Good Speech, But ...

I just watched Kerry's "response" to the Republican convention. Not bad; I think he got a kick out of chewing out Cheney.

One problem. No mention of terrorism. Could be a really big problem. Terrorism is the big Republican talking point — keep 'em as scared as possible. How many times did speakers at the RNC praise Bush's "heroism" in going to Ground Zero only three days after the attacks? Idea seems to be that since Georgie Bush allowed 9/11 to happen in the first place, he's somehow uniquely qualified to keep it from happening again. The attitude seems to be "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice — can't get fooled again."

Kerry needs to add something to his speech like:

To the terrorists — to Al Qaeda and to Osama bin Laden — you'd better hope and pray that George Bush wins this election. George Bush tried to come into Afghanistan "on the cheap" and let you walk away. George Bush does not understand intelligence operations. George Bush distracted himself with Iraq. I tell you now, we will not let you get away. We will unite the world to deny your funds and support. Above all, we will not be distracted until you are totally destroyed. This I promise you.

Anybody who thinks that Kerry wouldn't follow through on that should read his Silver Star citation. This is not a guy that you want mad at you.

Last One Down

Well, the last reason for voting for Bush (unless you're a corporate CEO or a hardcore Peronist) just evaporated. Economy in the toilet, unemployment up, deficit way up, army in Iraq, National Guard on the ropes, Afghanistan back to the warlords and the Taliban, scandals everywhere. "But we need Bush" went the line, "to keep this country secure. Bush will protect us from terrorism."

Oops. They can't even keep protesters out of their own convention, and they're supposed to keep terrorists from doing anything?

Now, convention security is fairly straightforward. You need a pass to get in. You have to have a pass to get anywhere. You put the pass on a cord around your neck. The convention has guards at doors. You don't have a pass? You don't get in, and I don't care if you are Dick Cheney. Not rocket science. Now, I don't know how the protestors got in and I don't really care; the fact that they got in at all was a failure of security. We're all lucky that they didn't have anything more dangerous than whistles and T shirts. Assuming that they didn't. Consider the effect of a tear gas grenade with a timer ...

Oh, and another thing re terrorism: where's Osama? Funny thing, I haven't heard his name mentioned at all.

LATER — Twistedchick has found a report that 1000 Thursday credentials are missing. Tonight may get more exciting than anybody wants ....

LATER STILL — From the NY Daily News (via) Sheesh! They're giving them away!

Omens

So NYC's ex- mayor and demigod Rudy Giuliani says, on Monday

The only two things I'm thinking of in the future right now are the Yankees getting themselves into the World Series and President Bush being re-elected.

Tempting the gods is a bad idea. Poking them with a sharp stick is an even worse idea.

Would these guys recognize an omen if it bit them on the arse?

"Girly Men"

California's honorable governor's favorite phrase for people he doesn't like is "girly men". Odd phrase. Austrian? Nope. Bodybuilder. Check out the side effects for massive steriod use.

Now, who do we know who has used massive doses of steriods? Who's the real "girly man" here?

Keep the Republicans Out of the Tunnels!

Security is tight at Madison Square Garden. (At least, for anybody important) Access to the train stations under the Garden (both subway and Amtrak) is quite limited.

How carefully are they checking the tunnels around the Garden? After all, isn't the whole point of having the convention in NYC to let the Republicans lay their eggs under the Garden?

This is especially worrisome in that Al Qaeda has expressed interest in the same scenario ...

Why Now?

One thing puzzles me about the Swift Boat ads. Why now? By questioning Kerry's military service, the ads invite discussion of Bush's military service. And Bush's service is far less, um, impressive than Kerry's. Bush, near as anybody can tell, served honorably for four years as a fighter jock in the Texas Air National Guard. Unfortunately, he had enlisted for six years.

Now, there are many questions about Bush's TANG service:

• He "jumped the line" to get into the TANG at all.
• Appointed Second Lieutenant without required ROTC or OCS training.
• He "jumped the line" again to get into pilot training
• He transferred from Texas to Alabama. This transfer is highly questionable; the Alabama guard didn't have the airplanes that Georgie was trained on. The military trains you to do something, you do it.
• There is no record of his ever showing up at the Guard in Alabama.
• In 1972, he didn't show up for his flight physical and was grounded as a result.
• He was discharged early to attend Harvard Business School

From looking at the dates coded into the information that we do have, it looks like the Guard was covering up for him. He would do something and the Guard would try to fix things to make it look right.

Now, in the 2000 election campaign, the Bush people painted Georgie's service (or lack thereof) as a total non- issue. Thirty years ago, and besides, Georgie Found Jaysus, which is the Republican moral reset switch. This worked; Georgie's misspent youth (I've heard that he was the model for Bluto, the John Belushi character in Animal House) never became an issue.

Why didn't they do the same thing this time? Simply smile indulgently and say, "Well, Kerry's trying to hide the fact that he hasn't really done anything interesting in the last thirty years." By bring this out now, it opens Georgie's sad National Guard service to scrutiny. In a month, the whole Swift Boat nonsense will be gone (a structure built totally on lies can only last so long), but Georgie's record will still be on the table.

So what's going on here? Well, the obvious answer is that the Swift Boat Liars are an independent group not connected with the RNC. They have a rather common bug up their arse:

1. All war heroes supported the Vietnam war enthusiastically
2. No war protesters supported the Vietnam war.
3. Therefore, no war protester was also a war hero
4. Since Kerry was a war protester, he cannot have been a war hero.
5. Since this is a Higher Truth, it's OK to lie about it.

In this model, the RNC higher- ups are tearing their hair out over this. Nothing they can do at this point; the cat's thoroughly out of the bag. Georgie's service is on the table for discussion and they just have to get ready to do damage control.

Problem is that nobody believes that the SBLs are really independent. The Repubs play things really tightly. So, again, why would they allow Georgie's record out of the closet?

Well, how about this? The Repubs are seriously concerned about an October Surprise about Georgie's National Guard service. This could be any of a number of things:

• Records of bad behavior in the Guard
• Copies of the missing part of Georgie's records, like the record of the Flight Inquiry Board that is required whenever a pilot is taken off of flight status.
• Proof that the Guard records were fudged to keep Georgie out of trouble.
• Proof that Georgie took pay from the National Guard under false pretenses.
• Proof that Georgie'e records were illegally discarded.

In this model, the SBL stuff makes sense. By getting it out onto the table now, the Bush campaign has two months, rather than a week or two, to do damage control.

Which is it? One of these, or something else? Only the Kerry campaign knows ....

LATER -- Ken Layne channels Hunter Thompson on the same subject (via).

The Persistance of Vision

According to Josh Marshall, the "Swift Boat" ads actually seem to be getting some traction with independent voters (assuming that there are any left.) The Kerry campaign doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of countering them. This is a bit surprising, seeing that this same group has trotted out the same charges against Kerry every time he's been up for re election.

Now, it's important to remember that a lot of people still think that we "lost" in Vietnam because we were "stabbed in the back" by the antiwar movement. Near as I can tell, they won't blame themselves, they won't blame their chain of command, they won't blame their political leadership, and they won't blame the North Vietnamese, so they blame the only ones left. Indeed, I've heard right- wingers flat- out blame Jane Fonda for the loss of Vietnam. Her. By herself. Ignore JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Westmoreland, Kissinger, and Giap. It's all Hanoi Jane's fault.

And of course, Vietnam Veterans Against the War. VVAW was a particularly sore point, as the hawks couldn't claim that they were just a bunch of strung- out hippie dope addict draft dodging cowards (the charge of choice against most antiwar types). John Kerry was by no means the most highly decorated soldier in VVAW; he was simply one of he most eloquent.

Memory is a funny thing. If somebody asks you to remember an event that fits your worldview, you're likely to remember it, whether it happened or not. The standard example is asking somebody who went to Disney World or Disneyland many years ago to remember meeting Bugs Bunny. A surprising number of people do, and will give a surprising level of detail. Problem is that Bugs is a Warner Brothers property; no way would he ever be at a Disney park.

Which brings us to the Swift Boat Vets. Looking at the records, none of them served with Kerry and it's hard to tell how many of them knew him at all. None of them seem to be VVAW members, or indeed any kind of "dove". It's a reasonable hypothesis that they believe the "stab in the back" theory. I'll bet that they honestly believe that they saw Kerry doing all sorts of horrible things.

But, pardon me for not believing them without contemporary documentary evidence. It fits too closely with the "hawk" worldview, where anyone associated with "peace" could never have done anything worthwhile. Remember Winston Smith in 1984? His job was in altering official records to show that the current Ins had always been wonderful people and the current Outs had always been horrible slimeballs. Same principal here.

Personally, I'll stick with the existing contemporary documentary evidence.

---

Now, there are a couple of barbs in this. First, I find it very odd that the Republicans would want to bring up Kerry's record at all. If the Repubs can talk about Kerry, the Dems can talk about Bush -- and Bush comes off very poorly by comparison.

The other is much nastier. By claiming that Kerry got his medals under false pretenses, they are implying that everybody else who got medals in Vietnam may have gotten them under false pretenses. Digby coverd this a while back, but it bears repeating -- If Kerry got his medals under false pretenses, so did many other people. After all in 1968 - 1969, Kerry was a nobody. He had no powerful political or military allies who might want to single him out for special favors; I've heard no accusations that he did any favors for anyone who might have pulled strings for him.

People with no military experience don't understand the importance of medals to people in the military. In the military, the pay sucks, the working conditions are horrible, and somebody is always ordering you around. Oft times, the only thing you have to show for a big chunk of your life is a little bit of ribbon. Claiming that someone got a medal under false pretenses, or wore a medal that they weren't entitled to, is a very serious matter. Before the "Swift Boat Veterans" got going, remember that the big question about Kerry was "Did he really throw his medals away, or just the service ribbons?" The fuss quieted down when everybody agreed that it was just the service ribbons. This makes sense only in the context of the military attitude toward medals -- something that civilians Just Don't Get.

Again, by casting doubt on the legitimacy of Kerry's medals, the Swift Boat Vets are pissing on all of the legitimate medals that they, and anyone else, earned in Vietnam.

Lock Up the Silverware!

When I lived in Arizona, both parties had a "stable" of big donors who would run in any race that was a sure loss. It was considered a perk -- run around the state, make speeches, get on TV, and so forth. Worked fine until one of the won.

Well, Illinois has that problem now. Barack Obama looks like a shoo- in for Senator, and the Republicans can't find anybody to run against him. Jack Ryan (the primary winner) is Out because of sex-club allegations and Peter Fitzgerald (the incumbent) and Mike Ditka aren't running because they aren't idiots. Best Line award to Fitzgerald: "I need that like I need a cancer transplant".

So it looks like they're turning to Maryland's own perennial Senate candidate and all- round fruitbat Alan Keyes. A bit of friendly advice for the Illinois Republicans -- lock up the silverware.

In 1992, when Keyes ran against pitbull Barbara Mikulski, the national party wouldn't give his campaign any money. No need to throw money at a sure loser. His campaign was seriously strapped for cash; they needed every nickel to just get out posters and flyers. So what did Keyes do? He paid himself $90,000 for "salary" from campaign funds.

Keyes' motto is "I'm smarter than you are". Expect to be presented with the bill for all sorts of "necessities", like a new house. (Illinois law says a candidate has to live in the state on Election Day.) And he will be very persuasive. Once you've locked in on him, you'll do things his way or else -- and that means taking a really big turn to the Right. I've seen his TV show -- think of Rush Limbaugh without the charm.

Amusingly enough, Keyes went after Hillary Clinton as a "carpetbagger" for her run for the Senate from New York in 2000:

I deeply resent the destruction of federalism represented by Hillary Clinton’s willingness go into a state she doesn't even live in and pretend to represent people there, so I certainly wouldn't imitate it.

— Alan Keyes, 2000 (via Archpundit)

Don't you Republicans in Illinois have a nice Republican used- car dealer who'd like to travel around the state and make speeches?

Later

Keyes gets his first real endorsement:

"I spent five weeks trying to find good people," said Mr. Hastert, who said he approached state legislators and the former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka and Gary Fencik, an Ivy Leaguer who was a hard-hitting safety.

"I got down into last week interviewing a 70-year-old guy who was a great farm broadcaster in Illinois," Mr. Hastert said. "He decided because of his health problems he couldn't do it. You know, we were down — we needed to find somebody to run, somebody who wanted to run. And, you know, Alan Keyes wants to run, and I hope he's a good candidate."

...

"I tell you what," Mr. Hastert. "I was out of town when it happened."

Some really wild enthusiasm there. (Via twistedchick)

"We have turned a corner, and we are not turning back!"

Georgie's new slogan. Sounds like a music cue to me:

Prosperity is Just Around Which Corner?

from 1932

[This song involves two people, the first is a loud-mouthed politician, the the other is supposed to be a man on the street.]

Everywhere you go, everyone you meet, All they talk about is this depression. They blame it on the war, they blame it on Wall Street, On politics and this administration. For two years now we've been assured good times are on the way, I wonder how much longer we must hear them talk this way?

Prosperity is just around the corner! What we'd like to know is which corner? We've turned so many corners now we're dizzy. But still I'm positive we'll soon be busy!

Why I read in Monday's paper that 10,000 men were hired! Yes, but Tuesday they forgot to say 12,000 more were fired. Well, I insist that this land of ours is stable! Stable? sounds like horses to me!

Prosperity is just around the corner! Did you say corner or coroner? Our credit is still strong, no one can doubt it! I guess my landlord don't know about it.

I see the market is going up, now you can't call that a joke! I recollect one time before it went clear up in smoke. This slump is just mostly imagination! Yeah, well you just try to pay your grocery bill with that!

Now everyone is sure that they could find the cure, If they could be the one to run this nation. They'd put a bill right through, and show us what to do, To get the money back in circulation. They say if we would spend our dough bad business soon will end But they forgot to tell us where to get the dough to spend.

Propserity is just around the corner. Around the same corner with prohibition, I reckon. Why, can't you understand why I'm so cheery? Yes, just like I understand the Einstein theory. But look at all the bumper crops the farmers have to sell, And every time they get a crop the price goes plumb to ****. [They couldn't record "hell" in 1932 for morality reasons] Well, every cloud still has a silver lining. But that don't line the pockets of your pants.

Still, prosperity is just around the corner. And we still would like to know which corner. Our nation will go down in history's pages. We're going down all right, especially wages. Why our banks are full of money, now you have to say I'm right. Then we can get all we want if we just use dynamite. You should fill your mind with optimism.

(Original here. I copied it because this link doesn't seem to be working.)

Rattlesnakes

Continuing with the RedState fluff piece, the "folksiness" secion (as opposed to the "character" section, which is actually most of the post) goes off into fearmongering:

Out here we have rattlers, big ones, that if you approach will sink their venomous teeth into your leg without hesitation.

Rattlesnakes are generally pretty harmless. Leave them alone and they'll leave you alone. Normally, on the desert, you'll never see one. They can sense you long before you see them -- and they want nothing to do with you. (You're too big to eat.) The urban equivalent is broken bottles-- nasty if you tangle with them, but easy to avoid.

The traditional Republican approach to issues is based on fear. Fear of terrorists, fear of crime, fear of drugs, fear of foreigners. Most of the Republicans' bogeymen are like rattlesnakes -- dangerous, but much less dangerous than presented. You'd never know from watching TV, for example, that violent crime has been going down lately. Read James Lileks for an example of somebody who is pants- pissing terrified by the Republican bogeymen.

Now, one of the oddities of "the fear card" is that politicians never seem to get called on it. "We elected you. We don't feel safer. Goodbye" just doesn't seem to happen. Reminds me of old- time medicine -- if you're sick, attach leeches. If you don't get better, you need more leeches.

When Democrats try to play the fear card, they generally sound whiny instead of scary. I don't know if this is an advantage or a disadvantage.