Pickering And Racial Relations

The Buck Stops Here has an interesting write up on Judge Chales Pickering.

For all of the objections the left had about this fine man, perhaps they should actually read his ruling of today.

Buck has a link to the PDF of the ruling. read up.

Of course it goes without saying that you’ll never hear about this in the press.

AP says:

“Funk singer Rick James, best known for the 1981 hit “Super Freak,” died Friday, apparently of natural causes, police said.

James, 56, died at 9:45 a.m. at a residence near Universal City, said Officer Esther Reyes, a Police Department spokeswoman.

“He died apparently of natural causes. We learned of his death after responding to a radio call,” Reyes said.”

“natural causes”? At 56? Who dies of natural causes at that age?

I guess it’s a way to be politically correct by avoiding playing that jingle that says “things go better with coke”, huh?

Sad.  What a waste of talent. I’m glad he got his act together toward the end, but what a cost, getting there.

Eariler today, a story started making the rounds about how one of the Swiftees, one George Elliott was recanting his statements about John Kerry.

That turns out not to be true. Before I could even react to the first story, here comes the second one:

Says HUMAN EVENTS:

“Captain George Elliott describes an article appearing in today’s edition of the Boston Globe by Mike Kranish as extremely inaccurate and highly misstating his actual views. He reaffirms his statement in the current advertisement paid for by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Captain Elliott reaffirms his affidavit [see link below] in support of that advertisement, and he reaffirms his request that the ad be played. ”

So, the Globe, which is owned by the New Yrk Times, slants a story to make a leftis look better? Gee, whodathinkit?

See the affidavit of George Elliot at Human events

Like I said, gang, the Democrats and their lackeys in the press are dsperate to disassemble this story. When the Democrats react this way, you know they’re hiding something… something BIG.  Something they’re outright desperate to remove from public view.

Nice to see Dan’s blog is doing well. I’ll open a beer in his honor tonight.

And pour it over his friggin’ head if he doesn’t get off the fence soon about Kerry.
(grin)

MS has held up the release of XP SP2 again.

The last two times I saw this kind of holdup with NT SP6 (which because SP6a) and DOSv4, (which because the even worse DOS 4.1)

VNUnet has more

Thanks, no… I’ll stick to Linux and MS 2000 for the time being.

Though I expect this will come up again, say, duirng the RNC, for example, the last word on this subject for the time being, fittingly goes to Ann Coulter

“The people who should be on their knees thanking God that W is president are the National Archives employees who caught Sandy Burglar.

If Clinton were still president, instead of a serious criminal investigation, we’d get six months of attacks on the poor National Archives employees as trailer trash, sluts, gold-diggers, etc., etc. (Of course, if Clinton were still president, some National Archives employees might well be on their knees, but for a different reason.) “

Has it ocurred to anyone else that the legal bills of Sibel Edmonds must be very large indeed? Why is it I cannot find anywhere any indication of where her legal funding is coming from?

I suspect many questions would be answered, were that funding source revealed.

I’ve been busy with the truck last night so didn’t have much chance to follow up on this story. I will do so today. But while working, last night, I did have the chance to spend some thought on the subject of the Swiftee ad and Kerry’s response to it, along with some of the responses around the right side of blogdom.

It is said that what defines people is not the troubles they are exposed to, but rather their response to them. So it is with the Democrats of today. When faced with the opinions of the people who served with their Candidate, John Kerry, the Democrats label themselves as guilty as charged by their response.

As usual, the Democrats do what they do best in their response.. They lie and twist. As the Human Events article says:

“As their first piece of evidence of the ad’s supposed lies, the DNC/Kerry lawyers claim that the veterans in the ad “purport to have served on Senator Kerry’s SWIFT Boat in Vietnam” but, “in fact, not a single one of the men who pretend to have served with Senator Kerry was actually a crewmate of Senator Kerry’s.” The problem is that none of these men claimed to have served on Kerry’s SWIFT Boat. They simply said they “served with John Kerry” — and they did.

I urge you; read the fax enclosed in the ‘response’ link.

The text in that document makes it blindingly clear that the Democrats are desperate to silence the people that John Kerry served with. Why would that be, do you suppose? After all, Kerry has changed his middle name to “Served in Vietnam’, and centered his entire campaign on that one phrase. It was Kerry has made his service in Vietnam the linchpin of his credentials to be President. (Which by the way, makes one kinda wonder a bit about Hillary’s qualifications when she runs in four years… will her non-military history disqualify her in the eyes of those supporting John Kerry today?)

That he cannot stand up to having that central point questioned in open discussion is to say the least, damning. Kerry knows this, and so do the other Democrats. Their reaction here reminds me of nothing so much as a rabid raccoon that’s been cornered.

Like that rabid racoon, John Kerry’s been cornered by the facts. He’s asked us to judge him by his record, but has fought all efforts to examine that record honestly and openly. His foaming at the mouth response to the facts coming out is the image the American people should carry with them to the voting booth. He knows he’s going to lose when his record is judged as he asked us to do.

Look, I don’t know and I don’t care about backlash of this issue against the Republicans. First, I make no pretentions about how this is going to hurt Kerry among his base… Kerry’s rabidly leftist base disagreed with his even being in the service in any event. His base isn’t moving even should be sudddenly be revealed as an axe murderer. What motivates Kerry’s base isn’t getting Kerry Elected, nearly as much as it is a hatred for George W. Bush and getting him unelected. As such, I expect the net effect to Kerry’s base however this falls out will be zero, and in any case, that simply doesn’t concern me.

What does concern me is getting the truth to the undecideds, and those Democrats with some thread of integrity left… who, as Zel Miller will tell you are getting harder to find.

What concerns me most though, is truth. I’m sure that the truth is paramount.. and when the truth is exposed, it works to the president’s favor. Given the reaction of the Democrats, they’re convinced of it, too.

There are those who will suggest that the vets in question are a little off the bubble, to put it mildly. Their ad campaign is decidedly partisan, it is said. There are those who question the timing of this ad.

But no. what is partisan, what is off the bubble, is the fact that the press ignored their story for so very long. These vets have been trying to get their story out for 6 months, now, and the press who has been trying to get Kerry elected, has been ignoring them. So, the vets put their money up, and started running an ad to get their message out. The timing issue is there because the leftist press has been ignoring the vets for so long… to Kerry’s temporary advantage.

Kerry and his people are screaming now, because that advantage is now all but gone… and legal threats are now the only tool the Democrats have to keep the story from coming out.

Consider, now, those legal threats, in light of the lies of one Rotundo Moore, who has been proven a liar and a slanderer a dozen times over. It seems that the Republicans lack of legal action against Moore was in restrospect, the best thing to do, since it provides a rather stark contrast between the two ways of doing business; Moore’s lies were easily exposed as such, and therefore legal action was not needed. The message of the Swift Vets rings all too true, and legal threats got resorted to as a result of their imability to deal with the message.

I’ll be watching to see this play out, but frankly, I can’t see how the Democrats are going to be able to get anything at all that’s positive out of this.

Meanwhile, make no mistake; I stand firmly behind the vets, here. I do not bend to the will of thugs, which is what, with the fax in the link above, the Democrats have exposed themselves as, to the world.

The Republicans… all of them… should be standing behind these vets, and heeding their message.

I’ll be particularly interested to see the reaction of some of the bloggers who are reading this blog daily.

This is unreal

This kind of scare tactics is what the Nazis used.

Clearly, the Democrats are now in desperation mode; they’d not do something this blatant and this downright STUPID, if they were not terrified of the damage this will do to Kerry’s chances of winning.

Look again at the link, and you tell ME…Is there any doubt about who is trying to silence whom?  If there was any doubt in anyone’s mind about going forward with this ad, there should be no longer. Again, I say, do NOT back down from these thugs, Mr. President.

An update to an earlier post, which desrves a whole seperate thread:

AP says::

“Republican Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, called an ad criticizing John Kerry’s military service ‘dishonest and dishonorable’ and urged the White House on Thursday to condemn it as well. ”

…”McCain said that’s all in the past to him, but he’s speaking out against the anti-Kerry ad because “it reopens all the old wounds of the Vietnam War, which I spent the last 35 years trying to heal.”

An odd claim to be making, since Kerry managed to change his middle name to ‘served in Vietnam’ and spent months campaigning on that one point, with nary a peep from McCain. Now suddenly he’s concerned?

How touching.
How uterly transparent.

Don’t do it, Mr President…. Don’t back off these ads. To do so is to back off from the truth, and there’s been far too much of that from the left that’s gone unchallanged.

Stand your ground, Mr. President.

Q&O has more

Eugene Volokh says this morning:

“A thoughtful acquaintance of mine sent around an e-mail expressing skepticism that what Mary Kay Letourneau did was all that bad. Many 12-year-old boys, he pointed out, would be quite happy to have sex with a 35-year-old woman. Perhaps this is even so for most 12-year-old boys, at least most of those who actually end up doing it. Nor would this be likely, he opined, to leave lasting psychological scars.

Well, maybe so; I can’t say that I feel deep pity for the boy because this woman had sex with him, or visceral outrage at the woman for doing so. Perhaps I should, but I can’t quite muster it — and, yes, I’d have a very different view of a 35-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl, because I do think (based on an admittedly nonexpert judgment) that this is more likely to involve manipulation and lasting harm. (That doesn’t by itself tell us what the law on this subject should be, of course.)

But Letourneau didn’t just have sex with him — she had two babies by him. Now that is a matter that leaves lasting (life-long) effects on many (I’d hope most) men, and certainly not one that the boy was prepared to thoughtfully embrace. Children can be a great joy, but also a great burden, one reason that it’s pretty important for people to think hard and maturely before having them.”

While I understand the response here, I’m repelled by the larger implications that Gene is apparently missing. He does mitigate this somewhat by suggesting:

“…she did take his freedom — the freedom to be a relatively carefree yet decent 18-year-old, and the freedom to have a family that he in some meaningful sense chose to have. And that is indeed something to feel outraged, and full of pity, about.”

But again, he’s pointing only at the individuals in the spotlight, and by my read seems to be suggesting… Perhaps unintentionally… That other than those in the spotlight, this was a ‘victimless crime’. I’ve always considered this phrase to be over used, given that there are damned few really victimless crimes…So I use it advisedly here, but it imparts the concept well, I think.

This was not a victimless crime… There are a number of others hurt by this as well. We should perhaps recall that she already had a husband and a family. What of their lives being ripped up by this action?  What of the parents of the then 12 year old, who now have this elephant in their living room for the remainder of their lives?

And what of the kids, themselves? I’m trying to imagine myself as such a kid, and what they would go through in life. I cannot.

There are just so many things wrong with this whole situation, I find it offensive that we limit our vocal objections to this, to those directly in the spotlight. As with most actions involving immoral behavior… ‘victimless crimes’ if you will… There are many more people being hurt here than just the ones you can see. And that hurt is very real.

It also interests me that the social left is apparently confused and so has been mostly silent on all of this.

I have no solid answers here, but I am concerned; What has Letourneau done to our society as a whole by forcing this situation on us?  And perhaps a larger issue; What have we done to our society as a whole by our rather confused societal response to her? What kind of precedent has this set for our future?

James Frederick Dwight of soxblog comes up with a gem today. (Wait… Soxblog? As in he’s a Bston redsox fan? Hmmm… he’s from the Boston area, I’d guess…. this oughta be interesting…)

” if Kerry is so bright, where has he been hiding his allegedly fearsome intellect? Does “I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it” sound like the workings of a brilliant mind?”

Read it and it’s followup, too.

McQ over at Q&O suggests John Kerry is about ready to go after the Swift Boat Vets for Truth that are telling about his ‘nam service. (I’ll bet you didn’t even know Kerry was in Vietnam, huh?)

McQ suggests that:

“…the tact may be to claim they’re actually embittered Republicans, disreputable, and one of them may have caused a massacre. Hmmm. If that’s the defense, then I don’t see it being that effective in terms of a rebuttal. The group includes his chain of command, his peers, a crew member and even the doctor that treated his first wound. Pretty diverse and inclusive.”

And to go after them on those grounds raises serious issues about the vets backing him… particularly, in my view, the vets he’s dragged out that didn’t serve with him, and who to a man are all Democrats, and many of them are Democrat leaders in their respective areas of the country. “…If the DNC goes after these guys, it will serve only to highlight the actual number of swift boat vets who oppose Kerry, which, apparently, is the vast majority of them…”

And Dale Franks pipes in:

“…If the DNC goes after these guys, it will serve only to highlight the actual number of swift boat vets who oppose Kerry, which, apparently, is the vast majority of them…”

The botom line here is Kerry cannot answer these charges without looking bitter, petty and a backstabber. If he doesn’t answer these charges, he loooks like an opportunist, a coward, and a liar.

Either way, call it “type casting.”

Update: Watch this vid to see what Kerry’s up against. (WMP only… sorry…. I don’t make ’em, I just link ’em.)

Backcountry Conservative is following a story about 350 miles down the road from us here.

“FBI agents raided an Albany, N.Y., mosque early Thursday, arresting two men who were allegedly trying to launder money so they could buy shoulder-fired missiles.
The men are identified as Yassim Muhhidin Aref, 34, the Imam of the Majid Al Salam mosque and Mohammed Mosharref Hoosain, 49, founder of the mosque. ”

I have a freind in Albany radio, and will be checking this today, if I can get ahold of him.

WorldNetDaily: Illinois dream matchup: Keyes v. Obama

I’ve seen chatter about this the last few days. I figure the Democrats thought they had the district in the bag after doing the deed on Ryan.

(Am I alone, or did it seema bit odd that this Obama flake shows up as the new darling of the Democrats within days of Ryan pulling out because of dirty politics?)

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see what happens when Ambassodor Keyes comes in to debate Obama. I’m thinking of starting a pool for how long it takes for the charge of ‘Tom’ and ‘house niggar’ to start being heard.

Oh, speaking of which, if you want an example of such… if you want to see how ugly Democrats can get when a well informed well spoken black man challanges their authority over what a Genuine black is, check out Larry Elder’s column this morning. Elder certainly is that, and so is Keyes. The styles are different, but the message is remakably similar… and so is the reaction from the leftists, I expect.