It’s all about access. You know you would be denied access if you all covered this fairly,” he said.
I know of two little piggies who are going waah-waah-waah all the way home.
Primary Poll Numbers
Here are the primary poll numbers as of right now. I guess my only comment is that I find it frightening that 10% of SC Democrats would vote for Sharpton.
The Weird World of Josh Marshall
Fact: The President served during the Vietnam era as a fighter pilot in the National Guard.
Fact: Parts of the same unit were deployed to combat in Vietnam.
Fact: The president was presented with an honorable discharge upoon completion of his service.
Fact: Some of the records regarding his National Guard service are missing or incomplete.
Assertion: The President, because the Democrats do not have all the documentation they want and a week-end by week-ened recitation of his Guard service, is AWOL, a deserter, and in the bizarro world of Terry McAuliffe, “never served our country.”
Enter beltway flack and DNC agitprop meme-meister Josh Marshall:
Finally the Democrats start getting a sense of how this works. After various Democratic candidates and their surrogates have pressed the issue of the president’s blowing off his military service in the early 1970s, The Washington Post puts together a piece reviewing what we know about the president’s time in the Texas Air National Guard…
But the long and the short of it is that all the strong evidence points to the conclusion that the president blew off a lot of his service in the Guard, while there’s enough flimsy and self-serving evidence to believe that he might have actually been there if you really, really, really want to believe he did.
Yes- the Democrats are finally learning. The party of Lehane, Blumenthal, Clinton, Begala, Carville, doesn’t know how to create false innuendo in the media, manipulate smears, and engage in character assassination. Stop giggling.
But really, the most absurd part of the Marshall post is worth repeating- “while there’s enough flimsy and self-serving evidence to believe that he might have actually been there if you really, really, really want to believe he did.” Knaves, take note. This is how you breathlessly and arrogantly advance a lie. A lot can be learned from Mr. Marshall, indeed.
The facts, of course, are just the opposite. Rather than prove the charge, Marshall and his dimwitted and vile cronies would rather us prove the charge false. Of course, Mr. Marshall and his ilk have no such proof, but only the weak memories of one Lt. Col. and a simmering hatred for George Bush.
Although I have no proof, I hereby assert that Joshua Micah Marshall buggers young children. I have no documentation that he has done otherwise, although a lot of people claim he does not, I want to see the paperwork. Until he comes up with paperwork that he does not, in fact, bugger small tykes, the charges stand.
(Clearly I don’t think he does this, but what is good for the goose is good for the gawker.)
Like The Old Joke
How can you tell when a politician is lying? When his lips are moving:
“Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition … to the early use of military force b the US against Iraq. I share your concerns. On January 11, I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work and against a resolution giving the president the immediate authority to go to war.” –letter from Senator John Kerry to Wallace Carter of Newton Centre, Massachusetts, dated January 22 [1991]
“Thank you very much for contacting me to express your support for the actions of President Bush in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush’s response to the crisis and the policy goals he has established with our military deployment in the Persian Gulf.” –Senator Kerry to Wallace Carter, January 31 [1991]
Kerry Lied. People Died.
Oh, Jeebus
More projection from the Calpundit:
Despite the supposed rightward drift of America since the early 80s, the fact is that most Americans actually have an increasingly liberal view of most issues: they like Social Security and Medicare, they like strong public schools, they prefer working with the UN to taking action unilaterally, and they are socially pretty tolerant. Taxes excepted, this is why Bush mostly has to advance the conservative agenda by stealth: if he spoke honestly about his goals he’d get very little support. And he knows it.
Talk amongst yourself.
Bring It On
I see nothing but an upside for Bush with this story:
In recent days, a one-year gap in President Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service during the height of the Vietnam War has been raised by Democrats.
While none of the presidential candidates has directly criticized Bush’s service, some Democrats, including Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe, have accused the president of shirking his military duties in 1972, when Bush transferred to an Alabama unit. McAuliffe on Sunday called Bush “AWOL,” or “absent without leave,” during that period.
Terry Holt, spokesman for the Bush campaign, accused McAuliffe of trying to “perpetuate a completely false and bogus assertion.” Holt said, “The president was never AWOL.”
Nothing but good things can happen when Terry McAuliffe injects himself into the campaign.