Coffee With Rhoads

Boondoggle?

2006-12-18T17:33:00.000-07:00

My wife and I drove down to Denver today along I-25. We met a friend near Wash Park and then headed further south to I-225 and points farther east and south. Along I-25 we got a look at the brand new southeast corridor light rail trains. Being a fan of trains and enjoying riding on light rail trains (just rode the Hiawatha Line between downtown Minneapolis and the Minneapolis airport last week) I wish I could say that this is not a very expensive boondoggle. But I can't say that. We saw probably a dozen or more different tain cars during our drive. Quick glances at all the train cars revealed totally empty and nearly empty cars. We couldn't count the people of course. There was no time. But I'd wager a lot of money that we saw less than 20 people riding the light rail.

Now we were driving in the late morning and early afternoon. I know these are not peak travel times. Perhaps these trollies are jammed full of commuters during the morning and evening rush hours. The Minneapolis light rail was also very, very sparsely populated when we rode it last week. Can this be a good use of billions of taxpayer dollars nationwide?

In contrast we drove in the HOV/Toll lane both ways, too. The switch of the HOV lane in the middle of I-25 to be both a high occupancy lane and a toll lane seems like a very good idea. The toll option allows people to voluntarily opt to pay a small fee to reduce the vehicle load on I-25. I don't know how much this helps the traffic flow on the interstate in Denver, but it sure helps me drive to and back from Denver when the HOV/Toll lane is open in my direction.

Better or Worse?

2006-11-30T12:54:00.000-07:00

This morning I began reading the latest collection of essays by Freeman Dyson called The Scientist as Rebel. Dyson is a favorite author of Rhoads who owns, I think, all but one of Dyson's books. I enjoy reading what Dyson has to say, too, though the second essay in this book struck me as being at odds with my impression of the state of the world.

In that essay Dyson bemoans the growing inequality in the world. Dyson says that earlier technological innovations like the motorcycle were cheap enough to be liberators of the poor while modern technological innovations, roughly those of the second half of the twentieth century, were "toys" of the wealthy, unnaffordable to the world's poor. This essay was originally written in the early 1990s, so Dyson included cell phones among those toys for the wealthy. In an addendum written in 2006 Dyson claims that things have gotten even worse, meaning more unequal, in the years since he wrote his essay, but that the cell phone, it turns out, is now ubiquitous and cheap enough to be a liberator of the poor.

I think the cell phone example is not isolated, but provides a window into where Dyson gets this story wrong. I suspect that had Dyson been writing in 1893 instead of 1993, he might have viewed the motorcycle as a plaything of the rich, too, when it first came out. I think the predominant pattern of innovation is that the wealthy are the early adaptors of new technology and that the rest of us follow as the prices fall.

The result of this process is one where we all are made better off over time and inequality may be not just a result of this process, but a cause of it.

Of course, I wonder to what extent inequality is growing. I suspect that the gap between the poorest and the wealthiest must inevitably grow. The lowest situation that man can find himself in, complete destitution barely above starvation and death, cannot get any lower. Since it is always possible for people to be destitute in particular times in particular places (poverty being the default position in nature) any increase in the wealth of the wealthiest will necessarily mean a larger gap between the poorest and the richest.

But there must be better measures of the gap between rich and poor than the wealth of the richest people and the destitution of people on death's door. And how many people find themselves utterly destitute now compared to past times? I don't know the answers to these questions, but Dyson seems to assume that inequality is getting worse without providing any evidence.

Luckily there is some evidence that we can examine in the form of a soon-to-be-published book called The Improving State of the World, by Indur Goklany. Below is an exerpt of that book's review in The Spectator:

We should be especially proud of the fact that humanity has never been better fed: the daily food intake in poor countries has increased by 38 per cent since the 1960s to 2,666 calories per person per day on average. The population of those countries has soared by 83 per cent during that time, so this is a stupendous achievement which puts the final nail in the coffin of Malthusianism.

Together with a 75 per cent decline in global food prices in real terms in the second half of the 20th century, caused by improved agricultural productivity and freer trade, fewer people than ever before are going hungry. The rate of chronic undernourishment in poor countries has halved to 17 per cent, compared with a little over a third 45 years ago. In wealthy countries, the cost of essential foods has collapsed, with the price of flour, bacon and potatoes relative to incomes dropping by between 82 and 92 per cent over the past century; similar trends are now visible in developing countries too.

There is still a long way to go; but never before in human history have so many people been liberated from extreme poverty so quickly. The number of people subsisting on $1 a day has declined from 16 per cent of the world population in the late 1970s to 6 per cent today, while those living on $2 a day dropped from 39 per cent to 18 per cent. In 1820, 84 per cent of the world’s population lived in absolute poverty; today this is down to about a fifth.

That sounds like progress. Here's more:

To see how far we have come, consider that anyone born in Britain during the Middle Ages would have been exceptionally lucky to live to see their 30th birthday. The average person could expect to live only to the age of 22, before succumbing to disease, injury or famine. By 1800, thanks to the Industrial Revolution, life expectancy in Britain had climbed to 36 years, then the highest ever seen but less than the life expectancy enjoyed today in even the most war-torn and deprived countries. By the 1950s the average Briton could expect to live to the age of 69; today this has increased to almost 78 years.

Life expectancy in poorer countries has improved even faster. In China it has surged from 41 years in the 1950s to 71 years today; in India it is up from 39 years to 63 years, almost doubling the average lifespan of 2 billion people. In 1900 average life expectancy around the world was a mere 31 years; today it is 67 years and rising.

While Dyson asserts, without evidence, that things are getting worse, this examination of the evidence comes to the opposite conclusion. What about the gap between rich and poor?

Just as remarkably, the gap between poor and rich countries has been shrinking fast. By the early 1950s a child born in a wealthy country such as Britain could expect to live 25 years longer than a child born in a poor country such as Algeria; today accidents of birth matter far less. The gap has closed to 12.2 years, thanks to diffusion and transfer of public health practices and medical advances pioneered in the West.

The whole review is worth a read (free registration required, click here to start the process and access the article).

My own sense of human progress is that human life is getting better all the time, just as the above evidence suggests. We tend to gripe a lot and focus on the negatives. That harping on the negatives clouds the immense progress we've seen in the last couple of hundred years, progress that apparently is shared by people the world over.

Save CU Tennis

2006-04-28T12:15:00.000-06:00

Long time dormant, but I thought I'd wake up and have a little Coffee With Rhoads. Today it's Farmer Friendly Organic Costa Rican La Amistad. Get some yourself at Little River Roasting, Co.

CU Men's Tennis was scheduled for elimination last month. Supporters have raised over $500,000 in just over a month to get that decision reversed. Anyone interested in the future of intercollegiate athletics and who is interested in this particular story can go to some of the following sites for information:

Save CU Tennis
or
BRG Blog

The first site has information on what you can do to help, links to stories about the program and the effort to save the team, and so forth. The second site, not realy active usually, has a couple of updates and may have a bit more as the story unfolds.

The reason this is more than just about CU tennis is that men's college sports are disappearing at an alarming rate. Football and basketball are not disappearing, but the participatory sports are. Men's tennis is a favorite place to cut, but swimming, diving, baseball, wrestling, gymnastics, and golf have all taken the axe.

Title IX legislation is partly to blame. But it is not probably the main reason these sports are disappearing. The main reason is that the cost of college athletics has spiraled upwards almost as fast as the stunning rate of growth of college tuition generally. At CU Boulder, undergraduate tuition and fees have grown 7x in the last 26 years. Stunning. Since tuition and fees are a cost of giving athletic scholarships, athletic department costs have risen, too. CU's athletic budget has grown from the $5 mil range per year in 1980 to over $36 mil in 2006.

Without general fund support, without student fees, and without very generous charitable donations every year, very few athletic departments would survive. Despite enormous ticket and TV revenue, athletic departments fail as businesses. The reason is that the two sports that have a chance of making a "profit" at most schools, football and men's basketball, must fund all the other sports. Hence, fiscally responsible athletic directors must look for places to cut. They must look to non-revenue generating sports for those cuts.

With Title IX legislation on the books calling for gender equity in collegs sports, athletic directors cannot very often cut women's sports. The laws state that the participation numbers and dollar amounts must be equal between men and women, or must reflect the enrollment demographics of the school. With men's football spending millions of dollars at most schools, and with men's football having a hundred or more roster spots, getting the dollars and numbers equal between men and women is difficult. Football at most schools brings in way more than it spends, but Title IX legislation does not address revenue equality or expenses compared to revenues. Title IX requires colleges and univesities to strive for gender equity regarding expenses and numbers.

So we get to men's non-revenue sports for any cuts that must be made.

The question on the table hear at Coffee With Rhoads is this: Are the people of Colorado (and the United States) comfortable with the evolution of NCAA Division IAA institutions toward revenue generation and spectator sports at the expense of opportunities for male (and sometimes female) student athletes to play non-revenue, non-TV sports?

I know I love college football and basketball. I know millions of people share those passions. But I'm growing uneasy with a system that caters to the low end of students in those sports (football and basketball team GPAs are overwhelmingly below those of "non-revenue" sports and the rest of the student bodies). I'm also growing uncomfortable with a system that caters more to the fans, donors, and alumni than to the student athletes.

I have always supported bringing student athletes to college campuses. I think that athletes add to the diversity of the campuses. I think that kids who are committed to something outside of the classroom often become valued assets to the campus. I also think that athletes become, on average, quite successful when they leave the campus after graduation. Business leaders, entrepreneurs, and so forth are not always the best students at school. But the commitment they show for the combination of athletics and school, the things they learn as teammates and as competitors, prepare them well for life after school. I would hate to see that lost if we lost college athletics as an extracurricular activity.

Perhaps this unique situation at CU Boulder will prove to be something of a watershed moment. It's not likely, of course, but you never know. At CU with the men's tennis team you have an unusual confluence of events: a VERY successful team being cut, a VERY cheap program, the sole program being cut, a large group of supporters who have quickly raised a VERY large amount of money, a university that has been stung by TERRIBLE PR over the last several years, an athletic department that has been the source of much of that terrible PR, and an opportunity to do something better by keeping a program that has high athletic and academic standards. If CU men's tennis goes down the river, it will surely be followed by many, many more similar programs.

Packers 28, Redskins 14 - Bad News for Bush

2004-10-31T18:04:00.000-07:00

The Green Bay Packers defeated the Washington Redskins today, 28-14 in Washington. This is bad news for President Bush and good news for Senator Kerry. Read the article to see why. This has been as reliable as the Iowa Election Markets in predicting the presidential election, although the Redskins have been at it longer.

Kerry's the One

2004-10-28T13:09:00.000-06:00

That's not just my opinion. That's the opinion of the writer of this article from The American Conservative magazine. I thought about quoting parts from the article, but the entire thing is wonderful. It deals with President Bush's deficit problem, as well as the problems of letting the neocons control our foreign policy. And it comes from a traditional/conservative perspective! Read the entire thing.

Why I'm For Kerry

2004-10-22T14:49:00.000-06:00

I think that Bob has abandoned CwR, and I am not sure why. I number of possible reasons come to mind:

He has gotten really really busy.

He didn't pay his ISP bill.

He got tired of the low quality of the competition.

He realized that in fact I have been right all along.

I think the last one is the most probable, especially when my predictions about the Swift Boat Vets and the lack of WMDs have come true.

At any rate, back when Bob was participating, he used to accuse me of being for "Anybody But Bush" instead of being pro-Kerry. Then Bob would attack John Kerry for being a "liberal (strike 1) Senator (strike 2) from Massachusettes (strike 3)" and so forth, without giving very much in a positive statement for our current president.

Well, today, David Corn has published on his blog an entry entitled Why I am for Kerry. I couldn't agree with it more. This explains why I think John Kerry would make a great president. Enjoy the read.

No WMDs - what a shock

2004-10-08T08:04:00.000-06:00

Well, the Duelfer Report is out, and the final conclusion is that there were no WMDs in Iraq, nor did they have any programs in place to create them.

I can honestly say that I am a little surprised.

I mean, I was skeptical that we would find "stockpiles" of WMDs when we attacked Iraq, but I thought we would find little pieces of something. We haven't. And it appears that we won't. It appears, as I have been saying, and as the more reasonable pundits on the left have been saying, that the Bush Administration seriously mislead us into the War in Iraq, which they continue to associate with a completly different war - the War on Terror.

John Dean wrote this article last June about what a serious offense against the nation and the world this misleading really is. I highly suggest reading the entire piece. It is even more poignant now that the Duelfer Report is out. These paragraphs at the beginning are particularly important in my mind:

Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his resignation.

Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it will end the matter. Clearly, the story of the missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too early, of course, to draw conclusions. But it is not too early to explore the relevant issues.

Well, the story was "far from over" in June of 2003, but I hope that America will wake up and that it will be over on November 3. The article then goes on to list many of the statements that President Bush made to the world concerning the certainty of these WMDs. Near the end of the article are these paragraphs:

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of presidential power.

Exactly.

Debates

2004-10-06T10:45:00.000-06:00

Well, the first two debates, including the one and only VP debate, are over.

There seems to be a general consensus that John Kerry picked up some significant ground in the first debate against President Bush. That is, he kicked butt.

The VP debate is closer. I was personally disappointed in John Edwards in that he kept answering "the previous question" and I wish he hadn't. FactCheck.org has a pretty good breakdown of some of the major points made by both sides, and it appears that although both Edwards and Cheney distorted reality, Edwards was generally closer to the truth.

From my perspective, it appears that of the four principles, three of them are smart enough for the jobs they are trying to hold. The fourth is our President.

I also noted that both President Bush and VP Cheney continue to try to tie 9/11, Al Queda, and Saddam Hussein together, which is a continuation of the misleading rhetoric which they used to get into the war in Iraq. In my opinion, this type of "leadership" is morally corrupt and self serving. I honestly believe that Cheney and Bush had a goal on January 20, 2001 to attack Iraq and get rid of Saddam Hussein. They distorted the facts and discarded all of the evidence which didn't support this goal, especially after 9/11. This course of action was reckless and irresponsible, and they continue it in these debates.

This people have to be fired.

Before the Fall

2004-09-26T17:42:00.000-06:00

That is the title of this opinion piece by Pulitzer Prize winning author and Stanford University history professor David M. Kennedy.

I was lucky in that I got to read that opinion piece in today's Mercury News since I am staying in the Bay area for a few days.

At any rate, the article describes exactly why I don't want George W Bush to be re-elected as our president.

Bob likes to criticize me for being "anti-Bush" instead of "pro-Kerry" when in reality I am both. And one of the main reasons that I am "pro-Kerry" is that he has stated that he would pursue policies which are antithetical to the policies of GWB, and for that I am in 100% support. Other Democrats would have done the same thing, and I would be for them because of it if that were the case.

Prof. Kennedy's opinion piece specifies one of the main reasons that I am "anti-Bush" which is that I believe that his decisions in realm of foreign policy have been mostly wrong for this country (with the exception of attacking Afghanistan). I believe that we attacked Iraq because it was one of the goals of the administration from the very beginning, and although the world is better off without Saddam Hussein, the United States is possibly LESS safe because of that action. Prof Kennedy agrees:

The Bush administration's path to war in Iraq is but the most dramatic example of a set of policies that has put at risk the kind of international leadership that has served both America and the world so well for the past half-century. The policies of the past four years have made America and the world less safe, not more.

The entire article is worth a read. And go John Kerry, if for no reason other than he will behave different than George W. Bush (alhough that is not MY only reason).

Belmont Club on Iraq

2004-09-20T13:59:00.000-06:00

Coffee With Rhoads readers interested in keeping up with Iraq should keep up with the posts at Belmont Club. The latest posts relate to the patterns of US troop deaths and the number and nature of Iraqi casualites. Read, scroll, and learn.

Squeeze Me

2004-09-20T13:20:00.000-06:00

Arnold Kling linked to a Washington Post article on the so-called middle class squeeze. The data don't seem to reflect the tone of the story, though. Kling put the data from the WaPo in tabular form:

Income Distribution	Percent of Households
Range	1967	2003
$75K and up	8.2	26.1
$50K - $75K	16.7	18.0
$35K - $50K	22.3	15.0
$15K - $35K	31.1	25.0
under $15K	21.7	15.9

Kling called this squeezing up. To me it looks like if the middle class was getting a sqeeze it was more like a sqeeze from Jessica Simpson. Hence the title of this post!

[Not sure why there's a big gap above my table. Maybe BRG's CTO knows a trick for removing the space.]

Not Good

2004-09-18T14:05:00.000-06:00

I'm hearing too many stories of destruction of Bush or Bush/Cheney signs, bumper stickers and so forth. A few representative links here, here, and the second letter down here. I'm not hearing similar stories of destruction of Kerry or Kerry/Edwards signs, bumper stickers, etc. Perhaps the former reports are more noteworthy to the sources I tend to read and listen to, and the latter reports are more common in the sources Rhoads reads and listens to. If Rhoads gets the time to let me know if he's hearing reports of abuse of Kerry/Edwards signage or people I'd appreciate it.

It looks to me people on the left in America aren't quite as tolerant of opposing political views as they should be. Considering what I've seen on college campuses (including the one down the hill from my home) for the last twenty-plus years, I must admit it doesn't surprise me that people on the evil, intolerant right appear more tolerant of opposing political speach than those on the left.

Rhoads' response: Well, I personally know of one person, who is a regular reader of CwR, who had his John Kerry signs vandalized in his yard. He doesn't live in the People's Republic of Boulder like Bob, though. He lives in Colorado Springs. So it probably depends on whether you are going against the prevailing winds as to whether your sign gets vandalized or not. I think that this means that there are jerks on both sides, as well. Perhaps I should get a JK sign for my front yard to see what happens.

Interesting Morning Reading

2004-09-18T13:51:00.000-06:00

Another great day in Boulder. The Mrs and I enjoyed a little coffee (without Rhoads, unfortunately) in the backyard this morning, accompanied in my case by some intersting reading on Iraq. Specifically I printed out and read four, brief informative pieces.

First was a post from Varifrank titled "Iraq: It's not for us". Varifrank addresses four issues regarding why we're fighting in Iraq.

The second was a piece from FoxNews.com by Claudia Rossett and George Russell titled "Possible Saddam-al Qaeda Link Seen in U.N. Oil-for-Food Program". The title pretty much describes the content of the article.

The third piece was from National Review Online by Victor Davis Hanson titled "See ya, Iraq?". The subtitle is "Leaving now would be a disaster."

Finally I read an email from a "Major in the USMC serving in the Multi-National Corps' staff in Baghdad." The title of his email is "Doom & Gloom about Iraq's future...I don't see it from where I'm sitting."

The series covers broadly why we're there, a specific element of why we needed to go, why we need to stick it out, and how things are going as of now. I recommend the whole series to CwR readers.

[Most if not all the links were initially pointed out by Glenn Reynolds I think.]

Pro Kerry Posts?

2004-09-17T19:05:00.000-06:00

In response to Rhoads' claim that he has blogged about his reasons for voting FOR John Kerry (as opposed to "anybody but Bush"), I took a walk down Blog Memory Lane courtesy of those Archive links to the left.

Holy smokes I've posted a lot! Anyway, here are the results of my search of the archives, post by post.

Rhoads wrote nothing in support of John Kerry in February, March or April. There were a couple of noteworthy posts in April, though. First, was my link to Robert Tagorda's search for a blogger or somebody who'd written something in support of Kerry rather than "we need to get rid of Bush" or "Kerry is better than Bush". That post is here.

The next post was this one by Rhoads where he said he sent money to Kerry. His reason?

"I am so scared to have George W. Bush continue as our president that I sent money to the Kerry campaign."

Anybody but Bush.

Moving on to May, June and July I found no positive statements of why Kerry was the man from Rhoads. Rhoads was busy with baseball. On to August...

Rhoads sited General McPeak on "why we need to get rid of Bush" in this post from Monday, August 15th.

On the brink of exhaustion from my walk down Archive Lane, finally I found something from Rhoads about Kerry's positions. In a response to my question about Kerry's Iraq policy, Rhoads' linked to the Kerry web site. That came in a reply to this post of mine on August 16th. Rhoads endorsed some of the particular sections, then nearly gave us a reason to vote for Kerry (rather than against Bush):

I think John Kerry has a better chance of putting together the right team to get that job done. It will involve the cooperation of many other nations, and at this point I think that quite a number of them just don't want to work with Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld.

He said Kerry "has a better chance" than the current administration. It doesn't meet the Tagorda Standard, but perhaps it qualifies as a "pro-Kerry post" on a blog where it's mostly anti-Bush from Rhoads.

That wasn't all I found in August, though. In this post Rhoads linked to a Forbes magazine story saying that we experience gretater prosperity under Democrats than Republicans. Rhoads concludes we should elect a Democrat. Then adds the Democrat is John Kerry. Close. But I can't count that one as pro-Kerry since it seems the argument is any Democrat will do.

In this post Rhoads linked to the Kerry Plan and specifically mentioned the section on restoring fiscal responsibility. I'll give you this one as a pro-Kerry position, but it seems equally plausible to me that it's a reaction to Bush's fiscal irresponsibility. I don't know how big a deficit fighter Rhoads was in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s when the deficits were much larger as a fraction of the national economy. I know John Kerry has not been a noted fiscal conservative in his twenty year career in the US Senate (where was he on Gramm Rudman, for example?). But John Kerry, fiscal conservative, got a plug from Rhoads in this post.

After all this, I guess Rhoads hasn't been completely silent on why a person should vote FOR Kerry as opposed to why a person should not vote for Bush. That last post was sort of pro-Kerry, a fiscal coservative Kerry. But pro-Kerry, I guess.

A CwR reader could certainly be excused for thinking Rhoads hasn't exactly made a strong pro-Kerry case, as opposed to the anti-Bush case. Nor has anyone else as far as I can tell, Kerry included.

Which is why the election isn't shaping up to be particularly close, and why any policy discussions should now be about how to get the second Bush Administration to do some of what you think Kerry would have done as president. Dreaming about a Kerry Administration is just that. I doubt even Kerry thinks he's going to win at this point.

Sorry if I'm unimpressed by the "we need to engage our allies" argument on Iraq. I particuarly don't like the dismissiveness toward the sacrifices made by the countries that have stepped up and joined us. Sure more cooperation from more nations would be nice. It would have been nicer if those nations had been on board from the start. Instead, some countries (France, Germany, Russia) chose continued trade with Hussein over liberating Iraq.

Real Issue #1: Iraq

2004-09-16T15:07:00.000-06:00

OK, although I have blogged before about my reasons for voting FOR John Kerry, Bob continues to say that I don't. So I submit John Kerry's plan for Winning the Peace in Iraqas my first real issue. John Kerry is going to work with the rest of the world to get us to peace in Iraq, something that George W. Bush has steadfastly refused to do. President Bush allows other nations to send us a couple of dozen of soldiers so that they can say they are on our side, but he makes it clear that we are in charge, which I think is a bad plan.

John Kerry, on the other hand, wants to build alliances with other nations, (through the auspices of the gasp United Nations) and do this WELL. He also recognizes that our Armed Forces need to come home so that we can have them available in case we have to attack a country which is actually a threat to us. John Kerry recognizes a bad war when he sees it, and he should know because he saw a bad war 30 years ago.

That's #1. More to come.

Real Issues

2004-09-16T09:20:00.000-06:00

Once again Rhoads fails to present a case for John Kerry as a president. In Rhoads' email to me, he asked if I was getting bored with CwR. My answer was no. After reading Rhoads' posts during my hiatus, the answer is yes. Too much argumentum ad hominem, too much faith in CBS News, and too much faith that John Kerry will win in November.

I'll give Rhoads credit for highlighting a significant difference between the people who will vote for Bush and the people who won't (including those who choose to make their non-Bush vote a Kerry vote). Rhoads says that the key difference is that people not voting for Bush don't see the war in Iraq as part of the war on terror. I think that's right. He says that people who do see the war in Iraq as part of the war on terror are under the spell of Bush marketing and propaganda (argumentum ad hominem). Even though Rhoads carves out an obvious and critical distinction between the Bush and non-Bush camps, he cannot resist the argumentum ad hominem. Disappointing.

At the risk of having my person attacked rather than the arguments I present, I'll reproduce the substance of Rhoads' post below on the Iraq-war on terror connection, or lack thereof:

I think that Novak is wrong in the first part of his statement, in that many liberals (myself included) DO want (if not like) the war on terror. That is to say, we do believe that it is the responsibility of our government to do its best to prevent future terrorist attacks against the United States. In the second part of his sentence, however, he says that we "refuse to see the vividly clear connection between the two." That is because THERE IS NONE.

I don't have time to post the hyper links, but let me summarize why I think Rhoads is wrong.

I think that we in the civilized world are under attack, a declared jihad, from radical Islamists who want to kill all infidels. These radical Islamists have killed innocent people in the name of their religious cause for roughly thirty years. The U.S. has been the target of these attacks going back to at least the 1980s. Israel has been the target of these attacks for longer than that. Murders of civilians in east Africa, Jakarta, Afghanistan, Spain, Italy, Russia, the Phillipines, and on and on have been part and parcel of a global war that as of September 11, 2001 the U.S. began to take seriously.

The first retalliatory battle waged by the U.S. and its allies in this global war (aside from missile strikes in places like Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Libya, etc. in years past) was in Afghanistan. The next battle was waged in Iraq. Rhoads denies a connection between the two. I'll examine his reasons below. Suffice to say that I think there is ample reason to think that the war in Iraq is part of the global war on terror, or the war against radical Islamists. Why do I say that?

Our government has said so. Absent some very broad conspiracy, I don't think that the president, the congress (including Mssrs Kerry and Edwards), and very many outside analysts would have said that ousting Saddam and attempting to establish democracy in the Middle East was part of a war on terror if that were not the case. This may be a poor strategy or a poor tactic at this time. But I don't think that all these people made false public statements to intentionally mislead us into a war. Rhoads apparently thinks that.

I think Saddam did provide safe haven for Islamist terrorists of all stripes within Iraq

I think there is reason to believe Saddam diverted Oil for Food money to terrorists

I think the fact that Saddam used WMD (specifically chemical weapons) against his own people and invaded his neighbors demonstrated that he was a threat to the world outside his borders

I think that Iraq attempted to acquire uranium from Africa, demonstrating an interest in nuclear weapons.

To me the cost of removing Saddam and the liberation of Iraq is justified by the benefits gained, specifically: removing Saddam (and Uday and Qusay) from power and permanently removing one particular threat, beginning the process of democratization in the Middle East, sending a message to other tyrants (Quaddaffi, e.g.) that there is no more free reign of terror inside "sovereign" borders, bringing the fight to the radical Islamist terrorists in a place and at a time of our choosing rather than theirs, removing one more safe-haven for training, funding and organizing for radical Islamist terrorists.

Rhoads continues:

There are no WMDs.

I agree. We and the rest of the western intelligence agencies failed in our intelligence gathering efforts regarding the development of WMD in Iraq. I think that the cost of going in and finding that their were no WMD is less than the cost of not going in and finding out the hard way (sooner or later) that there were. But I'll concede that we were wrong on WMD in Iraq, especially as to specific locations, specific weapons and so forth.

The 9/11 commission report states very clearly that there was no direct connection betweem Saddam Hussein and the events of 9/11.

Note the careful wording of Rhoads' point: "The 9/11 commission report states very clearly that there was no direct connection betweem Saddam Hussein and the events of 9/11." [bold added by Bob]. The report very clearly finds no direct (how about indirect?) connections between Saddam Hussein (any other Iraqi agents or surrogates? -- for the record I'm not convinced that Iraqis played a role in 9/11, but I'm not sure they didn't) and 9/11 (what about Iraqi involvement in other acts of terror carried out by radical Islamists?). I don't think the 9/11 commission statement is quite as emphatic on the lack of any connections between Iraq and the global war against radical Islamists as Rhoads' statement implies.
And we are no longer even fighting Saddam Hussein. And as far as I am concerned, even if Saddam were in power (and I think it is a good thing for the world that he is not) I do not think that the terroist threat against the United States would be any higher than it is now. In fact, I tend to believe folks like Richard Clarke, whom the president discounted, who say that the threat may even be higher now that we have attacked Iraq than if we had not.
Maybe. I guess we won't know that. We do know that since we attacked Afhanistan and Iraq, we have not been attacked by radical Islamist terrorists. We do know that Spain and Russia have been attacked quite recently. We probably will be attacked in the future. This war is not over.

George W. Bush misled us into a bad war. The ends do not justify the means in this case. I don't blame him entirely, though. Congress should never have handed over the authority to declare war to him in the first place.

I disagree that Bush "misled" us into anything. For what it's worth (certainly not much to Rhoads) John Edwards doesn't think so either. But just because I or Edwards or any number of people think something it doesn't make us right. Rhoads has his opinion and he's clearly not going to be swayed. Fair enough. That's why he's not voting for Bush.

I think there are reasonable disagreements to be had with Bush on the war in Iraq. I've seen plenty of pieces pro and con on whether that was the right tactic, whether it was planned well, whether the troop levels and make-up were right for the invasion and afterwards, whether the goal of democracy is realistic or not for Iraq, whether this engagement stretches us too thin, costs too much (in lives and dollars), whether things are going poorly or well over there right now, the nature and issues surrounding modern warfare, the nature and issues surrounding intelligence in this modern war, and so forth. I'm not expert in any of this, but I have been reading a lot about most of this over the last few years. I conclude that George W. Bush is committed to fighting and winning this global war against radical Islamists. I cannot conclude that about John F. Kerry. I have trouble concluding much about John Kerry, maybe that's his goal. But given what I know about the two candidates, and the presidency of one, I'm voting for Bush in November.

No, the Iowa Electronic Markets (and other vote markets) don't decide elections. Neither do opinion polls. But the markets are not jus "as good as" any other method of predicting the results ahead of time. Based upon history and research, they are better. In any case, the polls also show Bush winning. The state by state polls and markets show Bush with a lead, a growing lead, in the likely electoral college votes. New Jersey and Illinois, once considered extremely safe Kerry states (still considered pretty safe in the electronic markets) are now statistical dead heats in the polls. Iowa is very close. Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, and Arizona, at one time considered toss up states are now pretty clearly in the Bush column.

Is that because Kerry is a bad candidate? Without even going into specifics (e.g. stealing a Howard Dean line-"wrong war at the wrong time" that he had previously criticized strikes me as dumb) of Kerry's positions (can you succintly state his position on Iraq?), he is a liberal (strike one) senator (strike two) from a liberal northeastern state (strike three). That combination has proven to be electoral suicide for Democrats for a generation. That makes Kerry a bad candidate, and a bad nominee, aside from the many policy disagreements I and others may have with him. From the perspective of a party that wants desperately to win back the White House, I judge Kerry to be a poor nominee. What are your reasons for judging him not to be a bad candidate or a bad nominee?

Can Kerry rally? Anything's possible. I deal in the probable. I'm moving on to productive things like the issues, not Kerry vs. Bush. To me, the 2004 presidential campaign is now boring.

Iowa Electronic Markets

2004-09-16T08:43:00.000-06:00

Did I miss something? Did we pass a Constitutional Amendment saying that the Iowa Electronic Markets are our avenue for the presidential elections? If not, well, I guess that's as good a predictor as any.

Bob says that John Kerry is a bad candidate. He hasn't really given any hard evidence to back that up. I say that George Bush has PROVEN himself to be a bad president. Here are my reasons:

He has ignored the economy, other than to pass huge tax cuts for people capable of giving him large campaign contributions.

He has ignored the fact that so many people are having a hard time getting health care in this country.

He got us into a war in Iraq for no good reason, but he assured us that the reasons were valid.

This war is costing both American lives and BILLIONS of dollars, and yet he cuts taxes, causing the National Debt to skyrocket out of control.

He is just plain not smart enough to continue in this job. He just happens to have a GREAT marketing staff which manages to convince people (like Bob) that there really was a strong connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Queada.

Iowa Election Markets aside, I think America will figure it out be election day, especially if the 18-25 year olds get out and vote. George will be fired. Thank goodness.

I'm Back, sort of, part II

2004-09-15T20:16:00.000-06:00

Rhoads emailed to see if I was still breathing. After announcing I was back from NYC, I haven't had my usual Coffee With Rhoads. I've been quite busy, but should be back to my hyper blogging by early next week.

By then I shouldn't have to respond to some of Rhoads' posts, most notably anything relating to the hoax CBS fell for. The damage from that story won't be to Bush (see graph below), it will be to Dan Rather, the reputation of CBS News and to whomever passed those documents to CBS.

When I return, I'll probably do much less purely political-type blogging, though, since the 2004 presidential race is looking like a blowout of monumental proportions:

[source: Iowa Electronic Markets]

Rhoads could get more votes than it appears Kerry is going to get. In the spirit of good sportsmanship, I'll stop beating up on John Kerry. Sure he's been a bad candidate, but as I said before, nominating this guy was silly from the get go. The Democratic Party will have to rethink its nominating process to avoid this sort of nominee in the future.

Mr. Bush's Glass House

2004-09-15T10:04:00.000-06:00

That's the title of this OP-ED piece in the New York Times. I couldn't agree more. All of the broo ha ha about the President's National Guard service would be a big yawn if he would just own up to it and quit lying about it. In other words, he "served honorably," but only for SOME of his miltary service, and then he pulled strings to finish without completing his service. He should admit that so that we can move on. Maybe he will once he is fired in November.

Partisan Media

2004-09-14T08:52:00.000-06:00

For those of us who are still a little skeptical about the whole "liberal media" moniker, I think that this latest issue with the President's National Guard records is a good litmus test for which media outlets are "liberal" and which are "conservative" based on whether they start with the assumption that the documents are real or forged. Fox News, for example, is showing us their colors, much of it in the name of "news."

Now I still think there is a possibility that the documents are not real, but I will fall on the side of them being real unless there is some really strong evidence to the contrary. At this point, there doesn't seem to be any strong evidence to the contrary. Of course, Rush says that there is no question that the documents are fake, but Rush also says that Global Warming is "malarky." Rush is an idiot. Too bad so many people listen to him.

You can say that CBS was being partisan when they created this story, but I would argue that the Bush Administration forced them into it. The Administration was asked why the President didn't show up for a required physical, and they refused to answer the question. The claimed to release the President's "military" records, and they didn't. So CBS went in search of them and came up with some. If they created them from whole cloth, then you will see me blast CBS in the future. At the moment, it isn't obvious to any thinking person (Rush doesn't fall into that category) that they are fake.

Media Matters has done a pretty good job of debunking the claimed reasons for knowing that the docs are forged. The best article on those lines is available here. Another good one, discrediting William Safire (whom I admire and respect) is available here.

Ah, and a good article on Rush's Global Warming lunacy is available here.

Bush's National Guard records

2004-09-10T16:57:00.000-06:00

Well, CBS News has unearthed some old memos which they continue to stand by indicating that Goerge Bush was indeed missing during some of his service time with the Texas/Alabama Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. Of course, Fox News has probed into the memos and seems to thing that they might be forgeries. This will be interesting. Why? Well, because if the documents turn out to indeed be real, then it indicates more about the shoddy character of our President. The biggest problem as I see it is that he lied about it when asked about it a few months ago. If the documents are forgeries, then CBS should be ashamed of themselves, and they should be harshly reprimanded.

The crux of the matter per Michael Novak

2004-09-07T21:30:00.000-06:00

Bob posted an article by Michael Novak at the National Review about Zell Miller. Ignoring the laughability of anyone trying to seriously say that Zell Miller has anything useful to say, I pick out this particular quote from the Novak article which is one of the main differences between me and Bob, and quite possibly between people who will be voting for George Bush and people who will be voting for John Kerry come November.

The left wing of the Democratic party doesn't like either the war on terror or the war in Iraq, and refuses to see the vividly clear connection between the two.

I think that Novak is wrong in the first part of his statement, in that many liberals (myself included) DO want (if not like) the war on terror. That is to say, we do believe that it is the responsibility of our government to do its best to prevent future terrorist attacks against the United States. In the second part of his sentence, however, he says that we "refuse to see the vividly clear connection between the two." That is because THERE IS NONE. There are no WMDs. The 9/11 commission report states very clearly that there was no direct connection betweem Saddam Hussein and the events of 9/11. And we are no longer even fighting Saddam Hussein. And as far as I am concerned, even if Saddam were in power (and I think it is a good thing for the world that he is not) I do not think that the terroist threat against the United States would be any higher than it is now. In fact, I tend to believe folks like Richard Clarke, whom the president discounted, who say that the threat may even be higher now that we have attacked Iraq than if we had not.

George W. Bush mislead us into a bad war. The ends do not justify the means in this case. I don't blame him entirely, though. Congress should never have handed over the authority to declare war to him in the first place.

But people like Michael Novak who say that there is a "vividly clear connection" between the War and Iraq and the War on Terror are plain wrong. They have listened too much to the Bush propaganda. It is time for this president to leave, ESPECIALLY because of this extremely aggredious error.

Zell and the Democratic Party

2004-09-07T16:43:00.000-06:00

Michael Novak gets it.

Rhoads' response: What's to get? An old Dixiecrat rants and raves, trashing the name of another Democrat for his own personal gain, when just a few years ago he praised that very same person, also for personal gain. Perhaps he is as pissed as the SBVAJK, and so uses similar logic - i.e. none at all. Fine. But then to challenge Chris Matthews to a duel? Come on, Bob. The guy's a total lunatic, and when Rush and Novak praise him at all, they are just tarnishing their own credibility. Well, Rush doesn't really have any credibility any more, but Novak is usually pretty level headed.

Bob's reply:
Aside from missing or ignoring the point of the Novak piece, and despite accusing Zell Miller of using "similar logic - i.e. none at all," Rhoads resorts to his own favorite logical fallacy, the argumentum ad hominem. Goodness, the above is almost a classroom example of argumentum ad hominem.

Rhoads first questions Zell Miller's character by calling him a derogatory name ("old Dixicrat"). Then Rhoads questions Miller's motives ("for his own personal gain"). Then Rhoads again questions Miller's character by calling him another name ("a total lunatic").

Rhoads continued reliance on the argumentum ad hominem is most unbecoming, especially from a Princeton educated man.

Look What's Cooking

2004-09-04T08:31:00.000-06:00

I jus put two loaves of Rachel's famous banana bread into the oven. For those of you who may not have the recipe, here it is:
Rachel's Famous Banana Bread
1 1/2 c. flour
2/3 c. sugar
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
3-4 very ripe bananas [the blacker the better]
1/3 c. softened butter
2 T. milk
2 eggs

In large bowl, combine 1 c. flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add bananas, butter, and milk. Beat on high for 2 minutes. Add eggs and remaining 1/2 c. flour. Mix until blended. Put in greased load pan. Bake in 350 degree oven for 55 minutes.

Only 48 minutes to go...

Today it is coffee and banana bread with Rhoads.

Zell Miller: flip-flopper?

2004-09-02T10:49:00.000-06:00

Well, Democratic Senator Zell Miller from Georgia burned a bridge or two last night at the RNC. My guess is that we won't be calling him the "Democratic" Senator from Georgia for very much longer. I doubt that the Democratic Party will be giving him a whole lot of support in the future after his attacks on their presidential nominee. I didn't actually see his speech, but I have read the text. Powerful stuff. Of course, it directly contradicts his statements from a few years ago at the Democratic Party of Georgia Jefferson Jackson dinner:

Kerry An "Authentic Hero": "My job tonight is an easy one: to present to you one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders -- and a good friend. He was once a lieutenant governor -- but he didn't stay in that office 16 years, like someone else I know. It just took two years before the people of Massachusetts moved him into the United States Senate in 1984. -- U.S. Senator Zell Miller [Remarks to the Democratic Party of Georgia Jefferson Jackson Dinner 2001]

Kerry "Strengthened Our Military": "In his 16 years in the Senate, John Kerry has fought against government waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to Washington. Early in his Senate career in 1986, John signed on to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Bill, and he fought for balanced budgets before it was considered politically correct for Democrats to do so. John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment."

This guy is obviously quite the politician. Welcome to the Republican Party, Senator Miller. I guess it is a good thing that you are not running for reelection. Perhaps you can retire in Minnesota, since you are such a loon.

Air America in Denver (Boulder)

2004-09-02T08:58:00.000-06:00

It appears that Air America Radio is now available on AM 760, which used to carry Rush every so often. Apparently that station has now moved to Boulder. Now of course, the reasonible citizens of Boulder don't really need it (except maybe the Boulder staff of the BRG) but luckily the broadcast covers the suburbs as well. Go Air America!

I'm Back

2004-09-01T17:53:00.000-06:00

The wife and I just returned from a wonderful long weekend in New York City. We were there to see some of the US Open tennis tournament, to see a Broadway show (42nd Street--very good), to have a couple of beers at my old haunts (Chumley's and McSorley's) and to eat wonderful food (the best was at Spark's). We were joined there by some friends from the Boulder area and their two sons. A great time was had by all.

Now I'll have to see what Rhoads has posted in my absence...

Niwot Soccer makes its debut on the worldwide web. Cool. Now if there were some way for players to score a bit more often.

The Princeton Tigers will be in Laramie, WY in November. Awesome! I'll be sportin' my sweet black Princeton t-shirt.

Rhoads watched High Society with Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra. Probably my second favorite movie behind only It's A Wonderful Life starring Jimmy Stewart.

And finally Rhoads resorts to ad hominem yet again rather than answering the Swift Boat Vets' charges. Telling. Some things never change.

Oh well. Three quality posts out of four ain't bad. Sean Ratliff-like success rate.

Rhoads' response: Welcome back, Bob! The coffee just doesn't taste the same without you! I am not sure how catching someone red-handed in a huge lie when he is attacking someone else by accusing that other person of lying is ad hominem, but I guess that's just the way you see it.

Bob's reply: Regarding John O'Neil, Rhoads wrote: "The guy's a lying scumbag, and he is a pissed off lying scumbag." I referred to that as resorting to ad hominem. To help the readers decide if my accusation of argumentum ad hominem against Rhoads is justified, let's define the term.

Definition of argumentum ad hominem: "The person presenting an argument is attacked instead of the argument itself." [Reference source]

With that, I'll leave the verdict to CwR readers.

Niwot Soccer

2004-08-31T21:24:00.000-06:00

There is a new web site in the world as of today. Check out Niwot Soccer.

Tiger Hoops in Laramie

2004-08-30T21:30:00.000-06:00

Mark your calendars. November 22. Princeton @ Laramie. Time TBD.

Sweet!!

Have you heard, it's in the stars...

2004-08-29T23:52:00.000-06:00

...next July we collide with Mars...

Just finished watching High Society. Great flick. I'm sure Bob will agree.

O'Neill in Cambodia?

2004-08-27T22:58:00.000-06:00

Hmm, this article from Media Matters seems to indicate that John O'Neill admitted to Richard Nixon back in 1971 that he was in fact "in Cambodia" on a Swift Boat, or at least on the border (in a Swift Boat).

O'NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water.

NIXON: In a swift boat?

O'NEILL: Yes, sir.

This certainly brings up a credibility issue with Mr. O'Neill, who earlier said that Swift Boats were never withing 55 miles of the border. The guy's a lying scumbag, and he is a pissed off lying scumbag, and I hope that Bob stops giving any credibility to this group of people who are taking a page from an old Lee Atwater play book. Pathetic.

Survey, Quiz

2004-08-27T19:36:00.000-06:00

I tend to get a different score every time I do these sorts of things, but on this political survey this time I scored +0.3357 (+.0202) on the Left/Right axis, and +4.8274 (+0.2906) on the Pragmatism/Idealsm axis.

On the Estimation Quiz I scored a very disappointing 35%. Pathetic.

Your results may differ.

Rhoads' responseI got -3.2724 (-0.1970) on the left/right. I lost the page before I wrote down the pragmatic one.

Why Credibility Matters

2004-08-25T12:02:00.000-06:00

I admit that the Center for American Progress is a very liberal source. That means that Bob will generally dismiss them like I tend to dismiss most of the ulra conservative blogs that he links to regularly. However, I think this article bears reading anyway. It explains one of the big problems I have with President Bush-- he host lost credibility both at home and in the world. This quote sums it up:

Why is credibility so important? The conventional wisdom focuses on credibility for credibility's sake, but misses the real point: the war on terrorism cannot be won if the rest of the world mistrusts the United States.

Now I know that Bob will continue to point at John Kerry's credibility - or what Bob sees as a lack thereof. However, I also believe that information will come out that both John Kerry and John O'Neill were involved in covert operations in Cambodia. And to deny that there ever were such covert operations is putting your head in the sand. There is plenty of evidence in the Nixon Archives that such operations were happening.

Bob's reply: No time to go read the link, but there's no need. No, not because I don't trust the source. The source is liberal, but I've found a few things on their site that I agree with. From Rhoads description this is another. Well, not totally. I think any blanket statements about "the rest of the world" are not meaningful. But the basic point that the Bush Administration has credibility issues is legitimate. I have big problems with President Bush and the Bush Administration, too. That's why I keep, hysterically, griping about the nominee of the Democratic Party. Why did they nominate THIS GUY at this time? It just seems like such a big mistake to me. At the time the story was his electability. Argh. Senators have trouble winning presidential elections. Liberals from northeastern, liberal states have trouble winning presidential elections. Anti-war activists have trouble winning elections. What made the Democratic Party think John Kerry was so electable? Polls?

Regarding credibility and the Swifties. I take nothing they say at face value. I realize they have an axe to grind and they'd like to grind it in Kerry's skull. However, I am eager to check out the things they say. Rhoads may be surprised to learn this, but the main source for their criticisms is Douglas Brinkley's book on Kerry, Tour of Duty. The inconsistencies between stories in that book, stories told elsewhere, and the written records from Kerry's time in Vietnam led them (along with an intense hatred of the man's betrayal of them when he came back to the U.S.) to come forward to challenge Kerry's account of his service, a service that he unwisely made the centerpiece of his campaign.

Rhoads, there is ample evidence that covert operations were going on in Cambodia. Contrary what appears to be what you think, there is also documentation of said operations. Many people admit to having participated in said covert operations. They've described them in detail. None of what they've said supports Kerry's claim. He wasn't running the sort of boat (when they used boats on very rare occasions) that were inserted into Cambodia.

The evidence, screw the Swifties, just does not support Kerry's claim to have been in Cambodia, ever, much less when "the president said I wasn't there" as he claimed on the floor of the US Senate. Do you or any of your sources know of a time when Nixon or Johnson claimed no soldiers were in Cambodia at a time when Kerry was in the region? I don't know of such a source. I'd like to know of one. It may exist, but I haven't seen it yet.

The whole Cambodia tale appears to be a fraud from the very beginning. It looks like Kerry doesn't even support his claims any more. Cling to some changing version of Kerry's story if you want to.

It looks like the Kerry Campaign may be admitting that his first PH was self-inflicted and that there may not have been enemy fire that day. Kerry's own journal is certainly ambiguous on that score.

Further evidence, which I've posted below, casts doubt on whether Kerry and Rassman were under enemy fire when Kerry rescued him from the water after the mine blew Rassman's boat from the water. There was shooting, as Rassman says, but the shooting came from, among other places, Kerry's own gun which jammed. What we don't know is if shooting came from the shore, from enemies. If it did, they missed their targets with every shot. Odd.

Likewise the evidence indicates that Kerry and Rood did not turn into an enemy position that was superior in strength as thought when the Silver Star was issued.

Kerry opened the door to this stuff by using his service in his campaign. He kicked the door wide open in Boston when he saluted and said "Reporting for duty." The Swift Vets walked through that door. Now Kerry wants the door shut again. Too late.

Rhoads' reponseWell, Bob, you told me about the Swift Boat Vets long before Senator Kerry said anything about "Reporting for duty." And I think that they are the ones making this the centerpiece of his campaign. He is just defending himself against some unscrupulous attacks from them. But, it is something that he is most well known for until now - his record of speaking out against the Vietnam War - and so it is understandable.

Bob's reply. I first heard of the Swift Boat Vets back in April, I think. The CwR archives show when I first heard of them. I mentioned them here. [I went and looked: May 5th] Kerry used "his service in his campaign" long before he "reported for duty" in Boston. Remember the debates during the primary season? Kerry incessantly referred to his Vietnam service. He was using his service in the campaign then and it was a mistake. He then kicked the door open in Boston with his performance (arriving via boat with his "band of brothers"), ridiculous salute, and speech boosting his war record.

I recall the Deaniacs, Kucinich supporters (I saw a bumper sticker yesterday in my neighborhood), protectionists and union people pushing Gephart, even some hints of Clintonite support for Wes Clark last fall. Trial lawyers put their money behind John Edwards. So-called moderates, that is conservative Democrats (who by their candidate's showing don't appear strong in the Democratic primary process) supported Lieberman. I don't recall the passionate Kerry supporters. Yet, somehow Kerry's the Democratic nominee.

Now it appears Kerry is going off a cliff. Fairly soon the party will blame him for being a bad candidate. Sure, he's been a bad candidate. The whole Kerry campaign has had a horrendous August. But the true blame for the electoral beating Kerry will take (despite an incumbant ripe for the beating) lies with the Democratic primary voters who chose Kerry.

To be fair, though, what choice did they have? My guess is Dean may have been worse. Kucinich was never a realistic choice. Clark turned out to be a dud so probably would have been a bad choice, too. Gephart's message was too pessimistic to win a general election. Edwards may have had a chance of overcoming the Senate thing because he was only in for one term and is from the South. Of course that lack of experience would have hurt him in the general like it did in the primaries. Lieberman may have been able to overcome the Senate thing with his "moderate" positions, positions that have been fairly consistent if you forgive him going in the tank for Gore in 2000.

I think the cast of characters auditioning for the presidency was lean for the Dems in 2004. They got stuck with a bad choice. Sound familiar? Remember Bob Dole? Senator Dole? Bad Republican candidate from a bad primary field in 1996. Heck, Bush Sr was a bad candidate in 1980, a relatively bad president, and a bad candidate in 1992. Clinton (Southern governor), Reagan (Western governor), and Carter (Southern governor) were the only solid opposition-party winners in presidential elections since...? You've got to go back to Ike, a non-political pick, back in 1952 beating Princeton's own Adlai Stevenson to find an election where the opposition party won comfortably without a governor atop the ticket.

One-term Senator Kennedy narrowly beat sitting VP Nixon in 1960. Former VP Nixon narrowly beat sitting VP Humphrey in 1968. Governor George W. Bush managed to win, barely, in 2000 over VP Gore. Unless the opposition party can find a governor who is reasonably attractive to the swing voters in the middle, they don't have a very good record in presidential elections in modern times. Picking a senator, especially a long-serving, liberal one from a northern state, has spelled doom.

That doesn't mean Kerry can't or won't win. Perhaps this year will be different. But don't bet more than a couple of quarters on it. Save your betting for Poker Stars.

P.S. I finally got a minute to read the piece on credibility that started this post. The authors again trot out the unique definition of alone when they say we're going it alone in Iraq. To their credit they acknowledge the PRI, but complain that only 11 nations have signed on. Those 11 sign-ons are significant strategically: adjacent to N. Korea and on the Black Sea near Iran (excluding the European participants). More signatories would be nice, but complaining about the 11 minimizes the significance of this "multi-lateral" success by the Bush Administration.

I did enjoy the piece, though. I thought it was substantive. Unfortunately, like most of what I read, it manages to avoid how John Kerry would improve the situation. Kerry's not mentioned in the article. Judging by how Kerry's handled legitimate questions about his service in Vietnam (smearing the questioners), I wonder just how diplomatically successful he would be as a president. Surely our enemies worldwide are tougher opponents than the honorably discharged and in some cases decorated veterans challenging his accounts of his Vietnam service.

Rhoads: Auto mechanic

2004-08-24T22:14:00.000-06:00

So the reverse lights in Kim's 1991 Jeep Cherokee haven't worked for some time. Last time I had it in the shop. they told me that some switch underneath had gone bad, and that it would be a few hundred bucks to replace it. They suggested that perhaps I could go to a junk yard and get one cheaper. Last night I decided to use Google to see what I could find, and low and behold I found these instructions for cleaning my "Neutral Safety Switch." So tonight I bought a $2 can of Carb Cleaner, and followed the instructions. Lo and behold, the reverse lights now work. Bring your cars over anytime, Bob!!

A Talk with Ralph Peters

2004-08-24T17:01:00.000-06:00

This Ralph Peters piece in the New York Post bears reading. Here's the opening paragraph:

John Kerry went to Vietnam. Voluntarily. Given that President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and every chicken-hawk in the coop did all they could to avoid getting the mud of Indochina on their loafers, his service should make Kerry the election-year choice of those who serve, or once served, in our country's uniform.

Right. That's what Rhoads has been saying. Kerry served. He knows what war's like. Bush is a war-dodger who only likes wars he can send others to fight.

Instead, military men and women are overwhelmingly suspicious of Kerry. Many despise him so intensely that their emotions verge on hatred.

What went wrong?

What indeed.

There are three big problems with Kerry from the standpoint of those who are proud of their military service. And one of those reservations has been overlooked entirely by the parade of talking heads, so few of whom have served in uniform themselves.

Hey, I'm not a talking head (unless I'm behind a PA microphone), but I spout off on this stuff relentlessly and I never served. I'm ready to listen.

As far as the swift-boat controversy goes, it's likely to remain a he-said-she-said issue through Election Day. The red flag to military men and women is that so many swift-boat veterans have come out against John Kerry. Not just one. Not 10. Dozens upon dozens.

It's not a surprise to Rhoads. In contrast to the dozen or so supporting Kerry, these couple hundred Swift Boat Vets are bought and paid for by the evil genius, Karl Rove. No evidence of that, but we're talking beliefs here.

This is as rare as humility in the Hamptons. Vets stick together. Kerry likes to play up his "band of brothers" image, but if he's got a band, his opponents have a symphony. And even if the first violinist turns out to be a "Republican stooge," it's nonetheless stunning for so many vets to denounce a former comrade publicly. It just doesn't happen unless something's really wrong.

"His opponents have a symphony." Good one. Must be written by a Republican speech writer.

As for Kerry's support from his own crew, that's normal military psychology. You get the most objective view of a junior leader from his peers — the other swift-boat commanders (and their crews) who had to fear a weak link in the chain.

No. That's not right. ONLY the guys in his boat (except for William Rood) can comment on Kerry's fitness as an officer. Oh, wait. I'm not a military guy so how the heck do I get off making a comment like that? I wanna believe that, that's how.

I'm not a Vietnam vet, so I don't have as big an emotional dog in the fight as those who served so bravely and so thanklessly in Indochina. But some values are universal among those who wear or wore our country's uniform.

Yes, Kerry deserves credit for serving, whether he volunteered out of patriotism or because he had cast himself as the "next JFK," with a swift boat subbing for PT-109.

The first show-stopper problem with Kerry began after his return. He had the right to protest against the war — more than most, since he had served himself. But he had not earned the right to lie about the honorable service of millions of others.

Ralph, don't you know? Republicans lie. Democrats spin.

Kerry's lies — and they were nothing but lies — about "routine" atrocities committed by average American soldiers and sanctioned by the chain of command were sheer political opportunism. Kerry knew that none of the charges were true.

Well some of the charges were true, but Kerry embellished (pattern?).

He'd been there. He may have done some stupid things himself, but atrocities were statistically very rare. Contrary to the myths cherished by film-makers, American troops behaved remarkably well under dreadful conditions.

John Kerry lied. Without remorse. To advance his budding political career. He tarnished the reputation of his comrades when the military was out of vogue.

Now he's shocked, SHOCKED that some couple hundred of them have stepped forward to challenge him. Nice nominee.

Now, three decades later, camouflage is back in the fall fashion line-up. Suddenly, Kerry's proud of his service, portraying himself as a war hero.

But it doesn't work that way. You can't trash those who served in front of Congress and the American people, spend your senatorial career voting against our nation's security interests, then expect vets to love you when you abruptly change your tune.

Kerry might have won support had he apologized frankly for what he said in the early 1970s. But he no more disavowed his lies than he disclaimed the lies of Michael Moore.

Ralph. Democrats don't lie.

Which brings us to problems two and three.

John Kerry doesn't show a trace of integrity. Those constant flip-flops to suit the prevailing political winds are more troubling to military folks than many of the issues themselves.

Integrity matters to those in uniform. You have to be able to depend on the guy in the next foxhole — or swift boat. Trust is more important than any technology.

And John Kerry just doesn't seem trustworthy.

No big deal. Bush and Cheney must go. Get to your last point.

Finally — and this is the one the pundits have trouble grasping, given the self-promoting nature of today's culture — real heroes don't call themselves heroes. Honorable soldiers or sailors don't brag. They let their deeds speak for themselves. Some of the most off-putting words any veteran can utter are "I'm a war hero."

Real heroes (and I've been honored to know some) never portray their service in grandiose terms, telling TV cameras that they're reporting for duty. Real heroes may be proud of the sacrifices they offered, but they don't shout for attention.

This is so profoundly a part of the military code of behavior that it cannot be over-emphasized. The rule is that those who brag about being heroes usually aren't heroes at all. Bragging is for drunks at the end of the bar, not for real vets. And certainly not for anyone who wishes to trade on his service to become our commander-in-chief.

But Bush never served. Bush never served.

I wish Kerry were better. The truth is that I'm appalled by Bush's domestic policies. I believe that the Cheney-Halliburton connection stinks to high heaven. And I'm convinced that Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld & Co. have done colossal damage to our military and to our foreign policy.

But we're at war. And for all his faults, Bush has proven himself as a great wartime leader. Despite painful mistakes, he's served our security needs remarkably well. And security trumps all else in the age of terror.

Yep. It does for me, too.

Kerry says many of the right things.

Occasionally. To the right audiences. Before he changes the "nuance" to different audiences.

But I can't believe a word of it. I just can't trust John Kerry. I can't trust him to lead, I can't trust him to fight — and I can't trust him to make the right kind of peace.

I have reservations about voting for George W. Bush. But I have no reservations about voting against John Kerry. And I'm not alone.

No, Mr. Peters. You're not alone at all.

Poor Bob

2004-08-24T17:00:00.000-06:00

He's getting hysterical again.

Presidential Character

2004-08-24T16:51:00.000-06:00

Robert Tagorda on why Kerry's Cambodia problem matters:

I think that, by stressing how Kerry has allegedly used an inaccurate story to make policy changes, you raise the character issue to a highly relevant level. Suddenly, Christmas in Cambodia is no longer a dirty campaign ploy, which turns off moderate and independent voters, but rather a significant leadership question, which everyone should follow.

Well, everyone but the anti-Bush left. They'd rather smear the Swift Vets.

Never mind that Kerry smeared Vietnam Vets himself before Congress and on "Meet the Press" (I'm sure among many other times and places in his anti-war career). Again, in an addendum to the same post Robert Tagorda writes:

Hell, I'd be pissed off, too, if an ambitious politician charged atrocities to spark his public career, then a quarter-century later, surrounded himself with fellow veterans to bolster his foreign-policy toughness and advance his presidential campaign. It's plainly disingenuous -- and surpasses the standard white lies, policy straddles, and media spins that voters have come to tolerate from political figures.

Nice nominee.

Hah Hah Hah

2004-08-24T16:44:00.000-06:00

Beliefs. Beliefs. Beliefs.

John Kerry on the floor of the US Senate in a plea to influence public policy:

"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me."

LIE

Kerry's Lie According to Rhoads: No big deal. GIGGLE.

Swift Boat Vets: Kerry was not in Cambodia during Christmas of 1968. TRUE.

Kerry Campaign (revision): Kerry was 50 miles from Cambodia during Christmas of 1968. TRUE.

Douglas Brinkley (revision): Kerry was in Cambodia three or four times in early 1969 on secret missions. NO EVIDENCE FOR. CREWMATES CONTRADICT.

Kerry Campaign (revision): Kerry was in Cambodia once. NO EVIDENCE For. CREWMATES CONTRADICT.

Kerry's own Diary: Kerry was never in Cambodia. UNRELIABLE SOURCE

Rhoads belief that Kerry is believable: HAH

As I wrote elsewhere on Coffee With Rhoads, I won't vote for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for president. But I won't be voting for John Kerry, either.

I read Coffee with Rhoads

2004-08-24T15:38:00.000-06:00

Bob says I don't read Coffee With Rhoads. But I do. I only posted the link to the copy of the Chicago Tribune article because I didn't want to subscribe to the Trib in order to read it. Bob also like to keep harping on the Christmas in Cambodia thing as well. Of course, he is one of the few, because I don't think it is that big a deal. And the fact that it comes from the SBVAJK makes it pretty unbelievable, because everything else they say is so totally incredible and unbelievable that that particular issue coming from them falls in the same category. Do I think John Kerry was in Cambodia on December 25, 1968? Probably not. Do I think he was ever in Cambodia on a covert mission? Yes I do. Bob can claim that I am being silly in that belief, but I don't think I am. Bob also says these guys are credible. Laughable.

Bob's reply: As I wrote in the post below:

"Muravchik's conclusion won't sway the dedicated "anybody but Bush" crowd on the left."

Rhoads, in this post, proves my judgment correct again.

Kerry's Cambodia Whopper

2004-08-24T13:52:00.000-06:00

It seems to me that Joshua Muravchik drives a stake through Kerry's Cambodia tales in his Washington Post piece titled "Kerry's Cambodia Whopper". Muravchik's conclusion won't sway the dedicated "anybody but Bush" crowd on the left, but there aren't enough of them to elect Kerry. I suspect many Americans, those who will determine the outcome of the election, will share Muravchik's conclusion:

But Kerry has repeated his Cambodia tale throughout his adult life. He has claimed that the epiphany he had that Christmas of 1968 was about truthfulness. "One of the things that most struck me about Vietnam was how people were lied to," he explained in a subsequent interview. If -- as seems almost surely the case -- Kerry himself has lied about what he did in Vietnam, and has done so not merely to spice his biography but to influence national policy, then he is surely not the kind of man we want as our president.

Surely not. Nice nominee, Democrats.

Strengthen the Good

2004-08-24T08:55:00.000-06:00

I should have posted this yesterday on a high traffic day, but better late than never. Please head on over to Strengthen the Good and see how you can help some victims of Hurricane Charley in Florida.

Kerry Meets the Press and the Senate

2004-08-23T22:37:00.000-06:00

John Kerry's comments on NBC's "Meet the Press" in 1971 are reproduced here from Kerry's appearance with Tim Russert on that show April 18, 2004. Russert ran a clip of Kerry in 1971 saying this:

MR. KERRY (Vietnam Veterans Against the War): There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.

Is Kerry admitting to being a war criminal? He admits to actions "contrary to the laws of warfare." The best you can say is that Kerry is using the Nuremberg defense: he was ordered to do it, ordered to do it by men he describes as "by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals." That defense didn't work at Nuremberg, so I guess it won't work for Kerry.

John Kerry, as we all know, also testified before the US Senate in 1971. C-SPAN was kind enough to post the transcript of Kerry's testimony. Here's Kerry's opening:

Mr. Kerry: Thank you very much, Senator Fulbright, Senator Javits, Senator Symington, Senator Pell. I would like to say for the record, and also for the men behind me who are also wearing the uniforms and their medals, that my sitting here is really symbolic. I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of the group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table they would be here and have the same kind of testimony.

I would simply like to speak in very general terms. I apologize if my statement is general because I received notification yesterday you would hear me and I am afraid because of the injunction I was up most of the night and haven't had a great deal of chance to prepare.

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

So three paragraphs into his testimony, John Kerry has testified, second hand admittedly, to "not isolated" war crimes "committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." No names. No specifics as to places and dates. A broad condemnation of untold numbers of people who were not there to defend themselves. Accusations of war crimes committed with the "full awareness of officers at all levels of command." And now he's upset by specific charges backed up by sworn affidavits, regarding very specific incidents in his past? Gutsy. He also appears to be reliving the past by responding not with facts, but once again with smears. Those he smears now are those who felt smeared thirty years ago. John Kerry's surprised that some of those he smeared over thirty years ago have emerged to try to smear him as he uses his Vietnam experience as the centerpiece of his campaign for President of the United States, commander-in-chief of the armed forces? Is he an idiot?

Given all this baggage, why has Kerry made his four-month Vietnam experience the centerpiece of his campaign? Military experience has never correlated with presidential excellence before, wartime or peacetime. Why did the Democratic Party choose this particular guy with one particular message: "I served in Vietnam"? I'm not finding good answers to those questions.

Will Ferrell spoof

2004-08-23T14:15:00.000-06:00

Check out this spoof by Will Ferrell. Very funny.

Bob's reply: Not as funny as this from JibJab that I linked to here.

The Will Ferrell bit was funny, though. I especially liked Will's reactions when the horse walked up behind him.

Readers of Coffee With Rhoads, again unfortunately a group that doesn't include Rhoads, are aware of the group that funded Will's spoof of George W. Bush. It's called Americans Coming Together, or ACT. It is a section 527 organization funded by Democrats to the tune of $28-plus million. I linked to a story covering such Democratic 527s here. The evil Republicans have given Swift Boat Veterans for Truth around $200,000.

Oh, you'll notice at that link that ACT isn't even the biggest of the Democratic 527s. For the web of connections to Kerry, have a look here.

Another condemnation of the SWVAJK from someone else who was there

2004-08-23T10:32:00.000-06:00

William Rood works for the Chicago Tribune. If you don't want to subscribe to their web site, you can see his story here.

Bob's reply: Of course readers of Coffee With Rhoads, which unfortunately doesn't include Rhoads, already knew about Rood from my post here.

Another Admission of Embellishment

2004-08-23T09:34:00.000-06:00

At Command Post we see that the Kerry Campaign has removed some documents from its web site. In those documents Kerry took implied credit for the actions of Lt. Peck. Here's the Boston Globe's account:

The Kerry campaign removed a 20-page batch of documents yesterday from its website after The Boston Globe quoted a Navy officer who said the documents wrongly portrayed Kerry’s service. Edward Peck had said he — not Kerry — was the skipper of Navy boat No. 94 at a time when the Kerry campaign website credited the senator with serving on the boat. The website had described Kerry’s boat as being hit by rockets and said a crewmate was injured in an attack. But Peck said those events happened when he was the skipper. The campaign did not respond to a request to explain why the records were removed.

If you run on stuff that happened thirty five years ago, you're bound to run afowl of the facts from time to time. Especially if you're tying to pump up four months in Vietnam as the centerpiece of your campaign.

Bronze and Silver. No, not the Olympics.

2004-08-22T20:40:00.000-06:00

More reaction to accounts of events surrounding Kerry's Bronze Star and Silver Star from Captain's Quarters.

Rhoads response: You have to do batter than that, Bob. These guys want you to believe that Newsweek says that the Bronze Star doesn't hold water, but if you actually read the Newsweek article, it doesn't say anything like that.

Bob's reply: Captain's Quarters provided the link. I read the story. Newsweek doesn't say anything. A fellow named Sandusky, who was there, says that he wasn't sure if the shooting had stopped when Kerry pulled Rassman from the water. That matters. You get medals for turning back into enemy fire to pull a guy from the water. You don't get medals for turning back and pulling a guy from the water after the enemy has stopped firing.

Regarding the Silver Star episode, here's how Captain Ed sums up his post:

Did Kerry chase after the VC? By all accounts, yes.

Did Kerry shoot an unarmed teenager in the back? Unknown.

Did anyone but Kerry witness the shooting? No.

Did they plan on beaching the boats during an ambush? Apparently, they did, even if it was a foolish thing to do.

Were they under intense fire by a numerically superior foe, as Kerry's commendation claims? Looking at all of the evidence available, one would have to conclude not. Even I could hit the side of a 50-foot boat sitting dead on a riverbank across 100 feet of water with an automatic weapon, and I'm not terribly experienced with firearms. And yet we're to believe that large numbers of battle-hardened insurgents lined on both sides of that narrow canal completely missed two or three huge targets for several minutes while they were beached, and the men aboard them?

It doesn't add up.

That's Captain Ed's opinion. I presented the link because a reasonable critic of Kerry's seems to be providing some substantive analysis of various accounts of the Silver Star episode. Of course die-hard Kerry supporters won't care about the evidence or what Captain Ed thinks of it. But I care. It's my blog. So I linked to it. I don't have to do any better. You get what you pay for at CwR.

As I've written, the charges about Kerry's medals are the weakest of the charges made by the Swift Boat Veterans Against Kerry. But they have made serious charges, presented sworn witnesses, and described the physical evidence to support their case. As best they can, journalists need to examine the charges. Like it or not, this is beginning to happen. If the Swift Boat Vets turn out to be wrong more than they're right, then Kerry has nothing to worry about. Don't you think Kerry should authorize the release of whatever records will clear this up? Like Bush has?

Parallel Universe

2004-08-22T19:17:00.000-06:00

Glenn Reynolds offers a news clipping from a parallel universe that looks pretty good him. It looks pretty good to me, too. I suspect it looks good to a majority of the electorate. Here's Glenn's news clipping:

EAST HAMPTON, NY (IP) -- Democratic Presidential nomineee John Kerry laughs when told that most voters don't realize that he served in Vietnam, winning three purple hearts, a bronze star, and a silver star.

"Why should they? That's several wars ago," Kerry laughs. "Old stuff. I'd much rather people be talking about my detailed plan to rebuild Iraq, using an oil trust mechanism that would give the Iraqi people a stake in reconstruction. That's why I focused on that in my acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention. What was I going to do, rehash events from 35 years ago?"

Kerry's friends say that, like other veterans, he's been known to tell a few tall tales about his service over beers with others who served, but that he seldom talks about his combat experience otherwise. "He's put that behind him," says his wife Teresa. "And he thinks it would be unbecoming to make a big deal about his service when others, like [Senator] John McCain or [former P.O.W.] Paul Galanti went through so much more."

"I would have invaded Iraq regardless of the WMD issue," Kerry observes. "Saddam Hussein was a threat, and a menace to his own people. But as I said last year, the reconstruction needed more resources. That was why I voted for the $87 billion in reconstruction money, but urged the Bush Administration to ask for more, to do it right."

Kerry also takes a dim view of leftist filmmaker Michael Moore. "I think that his film 'Fahrenheit 9/11' was scurrilous and dangerous to the morale of our troops. That's why I asked that he be excluded from the Democratic Convention, despite Jimmy Carter's wishes. And that's why he wasn't seen there. In a time of war, we don't need guys like that. We can win this campaign based on our ideas, not propaganda films. That's also why I told Chris Matthews to 'stuff it' when he tried to make an issue out of President Bush's National Guard service."

Kerry's detailed plans for Iraq, and for carrying the war on terror to Al Qaeda and its backers elsewhere, seem to have left the Bush Administration floundering. Sources close to the Bush campaign say that some Bush operatives are considering an attack on Kerry's Vietnam record, but many are skeptical. "I don't think that'll work," says cyber-pundit Glenn Reynolds, who calls Kerry's Iraq plan promising. "Most voters have no idea Kerry was even in Vietnam. He never talks about it, so where's the traction? It's ancient history."

Others are even harsher. "They can't attack the message," says Matthew Yglesias of The American Prospect, a liberal publication. "So they're attacking the messenger. That's because they don't want to talk about Kerry's real accomplishments, the ones Kerry touted at the Convention, like his role in busting BCCI, the terrorists' money laundry. Kerry's talking about that, and his plans for Iraq, and they're talking about Vietnam? Who cares about that? Pathetic."

Alas the Democratic Party did not nominate the Kerry portrayed above. Nor Lieberman, nor Kerrey. Evidently they prefer the Kerry they got. I still haven't seen anyone explain why that is.

No Slack

2004-08-22T18:20:00.000-06:00

My new tentative conclusion is that Kerry lied utterly and completely about his Cambodian adventure. I was willing to believe that he confused Tet with Christmas and that the tale he told occured in February of 1969 not Christmas of 1968. That might explain the Nixon reference. Nixon was president in February of 1969. But there's a serious problem with that version, too. Being a younger reader, I didn't know when Nixon said we had no troops in Cambodia. It was 1971.

This reply by the guys at Power Line blog to a disgusting attack by Jim Boyd of the Minneapolis Star Tribune lays out the facts:

Our younger readers may not recall this, but Nixon's statement to that effect was very famous, and very controversial. Richard Nixon said that we had no troops in Cambodia in a press conference on November 12, 1971, two and one-half years after Kerry had left Vietnam.
Q. What assurance can you give the American people that we are not sliding into another Vietnam in Cambodia?

A. ... We have made a conscious decision not to send American troops in. There are no American combat troops in Cambodia. There are no American combat advisers in Cambodia. There will be no American combat troops or advisers in Cambodia.
So Kerry didn't just make an innocent mistake. He referred to a well-known historical event, and he told a perfectly coherent story about a soldier who lost his faith in our government when President Nixon said, falsely, that we had no troops in Cambodia. But the story was a lie. There could have been a soldier who had that experience, but it wasn't John Kerry. He had left Vietnam two and one-half years earlier.

This does not look good for Kerry. No wonder he's attacking the messengers instead of addressing the message.

Rhoads's reponse: Nice try, but silly. Nixon could very easily have said that in 1968 or 1969, and in 1971 been referring to the fact that we had PULLED out of Cambodia, since we invaded Cambodia in April of 1970.

Bob's reply: Good find, Rhoads. Call my try "silly" if you want, but I'm trying to get to the bottom of this.

As I said above, I'm one of the "younger readers" who was not aware of the timeline regarding US forces in Cambodia. The quote in Nixon's press conference from 1971 clearly gave the impression that no troops were in Vietnam:

"Now let's look at Cambodia. We have made a conscious decision not to send American troops in. There are no American combat troops in Cambodia. There are no American combat advisers in Cambodia. There will be no American combat troops or advisers in Cambodia."

As you've found, that impression is not correct. He must have been saying we won't send any more troops in now that the troops we sent in have been withdrawn. Here's another link that makes it clear that Nixon authorized sending U.S. troops into Cambodia on April 30, 1970.

The question remains, when did Richard Nixon first deny the existence of ground troops in Vietnam. Maybe it was on or after Nixon's inauguration in January of 1969. That would once again make a story of Kerry confusing Tet with Christmas plausible. However, nobody with Kerry's campaign is making that case. They're now saying that he may have been in Cambodia, that he may have been inadvertently in Cambodia and so forth. Maybe Doublas Brinkley will break his very odd media silence on all this soon and explain his sources for saying Kerry made three or four runs into Cambodia. Were those runs ferrying CIA guys, SEALs, and Green Berets as Kerry said? Or was Kerry running guns to the anti-communists as Kerry said? Still no evidence of any of that.

Rhoads writes that Nixon could very easily have said we have no troops in Cambodia in 1968 (though not as president), 1969, or before April 30, 1970. For Kerry, Nixon would have had to say that before March 13, 1969. I'm still looking for evidence that he did. So far nothing and no people support Kerry's claims. We know for sure he wasn't in Cambodia during Christmas of 1968 as he repeatedly said since 1979. If anything's silly it is believing the revised editions of Kerry's Cambodia tales without any evidence.

If you had caught a child of yours in a lie, would you be so tolerant of his attempts to save the story?

Bob's UPDATE: I've sent an email to Power Line Blog alerting them to the error Rhoads pointed out. Big media rarely make corrections and when they do, they bury them. It will be interesting to see Power Line's response.

UPDATE inserted 8-26: Here is Power Line's emailed response to me in its entirety (reproduced with permission):

Bob, our post is correct. We didn't have space to recount the full history, but what happened was that President Nixon first bombed Vietcong bases in Cambodia, then ordered a brief (60-day, if I remember correctly) "incursion" into Cambodia. After the 60 days, or whatever it was, all troops were supposed to be out. It was in 1971, a year or more later, when he assured the country that there were no troops in Cambodia.

By the way, I don't know whether this was true or not. It was widely claimed that he was lying and troops were still conducting missions there, and that widespread belief is what Kerry played on in his Cambodia "reminiscences." Whether that belief was actually true, I haven't tried to find out.

Thanks for writing.

John H.

Bob FOLLOW UP to UPDATE: Power Line Blog responded. Their blog was correct. Neither Rhoads nor I seem to remember the details of the troops in Cambodia tale that Kerry has been telling. Nixon bombed Cambodia, then sent in troops on April 30, 1970 for what was supposed to be a short period of time, then assured the American people that there were no troops in Cambodia (the press conference Power Line linked to).

Given what I know today, I stand by my tentative conclusion that Kerry lied utterly and completely about ever being in Cambodia and hearing Nixon say troops were there when he himself (Kerry) was there. If Rhoads wants to provide evidence that supports Kerry's claim, I'm willing to check it out.

Rhoads continues to claim the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are not about truth and are full of @#$%. It looks like John Kerry has a truth problem in the case of his Cambodia story. To be safe, I have a proposition: I won't vote for either the Swift Boat Vets for Truth or John Kerry for president in 2004.

Kerry and MoveOn.org

2004-08-22T17:44:00.000-06:00

Rhoads told me that John Kerry had condemned MoveOn.org's ads attacking George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. Looks like he did, then he didn't.

Oh and if you want to allege evil connections between the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat Vets, have a look at this web of connections between Kerry and the lefty 527s.

Oh and if it's the big Republican money behind the Swift Boat Vets against Kerry that bothers you, have a look at where the real 527 money is. So much for campaign finance reform.

Bob Dole Warned Kerry

2004-08-22T17:14:00.000-06:00

Bob Dole, WWII veteran and former Senate colleague of John Kerry, says Kerry should apologize for alleging that his "band of brothers" committed attrocites in Vietnam.

Dole told CNN's "Late Edition" that he warned Kerry months ago about going "too far" and that the Democrat may have himself to blame for the current situation, in which polls show him losing support among veterans.

"One day he's saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting off their ears, cutting off their heads, throwing away his medals or his ribbons," Dole said. "The next day he's standing there, `I want to be president because I'm a Vietnam veteran.' Maybe he should apologize to all the other 2.5 million veterans who served. He wasn't the only one in Vietnam," said Dole, whose World War II wounds left him without the use of his right arm.

Dole added: "And here's, you know, a good guy, a good friend. I respect his record. But three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds. Three Purple Hearts and you're out."

Three Purple Hearts and you ask to leave is more like it.

The Democratic Party was nuts for nominating a guy who's only strength (if you listen to him) seems to be that he served in Vietnam, before he came home and denounced his fellow soldiers. You're facing a relatively unpopular president, who barely won a fluke election four years ago, who got us into a relatively unpopular war in Iraq and you nominate this guy. Brutal.

Investors' Business Daily Nails It

2004-08-22T16:21:00.000-06:00

Today's Investors' Business Daily gets to the heart of the matter regarding the Swift Boat Vets and Senator Kerry in a piece titled "We're Waiting". The piece starts with some good advice:

Campaign '04: John Kerry says he'll fight claims he lied about or exaggerated his service in Vietnam. The best way to fight such charges would be to stop calling people names and start providing some answers.

What sort of names? Republican shills, goofballs, "full of shit", the sort of thing Rhoads has stooped to on this very site. Rhoads isn't running for president so maybe his intemperance can be excused. Kerry is. He and his campaign should answer the charges, not smear the messengers.

More from IBD:

Questions about Kerry's fitness to be commander in chief won't go away if he simply stonewalls and makes baseless charges of political bias.

After all, it was Kerry himself — with the smart salute and "reporting for duty" opening of his convention speech — who made his military service the keystone of his campaign. And it is Kerry who has repeatedly compared himself favorably with President Bush on that score.

In so doing, he's all but ignored his undistinguished 20-year career in the U.S. Senate and his decade as an anti-war activist.

Ouch. But they're right. I think Kerry'd like people to avert their gazes from the last thirty years of his life and focus on 4 months in southeast Asia thirty-five years ago, and the Swift Boat Vets may just be helping. Though unless Kerry responds to their charges effectively, without ad hominem attacks, he'll wish people were looking into his Senate career.

IBD continues with the sorts of questions about Kerry's service in Vietnam that he has invited and that must now be asked and answered:

• Did Kerry commit war atrocities? This charge would seem unduly harsh to level at someone who fought in a war more than three decades ago — except for the fact that he himself made it.

In a 1971 appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," Kerry said: "There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed . . ."

Earlier that year, Kerry claimed his now-beloved "band of brothers" were broadly guilty of war crimes as well.

During the infamous "Winter Soldier Investigation" by anti-war activists in early 1971, Kerry and his pals described a shocking array of atrocities that U.S. troops routinely committed: arson, rape, torture, murder, burning of villages, all part of official policy.

This, more than anything, explains the still-burning ire of his former comrades in arms.

As O'Neill wrote: "Millions of Vietnam veterans will never forget Kerry's spinning of lies — lies so damaging to his comrades but so profitable to himself."

Kerry never provided evidence that such war crimes were official policy or routine. But he — and O'Neill — have raised questions about his own behavior in Vietnam.

Yep, it looks to me like Kerry is either a liar (he never committed the attrocities he said he committed) or a war criminal (he committed the atrocities he said he committed). Kerry better have a good explanation why we should elect a liar or a war criminal president.

Next question:

• Did Kerry lie about "Christmas in Cambodia"? This is a story Kerry has repeated over and over as explanation for his later metamorphosis from decorated hero into staunch anti-war activist.

"I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas," Kerry wrote in the Boston Herald in October 1979. "The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."

A couple of problems. Nixon wasn't president on Christmas Eve 1968. Lyndon Johnson was. In fact, official records of his service show Kerry was never in Cambodia — as his campaign now concedes.

Subsequent "clarifications" — saying Kerry in ensuing months served as a kind of ferry master for Green Berets, CIA agents and Navy Seals into Cambodia — likewise have run afoul of the truth. There simply is no evidence for it.

Yet, on the floor of the Senate, Kerry said the experience was "seared — seared" into his memory.

Bad memory, or just a lie? People deserve an explanation.

I was willing to give Kerry the benefit of the doubt on this one, but as time goes by and his campaign fails to address this, or addresses this with stories that cast doubt on the significance of his going into Cambodia (that it was intentional, illegal, and seriously affected his views about his own country) I'm less inclined to cut him slack. No other person who ever took CIA, SEALs, or Green Berets into Cambodia, no crewmen nor other Swift boat officers nor commanding officer anywhere up the chain of command admit to such missions. This looks bad for Kerry.

IBD continues:

• Kerry's medals. Kerry returned from his 4 1/2 month stint in Vietnam with three Purple Hearts for wounds, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star for gallantry.

But some of those who served with him cast doubt on how he earned his medals — and whether he deserved them. Harsh charges, to be sure. O'Neill's book, however, raises serious evidence to support the charges. Kerry must respond.

Specifically, O'Neill alleges Kerry got his first and third Purple Hearts for mishandling grenades — in one case, for setting off one too close to his boat, and in the other, throwing a grenade into a rice bin. In neither case was he seriously wounded, says O'Neill.

Questions abound, too, about his Bronze Star, received for pulling special forces Lt. Jim Rassman out of the water under hostile fire, and his Silver Star, given after Kerry beached his boat in the face of an ambush and killed an enemy soldier.

In the first case, O'Neill and others charge, Kerry was fleeing action when he picked up Rassman. In the second case, the soldier was a "skinny kid" who was wounded and running away.

We'd like to know — and suspect the American people would, too.

I think the charges regarding Kerry's medals are the weakest made by the Swift Boat Vets. Several eyewitnesses support Kerry. But rather than slandering the veterans who recall the situations differently, Kerry and his surrogates should present their case. The charges leveled by the Swifties, while their weakest and toughest to prove or disprove, are serious and substantive. Kerry must respond.

IBD concludes:

You may be wondering: Why raise these questions now, in the heat of a campaign? Sadly, the major media have all but ignored questions of Kerry's record. They've been too busy looking for scandal in Bush's past and, more recently, attacking O'Neill and anyone else who dares question Kerry's glowing accounts of his service.

The bias is pervasive. As the Media Research Center, a media watchdog, pointed out, ABC, CBS and NBC did 75 stories on charges Bush was "AWOL" from the National Guard. They did nine on claims Kerry fibbed about his war record. Biased might be too kind a description.

The major media in this country are overwhelmingly liberal and refuse to ask the questions that need to be asked. They do their viewers and readers — and Kerry for that matter — a disservice.

If Kerry thinks he's being slandered, he should answer with facts —not with insults, threats and lawsuits.

We have questions, senator. We're ready for your answers.

Well said. The Democratic big media in this country can no longer provide the cover Kerry needed, wanted, and expected. Despite a near total blackout on this story in the NYT, WaPo, LAT, CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN, the majority of Americans knew about the Swift Boat Vets' charges. Newspapers were even running political cartoons lampooning the Swift Boat Vets, even though those same newspapers had never run stories about their charges. If those newspapers, or the TV networks, were the people's only source for news, they would have been mighty confused by those cartoons. But the readers weren't confused, because they get their news from a lot of different places now.

A new day has dawned. Americans are no longer sheep getting their news from just the few big, biased news organizations. They now get their news from multiple, distributed, biased news outlets. That's a big improvement. Unless you're a mainstream "journalist" or a Democratic candidate with something to hide.

More Eyewitness Accounts of Kerry's Vietnam Service

2004-08-22T08:33:00.000-06:00

Willam Rood tells what he remembers of the events leading to John Kerry's Siver Star and Rood's Bronze Star in today's Chicago Tribune.

Some reaction to Rood's account as it relates to the charges made by the Swift Boat Vets here.

Regarding Kerry's first Purple Heart, here is a guy who confirms that Kerry was under enemy fire on that occasion.

Failing Journalism

2004-08-21T22:34:00.000-06:00

Dave Shearon isn't too impressed with Thomas Oliphant or the standards of his paper, the Boston Globe. Oliphant doesn't think the charges against Kerry are worth covering having not "met the 'first-grade' principle of journalism that, when making a personal attack, the burden of proof is on the accuser and 'almost conclusive isn't good enough.'" Yet the Boston Globe didn't hesitate to run with the Bush AWOL story.

Shearon, a former journalism student, wonders just what they learn in journalism school these days. In his day they learned things like news judgment:

Frankly, I cannot even imagine making an argument that substantial and detailed charges that a presidential candidate fraudulently obtained multiple medals in his military service, and that these allegations were coming from fellow officers who served with him, was NOT news. Not a chance.

The Swift Boat Vet allegations are indeed serious and material. The Kerry in Cambodia oft-told tale has been materially recanted. So the Swift Boat Vets Against Kerry's cries of Kerry's lying aren't TOTALLY baseless. Their charges concerning the medals probably can't be proven or disproven. But the "journalists" at Americas major dailies and network news divisions should be investigating these stories and providing as much background information as they can so that the voting public can decide whether the Swifties are lying, Kerry is lying, or some combination of both or neither.

Budget Update

2004-08-21T22:22:00.000-06:00

For federal budget wonks, I've updated this post below. Bottom line is that the federal deficit in 2002 would have been virtually unaffected by excluding Social Security and Medicare from both sides of the federal income statement (receipts and outlays).

Purple Heart, Reassignment, Records, Etc

2004-08-21T20:46:00.000-06:00

As the stories of John Kerry's Vietnam service continue to be investigated, I thought BRG should take a few minutes to clear up some factual points, followed by some commentary.

Last night Rhoads told me that once Kerry received his third Purple Heart, the rules mandated that he be reassigned. Not true.

In a generally flattering story on Kerry from 2003 in the Boston Globe, Michael Kranish reports on the matter of Kerry's reassignment:

On Friday, however, the National Archives provided the Globe with a Navy "instruction" document that formed the basis for Kerry's request. The instruction, titled 1300.39, says that a Naval officer who requires hospitalization on two separate occasions, or who receives three wounds "regardless of the nature of the wounds," can ask a superior officer to request a reassignment. The instruction makes clear the reassignment is not automatic. It says that the reassignment "will be determined after consideration of his physical classification for duty and on an individual basis." Because Kerry's wounds were not considered serious, his reassignment appears to have been made on an individual basis.

Moreover, the instruction makes clear that Kerry could have asked that any reassignment be waived.

The bottom line is that Kerry could have remained but he chose to seek an early transfer.[emphasis added]

"Kerry's wounds were not considered serious" it says above. Who considered them not serious? Well, among others John Kerry:

Asked about the severity of the wounds, Kerry said that one of them cost him about two days of service, and that the other two did not interrupt his duty. "Walking wounded," as Kerry put it.

Also yesterday, Rhoads linked to the Kerry web site's listing of John Kerry's military records and asked me to tell him what was missing. I said I'd investigate.

First, those records have been on the web site since April 2004. Apparently they do not include some information that could shed light on his medical treatment for those wounds resulting in the Purple Hearts, plus supporting documentation for his other medals according to this story in tomorrow's Washington Post:

Some of the mystery surrounding exactly what happened on the Bay Hap River in March 1969 could be resolved by the full release of all relevant records and personal diaries. Much information is available from the Web sites of the Kerry campaign and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and the Navy archives. But both the Kerry and anti-Kerry camps continue to deny or ignore requests for other relevant documents, including Kerry's personal reminiscences (shared only with biographer Brinkley), the boat log of PCF-94 compiled by Medeiros (shared only with Brinkley) and the Chenoweth diary.

Although Kerry campaign officials insist that they have published Kerry's full military records on their Web site (with the exception of medical records shown briefly to reporters earlier this year), they have not permitted independent access to his original Navy records. A Freedom of Information Act request by The Post for Kerry's records produced six pages of information. A spokesman for the Navy Personnel Command, Mike McClellan, said he was not authorized to release the full file, which consists of at least a hundred pages.[emphasis added]

The Post article is generally favorable to Kerry, but also backs up a lot of what the Swift Vets say. Not surprisingly, neither side, according to the Post, is able to prove their version of events. The official records support Kerry's stories more often than the Swift Vets, but there remains some question (and conflicting eyewitness accounts of the actions) about who authored the after-action reports on which medals were awarded.

The circumstances of how Kerry earned his medals (three Purple Hearts, Silver Star, and Bronze Star) will be tough to confirm. I'll quote myself from Coffee With Rhoads a couple weeks ago:

Are the Swift Vets telling the truth? Has Kerry been telling the truth? My guess is both are telling the truth, both are mistaken, and both are embellishing for their own purposes. Sort of like what goes on in a court room. We're seeing an adversarial process here where both sides are trying to make their best case, presenting the opposite side in its worst light, and leaving it up to the jury to decide who's right. I think this is as it should be, well except for the embellishments which are probably inevitable but regrettable. Politics is an adversarial process.

These Swift Boat Vets are steamed at John Kerry, no doubt about it. They are steamed because they think he came back to the U.S. and betrayed them, alleging that they committed war crimes on a daily basis. Kerry then used his service and his anti-war position for political gain. Looking back on it, many of them think Kerry's service in Vietnam seems contrived.

These Swift Boat Vets probably aren't going away. There's really no telling whether they'll ultimately be helpful for Kerry or for Bush. They could help Kerry by keeping the focus on his Vietnam service rather than on his record in the Senate. Judging by Kerry's speech in Boston at the Democratic Convention, that's the way Kerry wants it. They could also help Kerry by being proven wrong on substantial charges. Nobody likes to see a man's character wrongly impugned, especially a decorated veteran like Kerry.

The Swift Vets could help Bush by now shifting public attention to Kerry's anti-war positions when he came back from Vietnam, the subject of their latest ad. I'm not sure how many people in the general public are even aware of Kerry's testimony in 1971. They'll be aware now thanks to the Swift Boat Vets. The Swifties are on the map courtesy of their controversial first ad and Kerry's response to it. That virtually guarantees a lot of play for their second ad. The images and words of John Kerry sitting before the Senate accusing his "band of brothers" of war crimes, interspersed with POWs saying how those words were used against them, will hurt Kerry with the electorate in my opinion. Against the feelings expressed in the second ad, unlike the charges lodged in the first ad, there is no defense. That could be devastating. Kerry and McCain can't say the guys in the second ad are questioning Kerry's service in Vietnam. They're questioning his actions when he came back. Actions which Kerry has not backed off from in the thirty three years since. Kerry's testimony and his meetings with the North Vietnamese are nothing for which he should apologize according to a radical fringe in this country, nor apparently to Kerry. Veterans won't be the only ones steamed by that news.

As I've repeatedly said, I can't imagine why the Democratic Party nominated John Kerry. His actions when he came back from Vietnam were controversial to say the least. This was bound to be a sore spot for a lot of Vietnam and other veterans. Anti-war candidates in general (and Kerry's war-protestor past and voting record in the Senate make it very easy to paint Kerry as anti-war) have not done well in elections. If you think military service makes an anti-war candidate more palatable to the electorate, ask George McGovern how it worked out for him. John Kerry, as I've said before, is a liberal from a liberal northeast state. The American electorate has never embraced that sort of candidate. Kerry is a US Senator, a notoriously difficult position from which to win a presidential election. Senators frequently have conflicting voting records that can and are used against them in presidential campaigns. None of these things guarantee that Kerry won't win (though I have a quarter riding on him not winning), but they combine to make him an odd nominee.

George W. Bush won a fluke election (Gore not winning Tennessee!) and is not popular with a large segment of the electorate for a lot of good and not so good reasons. For a sitting war-time president, Bush is eminently beatable. I just don't see him being beaten by John Kerry. Bob Kerrey? Sure. But he didn't run.

Wednesday Policy or Sunday Policy?

2004-08-21T09:26:00.000-06:00

The majority of veterans are against John Kerry because he called fellow soldiers war criminals in testimony before the US Senate, met with the enemy, and voted against defense appropriations across the board during his career in the Senate. But a lot of us regular folks are creeped out by Kerry because we don't know if he knows where he stands on the issues:

THE PROBLEM with being an opportunist is that you can easily forget what you've recently said.

On Monday, during a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, President Bush announced that he intends to modify the configuration of American forces in both South Korea and Europe. On Wednesday, Sen. Kerry, speaking before the same audience, sharply criticized the president's decision.

Appearing on ABC's This Week on August 1, however, Sen. Kerry responded to a question by host George Stephanopoulos on Iraq. Stephanopoulos asked Kerry whether, as president, he could "promise that American troops will be home by the end of your first term?" Kerry's answer:
I will have significant, enormous reduction in the level of troops. . . . I think we can significantly change the deployment of troops, not just there but elsewhere in the world. In the Korean peninsula perhaps, in Europe perhaps. There are great possibilities open to us. But this administration has very little imagination.
Apparently, Sen. Kerry wanted to appeal to the "get-the-boys-back-home" sentiment in the country when he spoke on This Week. Yesterday, addressing a convention of veterans, Kerry was busy burnishing his credentials as a hawk by suggesting that cutting our forces in Korea "is clearly the wrong signal to send" at this time.

Who knows what Sen. Kerry believes? Does Sen. Kerry even know?

He knows what he believes. He believes he wants to win the next election. If enough people vote "against Bush" he may win. Nobody's paying any attention to Kerry.

What was that name again?

2004-08-20T23:21:00.000-06:00

Pejman linked to this story. I click and what do I see?

DETROIT (AP) - A member of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's legal team said he'll step down after receiving a citation accusing him of soliciting a prostitute. He denied the charges.

Melvin "Butch" Hollowell, 44, was expected to appear in court Tuesday, a week after deputies saw the attorney pick up a woman near his Detroit home, authorities said.

Pejman also linked to this story in the interest of political balance. But nothing in the second story caught my attention like ol' Butch did.

Rhoads' response: Nice!! I did an extensive search of my Hollowell family database, and found no Melvin. But I will bet the $0.50 Bob will owe me on November 3 that we are related. Good old long lost cousin Butch. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to try to help out a young lady in need.

Minimum Wage

2004-08-20T22:39:00.000-06:00

Bureau of Labor Statistics data (start here) show that 2.9% or less of the workforce (over 16 years of age) earn the minimum wage or less. Rhoads contends that many, many more work for a dime or a quarter more than that per hour. This slightly-above-minimum wage is settled on so that employers can claim that they pay more than the minimum wage. I told Rhoads that I thought such a method of arriving at a wage rate, one that would be acceptable to workers as well as to employers, seemed fanciful. Rhoads had his experience working for the State of South Carolina for just above the minimum wage to back up his labor relations theory.

Rhoads and I agreed that it might be tough to know just how many people earn just over the minimum wage, especially without a definition of "just over." Our next step was to agree that it would be good to know how many people earn between the current minimum wage and the proposed Kerry minimum wage of $7 per hour. That information is proving difficult for the staff of BRG to come up with. I have an email out to Russell Roberts to see if he can help me find out. I went to the web site where Professor Roberts got his data and found nothing to help me.

This difficulty in coming up with any data on just how many people earn less than $7 per hour got me thinking. What the heck makes Kerry or anyone else think that a nationwide minimum wage of $7 makes sense? I'm having trouble coming up with any information on how many people earn that, who they are, where they are, what industries they work in, how long they earn that sort of wage, and so forth. What has Kerry based his $7 figure on? What sort of information has led him to the judgment that the whole nation, millions and millions of employers and employees, should be bounded by this single, round figure?

I suspect this $7 figure is the result of magical thinking from a politician who sees a problem (people who work and earn little) and he imagines that he has a political solution for the problem. Magical thinking is a serious problem, one that's particularly resistant to change among politicians.

If I hear back from Professor Roberts, or if anyone else in the blogosphere comes to my aid in finding data on low-wage workers I'll report it here.

Budget

2004-08-20T21:09:00.000-06:00

Rhoads wanted some detail on the federal budget. Kind visitors not interested in such matters should move along. We won't be offended.

My source for these numbers is the Budget of the US Government, FY 2004 (a 23.5MB pdf file available from the Office of Management and Budget here).

How close to 99% of the non-Social Security/Medicare budget is Defense spending? Let's have a look.

These figures are actual outlays from FY 2002 ($ in billions):

Social Security: $452
Medicare: $228

Total: $680 for SS and Medicare

Discretionary:

Defense: $349
Nondefense: $385

Mandatory:

Medicaid and SCHIP:$151
Other: $274
Net Interest: $171

Total defense: $349
Total non SS, Medicaid: $981

So of just the discretionary spending, Defense is 47.5% of the Federal Budget.

Of the non-Social Security/Medicare budget, Defense spending accounts for 26.2% of the Federal Budget.

If you include Social Security and Medicare in the budget, Defense spending accounts for 17.4% of the Federal Budget.

Rhoads' response: Thank you, Bob. Those numbers are very helpful. I tried to do that once and was having a hard time with the huge PDF file. Now, to me, the ONLY interesting number is the 26.2%. In other words, I think that when we talk federal spending, we need to take FICA out of it. We can have a seperate discussion about whether or not FICA should exist at all, and that's fine. My point is that FICA has money coming in to pay for the money going out, and should have surplus money coming in - and always has. So if we are really going to look at federal spending, it only makes sense to remove that money entirely from both sides of the equation. So MY next question is this: What is out federal deficit if FICA money is removed from BOTH sides? In other words, how much larger would the deficit be if it didn't get to steal money which is earmarked for something else?

Bob's response: Rhoads asked: "What is our federal deficit if FICA money is removed from BOTH sides?

The answer: $201 billion rather than $198 billion in FY 2002. Medicare receives a subsidy from general revenues of $78 billion while Social Security takes in $82 billion more than it spends.

Here's the section of the budget that explains it:

to pay Medicare’s bills a massive subsidy ($78 billion in 2002) must be funded out of other government taxes...Social Security’s dedicated receipts, which include both payroll taxes and income taxes levied on Social Security benefits, did exceed Social Security spending by $82 billion in 2002.

I'll help with the math. The federal budget deficit would have been $3 billion larger in 2002. That's an increase of 1.5%.

Looks to me like the politicians steal from Social Security to pay for Medicare.

I therefore do not think it makes sense, as Rhoads suggests, to take Social Security and Medicare out of federal budget discussions. The primary fiscal threat to the nation comes from the growth of Social Security and Medicare benefits. Projections are imperfect, but as of 2004 Social Security revenues are expected to lag expenses by $5 trillion. The current amount of federal debt held by the public is "only" $3.2 trillion. Medicare's unfunded liability is $13 trillion.

To put those two massive issues aside is to put the fiscal problem aside. I see no benefit in doing so.

Pejman's Thought for the Day

2004-08-20T20:47:00.000-06:00

The kind of situation which economists are prone to consider as requiring corrective Government action is, in fact, often the result of Government action.

--Ronald H. Coase

Courtesy of Pejman Yousefzadeh

Guns and Genocide

2004-08-20T20:38:00.000-06:00

Dave Kopel covers the Darfur genocide in Sudan.

Tagorda Survives

2004-08-20T20:36:00.000-06:00

Robert Tagorda took his turn on Air America. He tells about it here.

O'Neill Better Be Lying

2004-08-20T18:20:00.000-06:00

If John O'Neill is not lying in this interview, then John F. Kerry's candidacy is doomed. You can call me a goofball, a shill, a partisan Republican, a fool, whatever you want. But to me John O'Neill comes off in that interview as a credible man who knows what he's talking about and has the witnesses and physical evidence to back up what he says.

Aside from Kerry's obviously false tale of Christmas in Cambodia, I haven't paid close attention to the rest of the Swift Boat Veterans charges (I haven't read the book and didn't read the free chapter available online). Even regarding the Cambodia stuff, I said just two days ago (see the end of my reply to this post by Rhoads) that I was inclined to think Kerry mixed up the dates. After reading the Human Events interview with John O'Neill, I'm inclined to think Kerry isn't telling the truth about any of this. Though I suspect by now he has no idea the extent to which he's embellished the events of his past.

If it turns out that O'Neill and all the guys who've signed sworn affidavits are liars, then John Kerry had better sue them for slander and lible. Fast.

Live Audio from the American Legion WS!!

2004-08-20T17:42:00.000-06:00

If you go to this link and then click on the link for Game 3, you will not only get the "live"stats window of the game (with play-by-play), but you will also be able to click on a "Live Game Audio" link on the left hand side of that window. SWEET!! Not as good as the regular voice of the Cougars, but pretty sweet nonetheless.

John Kerry's Military Records

2004-08-20T17:01:00.000-06:00

I finally found them. You can too, here. Let me know what is missing.

Kerry and Substance

2004-08-20T15:51:00.001-06:00

Rhoads' link to John Kerry's "Our Plan for America" has been helpful so far. I've read very little of it, but what I've read does move beyond platitude to substance. I hope to read more of it and provide comments in the near future. In the meantime, I've commented on some of it below here and here.

Minimum Wage

2004-08-20T15:38:00.000-06:00

I really don't want to get into an argumennt about the Minimum Wage. I haven't read that part of John Kerry's plan, yet, although I might. I do undertand the problem that is trying to be solved by people who advocate raising the MW, however - the current MW does not provide enough money for a person working 40 hours/week to live in any kind of decent condition. I don't have any great ideas about how to solve that issue, but that's the issue attempting to be solved.

So giving a stat about the number of people making minimum wage or less is not all that interesting. I would assume that such a stat excludes people who make MW+$0.10, for example, and I bet that there as many people making that amount as there are people making MW. I only say that because when I was in High School, the job I had (as a computer programmer for the state of SC) made MW+$0.10. I thought it was pretty cool.

So give me a stat about the number of people making less than $7.00/hour or less, which would be the number of people that would be affected by raising the MW to that amount. Some would be affected positively, and other would see their job disappear, I know. Again, this is not about the MW. This is about which stats are meaningful in the conversation.

Bob's reply: I'll try to track those stats down for you, but the point is you can't legislate prosperity. If you don't understand that I don't see how more statistics will help you.

A question: When you were a high school kid working as a computer programmer were you having trouble living in any kind of decent condition?

The solution to the problem of poverty isn't to give a 17-year old Rhoads a legally enforced raise. You and 97% of the workforce managed to find better work for better wages without help from Congress.

A related discussion about laws mandating that rental units have hot water and so forth is commented on here by Glenn Whitman. I also recommend following Glenn's links to the original post on the topic by Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution. Alex's original post is here, with follups by Alex here and here.

I appreciate the difficulty of the issue being addressed by minimum wage legislation. But just because overcoming poverty is difficult (I've addressed it a bit in this nearby post) that doesn't excuse policy makers committing simple errors. This is all some pretty basic economics, but if you don't grasp it you can come to some awfully bad social policy conclusions. But take heart, you're never too old to learn.

Deficits, Interest Rates, and Growth

2004-08-20T14:36:00.000-06:00

The Kerry Plan for fiscal responsibility (available in pdf form here beginning on page 73) rests on the idea that public borrowing (annual deficits funded by debt) increases interest rates. Those higher interest rates increase the cost of borrowing for individuals, families, and businesses. The higher interest rates thwart growth. That's called Rubinomics, I think, since that was the belief of former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.

This theory is coherent. It is logical. So logical that I made the argument myself back in the days of Ronald Reagan's annual deficits. The problem is the theory does not correspond with the facts. That is the evidence of the 1980s and 1990s does not correspond to what the theory says. Specifically regarding the idea that Bill Clinton's 1993 tax increases (intended to reduce the deficit and reduce interest rates per-Rubin) led to lower interest rates and higher rates of economic growth, the evidence does not support the theory. Here's what Steve Forbes wrote in yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

There is no correlation between budget deficits and interest rates. In fact, no sooner did Mr. Clinton sign that tax legislation than interest rates began a relentless clime. The 30-year Treasury bond went from 5.87% to more than 8% in a little over a year. The economy, which had begun a big recovery in the second half of 1992, hit the brakes. The economic growth rate for 1993 was less than it had been the previous year when President Bush senior was running for re-election and Mr. Clinton was crying, "It's the economy, stupid." It was not until 1996 that the economy surpassed the growth rates it had achieved in the latter half of 1992. (Sorry, no free link. I'm quoting from the print version.)

I agree with Kerry that the Bush Administration has been fiscally irresponsible. Bush and the Republican Congress have spent money with reckless abandon. But their spending irresponsibility would be mitigated very little if Bush had raised tax rates while he increased spending. The primary problem is the spending. The funding of the spending is secondary.

Economic growth requires capital accumulation. Once accumulated the capital needs to be put to its best use. So what's the best use? That's not knowable in advance. Putting capital to use is what capitalists do. Entrepreneurs spot opportunity and capitalists join them in capitalizing on those opportunities. Frequently they are wrong. But often enough they are right. The result of this process is the immense wealth you, dear prosperous reader of this blog, see all around you. Poverty needs no causes. It's the baseline. Wealth needs causes.

We need capital for our wealth to grow. We need productive people to make use of that capital. We need a growing economy so that more people in this country and around the world can overcome poverty. Tyler Cowen gets it:

If I had to explain, in one sentence, the reason I am not on the political left, I would cite the enormous long-run benefits of economic growth. Of course it still can be argued that various left-wing policies, properly understood, will contribute to long-term growth. But in my view, if you are not supporting growth-maximizing economic policies, you better have a pretty good reason in your pocket.

I think Kerry thinks he's supporting growth-maximizing economic policies. I just think he's wrong.

Brief Substantive Reading

2004-08-20T14:25:00.000-06:00

The Kerry Campaign needs to do some remedial reading. I read the section Rhoads suggested on restoring fiscal responsibility in Washington. I'll comment on that shortly. But then I kept reading and found that Kerry & Co plan to increase the minimum wage to $7.00 per hour so that a family won't have to raise children in poverty.

Um. Less than 3% of the workforce earns the current minimum wage. People overcome poverty because they acquire skills that earn them more than the minimum wage in a competitive labor market. I'll let Russell Roberts explain:

When I give lectures outside of the university, I often ask my audience to guess the percentage of the work force that earns the minimum wage or less. The median answer, across a wide array of educated audiences (journalists, congressional staffers, law professors) is very stable. The median answer that I get in these surveys is between 20% and 25%. That's the median. So half of the audience thinks it's higher. A substantial number answer 50%. The actual number is about 3%.

I once asked a group of law students why America's standard of living is higher than Mexico's. A common answer was that we had a minimum wage, Mexico did not. I suspect Mexico has a minimum wage, but never mind. The real problem is that when 97% of the American work force earns more than the minimum wage, it's hard to make the case that regulations keep wages high. Competition keeps wages high. Your world view may be that employers always have the upper hand, that employees always bargain from weakness, but if that's true, it sure is hard to explain that 97% number. Why do those rapacious employers pay so much more than they have to? (As for the argument that it's labor unions, another common answer from the law students to explain our standard of living being higher than Mexico's, unions are about 10% of the private work force. That proportion has been falling steadily for decades as compensation has risen steadily. And see the previous post by Don on the issue of whether labor immobility allows workers to be exploited.)

The post by Don that Russell links to simply points out that we arm guards at our borders to keep laborers from coming to get better jobs so it's a bit of a stretch to imagine helpless, immobile workers subjected to monopsonistic employers for any length of time.

UPDATE: Mexico does indeed have a minimum wage. Probably just isn't high enough to assure the sort of prosperity we have in the U.S.

Kaus on Swifties

2004-08-20T13:26:00.000-06:00

Mickey Kaus, Democrat and Kerry supporter, weighs in on Kerry and the Swift Vets.

Kf's Long-Overdue Push-Back! This has undoubtedly been blogged, but I couldn't help noticing that what The Note called Michael Kranish's "long-overdue, point-by-point push-back from the Kerry campaign" on the charge that he didn't take his Swift boat into Cambodia during Christmas of 1968 contained no evidence of any sort--beyond the Kerry campaign's own assertions--that Kerry was ever in Cambodia. Instead, Kranish gave us the testimony of three Swift boat crewmen.
1) One, who supports Kerry, says "they were 'very.. very close' to Cambodia" but "did not think they entered Cambodia."
2) A second, who opposes Kerry, says they were nowhere near Cambodia.
3) A third said they got close but didn't go into Cambodia and "could not recall dropping off special forces in Cambodia or going inside Cambodia with Kerry." [Emph. added.]
If this is Kerry's mighty, mighty "push-back," I'd hate to see what a Kerry retreat would look like. Yet Kranish's account was bizarrely portrayed by The Note as a pro-Kerry turning point. ...

Kaus ads a P.S. to that post regarding the credibility of the "goofballs":

Respectable big-time journalist friends who met with the anti-Kerry vets recently found them a lot more credible than expected.

Even Kerry's own rooting section finds the Swift Vets credible. So far nobody's rebutted a single charge that they've made as far as I can tell. Some may be "he said, she said" stuff that's not rebuttable. But the stuff that's rebuttable (Cambodia at Christmas) has not been rebutted.

P.S. of my own: Since Mickey Kaus is a Democrat and a Kerry supporter, Rhoads must give Kaus' opinion special weight since he's arguing against his own interests.

Jerome Corsi: Real Nice Guy

2004-08-20T10:48:00.000-06:00

Found an interesting link about one of the co-authors of the book by the Swift Boat Veterans Against John Kerry. This guy's a real peach. Two down.

Bob's reply: Media Matters to the rescue, well, without contributing anything to the question of Kerry's service in Vietnam. The character of this guy Corsi addresses the substance of the book how? Assume Jerome Corsi is Satan himself. How does the fact that Corsi is Satan help John Kerry? What has Corsi alleged about John Kerry's service? How does Corsi's character help us determine if John Kerry has embellished, lied, misremembered, or told the truth about his service in four months in 1968-69?

Corsi is not a Swift Vet, so you're still at one. A couple hundred to go.

John Kerry's Plan for America

2004-08-20T09:42:00.000-06:00

Bob is complaining about the lack of substance on John Kerry's website. Of course, the pages mentioned were designed for the general public, and the average member of the GP is not as intelligent as Bob (they are more like me I'm afraid) when it comes to being able to read massive volumes of information. Good news, though! There is more substance about John Kerry's plan available on the web site as a downloadable 246 page book. Granted, the pages are small, but there is still more information. I hope this helps Bob. Maybe it will even influence his vote.

Of course, the thing I think is one of the most important part is something that may be a stumbling block for Bob. It starts on page 70 of the book, and is entitled "RESTORING FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY IN WASHINGTON." I guess I will wait to hear Bob's opinion on the document as a whole and on that section in particular.

Bob's Reply: It isn't that the general public can't understand issues and isn't interested in getting good information (though that may be true in many cases, cases where people are fooled into thinking platitudes are substance). Rather it's that politicians don't want to say anything. So they don't. Frankly I'm glad Kerry's Campaign used few words to say nothing on their web site. That beats saying nothing with many words.

So recognizing the danger that I'll find nothing but more words, I'll now head to the above link. The first section I'll read will be "RESTORING FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY IN WASHINGTON." I'm for that. Perhaps Kerry will be substantive and brief by saying "I want to raise taxes on the rich to balance the budget (though Teresa and I will use trusts and such to avoid paying taxes ourselves)." Maybe he'll say, "The rich pay the majority of the income taxes in this country, and I think they should pay a lot more." Or maybe he'll say, "The payroll tax which funds Social Security and Medicare severely restricts lower and middle class workers' chances of acquiring assets over their working lifetimes. Therefore I think Social Security and Medicare benefits need to be cut. They are two programs that have far outgrown their usefulness and the burdens of funding them are hurting the vast majority of our citizens."

This all reminds me of a time in college (1984 election) when I read a pamphlet by Tim Worth (D-CO). He was running for Congress from the 2nd District. I agreed with everything in the pamphlet. But wouldn't you know, when it came to spelling out what he actually stood for in some detail I disagreed with Tim Wirth on nearly all the substance. Go figure. He'd written a pamphlet that nobody could possibly disagree with.

Campaign Platitudes

2004-08-19T17:06:00.000-06:00

A few days ago Rhoads suggested I look at a couple of links regarding John Kerry's positions on two important issues, National Security and Homeland Security. Rhoads singled out sections titled "Launch and Lead a New Era of Alliances" and "Guard Liberty" for special appreciation.

In response I called these a waste and nonsubstantive. Rhoads took issue with my dismissal of these sources as nonsubstantive. I'm going to reproduce both highlighted sections IN THERE ENTIRETY so that Coffee With Rhoads readers who don't follow useless links can judge for themselves.

Launch And Lead A New Era Of Alliances
The threat of terrorism demands alliances on a global scale - to utilize every available resource to get the terrorists before they can strike at us. As president, John Kerry will lead a coalition of the able - because no force on earth is more able than the United States and its allie

Guard Liberty
We must always remember that terrorists do not just target our lives - they target our way of life. John Kerry and John Edwards believe in an America that is safe and free, and they will protect our personal liberties as well as our personal security.[editorial hyperlink added by me to add substance--Bob]

That's it. Just over one hundred words. There are seven other equally detailed, substantive sections in the National Security and Homeland Security links in case you're too smart to bother clicking through.

I don't think this sort of shallowness is unique to the Kerry/Edwards Campaign or to Democrats. I've never visited the Bush/Cheney web site, but I'll bet there's no substance there either.

Rhoads is right. This is politics. But it's not my politics that lead me to conclude there's no substance there. It's the politics of the Kerry and Bush camps that lead them to post platitudes and think such nonsense will satisfy the voting public.

Kerry Responds to Swifties--Sort of

2004-08-19T16:53:00.000-06:00

John Kerry mentioned the Swifties in a speech today. Power Line points out he didn't exactly respond:

Needless to say, Kerry did not respond substantively to the Swift Boat Vets, nor did he address the Cambodian fantasy. This was as close as he got to a response:
"Thirty years ago, official Navy reports documented my service in Vietnam and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Thirty years ago, this was the plain truth. It still is. And I still carry the shrapnel in my leg from a wound in Vietnam."
Kerry will stay at that level of generality unless reporters force him to address more specific questions. The issue, of course, is not whether Kerry served honorably and bravely in Vietnam. I take it as a given that he did. The questions are: 1) whether he has lied, repeatedly, about his service in an effort to embellish it; 2) whether he has delibertately tried to take credit for engagements fought by other men (Lt. Ted Peck in particular); 3) whether his leadership of the anti-war movement, which was the origin of his political career, was based on a tissue of lies, including not just the Christmas in Cambodia fantasy--the stated reason for Kerry's purported disillusionment with government--but, more fundamentally, his claims that his fellow servicemen were a group of war criminals who routinely committed atrocities.

These are serious questions that go the the heart of Kerry's fitness to be Commander in Chief, but Kerry won't acknowledge them (let alone answer them) unless he absolutely has to.

Any chance the adoring press will force him to answer the questions?

Glenn Reynolds just said on the Hugh Hewitt radio show that the New York Times has a story tomorrow about (read: trashing) the Swift Vets. Good timing. Unless Kerry had mentioned the Swift Vets in his speech today, readers of the New York Times wouldn't know what the heck the story was about. The Times, to my knowledge, hasn't bothered to print that the easiest, simplest Swift Vet charge to check (that Kerry was not in Cambodia in Christmas of 1968) has been admitted by the Kerry Campaign to be correct. That might hurt the chances of their guy winning.

Release the Records, John

2004-08-19T13:22:00.001-06:00

The Bush Campaign points out that John Kerry was absent for 76% of the Senate Intelligence Committee's public hearings during his tenure on the Committee. The Kerry Campaign replies that the Bush Campaign engages in fuzzy math. FactCheck.org says the Bush Campaign is correct.

However, the Kerry Campaign correctly points out that many of the Committee's hearings were closed, hence attendance records are not public. Attendance at those meetings, or lack thereof, would complete the record regarding Senator Kerry's attendance at all the relevant hearings. Senator Roberts (R-Kansas), Intelligence Committee Chairman, says that Senator Kerry can request that he and Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) release the attendance records. That would clear up the factual matter.

Since John Kerry rightly claims his service on the Senate Intelligence Committee is part of his qualifications for being president, and since the Bush Campaign has questioned that service, Senator Kerry should ask that the attendance records be released. I see no reason why this information is not relevant to the election.

Swift Boat Veterans Against John Kerry

2004-08-19T13:22:00.000-06:00

One down, who knows how many to go.

Bob's reply: Time for an investigation. Seems like a good way to get at the truth.

Rhoads' reply: I agree. John sends me an email every day, so perhaps I will send him one.

Bob UPDATE: It seems more people are having trouble with their memories of Kerry's brief service in Vietnam.

Rhoads' reply: I read the article. Twice. It didn't make any sense to me. The writing is too convoluted. What does it say?

Bob's reply: It is very confusing. Not just the writing, but the whole timeline of who served with whom and when. I haven't read this post in detail, yet (I've been busy reading the one I linked to for the third time myself, plus re-reading Bryon York's NRO piece!), but it tries to lay out the facts.

Here's what the piece I linked to says. Some dude named Short has given conflicting reports about when he came aboard John Kerry's Swift boat. It's most likely he came on board 2/28/69 as he said in July, not 2/18/69 as he told Byron York. It also looks like Alston, the fellow who spoke on Kerry's behalf in Boston, "misremembered" the serverity of his wounds. He said he was not hospitalized, that scar tissue visible on his head was not from a war wound, but from a scalp condition, and that he was only out of service for two weeks due to his injuries (suffered 1/29/69, the day BEFORE Kerry took over his Swift Boat). His records indicate he was medevaced to a hospital and his mom said she saw his "war wound" on his head when she saw him on television. Who knows how long the dude was out of service from his injuries.

This all boils down to whether or not this Alston fellow was ever on the Swift boat under Kerry's command.He may or may not have actually there when Kerry was. From Captain Ed's UPDATE III:

York spoke with Short, who says that Alston returned to active duty on 4 March or shortly afterwards. He served with Kerry for a week, including two combat engagements -- neither of which were the ones Kerry and Alston used in their speeches. Not only does that length of service call into question Alston's credentials as an expert on Kerry, but the falsifications in their campaigning over the past two years should render their credibility as moot.

As I said, the Swift Vets, Kerry, and his surrogates all seem to have memory troubles. We are talking about four months thirty five years ago. Flimsy stuff to campaign upon, especially given the emotions raised by Kerry's actions in Vietnam (his first Purple Heart claim was denied leaving him not too popular with his fellow service men for having requested a lame PH--which after the officer who denied it left, Kerry subsequently got) and afterwards (testifying before Congress to "war crimes" committed in his presence, meating with the North Vietnamese while a commissioned member of the US Naval Reserves).

Kerry and his supporters may think his Vietnam service makes him seem attractive as a candidate for president. I say he was nuts to pump it up. But then he is the nominee, so what do I know. I would never in a million years have guessed that the Democratic Party would have nominated this guy. Maybe they think they nominated a different Kerrey. Maybe the electorate will think so, too.

Divided Loyalty?

2004-08-19T11:06:00.001-06:00

Tomorrow evening in Corvallis, Oregon the Niwot-Boulder team takes on a squad from Portland, Maine in Game 3 of the American Legion World Series. Any divided loyalties in Rhoads' clan?

News Media, Credibility, and Kerry

2004-08-19T11:06:00.000-06:00

Glenn Reynolds and Roger Simon say the mainstream Cronkite media are the real story.

So does Frederick Turner writing at Tech Central Station.

UPDATE: On the topic of media behavior, Glenn Reynolds received an email "from a journalist whose name you'd probably recognize":

Glenn- I completely agree with your observations about the threat this election presents to the credibility of the Fourth Estate. Too much of my own energy has been spent trying to convince colleagues of the danger -- my point being that if the public loses faith in our capacity for basic objectivity and fairness, the public will find/create other means of collecting information. (My own impression from the inside, by the way, is that the media aren't "liberal" so much as simply partisan. Think of it like a sporting event where folks desperately want one team to win and the other to lose.)

Not "liberal" just rooting for the Democrats.

Hugh Hewitt isn't buying

2004-08-19T11:01:00.000-06:00

Hugh Hewitt isn't willing to accept the Kerry versions of events in Cambodia without some evidence. I can't blame him. He's calling on historian and Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley to help us out here with more information.

Economics PhD

2004-08-19T10:09:00.000-06:00

Alex Tabarrok has a post that illustrates why a mathematics degree is better preparation for graduate study in economics than is economics. I should know.

I earned my undergraduate degree and VERY briefly pursued a PhD in economics. I began to study economics because the topic fascinated me, especially the work of F.A. Hayek on distributed knowledge, the market as a communication system, the market as a discovery process and the foundations of liberty generally. My undergraduate courses touched on those topics, but most of what I learned along those lines I learned through outside reading. My fascination with the outside reading along with a decent background in mathematics allowed me to graduate with with a 4.0 GPA and high honors in economics. I was given an award as the outstanding student in economics my senior year and accepted a fellowship to continue my studies in graduate school. You might think I was well-prepared for graduate study in economics. Nope. Very little of my reading and my classes related to the graduate curriculum.

So what do I remember from graduate school? Doing proofs of set theory. Not exactly what I was interested in nor prepared for. I left after a few months.

I'm still fascinated by the same aspects of economics that I was twenty years ago. Just like when I was an undergraduate I continue to read about those topics on my own. I'll just have to make do without that PhD.

Republican Congressman Says Iraq War Was Mistake

2004-08-18T16:06:00.000-06:00

That's the title of this recent Reuters news story. I think this type of new story is noteworthy because it shows definite non-partisanship. That is to say it is a Republican congressman breaking ranks with his party and criticizing the Republican president. When a Democrat from congress does that, it is par for the course, kinda like when a Republican criticizes John Kerry. But when a Republican congressman does it (which he can because he is a lame duck) it carries more weight with me, because it is generally minimally spun. I also like it when I watch C-Span and see Congressman from either side crossing party lines on a vote. It shows that they are thinking.

Bob's reply: I try to judge arguments on their merits. I try not to judge them by who makes them or for what purpose, but weighting the veracity of what people say by where they're coming from is a perfectly reasonable approach to take. With that preamble, I think the Republican congressman from Nebraska comes to a perfectly reasonable conclusion. At the time and given the evidence he thought going into Iraq was the right decision. Based upon the facts as we know them now, he thinks his vote was an error. In the language of human judgment and decision-making his decision on how to cast his vote was coherent (it was logical) at the time, but it turned out not to correspond to the facts. The research into the two theories of J/DM, coherence based and correspondence based makes for interesting reading.

My friend Ken Hammond is a prominent researcher into correspondence-based theories of judgment and decision-making. He has pointed out in numerous books over a sixty year (and counting!) career that error and injustice are inevitable when humans have to make judgments about social policy under conditions of uncertainty, which is to say always. The two types of errors are Type I (false positives--indications that Iraq has WMD when they don't) and Type II (false negatives--no indications that Iraq has WMD when they do). The congressman now believes he committed a Type I error (false positive).

So how do we go about reducing the likelihood of that sort of error occuring in the future? Unfortunately you can't reduce one type of error without increasing the other type. The cost of reducing the likelihood of Type I errors is the increased likelihood of Type II errors. So it comes down to getting the best information you can and weighing the costs of each type of error to know where you want to draw the line, where you want to make the tradeoff.

How do we improve our intelligence? The 9/11 Commission recommended an Intelligence Czar. I haven't looked into that idea, yet, but I think I favor a more "decentral" intelligence agency as Alex Tabarrok described it with shared databases, cooperation and communication at the lowest level. That is rather than sending information up the chain of each bureau and ultimately to some Czar, I think the information should be shared and, as much as possible, acted upon by field agents. Communicating the information is costly in time and purety of the information. I also think the idea of a futures market in things like terrorist attacks is a good idea, but that was quickly killed by balky senators last summer.

But anyway back to the congressman. He thinks he made a Type I correspondence error. Other people may think he made an error of coherence in the first place, that given the evidence at the time his vote to go to war was not logical (I saw many of them with "No Iraq War" and "No War for Oil" signs at the time). Other people who had more and different reasons for advocating war with Iraq (to stop the torture and killing of innocent people, to oust a regime that aided and abetted terrorists) may disagree with the congressman that the facts now don't support our having invaded Iraq. We invaded and have found little evidence of an active WMD program, but the other things we alleged were found to be true. Reasonable people can see things differently. That's why we elect representatives to cast votes on such matters.

Presidents and Prosperity

2004-08-18T15:15:00.000-06:00

Hmmm. Interesting article in Forbes Magazine about economic prosperity under various presidencies. #1 in the list? Bill Clinton. And I am pretty sure that Forbes Magazine does not have a liberal bias. #2? Lyndon Johnson. #3? JFK. We have to get to #4 to see Ronal Reagan's name in the list. Well since I think we are hungry for some prosperity, I guess we would get better odds by electing a Democrat. That would be John Forbes (no relation) Kerry.

Bob's reply: Repeat after me: Association is not causation. This is especially true when you're associating national prosperity with all the inherent lags in a complex economy and the sitting president.

It's amusing that the Forbes article used the reduction of inflation as one of its criteria. I'm afraid the blame and the credit for that goes largely to the Federal Reserve Board and its control of the money supply. Though the federal government, through taxes, spending, borrowing, and regulating, can affect output enough to have some affect on price levels over a longer period of time. Inflation, a rise in the general level of prices, results from too many dollars chasing too few goods and services. The Fed controls the supply of dollars while "we the people" produce the goods and services those dollars chase.

I've made the case before that a Kerry presidency with a Republican Congress may be the best thing for the economy. George W. Bush and the Republicans have increased spending at an alarming rate. Kerry may want to increase spending at an even more alarming rate, but an adversarial Congress probably wouldn't allow it. With a Republican president, there seems to be nothing to stop the increase in the spending.

Of course, the Bush Administration has done a good job of reducing the growth in the Federal Register, that awful list of federal regulations put out each year. Virginal Postrel has info on that here and here.

As long as Forbes decided to run the story and Rhoads decided to post about it here, I'll play along for kicks. My vote for the worst president of my lifetime (1962-present) when it comes to the economy goes to Richard M. Nixon, Republican. I'll also say that Bill Clinton, Democrat, fared surprisingly well. Surprisingly because he tried to socialize medicine early in his first term. He failed but had he succeeded it would have been a disaster for 1/7th of the national economy. After that failure and the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, Clinton moved more to the "right" and passed things like welfare reform and NAFTA to the benefit of the economy.

Ford, Republican, and Carter, Democrat, sucked as presidents, but as far as the economy goes they both get a bad rap. Forbes says the economy wasn't all that bad on their watches. I think Forbes is wrong on that score. But the blame for the state of the economy goes mainly to the incompetence of Nixon. Wage and price controls? Nuts. Ford was in office too short a time to really say much, but Carter gets high marks for starting us on the path to greater deregulation (airlines, etc).

Reagan, Republican, was good (deregulation of energy, pushing through significant marginal rate reductions that we benefit from still today) and Bush, Republican, 41 stunk.

Kennedy, Democrat, was an early supply-sider (reducing marginal income tax rates) and Johnson was a big spender. So Kennedy gets pretty high marks from me, while Johnson gets low marks.

Those are my ratings, but they don't nakedly measure prosperity while the man was in office. They are my judgment of the effects of the policies advocated and enacted by each man.

Thanks for the Cambodia links, Bob

2004-08-18T10:06:00.000-06:00

That's exactly what I was looking for. For some reason, I wasn't coming up with anything but the anti-Kerry blogs when I googled for it. But your google skills are much better than mine, I think. So it appears that the situation boils down to this: John Kerry has claimed that he was sent on a covert mission across the border into Cambodia during Christmas of 1968 while President Nixon was telling the public that there were not troops in Cambodia. Now, with that in mind, at least one of the following must be false.

It was Christmas
It was 1968
Nixon said there were no troops in Cambodia
John Kerry was in Cambodia

This makes sense, of course, because if nothing else, we know that Nixon was not yet president in December, 1968. He was president-elect, but not president. Of course, he could have said that while president-elect, and when John Kerry was talking about it later, he called him by the name he was known by at the time John Kerry said it, when technically he should have said "president-elect Nixon" but let's rule that possibility out as unlikely.

Now the Swift Boat Veterans against John Kerry would like us to believe that JK was never sent into Cambodia. And JK's team want us to believe that he was sent into Cambodia, but that it was sometime in early 1969 (presumably after Jan 20) and not Christmas of 1968.

Now JK has said that this event is "seared" into his memory. The SBVAJK make fun of this because it obviously didn't happen. Is that a fairly accurate assessment of the current broo-ha-ha?

OK, well I look forward to seeing how some more objective folks deal with this - like Spinsanity - because obviously this is spinning out of control. If it turns out that JK can prove that he was actually sent on a covert mission into Cambodia, then does that mean that this is a lie, or just hyperbole, or perhaps a false memory (because of the Christmas part). Maybe this actually happened during Spring Festival (a.k.a. Chinese New Year) 1969. I have no doubt that the US was executing covert operations into Cambodia about this time, since we were leading up to the invasion of Cambodia in April, 1970. Of course, if such OPS were Classified, and perhaps still are, it might be hard to prove...

Bob's reply: Glad to be of service. Virginia Postrel posts an email from a reader with a very interesting perspective. The guy says that Kerry may have confused Christmas with Tet. The Vietnamese would not have been celebrating Christmas, but would have been celebrating Tet by shooting guns into the air. The date for Tet? February 17, 1969.

Virginia also channels me in a post titled "Dear Campaing Journalists: Please do your jobs".

I don't have to do these things because I don't want to and because they are not my job. But there are a lot of fine journalists who do have the job of political reporting, they are not doing it when it comes to Kerry's past, and they are making our whole profession look bad. Come on, folks. If you can't find out any independent sources on Kerry's own story, at least report the "he says-he says" allegations. And help out your audience with some context: Dig up some more-or-less unbiased (or at least nonpartisan) sources to provide some historical context for the bizarre Cambodia story. Never mind John Kerry specifically, what were U.S. operations during that period? Are any of his various accounts plausible and, if so, which ones? Or give readers some background on the procedures for awarding medals during Vietnam. There was a lot of medal inflation and, presumably, some politics in how medals were awarded. What, if anything, does the broader context tell us about Kerry and his critics?

If Kerry made up his Cambodian adventure it's a very big deal. It appears as if the Swift Vets are correct so far, that Kerry was not in Cambodia at the time he said he was. If it's just about the dates and Kerry was in Cambodia in the spring of 1969, then this is not a big deal. If it turns out that Kerry was never in Cambodia, given how he's used that event in the past and given that he (or his campaign on his behalf) has said very recently that the story is true, then it is a very big deal. We don't need people who make up stories about their war service, stories that specifically are meant to reflect badly on this country, becoming president.

But at this very moment (6:30 PM, 8/18/04) I'm inclined to think Kerry mixed up the dates. I'd like to see some evidence, though, that he actually was in Cambodia in the spring of 1969.

Government Spending I Support

2004-08-17T23:00:00.000-06:00

Doug Kern tells a "Tale of Two Bicycles". It's a tale of two Americas (has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?): one safe from crime and one not. Kern's solution:

We need more: more prosecutors, more public defenders, more judges, more investigators, and more local jail space, to ensure that more criminals learn early and often that their crimes will be justly punished.

I agree. However, Kern criticizes both Kerry and Bush for not addressing this issue. That's where Kern and I part ways.

The crimes Kern describes, the crimes ravaging the lives of our country's poorest citizens, are not federal crimes. Therefore the money for the prosecutors, defenders, judges, investigators and jail cells must come from state and local sources. Don't beat up candidates for a federal office over local issues. The federal government has enough trouble doing what it is authorized by the US Constitution to do. I think it's unwise to add things it's not authorized to do.

If done on the state and local level, I'm all for the additional spending that Kern suggests. A tax hike targeted for those purposes is a tax hike I would support. You heard it hear first.

(As usual, thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link.)

Rhoads: I agree with you on that one, Bob. I would hope that those new taxes would also include money for education in the jails as well, as studies show that education reduces Recidivism rates. I would also hope that locally we would spend more money on Early Childhood Education and Child Care as this also has been shown to lead to less crime.

Bob's reply: Now those links are substantive. I'm not interested enough in the topic to examine the studies cited to see how good they are, but if state and local areas want to experiment with variations on the themes of early education and education in jails and prisons that seems like money well spent to me. Let's just have some goals and varifiable data to test the hypothesis that the programs work. If they work, roll 'em out to more areas. If they don't work, stop them. That sort of discipline is generally lacking in publicly funded programs. The market provides that discipline for private programs.

Still looking for a reasonable post on the Cambodia thing

2004-08-17T22:19:00.000-06:00

I am still trying to find a reasonable, somewhat objective post describing the Cambodia issue. Haven't found any recent quotes from the Kerry campaign or Kerry himself. Nothing on Spinsanity, which I think it still reasonably objective. I am sure Bob will let me know if he comes up with one. He so likes these Swift Boat guys.

Bob's reply: Try this piece from Knight Ridder in the Seattle Times. It describes what the swifties say and the reply from the Kerry campaign.

Bob again: Here's the conclusion from a pro-Kerry opinion piece in the Boston Globe:

Kerry's statements about Cambodia do have traction for opponents. He has referred to spending Christmas or Christmas Eve 1968 in Cambodia and coming under fire. At the time Cambodia was neutral and supposedly off-limits to US troops. "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia," Kerry said in 1986 at a Senate committee hearing on US policy toward Central America. "I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there, the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me."

The Kerry campaign now says Kerry's runs into Cambodia came in early 1969. "Swift boat crews regularly operated along the Cambodian border from Ha Tien on the Gulf of Thailand to the rivers of the Mekong south and west of Saigon," Michael Meehan, a Kerry adviser, said in a statement last week. "Many times he was on or near the Cambodian border and on one occasion crossed into Cambodia at the request of members of a special operations group."

Answers like that aren't good enough. Kerry put his Vietnam service before voters as the seminal character issue of his presidential campaign. He should answer every question voters have about it -- and he should answer them himself.

Yep. He should. And he should release his military records like George W. Bush did. A war hero can't have more to hide than a guy who used political advantage to avoid Vietnam, can he?

Bob yet again: I think you may have to submit to free registration to read this piece in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, but being a Minnesotan I long ago submitted to that. Here's how it starts:

On March 27, 1986, John Kerry took the floor of the U.S. Senate and delivered a dramatic oration indicting the foreign policy of the Reagan administration. As is his habit, Kerry drew on his Vietnam experience in explaining his opposition to the policy.

"I remember Christmas of 1968, sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and having the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there."

To emphasize the importance of this incident to his subsequent political development, Kerry asserted: "I have that memory which is seared --seared -- in me, that says to me, before we send another generation into harm's way we have a responsibility in the U.S. Senate to go the last step, to make the best effort possible to avoid that kind of conflict."

The story of his 1968 Christmas in Cambodia is one that Kerry has told on many occasions over the years. He invoked the story in 1979 in the course of his review of the movie "Apocalypse Now" for the Boston Herald. Most recently, Kerry told the story -- with remarkable embellishments involving a CIA man who gave him his favorite hat -- last year on separate occasions to reporters Laura Blumenfeld of the Washington Post and Michael Kranish of the Boston Globe.

Certain elements of Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia story were incredible on their face. Kerry attributed responsibility for his illegal 1968 mission to Richard Nixon, despite the fact that Lyndon Johnson was president at the time. The Khmer Rouge who allegedly shot at Kerry during his "secret" mission did not take the field until 1972.

Moreover, there is no record that Swift boats -- the kind of boat under Kerry's command -- were ever used for secret missions in Cambodia. Their size and noise make them unlikely candidates for such missions. Indeed, the authorized biographer of Kerry's Vietnam service -- historian Douglas Brinkley -- omits from his book, "Tour of Duty," any mention of a covert cross-border mission to Cambodia during Kerry's service.

Over the past few weeks, the Christmas in Cambodia tale, a keystone of John Kerry's Vietnam autobiography, has been revealed to be fraudulent. On Christmas 1968, Kerry was docked at Sa Dec, 50 miles from Cambodia, in an area from which the Cambodian border was inaccessible.

Last week, after the falsity of Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia account became public, the Kerry campaign issued a statement "correcting" the story. According to the Kerry campaign, the mission referred to took place in January 1969, when Kerry "inadvertently or responsibly" crossed the border into Cambodia. However, three of Kerry's Swift boat crewmates have denied entering Cambodia at any time, and no one has corroborated Kerry's claim.

The suggestion that Kerry may have "inadvertently" strayed into Cambodia -- leaving aside whether that was even possible -- constitutes a complete retreat from the point of Kerry's original story: that he lost his faith in government because the president lied about having sent American troops into Cambodia. And, of course, it contradicts his story about ferrying a CIA man to Cambodia.

The Cambodia Thing

2004-08-17T15:49:00.000-06:00

I don't really understand what the whole Cambodia thing is about, but Bob brings it up in twleve or so posts per day, so he obviously thinks it is important. Apparently John Kerry wrote a letter the editor 25 years ago saying that he remembers being in Cambodia in 1968. He also mentions being shot at by allies in South Vietnam. I have no idea whether he was or not - it looks like not - but it also appears to me that the meat of the story was about being in a situation where American troops were being accidentally shot at by allies who were celebrating. Did that happen? Probably. Did it happen to John Kerry? Maybe. Maybe not. Not sure why it matters. He wasn't accusing the USA of anything. He was (possibly mis-)remembering something in a really ugly time period of America's foreign policy. But at least if we keep talking about it we can not talk about the fact that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney avoided going to Vietanam altogether.

Keep trying, Bob. The Swift Boat Vets are still going to go down in flames in the Battle of Public Opinion, because they are full of shit.

Bob's reply: Ignorance is bliss.

Yeah, a letter to the editor 25 years ago. That's what the Cambodia thing is about. "He wasn't accusing the USA of anything." Um, he was accusing the USA of sending him on an illegal mission into neutral Cambodia during Christmas of 1968. He mentioned this on the floor of the US Senate in 1986. If you search Coffee With Rhoads you can get the details.

Nice retort on the Swift Vets. So far I've heard that they're "shills", that the "truth" they're for isn't truth, that they're "full of shit". They make substantive charges, backed up by sworn affidavits and the reply is they're scumbags. Fine. They're scumbags. Now what of the charges they made? Well, so far the one charge I've seen investigated has been found to be true. Kerry claimed on numerous times including on the floor of the US Senate in 1968 to have been in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968. He was not. The Kerry campaign has admitted that. Now the story is that he was on a super secret mission "some time in early 1969" dropping off CIA agents, SEALs or some other such clandestine outfit. Except there's no evicence for that. The Swift Vets, who are one-for-one on "truth", point out that no living member of the chain of command above Kerry says he was ever sent to Cambodia. No other swift boat commander or service man, none, says they were ever in Cambodia. So it appears that the Democratic Party's delusional nominee is still lying about the incident. Not 25 years ago. Not in a letter to the editor. On the floor of the US Senate, in a 2003 story in the Washington Post, and now in response to a claim by the Swift Vets that he (his campaign) has admitted was correct. He was not in Cambodia when he said he was. He was probably never there. Though he may still produce some evidence or testimony that he was. Until Kerry provides the evidence that NOW he's telling the truth, if anyone's full of it that would be Kerry.

Funny how truthfulness takes a backseat to service in Vietnam. Hey, Clinton failed on both counts--never served in Vietnam and was held in contempt of court for lying. Kerry's one step better, I suppose. The Democratic Party has low standards. Maybe the country shares those low standards. We'll see in November. If the country remains blissfully ignorant, anything's possible.

Islamofascism

2004-08-17T13:55:00.000-06:00

Google comes up with 8,270 hits in 0.2 sec.

Rhoads' response: Yes it does. Haven't seen one with any useful information, though.

On to Corvallis

2004-08-16T22:04:00.000-06:00

Congratulations to Niwot-Boulder's Legion A baseball team. They beat Taylorsville, UT tonight 15-3 to advance to the American Legion World Series in Corvallis, Oregon. Sean Ratliff was the winning pitcher, and oh by the way he also had two homeruns and seven runs batted in.

Go Cougars (Panthers)!

Rhoads' response: All the way, Nibot!

What War is Like and Presidents

2004-08-16T21:51:00.000-06:00

"Oh - and this is exactly why the candidates respective war records 30 years ago matter-- one guy understands what war is like, especially when it is wrong. The other guy doesn't know and doesn't care, as long as he gets to send people to it."

George H. W. Bush -- Navy aviator saw action in the Pacific during WWII.
Bill Clinton -- Draft "evader" to put it politely.
Rhoads' vote:

Robert Dole -- WWII veteran wounded in combat.
Bill Clinton -- see above
Rhoads' vote:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- no war service
Winston Churchill -- no war service

What really matters is John Kerry's positon on the war we're in with Islamofascism. What's his position on Iraq?

Rhoads' response: Glad you asked. Read about his position on the war as it applies to National Security here and as it applies to Homeland Security here. In the former I especially appreciate the section entitled "Launch and Lead A New Era of Alliances" which is something that Dick Cheney made fun of a couple of days ago. In the latter I especially like the section entitled "Guard Liberty" which is something I don't think the current administration is too keen on.

You see, Bob, the problem we face now is that we are not just at war with Islamofascism (and that is the first time I have ever heard it called that). Like it or not, we are at war with the people of Iraq. Not all of them, but a large number of them. We didn't want that, and they didn't want that, but it is what we have. Our war against one person (Saddam) turned into a war against a large number of people in a country. I don't think that George W. Bush has the wherewithall to figure out how to end that war, because I think he figured that once we got Saddam, the mission would be accomplished. I think John Kerry has a better chance of putting together the right team to get that job done. It will involve the cooperation of many other nations, and at this point I think that quite a number of them just don't want to work with Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld. And unfortunately, Colin Powel - who I would like to see John Kerry keep as Secretary of State - seems to have been put on the back burner.

Bob's reply: You know ink isn't cheap. I printed out those two links from Kerry's site. What a waste. Give me some substance will you. Kerry and Edwards believe in a stronger America. I get that. They won't go it alone. Right. They'll protect us while respecting our rights. Super. And to cap it all off they'll reduce our dependence on Mideast Oil (as if oil isn't oil) "by tapping American ingenuity." Now why didn't somebody else think of that before.

Rhoads wrote: "Like it or not, we are at war with the people of Iraq." Good one.

Listen, I think the Bush Administration misjudged the amount of fighting we would face once Saddam fell, but to pretend the liberation isn't wildly popular in Iraq is to live in a fantasy world. One where imaginary CIA agents hand out magic hats en route to Cambodia on Christmas Eve.

Rhoads' response: You can deny all you want that we are not at war with the people in Iraq, but check the coffins coming home. Oh wait - you can't, because the Bush administration thinks that is bad PR. Well, anyway, my point is that even if the removal of Saddam is "wildly popular in Iraq" as you claim, that popularity is diminishing with each passing week as the violence continues. And I don't think the Bushies have any clue how to deal with that, and I think that the coalition is shrinking because we never found the WMDs, which was the whole rationale for the war in the first place.

And if you find no substance in John Kerry's web site, well, I guess that's politics, and that's you living in your own little fantasy world. Maybe when George gets re-elected and the national debt is 50 trillion dollars you will think that is substance.

This Land Is Your Land

2004-08-16T21:38:00.000-06:00

Don't miss JibJab's "This Land is Your Land" parody

"Kerry is a liar"

2004-08-16T21:06:00.000-06:00

So says Froggy Ruminations about John Kerry's revision of his Christmas in Cambodia story. The revision includes Navy SEALs. Froggy was a SEAL in the 1990s and his father-in-law was a SEAL in Vietnam in 1970. According to them, Kerry's new explanation for his illegal (imaginary?) incursions into Cambodia doesn't pass the smell test.

It's time for Kerry to provide some evidence that he was ever in Cambodia or admit he made the whole thing up.

General McPeak

2004-08-16T16:05:00.000-06:00

Here is a transcript of a radio address given by retired Air Force General Tony McPeak explaining why we need to get rid of George Bush because he has done such a horrible job with foreign policy. Is this guy a shill of the Democratic Party, like the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth[sic]" are shills of the Republican Party? Probably. Does he have a long standing grudge against the President, like those other guys have against John Kerry? No. I mean, he actively campaigned for the guy 4 years ago. Does he have a grudge against the President now? I think so - he thinks he is unfit to lead the country, and he has good experience to back up his opinion. Good to see that miltary men like him are stepping forward to counter the shills like John O'Neill.

Oh - and this is exactly why the candidates respective war records 30 years ago matter-- one guy understands what war is like, especially when it is wrong. The other guy doesn't know and doesn't care, as long as he gets to send people to it.

Bob's reply: Bad link on the McPeak transcript. I'd be happy to read it if you provide another link.

I'll concede there are tons of reasons to criticize George W. Bush as president, even reasons to want him out. Where's the case for John Kerry? Democrats appear to be hoping to beat somebody with nobody. It may work, but I'd like to see a case for John Kerry rather than more reasons not to vote for Bush. Is it because of Kerry's respect for civil liberties?

Bob again: I read the McPeak transcript. The general makes a lot out of our needing to work with allies. He specifically mentioned Italy as a potential source of intelligence. Hey, Tony. Italy was on board for the liberation. Why do Kerry and his supporters think France and Germany are our only allies? We went it alone according to McPeak. He has his own, personal definition of alone, I guess. Oh, wait, it's the same definition that Kerry uses. Alone: without France.

The general expressed his support for Kerry, but provided no substance. He was a Dole guy, then a Bush guy, now a Kerry guy. Fair enough. I eagerly await hearing who McPeak supports in 2008. Should be entertaining.

Tenacious Press

2004-08-15T13:36:00.000-06:00

If you're looking for a tenacious, inquiring press corps you'll have to go back to February 2004 and this press briefing regarding George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. Politically motivated charges regarding something that happened over thirty years ago seemed to be very important to the press that day. So far they don't seem concerned about John Kerry's unlikely tale about being in Cambodia. Perhaps they're just doing background research and will start asking Kerry and his campaign these sorts of specific questions in due time. That is if they're not actively aiding his campaign.

Rhoads' response: Bob continues to give example after example after example after example of the "liberal media." Not quite sure why. If it is to convince me, then you can stop, because I have already admitted that many many journalists lean to the left. But then I thought about it some more, and maybe it is to try to convince yourself, because there are in fact just as many examples of the media having a "conservative" or "pro-Bush" bias. In fact, the example you list above could be an example of this that. I say that because even though the presidential spokesperson never actually answered the question asked the press eventually lost interest and gave up. I still want to know where the president was during the three months in question.

Bob's reply: Where was Bush? Cambodia with Kerry.

I'm sure that seems plausible in a world where "there are in fact just as many examples of the media having a 'conservative' or 'pro-Bush' bias."

Strengthen the Good

2004-08-15T13:22:00.000-06:00

Please visit Strengthen the Good and see how you can help the victims of Hurricane Charley in Florida.

Roughly every other Sunday I will be posting a link to Strengthen the Good where you can read about worthy "micro" charities that you may choose to support.

Rhoads' reponseI couldn't agree more!

Who's Number 1?

2004-08-14T19:53:00.002-06:00

Come Monday morning Tiger Woods may no longer be the number one ranked golfer in the world. I'm not sure of the specific scenarios, but both Vijay Singh and Ernie Els could overtake Tiger for the number one spot. Tiger has held that number one ranking for several years, but is he still the best golfer in the world? I'm a huge fan of Tiger, but the answer is that no matter what happens tomorrow in the final round of the PGA Championship Tiger is not the best golfer in the world. Based upon the following stats courtesy of the PGA Tour, I'd say that Tiger is the fourth best player in the world.

Rank This Week	Rank Last Week	Player	Rounds	Avg.	Tot. Strks	Tot. Adj.
1	1	Phil Mickelson	59	68.60	4,078	-30.554
2	2	Ernie Els	42	68.65	2,920	-36.779
3	3	Vijay Singh	78	69.09	5,420	-31.331
4	4	Tiger Woods	52	69.19	3,636	-38.041

A Rare Recommendation

2004-08-14T19:17:00.000-06:00

Former MIT and now Princeton lefty economist Paul Krugman never writes anything I can recommend in his goofy column in the New York Times. Imagine my surprise when I read a wonderful, insightful essay called In Praise of Cheap Labor written by Krugman in March of 1997. The essay examines the moral outrage of the anti-globalization movement, a movement mostly of the left that counts among it's allies the noted right-winger Pat Buchanan.

A sample:

Why does the image of an Indonesian sewing sneakers for 60 cents an hour evoke so much more feeling than the image of another Indonesian earning the equivalent of 30 cents an hour trying to feed his family on a tiny plot of land--or of a Filipino scavenging on a garbage heap?
The main answer, I think, is a sort of fastidiousness. Unlike the starving subsistence farmer, the women and children in the sneaker factory are working at slave wages for our benefit--and this makes us feel unclean. And so there are self-righteous demands for international labor standards: We should not, the opponents of globalization insist, be willing to buy those sneakers and shirts unless the people who make them receive decent wages and work under decent conditions.
This sounds only fair–but is it? Let's think through the consequences.

Not surprisingly to anyone with a basic economic education, the consequences are not good--not good for the workers, the multi-national manufacturers, nor the consumers. Krugman concludes:

You may say that the wretched of the earth should not be forced to serve as hewers of wood, drawers of water, and sewers of sneakers for the affluent. But what is the alternative? Should they be helped with foreign aid? Maybe--although the historical record of regions like southern Italy suggests that such aid has a tendency to promote perpetual dependence. Anyway, there isn't the slightest prospect of significant aid materializing. Should their own governments provide more social justice? Of course--but they won't, or at least not because we tell them to. And as long as you have no realistic alternative to industrialization based on low wages, to oppose it means that you are willing to deny desperately poor people the best chance they have of progress for the sake of what amounts to an aesthetic standard--that is, the fact that you don't like the idea of workers being paid a pittance to supply rich Westerners with fashion items.
In short, my correspondents are not entitled to their self-righteousness. They have not thought the matter through. And when the hopes of hundreds of millions are at stake, thinking things through is not just good intellectual practice. It is a moral duty.

Shocked as I am to say it, I agree with Paul Krugman.

Thanks to Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek for directing me to the lost essay of Krugman. Says Boudreaux:

Reading this essay supplies a good reason for hoping that John Kerry wins the November election: With a Democrat in the White House, Paul Krugman might rediscover legitimate economics.

Not exactly a positive case for John Kerry, but it's something.

Fraud and Coverup in the Kerry Vietnam Saga?

2004-08-14T12:25:00.000-06:00

The Kerry in Cambodia narrative and his parading of his Band of Brothers at the Boston convention continues to unravel. One of the men who stood up and spoke on Kerry's behalf never served under Kerry in Vietnam [Not true: see UPDATE below]. Captain Ed posts that it's beginning to look like more than just a faulty memory on Kerry's part.

This isn't just a guy embellishing his war record -- this is a deliberate and longstanding attempt to mislead and defraud people by creating his own witnesses after the fact. That he could have done such a clumsy job should disqualify him for higher office on that basis alone.

With the complicity of an adoring media, this probably won't turn into anything. Besides, for a significant minority of the voting public this election isn't about Kerry. They'd vote for anyone the Democratic Party nominated to oppose Bush.

For about six months now I've been waiting to read a positive case made for John Kerry as president. Now it seems the more people get to know Kerry the less likely I am to find that case presented.

UPDATE: The man who stood up and spoke for Kerry in Boston DID serve under Kerry in Vietnam for a week or two. Here's the approximate timeline of service and tangled web of Kerry chronology from Byron York.

Kerry, Kerry, he's our man

2004-08-13T09:49:00.000-06:00

If he can't do it, nobody can!

Are the mainstream media cheerleaders for John Kerry? They are according to Evan Thomas, Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek:

MR. THOMAS: There's one other base here, the media. Let's talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win and I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards I'm talking about the establishment media, not Fox. They're going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there's going to be this glow about them, collective glow, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points.

Worth maybe 15 points? That might be a bit arrogant of Mr. Thomas to assume he and his cohorts have that much influence. But at least he's honest about the goals of the mainstream, elite media.

(Thanks to InstaPundit for the link)

President Cowen

2004-08-11T09:50:00.000-06:00

Tyler Cown offers up his vision for Bush's second term:

1. Eliminate all farm subsidies, tariffs, quotas and price supports.

2. Tell Western Europe it is paying for its own defense from now on.

3. Admit that the Medicare drug prescription bill was a mistake. Repeal it, and consider a revenue-neutral benefit that does not discriminate against prescription drugs. Introduce means-testing for Medicare to stop that program from bankrupting us. I would rather cut this benefit than repeal the tax cuts [tax shifts, correctly, though spending discipline could turn them into real tax cuts.] The long-run benefits of greater capital accumulation remain significant.

4. Negotiate bilateral free trade agreements as rapidly as possible. Start with Japan, the second largest economy in the world.

5. Strengthen America's commitment to science. This will have implications for educational policy, immigration policy, and regulatory policy. Don't restrict stem cell research. Hope that science comes up with affordable and politically sustainable solutions for global warming and clean energy independence. You might have libertarian objections to science subsidies, but the realistic alternative today is more government intervention.

6. Strengthen early warning systems against infectious diseases. Increase research into cures, vaccines, immunity, and the like. We don't want the world to lose fifty million people to avian flu or some other malady.

7. Take in more immigrants, but demand higher levels of skills and education. At the very least, take in any revenue-positive immigrant.

8. Abolish the Department of Education.

9. Abolish the Department of Energy.

10. Repeal all corporate welfare.

11. Repeal the corporate income tax. Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax. Admittedly these are "ifs," depending on fiscal considerations.

12. Get on TV and tell the nation that a free economy is a critical source of our strength. Tell them you mean it, and then mean it. Economic growth is the greatest long-run gift we can give to the world.

I suspect Tyler realizes these are not going to be part of any Bush presidency. They won't be part of any Kerry presidency, either.

Here's my vision: Cowen for President 2008

The bandwagon is now open.

You Go David

2004-08-09T14:34:00.000-06:00

David Boaz writes that liberals and conservatives both use the same play book:

Both believe in government magic. And they want you to believe in it too. They want you to believe the president can be Superman, Santa Claus and Mother Teresa all rolled into one and that he can cure poverty and racism, keep kids off drugs and keep families together. Magical thinking is cute among children. But adults should know that the world is complicated and that legislative actions often fail, or backfire, or have unintended consequences or disappear into bureaucratic sinkholes.

And this magical thinking manifests itself in "the number one way liberals and conservatives are alike according" to Boaz:

Both think they can run your life better than you can.

Liberals want to raise taxes because they can spend your money better than you can. They don't believe in school choice because you're not capable of choosing a school for your children. They think they can handle your healthcare, your retirement and your charitable contributions better than you can.

Conservatives want to censor cable television because you're too dumb to decide what your family should watch. They want to ban drugs, pornography, gambling and gay marriage because you just don't know what's good for you.

That's been my experience, too. Both sides are elitist. The elitism just manifests itself differently.