Mystery Surrounds Kerry’s Navy Discharge

The New York Sun is asking questions….

Did John Kerry get a Dishonorable Discharge that was only reversed under the Clinton administration?

It’s about time someone actually investigated this.
Perhaps now we better understand why Kerry wouldn’t release his military records.

Mickey Kaus points out that

Kerry’s no-tax-increase-for-people-making-less-than-$200,000 pledge on Friday was more significant, in terms of boxing Kerry in should he win, than has been reflected in the press coverage. USAT’s Walter Shapiro points this out:

“Now that the Democratic nominee is so locked in, every discussion of the budget deficit, tax reform, Social Security or Medicare in a Kerry White House will pivot around the pledge.”

What these guys seem to forget is the linkage to Bill Clinton. About half of Kerry’s hand-picked staff is Bill Clinton alums, so I’m amazed nobody’s made this connection.

I mean, let’s go back to 1992. Bill Clinton has just spent nearly a year promising tax breaks. Remember what happned? Before the echo from his taking the oath of office had died, the tax breaks for the middle class…. tax breaks significantly like what John Kerry is promising today, suddenly were dead meat. Remember the whine we heard? “I tried, I realy did”…  Remember? His seat wasn’t warm yet, before his tax breaks pledge was revealed as a lie.

Explain to me how we can trust John Kerry any more with these promises than we could with Bill Clinton.

Dick Morris this morning, on Kamp Kerry’s view of the war on terror: They think it’s not a war.

“They see the war on Iraq as a diversion from this essentially criminal-justice function and the disruption of our relations with Germany, Russia and France as extremely bad news for a battle against terror that must rely on police activities of these three essential nations.
The fundamental flaw: This approach fails to recognize that terrorist gangs are only truly capable of mayhem when they’re aligned with nation-states, able to use a government’s resources to spread destruction globally.
This combination of nations and gangs doesn’t need weapons of mass destruction to be potent. They managed to knock down the Twin Towers and plunge the world into recession with only small knives and box-cutters.
Without government allies, terrorists are a threat on the level of drug cartels or organized crime. They can terrorize a local area, make profits, assassinate local officials and kill the occasional police officer – but they can’t knock down buildings or throw the world into turmoil. “

Morris goes on, then to complete the thought I started the other night in this space… thatsuch policy as Kerry is pushing for now is exactly how we got 9/11 in the first place.

“Shortly after 9/11, Leon Furth, Al Gore’s chief national-security adviser, warned against attacking Iraq and urged a law-enforcement approach to terror in language almost identical to Holbrooke’s and Kerry’s. The same misguided mindset characterized the Clinton administration’s core thinking on terror — that is, the “defense” that paved the way for 9/11. It is fundamentally, deeply and unalterably wrong. “

But, watch Kerry dance around this issue in the next several days. Think, now… You and I both know that the failure that led to 9/11 is the 9/10 mentality that John Kerry is now pushing. The question becomes, can we get Kerry to react to that reality? Will the west survive that reality with Kery at the Helm?

I doubt it.

John Fund at the WSJ looks at the rash of Democrat Party thugery

CNSNews.com Publishes Iraqi Intelligence Docs — 10/11/2004

These docs seems to support the Intel we got prior to our invasion of Iraq. Do you suppose this will come up tonight?

I’ve not ommented on this flat-out-weird assertion by John Kerry about how Terorism is merely a nuisance, for a few reasons. First, because I was out on the road when this stuff broke, and didn’t note it until I got back, and by that time, everyone and their brother-in-law’s cat had done a fair-job of bitchslapping Kerry over it.

Secondly, because the remark seemed so obviously and foundationally STUPID as to not require a comment from or anyone else.

In this morning’s tour of the net usuals, however, I found James Lileks had made them all out as slackers:(I’ll leave my usual habit of putting the whole quote in ital off for a moment, because I want you to read it the way he formatted it)

A nuisance?

A nuisance?  I don’t want the definition of success of terrorism to be “it isn’t on the rise.” I want the definition of success to be “free democratic states in the Middle East and the cessation of support of those governments and fascist states we haven’t gotten around to kicking in the ass yet.” I want the definition of success to mean a free Lebanon and free Iran and a Saudi Arabia that realizes there’s no point in funding the fundies. An Egypt that stops pouring out the Jew-hatred as a form of political novacaine to keep the citizens from turning their ire on their own government. I want the definition of success to mean that Europe takes a stand against the Islamicist radicals in their midst before the Wahabbi poison is the only acceptable strain on the continent.  Mosquito bites are a nuisance. Cable outages are a nuisance. Someone shooting up a school in Montana or California or Maine on behalf of the brave martyrs of Fallujah isn’t a nuisance. It’s war.

But that’s not the key phrase. This matters: We have to get back to the place we were.

But when we were there we were blind. When we were there we losing. When we were there we died. We have to get back to the place we were. We have to get back to 9/10? We have to get back to the place we were. So we can go through it all again? We have to get back to the place we were. And forget all we’ve learned and done? We have to get back to the place we were. No. I don’t want to go back there.  Planes into towers. That changed the terms. I am remarkably disinterested in returning to a place where such things are unimaginable. Where our nighmares are their dreams.

We have to get back to the place we were.

No. We have to go the place where they are.

And that, my freinds, is the key to the whole issue of Kerry’s “plan” for Iraq… this is the point about all of this he simply cannot bring himself to understand… what we did needed to be done.

Kerry is basicly promising us a return to the blind bumbling of the Clinton misadministration… and the problem with that is that Clinton’s policies broought us to the point of 9/11’s attacks.

And Kerry has yet to understand that.

Illinois Leader:

“Yesterday John Edwards said, ‘When John Kerry is the president people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk again!’ implying that Christopher Reeve could have been helped by embryonic stem cell research. “

Well, now isn’t THIS a target rich environment?

Well, the Fact of course, are different.

But it sure SOUNDED good, huh?

I was encouraged by the Nobel Prize for econoomics being awarded to Edward Prescot, who teahces at Arizona State University, and is a Researcher at the Federal Reserve.

I was thrilled when Prescott made a recent appearence on CNBC, saying in part that Bush’s tax cuts were not large enough… an argument that runs exactly opposite that of the Democrats.

Read the above link, and ask yourself; Do you suppose this situation will help the President, given that the next debate will take place at the self-same Arizona State?

Scott Novell at TCS:

“KABUL – It was a regrettably typical comment from an American reporter in this part of the world. ‘At least it’s news,’ he said of the Afghan election scuffle over the weekend. ‘Otherwise, this is just a success story.’

God forbid it be a success story.

But that’s what it was here, no matter how hard the international media tried to spin it. There were no car bombs raining body parts all over the polling stations. There were no last-minute assassinations. There were no drive-by shootings. The best they could come up with for ‘news’ was grumbling from hopelessly trailing opposition candidates about washable ink and threats of a boycott. The media’s disappointment was palpable.”

And doesn’t that just say it all? The press WANTS failure for Bush and the US in the middle east. All of which explains why the massive successes in Afghanistan were met with a large yawn.

Can’t be seen calling what Mr. Bush did a success, can we?

Reiters is screaming about oil over $54/bl at the moment.

If I’m an investor, I’m shorting this stuff. Think; What happens next month when the Gulf of Mexico platforms come back online, and the bottom drops out? There’s other factors, too, such as a stike in Norway which will be settled momentarily, and will be online within the week.

This is short term, Gang.

The AP is running a story about Franks this morning

“Franks, former commander of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, faulted Kerry’s votes on major weapons systems and intelligence issues, and against the 1991 Gulf War.

“If his voting record ruled the day, Saddam Hussein would not only be running Iraq but Kuwait,” Franks told about 200 people Sunday at a Reno rally.

“The choice is very, very clear. We need decisive, strong, no-backing-down and no-equivocating leadership,” he said.

Franks praised the Democratic challenger’s military service during the Vietnam War, but said Kerry’s later anti-war activities upset him.

“The men I served with in Vietnam weren’t war criminals and I’m proud I served with them,” Franks said.

Nice to have you in the fight, General.

Boortz asks a good question this morning;

“I’m going to have much more to say on this in just a few days, but to what extent do you think those who decided to fight for independence from England, or our forefathers who wrote the Declaration of Independence worried about passing some sort of a “global test” before they acted?”

Boortz goes on to point up that we did have a completely different class of people in 1776. A fair enough example of this was George Washington who, in his farewell address, warned us about alliences, yes, the very ones which John Kerry would have us bow to.  On the whole, I’ll take George Washington’s view on this matter.

Boortz though points up another.

“When this country was formed you couldn’t find 10 people on the continent who thought that it was the responsibility of the federal government to provide them with job or a health care.

Know this … transport today’s average American back to 1776 and the Revolutionary War would never have happened.”

And wouldn’t that make the French of today happy?

Consider these points as we move up to the final president debate. The President isn’t perfect. But my read of Washington puts him in direct opposition to John Kerry’s politics.

Including the part about honor.

The Seattle Times: :

“Offices that house President Bush’s re-election campaign in Spokane were broken into and vandalized last night, the latest in a string of crimes at Republican offices across the country”

Ah, yes. The Democrat Brownshirts Continue their wave of intimidation.

That’s the question for this week’s BitsBit

…and I see the problem with the technorati script.
I’m working on it.
And my BITS BIT of the week will be up this morning…