|
|
|
|
8/27/04 Another Day, Another 800 Pounds of You-Know-What Every day the Democrats dump another load of hooey on this society. It would be laughable if the people reporting the things they've said didn't report it with a straight face, and then spend the next five minutes going through the evidence that shows that the Democrats are bald-faced liars, without even suggesting that they might be bald-faced liars. I can't laugh about it when the greatest fraud in history is being perpetrated on a mostly unsuspecting populace, and the journalists who are supposed to be concerned about the truth are so lackadaisical in their pursuit of it. Most of them lean liberal, of course, and so it is not surprising that they aren't enthusiastic about pursuing the very strong possibility that John F. Kerry began exaggerating details of his service in Vietnam while he was serving, and that those exaggerations made their way into official records that are now being used to try to verify his original exaggerations. Isn't it neat the way that works out? If you can get an exaggeration into an official record, then you can always appeal to the official record to defend the accuracy of the exaggeration. It should be the job of a journalist to be skeptical about all claims (especially official ones), and investigate every one as if it might not be true. But journalists are now very quick to assume that official military documents are reliable when it comes to John Kerry's alleged exaggerations, when they have in the past routinely dismissed official documents as almost certainly falsified or exaggerated to conceal wrongdoing. Where are Woodward and Bernstein now? Oh, wait, I forgot. Nixon was a Republican, and Kerry isn't. So when Democratic operatives circulated baseless rumors that George W. Bush was AWOL during his service in the Air National Guard (well, it was based on the fact that one man who barely knew Bush at the time couldn't remember whether he'd seen him at some points in 1971), the press went into a feeding frenzy, demanding documentation to prove that he'd been there. They produced pay stubs. But the skeptical press demanded more evidence, since people can be paid even if they aren't there. So they produced records of dental visits. So what? Just because you visited the dentist in the town you were supposed to be working in and being paid for the work you were supposed to be doing doesn't prove you were actually in that town to do any work! Now that dozens of witnesses are saying that events were not as Kerry describes them when he won his medals or otherwise supposedly distinguished himself by disobeying international law at the direction of presidents who hadn't been elected yet, the only time the press is willing to concede that official records are wrong or misleading is when Kerry himself disputes them. For example, when his own recollection tells us that he got shrapnel in his tush when he blew up a pile of rice that was not attacking him, a wound for which he received the purple heart in connection with action later in the day. The official record in that case is clearly confused, but if we convince ourselves that Kerry had nothing to do with the creation of the official record, we can conclude that he just accepted a purple heart for a wound that would not have qualified for a purple heart had his superior officers known the truth, and he decided to keep quiet about it until the award had already been granted. Whatever. But the Democrats aren't satisfied with that. They have to convince the public that the accusations of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT) are false, not by showing them false (because in most cases they can't), but by making them into a "smear" campaign by the Republicans, hearkening back to the heyday of the Democratic party when they and the press last teamed up to take down a Republican president. So they start concocting silly little lies so transparent that even a schoolchild on the playground would see through them. They say that a big Republican donor gave them $200,000 to the SBVT, which would not be possible unless the Bush-Cheney campaign had something to do with it. WRONG! Any moron knows that a big Republican donor is smart enough to decide whether a group of veterans who think Kerry is a big, fat, dishonorable liar will help or hurt the Kerry campaign! And that same moron also knows that big Republican donors do not want the Kerry campaign to succeed. Therefore, the moron easily concludes that big Republican donors who don't like Kerry will give money to groups that don't like Kerry even if they haven't talked to anyone at the Bush-Cheney campaign about how best to hurt Kerry (which is the only part of any of this that would be illegal). In other words, there's a gun, but it ain't smoking. But the Democrats found the press repeating this "non-smoking gun" argument so frequently that they keep going back to it. Now Ben Ginsburg, an attorney who worked for the Bush-Cheney campaign and also did some work for the SBVT resigns to avoid the appearance of impropriety, and the Democrats again point to the gun not smoking: Ginsburg is an expert on campaign finance law, and both the Bush-Cheney campaign and the SBVT want to comply with those laws, so they both consult him. The common thread? Campaign finance law. No coordination. Nothing illegal. No smoking gun. Belatedly the press has reported that the Democrats have a lot of non-smoking guns, too. George Soros gives money to Democrats, and he gave money to MoveOn.org. Surely they don't want us to conclude they are therefore coordinating MoveOn.org! Voila! Non-smoking gun. The Democratic campaign consults the same lawyers who advise MoveOn.org and other groups. Again, they don't expect us to believe this proves they are coordinating illegally with those groups. Voila! Non-smoking gun. But they do hope to distract attention from their non-smoking guns to the Republican non-smoking guns; if they just keep screaming like children and pointing at them saying "Smoking gun, smoking gun!" they hope that enough of the not-quite-qualified-to-be-called-a-moron folks will believe the gun is smoking (I heard one of them on an airplane today!) to swing a close election to their side. And for liars to win an election would not be funny at all. Let me close by saying something about Max Cleland, a man who had honor when he fought for this nation in Vietnam and sacrificed his limbs for this nation and its freedom, but who has squandered it by subscribing to a campaign of lies and deceit. He has prostituted himself to the Kerry campaign, perhaps because he believes Kerry is actually an honorable man and should not be attacked by fellow veterans, but to make public accusations that he knows he cannot prove and that the other side could make of his camp with equal validity (meaning "none"), and attempt by so doing to deceive the public and other veterans to produce a backlash against the President, is the height of dishonor. He has lost his authority by demonstrably not defending the truth, but by assaulting it, and all in service to claims that, if they were true, should have been able to stand on their own merits. Cleland and the rest would not be acting like desperate, lying children if they had the truth on their side. Modified: 09/10/2004 |
|
|
All Original Content (C) 2003, 2004, 2005 SoothSeeker.Com
SoothSeeker Welcomes your Comments at letters@soothseeker.com Report problems to webmaster@soothseeker.com
Hits on this site:
|