Monthly Archives: September 2004

Bush Caught in Blatant Lie. No One Cares?

Posted on September 20, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Someone please explain this to me. Usually GW Bush speeches are artfully concocted creations that sound like they say one thing (e.g. Saddam was in bed with Al Qaeda), but in fact when you parse them carefully don't actually lie as such. (Disclaimer: does not apply to uses of economic statistics, where the M.O. is to accurately quote transparently concocted statistics.)

But yesterday GW Bush said something quite plainly false. Look at this article in the Manchester Union Leader, referenced in Dan's latest column:

The President said, as he has in the past, that after flying more than 570 hours in the Guard, he asked permission to work on a political campaign. “I was granted permission by my superiors,” he said. “I did everything they asked me to do and met my requirements and was honorably discharged. I’m proud of my service in the Guard.

We all know that the claim that “I did everything they asked me to do” is false. “They” asked Lt. Bush to take a physical. In fact, if the Guard followed its routine, they almost certainly ordered him to. And he didn't.

This incident demonstrates the major reason why the issue of 30-year-ago National Guard service is relevant today. Not because someone pulled strings in order to put some poor person's kid at risk in Vietnam instead of Jr. Not because Bush gamed the system to get out of flying just when his unit was going to a genuine mission to patrol US airspace. Not because the ill-minded of the world speculate that substance abuse lead to his being grounded, and meant he would have flunked the physical. Not because someone falsified the official records to record credits that were never actually earned. Nor even because the records were later sanitized to remove the critical separation codes that would tell us something about what really happened.

No. The reason this incident matters most is because GWB still can't come clean about it. And that sort of stubborn denial of facts is digging us deeper into holes in Iraq and at home.

But you know all this. Everyone knows all this. So the question I want explained to me is this: Why is it that when Dan Rather unwittingly albeit negligently tells a lie, everyone gets excited. But when the GOP candidate for President tells a lie knowingly and with malice aforethought…no one calls him on it?

Posted in Politics: US: GW Bush Scandals | 15 Comments

A Year Already?

Posted on September 19, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Depending how you count, I've been blogging for a year now. The first post, such as it was, is dated Sept. 15, but I started in earnest on the 20th. And I still think that one of the early posts was one of the best; it certainly hit the kind of issues I ended up blogging most about. (My eldest son, however, says that this one is the best of the early posts and maybe all time.)

I had thought when I began to take part in the life of the mind working out loud. There hasn’t been all that much of that here; my academic work tends to stay on academic pages where I can go on at sufficient length to be as precise as I feel a need to be. Instead, this blog ended up far more political than I originally imagined it would be. There's a reason for this.

I find it shocking and horrible that anyone running the government, anyone running the Justice Department, could argue for torturing prisoners of war, or any other class of person.

I find it frightening that anyone running the government, anyone running the Justice Department, could even entertain arguments that US Citizens should be held in solitary confinement, indefinitely, without charges or access to court and counsel. The assertion of this power strikes at the hear of our democracy. It is in my view many steps down the road to serious, genuine, good-old-fashioned tyranny, with or without raising the almost distracting issue of whether this is some nascent form of fascism.

(And the bankrupt-America policies of this administration, with many mainstream economists predicting a crash of the dollar or other economic disaster unless we change our policies doesn’t make me feel all that great either. Especially when I think about the political developments that often tend to follow an economic crisis.)

So, one reason I’ve kept on doing this is that I don’t want to look back in twenty years and discover that during the crunch time I was the modern equivalent of a ‘good German’—busy with the demands of family and career while ‘the great experiment,’ the USA, went down the tubes around me. Even bearing witness against these trends serves, I hope, in some small way to begin to roll them back.

As for the rest, it's part archive of interesting things, part sharing. The mix seems to work for some people. Your civil comments, public or private, are always welcome.

Continue reading →

Posted in Discourse.net | 10 Comments

Make Way for the Kamelopedia

Posted on September 19, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Oh how Borges would have loved the Kamelopedia. The English-language version of this online user-contributed dictionary defines German as follows:

A German is the counterpart of a Gerwoman. The Germans are a very clever people, having discovered the Kamel. They are very similar to the Americamelian people, which is to say very friendly and kind when they are not in a mood to take over the world. In Germany there are no palm trees.

What's going on? Joi Ito (who got it from Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales) explains:

Kamelopedia, originally a German parody of Wikipedia, has launched in English. Kamelopedia uses the same MediaWiki software that Wikipedia uses, but it is a joke encyclopedia based on puns and mistakes. Wikipedia has an english language description of Kamelopedia. I just signed up, but I'm not sure which is more fun… trying to be funny, or writing in the Wikipedia deadpan tone about something that is funny. (I'm working on this style on the Stealth Disco article.) There is also the Wikipedia Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense page.

Posted in Internet | Comments Off on Make Way for the Kamelopedia

I Hate It When She’s Right (II)

Posted on September 19, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Dowd scores again. Op-Ed Columnist: No Stars, Just Cuffs shows that the Bushies have no class and no decency.

While I don't oppose a draft in all circumstances, I do not want my sons drafted if they are going to be sent to fight Bush's wars of choice rather than fights of real necessity. And there are credible rumors that Syria or Iran are next.

Posted in Politics: US: GW Bush Scandals | 3 Comments

If the Left Blogs Were as On-Message As the Right Blogs…

Posted on September 18, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

If the left-leaning blogs were as on-message as the right-leaning blogs, in the next few days you would be hearing a vast echo-chamber effect from this Gadflyer post, about GW Bush, Girlie Man.

By next weekend, you would hear questions based on it on your TV pundit shows.

A few days after this, the obvious wimpish implications of draft-dodging, cheerleading at Yale, and question-dodging would be standard watercooler stuff.

But in fact, Democrats are not organized (pace Will Rodgers), they fail to understand that if you repeat something often enough it becomes taken as true, and they don't own TV networks.

So it probably won't happen.

Even though, oddly enough (and the implications drawn from male cheerleading excepted), I'm in broad agreement with the Gadflyer article's basic thesis: Bush is frit. That's why, for example, he won't face questions from a representative public. That's why he's running away from the second debate, where he might have to face real, unscripted, people rather than the milquetoasts we have for journalists.

More tellingly, that's why we have this idiotic color-coding system for terror warnings that never goes down. Bush & Co. are terrified that they'll get blamed for being asleep at the switch again for the next terror attack, having been asleep at the switches for 9/11. As a result, rather than take the stiff upper lip approach used by the British government in light of IRA terror — an attitude in which the whole country more or less shrugged off the constant bombs, our government here in the US encourages public panic. The fact that 'security theater' and other silly and expensive actions which don't do much good are constant victories for the terrorists is less important than the paramount need felt by a certain type of moral cowards: the need to avoid blame at all costs.

John Kerry got near the edge of this with his speech recently about the pass-the-buck administration, the excuse presidency: never wrong, never responsible, never to blame, but it's really deeper than that.

OK. Now I probably deserve my induction into the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill.

Posted in Politics: US: 2004 Election | 4 Comments

Navy Won’t Investigate Kerry Medals

Posted on September 17, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Boy, the Telegraph sure screwed up its report on this one:

Reuters.com: The U.S. Navy has rejected a legal watchdog group's request to open an investigation into military awards given to Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry during the Vietnam War, saying his medals were properly approved.

“Our examination found that existing documentation regarding the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart medals indicates the awards approval process was properly followed,” the Navy's inspector general, Vice Admiral Ronald Route, said in a memo written to Navy Secretary Gordon England.

“In particular, the senior officers who awarded the medals were properly delegated authority to do so. In addition we found that they correctly followed the procedures in place at the time for approving these awards.”

In rejecting the request for an investigation made by Judicial Watch last month, Route said that “conducting any additional review regarding events that took place over thirty years ago would not be productive.”

That's for sure.

Update: More of the same from AP.

Posted in Politics: US: 2004 Election | 4 Comments