This thread self-destructs on 3 November 2004

[Force]

Putting your rowboat up against the aircraft carrier and rowing your hardest is an apt analogy, not for a vision of futility, but rather my mind immediately envisioned hundreds of people in rowboats pushing an aircraft carrier aground.

They've convinced the great mass of voters that their vote either doesn't matter or that if they vote for a 3rd party candidate that they're giving up the chance to make a difference in an essentially 2 party election.

I'm with you Samtzu, I will be voting for Nader rather than one of the two sides of the same skull and bones face Bush or Kerry. The whole campaigning drama is a farce on the level of pro wrestling. "We have better hair...". Sheesh. Why doesn't he just come right out and say, "I'm taking a dive, let's see how funny I can make it look..."

Rather than voting for the parties that have sold us out to big business for years and years, why the hell wouldn't you vote for a 3rd party candidate? Voting for Bush or Kerry is basically tantamount to saying; "I'm voting for the further demise of the American public, I'm voting for government to continue to tax me to death and give my money to the rich, and I'm voting in general to keep on being buttfucked the way I have been my whole life." Voting for ANYONE else says; "I see what's going on, and I don't like it."

It's also a good idea if for no other reason than to alert the clueless that these goofs propped up as the best we can do for a commander in chief are really fucking stupid.

I mean really, are there no FDR's left in the world? No Abraham Lincolns? No JFK's? Something stinks when the two most powerful political parties in the world can't put forth any better candidates than these two fuckups.

[Simply Joel]

I concur with the post above, yet I won't be voting for Nader.

and... You don't need rowboats, you need a massive writing campaign of.... not only what you are against, but also what you are in favor of and how to get it.

[Magikal]

I mean really, are there no FDR's left in the world? No Abraham Lincolns? No JFK's? Something stinks when the two most powerful political parties in the world can't put forth any better candidates than these two fuckups.

I can certainly agree with that. While the actual theories of the guilty parties abound, I think it's generally pretty well accepted that you have no chance of winning one of the two major parties' endorsement unless you wear the leash of the monied interests from both sides of the aisle. And, frankly, you have no chance of winning the presidency unless you are the nominee of one of the two major parties (third party candidates don't win, period). As others have observed, there's no more than a thimbles' worth of difference between the two parties, consisting of little more than a different color of paint on the same ol' thing. F'rinstance, both sides support illegal immigration; the right for cheap labor, the left for sure votes.

More than FDR or JFK, I sure would like to see another Theodore Roosevelt. Now there was a man who had acomplisments outside of the political arena, whom you could admire as a man as well as commander-in-chief.

But of course today, a man like that who actually had a backbone, would never get the nomination of either party.

[samtzu]

Magikal wrote:

More than FDR or JFK, I sure would like to see another Theodore Roosevelt. Now there was a man who had acomplisments outside of the political arena, whom you could admire as a man as well as commander-in-chief.

But of course today, a man like that who actually had a backbone, would never get the nomination of either party.

Actually, a man like that will wind up dying on a hotel kitchen floor with a bullet in the back of his head (miss ya', Bobby)

Still, I hate to sing that same old song, but removing the electoral college and making it possible for Third (and fourth, fifth, etc.) parties to have a realistic expectation of winning, would go a long way towards turning the U.S. back into what it once had dreams of becoming: i.e. a beacon for the rest of the world, instead of a pillar of black smoke, like it is now.

[samtzu]

Magikal wrote:

More than FDR or JFK, I sure would like to see another Theodore Roosevelt. Now there was a man who had acomplisments outside of the political arena, whom you could admire as a man as well as commander-in-chief.

But of course today, a man like that who actually had a backbone, would never get the nomination of either party.

Actually, a man like that will wind up dying on a hotel kitchen floor with a bullet in the back of his head (miss ya', Bobby)

Still, I hate to sing that same old song, but removing the electoral college and making it possible for Third (and fourth, fifth, etc.) parties to have a realistic expectation of winning, would go a long way towards turning the U.S. back into what it once had dreams of becoming: i.e. a beacon for the rest of the world, instead of a pillar of black smoke, like it is now.

[samtzu]

I hate this stuttering posts shit....

[Simply Joel]

I hate this stuttering posts shit....

I would suggest patience... but what the hell do I know about patience.

and now... another reminder of our own all too soon demise...

Funk Singer Rick James Dies at Age 56

LOS ANGELES - Funk legend Rick James, best known for the 1981 hit "Super Freak" before his career disintegrated amid drug use and violence that sent him to prison, died Friday. He was 56.

James died in his sleep at his residence near Universal City, said publicist Sujata Murthy. James lived alone and was found dead by his personal assistant, who notified police, she said.

Police and Murthy believe James died of natural causes. The exact cause has not immediately released.

"There'll be an autopsy and we'll find that out shortly," Murthy said.

Publicist Maureen O'Connor, speaking on behalf of James' three children, said they believed he died of heart failure.

"He passed away peacefully in his sleep," O'Connor said.

"I think he was really fantastic, he was a creator," singer Little Richard told MSNBC.

"He made a lot of people happy, he made a lot of friends and a lot of people got famous through his music," he said, referring to sampling by hip-hop artists such as MC Hammer, who used the "Super Freak" bass line in his hit "U Can't Touch This."

The song earned James and Hammer the Grammy for best R&B song in 1990.

"Today the world mourns a musician and performer of the funkiest kind," said Neil Portnow, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. "Grammy winner Rick James was a singer, songwriter and producer whose performances were always as dynamic as his personality. The `Super Freak' of funk will be missed."

James had hit songs and albums from the 1970s into the '80s, but by the following decade his fame began to fade as he became embroiled in legal problems and health troubles.

James was convicted in 1993 of assaulting two women. The first attack occurred in 1991 when he restrained and burned a young woman with a hot pipe during a cocaine binge at his house in West Hollywood. He was free on bail when the second assault occurred in 1992 in James' hotel room.

James served more than two years in Folsom Prison.

In 1997, he released a new album, but a year later he suffered a stroke while performing at Denver's Mammoth Events Center, derailing a comeback tour.

In 1998 he also underwent hip replacement surgery.

James was born James A. Johnson Jr. in Buffalo, N.Y. He had long been reported to have been born in 1952, but according to his Web site and police he was born on Feb. 1, 1948.

James went to work for Motown in the 1970s and got the chance to record an album, "Come and Get It," which was released in 1978 and produced the hit "You and I." He followed with "Bustin' out of L Seven," which had a hit with the single "Bustin' Out," and another popular LP, "Fire it Up."

His hits in 1980 included the album "Garden of Love" and the singles "Fool on the Street," "Love Gun," "Come into My Life," and "Big Time." The following year came the well-received album "Street Songs" and the hits "Give It to Me Baby" and "Super Freak."

After a decade at Motown, James left the label as the sexually graphic themes of his music conflicted with the company's conservative approach to pop music.

"They never totally understood what I was trying to do, where I was trying to come from with my music," he said in a 1988 interview with The Associated Press. "For the whole 10 years, it was a constant battle in me trying to acquaint them with what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it."

At the time he said he had freed himself from a cocaine addiction that threatened his life.

"There was a bad period in my life some years ago when I got into a serious cocaine habit; $10,000 to $15,000 a week," he said. "I didn't really see it. My lawyers and my accountants and friends really saw it before I did. They saw that my usage of coke was getting to be a million-dollar-a-year habit. I didn't see it until I went into rehab and I didn't understand it until I got out."

James said he got caught up in living the "bad boy" persona he had cultivated.

"There was a time where I was just trying to live the image wholeheartedly; I wasn't thinking about the person, James Johnson," he said. "I mean, Rick James was just a man-made image, the image I created. Just trying to live Rick James almost killed me."

James was not married, Murthy said. He is survived by daughter Ty, sons Rick Jr. and Tazman, and granddaughters Jasmine and Charisma.

[Magikal]

Funk Singer Rick James Dies at Age 56

Aah, yeah, I heard about that. Too bad, that was some really good tunage. I really admire people who can entertain, and you can hardly deny there are a lot worse things you can do with your time. Hitler was a portrait painter, and a rather good one, if not spectacular. Too bad he didn't stick with it.

Still, I hate to sing that same old song, but removing the electoral college and making it possible for Third (and fourth, fifth, etc.) parties to have a realistic expectation of winning, would go a long way towards turning the U.S. back into what it once had dreams of becoming: i.e. a beacon for the rest of the world, instead of a pillar of black smoke, like it is now.

Samtzu, I've seen you saying that a couple of times now. As you are doubtless aware, the EC was set up by the founding fathers, hardly fans of barring the "little people" from the electoral process. Are you saying the system has been hi-jacked lo these later years by the "monied interests" (for lack of a better identifier), or that the system is intrinsically flawed and was from the start? Certainly, if someone outside the two main parties were to receive 50%+ of the vote, they would win the presidency, and I don't think anyone could/would argue it. That it would happen roughly when hell froze over doesn't detract from that (hey, the Eagles got back together). Do you honestly think ditching the EC would really make a rats' posterior to the process? If a truly viable 3rd party candidate, a FDR or a JFK or a TR were to show up as an independant, instead of a nasely, large-eared, erm, PERSON like Ross Perot, I don't think you could restrain the enthusiasm of the voters, EC or no.

Even tho we both know he'd likely catch a bullet to the back of the head...

[Simply Joel]

August 7, 2004

Selling the Sizzle
By DAVID BROOKS

We've got 43 million people without health insurance. We're relying on energy sources that are politically dangerous and economically unsustainable. Wage growth is not what it should be, and yesterday's jobs numbers suggest that strong economic growth may not be producing strong job growth. Would it be illegal in these circumstances for at least one presidential candidate to propose policies remotely in proportion to the problems that confront us?

Apparently so. John Kerry and the Democrats spent their convention talking about broad values like unity and military service and almost no time talking about specific proposals. And if you peek in at a Bush campaign event, it's like a traveling road show of proper emotions. Bush will remind the crowd of the feelings we all experienced on Sept. 11. Then there will be several paragraphs on the importance of loving thy neighbor, and several minutes spent reciting the accomplishments of Term 1.

No offense, but where's the beef?

Kerry at least has a reputation for caution. It's not surprising that his policies are orthodox Democratic ideas. Bush's hallmark is boldness, but when it comes to laying out an agenda for the second term, he has been remarkably timid.

He's dropped hints over the past eight months that he is about to unveil a second-term agenda (for those of us waiting, this has been the longest striptease act in human history). But even the ideas that are bandied about are mostly small.

Yes, community colleges should get a little more help. Yes, flextime is a good idea. Yes, high schools should be held accountable. But this is not exactly the New Deal or the New Frontier. It's more like the New Minor Modifications of Existing Programs.

Maybe there is a bold tax reform plan in the offing, but so far I'm able to control my excitement.

I suspect there are several reasons the administration has not yet communicated an exciting second-term agenda. First, many people in the administration are so consumed by the war that domestic policy no longer gets their juices flowing. Second, with the high deficits, there's no money for ambitious programs, and fiscal conservatives don't want to hear about huge new programs anyway.

Third, in an age of polarized parity, a new policy direction is risky. You might alienate a necessary part of your coalition. Finally, the consultants like campaigns that stress "themes" and "visions" because they test so well in focus groups.

But this year that's politically crazy. This year the people who can be won over by visions and values have already decided. Most of the people who are undecided don't care about politics. They don't care about politicians. They're asking, What are you going to do to solve my problems? What are you going to do for me?

The sad thing is that while the candidates have been talking about broad values and modest policies, there are exciting new ideas floating around. For example, people in the health care industry are talking about an essay Michael Porter and Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg wrote in the June Harvard Business Review.

Porter and Teisberg argue that the current health care system encourages competition at the wrong level - among health plans, networks and hospital groups - which just leads to zero-sum cost shifting. It should occur at the level of individual treatment, which would encourage not shifting costs, but improving value.

The argument takes awhile to unfold, but here are two people taking a fresh look at a seemingly intractable problem. Similarly, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, recently gave a speech at the National Press Club outlining an ambitious health care reform plan.

Frist set out a clear goal, that "all Americans should have the security of lifelong affordable access to health care." He embraced some guiding principles, that the system should be consumer-driven, etc. Then he laid out six policy proposals, including "Healthy Mae" organizations (which would be like Fannie Mae to share insurance risks) and setting up tax-free health I.R.A.'s for old-age costs.

Frist, Porter and Teisberg remind us that it's possible to envision bold departures from the status quo, a spirit missing so far on the campaign trail.

People used to complain that selling a president was like selling a bar of soap. But when you buy soap, at least you get the soap. In this campaign you just get two guys telling you that they really value cleanliness.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[samtzu]

Magikal wrote:

Certainly, if someone outside the two main parties were to receive 50%+ of the vote, they would win the presidency, and I don't think anyone could/would argue it.

Actually, in a three party race, that figure could be as low as 33%. Under the present system (Electoral College) winning with only 33% of the vote is almost impossible, although winning with only 48-49% is possible if your brother if Governor of Florida.

[Simply Joel]

August 9, 2004

Arabs on the Verge of Democracy
By DANIELLE PLETKA

Washington — Early last month, John Kerry devoted 11 days to fleshing out his foreign policy priorities. Promoting democracy in the Middle East, he made clear, will not be high on his agenda. Sadly, Mr. Kerry's decision could not have come at a worse moment. For the first time in half a century, democracy is the talk of the Arab world.

Mr. Kerry has not been specific about many of his goals, but one thing he's gone out of his way to advertise is his distaste for pushing reform at the expense of "stability" in the Middle East. Sure, he's in favor of democracy in principle, but not as the centerpiece of his foreign policy agenda. "Realism," in the fashion of Metternich and Kissinger, is his guiding light, Mr. Kerry told The New Yorker.

In this respect, Mr. Kerry echoes President George H. W. Bush and even his own father, Richard Kerry, a diplomat who once criticized the Reagan administration's "fatal error of seeing U.S. security as dependent on illusions of propagating democracy" in the Soviet bloc.

Such "realism," of course, was anything but. It failed to appreciate the real forces and opportunities at work in the world. The same is true today. The initial reviews of the current President Bush's push for reform in the Middle East may have been harsh, especially from the region's entrenched powers. Yet in the last few months, the debate, once confined to émigré papers published in London or Paris, has suddenly bubbled up onto the pages of the state-controlled press in the Arab world.

And what about the argument that democracy can't be "imposed" from the outside? That counsel of despair was knocked out of the park by the Palestinian scholar Daoud Kuttab, who wrote in the London-based Arabic daily Al Hayat that "Arab democrats have failed to reach their goals through their own efforts" and should welcome support from outside "irrespective of the messenger." Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian Nobel laureate, went even further in Al Ahram, Egypt's main daily newspaper, warning that postponing reform would be "playing with fire."

Mr. Kerry and his surrogates, meanwhile, worry about change that comes "too quickly" and breeds "violence and repression," in the words of an old Kerry hand from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jonathan Winer.

Arab democrats and their supporters abroad, however, might respond that the Arab world is hardly short of violence and repression as things now stand, and change that comes too slowly might prove the biggest danger. Indeed, the fruits of "stability" are hard to find in the latest Arab Human Development Report issued by the United Nations Development Program. It describes the Arab Middle East and North Africa as the least politically free region of the world. It also describes a region where 65 million adults are illiterate, almost two-thirds of them women, and where one in five citizens lives on less than $2 a day.

At the same time, Arabs are increasingly exposed to the world through the electronic media, and likely to become more angry and frustrated about their degraded status in a globalizing world economy. You don't have to strain to see such forces at play in the blind rage of Islamic radicals, or to suspect that continued "stability" of the sort that has held the region's politics and economies in stagnation for the last 40 years will only make matters worse.

In theory, the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative rolled out by President Bush at the Group of 8 summit meeting in June is aimed at addressing the roots of terrorism in the Middle East. In fact, the initiative has amounted to little more than a tepid cheer for Arab democracy, and the Bush administration has been less aggressive in following through on its modest proposals than many hoped. If American support for democracy is going to amount to anything, there's a lot more work to be done, especially among the skeptics inside the United States Foreign Service. And if Mr. Bush can't rally his own troops to the cause, he's unlikely to continue making headway overseas.

But make no mistake, he has made headway. Notwithstanding the administration's modest approach, democracy is now at the center of debate in Arab capitals. And while some in the United States continue to insist that Arab democracy is the fantasy of a discredited cabal in Washington, an effort to avoid what they assert should be America's only priority - resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - Arab intellectuals don't necessarily agree. The director of Egypt's Al Ahram center for Political and Strategic Studies, Abdel Monem Said, took the issue on himself. "Making reform and human rights contingent upon resolving the Palestinian problem," he said, "confirms what the American neo-cons are saying, that the political regimes harming human rights are using the Palestinian problem in order to divert glances from their own behavior."

It's not 1989 in the Middle East, and a series of velvet revolutions aren't on tap for the immediate future. But the intellectual firepower that underlies any such revolution is growing; the region is in the throes of genuine pro-democratic ferment. And governments have taken note, admittedly in their own half-hearted fashion. The Arab League has embraced a series of self-serving reforms; the Saudis have announced plans for municipal elections starting in November; and the Bahrainis and Qataris are making real changes to their political systems.

Ferment is not change, but Mr. Kerry and his advisers may be kidding themselves that an incipient upheaval can be turned off just by Washington whistling another tune. More likely, without change, the United States will face one collapsing dictatorship after another and an instability much greater and more threatening than any that would come from an aggressive American push for democracy. Mr. Kerry would be wiser to try to see the world as it is - and realize that hoping the United States can impose an unchanging "stability" on the Arab world may be the greatest unrealism of all.

Danielle Pletka is vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Simply Joel]

THE NEW WAR HAWK

By William F. Buckley Jr.

Six months ago I ventured in this space that the Democratic position on the war in Iraq was the single most critical question in U.S. politics. The statement made on Monday by John Kerry is the climactic event in this matter. Senator Kerry said that notwithstanding all that is known now, whatever have been the developments in the past year, if he had it to do again, he'd vote as he did: in favor of giving the president the power he requested, before going on to wage war in Iraq.

Kerry made this faintly more tolerable to the anti-war segment by saying that he was pleading, after all, a point of constitutional rectitude: The president should have the power inherent in his role as commander in chief. Kerry did not trouble to ponder what it is the Constitution was talking about when it said that only Congress could declare war. Never mind; we don't declare wars any more, we just fight.

But outstanding in political meaning was less what Kerry said about standing by his vote than what he said about the long-term commitment we have undertaken. Surely he would pledge to reduce our troops in Iraq by next summer, even if he wasn't prepared to simply call them home, as Democratic contender Howard Dean had demanded.

Well, here is how Kerry put it: "I believe if you do the kind of alliance-building that is available to us, that it is appropriate to have a goal of reducing our troops over that period of time. Obviously we have to see how events unfold."

Indeed. How events unfold. What events?

Here is where Kerry underwrote the Iraq venture in terms extraordinarily comprehensive. "The measurement has to be, as I've said all along, the stability of Iraq, the ability to have the elections, and the training and transformation of the Iraqi security force itself." Get from your paper supplier the thinnest sheet in the inventory, and you won't succeed in wedging it between the Republican and the Democratic position on the nature of our strategic objectives in Iraq.

This is reassuring, by most lights. The nation is at war; it is comforting that both political parties support the war. What is astonishing is that the entire vector of U.S. politics is here affected. The Democratic Party, through its leaders, has expressed itself with progressive force against the Iraq war. It was certainly expected that Democratic challenger John Kerry would pound home his criticisms of President Bush's policies.

Public support for the war has diminished in the 17 months since we went in. This reflects the absence of the weapons of mass destruction, the disaffection of some of our allies, the intransigence of the insurgents, and the mounting fatalities. The approval of the war has reduced from 73 percent early on to about 49 percent, and the dynamics of democratic government would suggest that the Democratic challenger would proceed, if not to deconstruct the war, at least to criticize the conduct of it and the assumptions associated with it.

Mr. Kerry is saying that our commitments continue until democratic elections in Iraq are held. This is a dream, though not, we like to think, extravagant. The New York Times has published an update on concrete questions, from which we learn that there is bad news (the insurgents have risen from 5,000 in April to 20,000 today), but that estimates of support for the new Iraqi government are at 68 percent, and 80 percent of Iraqis believe that life will improve under the new government. Already there is an increase in oil production and in electricity.

It is an honorable thing for John Kerry to do, to associate himself so fully with the whole Iraq enterprise. Mr. Bush can take satisfaction from that endorsement, and critics of the war will have to exert themselves in other ways than merely to support the election of John Kerry.

[cowboyangel]

I'll take the greet n' meet instead for 10 rocky....Joel..........
you are weird dude.....in a nice way

[Simply Joel]

I'll take the greet n' meet instead for 10 rocky....Joel..........
you are weird dude.....in a nice way

All this nice-ness... nauseates me.

[buckethead alien]

Hey, Joel how's this: Good fucking morning! Now hurry up with my pancakes!

[DVD Burner]

All this nice-ness... nauseates me.

well then get back to fucking work.

[Simply Joel]

Hey, Joel how's this: Good fucking morning! Now hurry up with my pancakes!

For everyone's clarification... I actually understand the statement above.

DVD, I am at work....

[Simply Joel]

BROTHERS BAND TOGETHER AGAINST KERRY

Democrats haven't been this upset about an American engaging in free speech since Juanita Broaddrick opened her yap.
Two hundred fifty-four Swift Boat Veterans have signed a letter saying John Kerry is not fit to be commander in chief, a point developed in some detail in the blockbuster new book by John O'Neill, aptly titled "Unfit for Command." At the 2003 reunion of Swift Boat Veterans, about 300 men showed up: 85 percent of them think Kerry is unfit to be president. (On the bright side, Kerry was voted, in absentia, "Most Likely to Run for President on His Phony War Record.") Fewer than 10 percent of all Swift Boat Veterans contacted refused to sign the letter.

Kerry was in Vietnam for only four months, which, coincidentally, is less than the combined airtime he's spent talking about it. It takes a special kind of person to get that many people to hate your guts in so little time. The last time this many people hated one person after only four months was when Margaret Cho had her own sitcom.

But our young Eddie Haskell managed to annoy other servicemen even before he came home and called them war criminals. About 60 eyewitnesses to Kerry's service are cited in the book, describing Kerry fleeing comrades who were under attack, disregarding orders, putting others in danger, sucking up to his commanders, creating phony film footage of his exploits with a home-movie camera, and recommending himself for medals and Purple Hearts in vainglorious reports he wrote himself. (This was apparently before the concept of "fragging" put limits on such behavior.)

After three months of combat, Kerry had collected enough film footage for his political campaigns, so he went home. He even shot three different endings to the episode where he chases down a VC guy after test audiences thought Kerry shooting a wounded teenager in the back was too much of a "downer." After filming his last staged exploit, Kerry reportedly told a buddy, "That's a wrap. See you at the convention in about 35 years."

Kerry is demanding to be made president on the basis of spending four months in Vietnam 35 years ago. And yet the men who know what he did during those four months don't think he's fit to be dogcatcher. That seems newsworthy to me, but I must be wrong since the media have engineered a total blackout of the Swift Boat Veterans.

In May, the Swiftees held a spellbinding press conference in Washington, D.C. In front of a photo being used by the Kerry campaign to tout Kerry's war service, the officers stood up, one by one, pointed to their own faces in the campaign photo, and announced that they believed Kerry unfit for command. Only one officer in the photo supports Kerry for president. Seventeen say he is not fit to be president.

The press covered it much as they covered Paula Jones' first press conference.

With the media playing their usual role as Truth Commissar for the now-dead Soviet Union, the Swiftees are having to purchase ad time in order to be heard. No Tim Russert interviews, no "Today" show appearances, no New York Times editorials or Vanity Fair hagiographies for these heretics against the liberal religion. The only way Swift Boat Veterans for Truth could get less attention would be to go on "Air America" radio.

If the 254 veterans against Kerry got one-tenth as much media coverage for calling Kerry a liar as Clown Joe Wilson did for calling Bush a liar, the veterans wouldn't need to buy ad time to get their message out. (Wilson, you'll recall, was a media darling for six or seven months before being exposed as a fantasist by Senate investigators.)

With their commitment to free speech and a robust exchange of ideas (i.e., "child pornography" and "sedition"), the Democratic National Committee is threatening to sue TV stations that run the Swift Boat Veterans' paid ads. Sue? Can you tell already that there are two lawyers at the top of the Democratic ticket? These are the same people who accuse John Ashcroft of shredding the Bill of Rights. WHY ISN'T THE PRESS COVERING THIS??? Wait, now I remember. OK, never mind. (To contribute to the Swift Boat Veterans go here:

https://coral.he.net/~swiftvet/swift/cc ... =SwiftVets)

The threat to sue is absurd, but will allow the very same TV stations that are already censoring the Swiftees to have an excuse to censor even purchased airtime.

Leave aside the fact that Kerry is a presidential candidate and -- judging by the ads being run against George Bush -- I gather there's nothing you can't say about a presidential candidate, including calling him Hitler. After reading "Unfit for Command," I am pretty sure Kerry doesn't want a neutral tribunal deciding who's telling the truth here.

The Swift Boat Veterans provide detailed accounts from dozens and dozens of eyewitnesses to Kerry's Uriah Heep-like behavior -- which "Unfit for Command" contrasts with Kerry's boastful descriptions of the exact same incidents.

By contrast, Kerry's supporters have their usual off-the-rack denunciations of any witness against a Democrat. The veterans are: liars, bigots, idiots, politically motivated, and I was never alone in a hotel with Paula Jones.

Ron Brownstein, Los Angeles Times reporter and Bill Clinton's favorite reporter, compared the Swift Boat Veterans' ad to a "snuff film." He claimed the veterans have "strong Republican ties."

Apparently, before being permitted to engage in free speech against Democrats in this country you have to: (1) prove that you are not a Republican, (2) take a vow of poverty, and (3) purchase the right to speak in a TV ad. On the basis of Clown Wilson, Michael Moore, George Soros, Moveon.org, etc., etc., etc., I gather the requirements for engaging in free speech against a Republican are somewhat less rigorous. Hey! Maybe John Edwards is right: There really are two Americas!

O'Neill, the author of "Unfit for Command" and founder of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, can be heard on the Nixon tapes -- unaware that he was being taped -- telling Nixon that he came from a family of Democrats and voted for Hubert Humphrey in the prior election. Unlike Joe Wilson, Anita Hill or Richard Clarke, Woodward and Bernstein, et al., O'Neill has said he will take no royalties on his book but will donate all his profits to the Navy. So I think even under liberals' rules, O'Neill is allowed to have an opinion.

Before the book was released and O'Neill could appear to defend it, liberals were on TV denouncing the book. If memory serves, the last book Democrats tried this hard to suppress was the Bible. The DNC is threatening to sue to prevent the Swift Boat Veterans from buying ad time. When Democrats are this terrified of a book, it's not because they have a good answer. Howard Dean can accuse Ashcroft of book-burning all he wants, but it's the Democrats who are doing everything in their power to prevent you from reading "Unfit for Command." In bookstores beginning this week.

COPYRIGHT 2004 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE

[cowboyangel]

funny we don't see the band of brothers for GW...golly

[Simply Joel]

point taken

[DE FACTO]

this thread should be here only earlier.

[Simply Joel]

this thread should be here only earlier.

self-interests?

[Hulagu270]

this thread should be here only earlier.
_________________
even though...........

[DVD Burner]

So Hulagu270 what's your problem?

[Simply Joel]

Babies and Bath Water
By DAHLIA LITHWICK

Maybe it's just that I'm having too many long talks with my 16-month-old these days, but I find myself sensitive to the language of "daddies" and "dummies." This is the language of toddlerhood; it's not how we should be framing a national conversation about the president.

It cannot have escaped anyone's notice that much of the current Bush-bashing aims to infantilize him. The most devastating segment in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," for instance, features the president - just after he learned of the second attack on the World Trade Center - perched on a chair in a Florida classroom, looking glazed and confused as he listens to a reading of "The Pet Goat." Mr. Bush's aide might well have whispered the news to one of the assembled students to greater effect, and the implication is inescapable: for seven long minutes, the president was Not a Man.

A glance at the top 150 ads selected by MoveOn.org for its recent political advertising contest, "Bush in 30 Seconds," similarly reveals the extent to which childishness is woven into the current Bush-bashing. While children have long been used in political ads to represent the future, many of the MoveOn entries use them to satirize the actual candidate. Several of the proposed anti-Bush commercials use kids to condemn the president for unsophisticated thinking, for an infantile worldview, for the fact that his daddy purchased his every big break and for the fact that he is desperately beholden to the wealthy and powerful grown-ups surrounding him. The clear message is that Bush is more a child than an adult.

What's wrong with continuing efforts to characterize Mr. Bush as a not-particularly-smart third grader? For one thing, it plays to every stereotype of liberals as snotty know-it-alls who think everyone in a red state is anti-intellectual or simple-minded. It answers name-calling from the right with name-calling from the left.

These assertions also insult anyone who voted for Mr. Bush in 2000. Rather than offering an argument for Mr. Kerry, they merely disparage swing voters, who may be tempted to defect to the Democrats over the war or the economy, by sneering that they voted for a kid - and a dumb kid at that.

One of the most enduring memories from the Bush-Gore debates in 2000 was Al Gore, all sighs and eye-rolls, trapped in what must have felt like the middle-school playground fight from hell instead of a presidential debate. Everything about Mr. Gore's demeanor signaled that he felt he was giving a punk kid a much-needed scolding. Which missed the point: a lot of very smart people voted for Mr. Bush in 2000 because to them, he represented a return to honesty and morality. Dismissing him as a stupid child, and these voters as stupid-children-by-association, is no way to win them back.

Furthermore, the campaign to cast Mr. Bush as a bumbling child ignores the very grown-up machine that stands behind him. Infantilizing the president shifts the focus away from the Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Ashcrofts and Wolfowitzes. These are the men who promised us short, easy wars and painless little suspensions of the Geneva Conventions. These are the men of the secret energy-policy meetings. They aren't a bunch of rowdy juveniles. They represent one of the most secretive, powerful administrations in recent memory. Whether the president could outscore your kids on the SAT is a distraction from that fact.

Finally, there is a psychological consequence to labeling the president an incurious frat boy. With each attempt to cast Mr. Bush as a baby, we craft excuses for his childish behaviors. If Mr. Bush misled us into a war in Iraq, it's because children have trouble telling the truth. If Mr. Bush sees the world in too-stark terms, it's because nuanced reasoning isn't easy for children. With each comparison between the president and a youngster, we subtly lower national expectations and exonerate bad behavior.

This election is not a choice between adults and children, and it won't be won or lost with jokes about whether Laura ties the president's shoes each morning before she points him toward the Oval Office. Nothing is gained by offering Mr. Bush even a metaphorical second childhood. Much may be gained by offering our real children a safe and just first one.

Dahlia Lithwick, a senior editor at Slate, is a guest columnist during August.

[Simply Joel]

August 20, 2004
Anarchists Emerge as the Convention's Wild Card
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

Their reputation precedes them.

Self-described anarchists were blamed for inciting the violence in Seattle at a 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in which 500 people were arrested and several businesses damaged. They have been accused by the police of throwing rocks or threatening officers with liquid substances at demonstrations against the Republican convention in Philadelphia in 2000 and at an economic summit meeting in Miami last year.

Now, as the Republican National Convention is about to begin in New York City, the police are bracing for the actions of this loosely aligned and often shadowy group of protesters, and consider them the great unknown factor in whether the demonstrations remain under control or veer toward violence and disorder.

The city is trying everything from giving protesters discount coupons to using an army of police officers to deter violent protests, and police officials said yesterday that they had identified about 60 people as militants, some of whom were arrested for violent acts in past protests.

In a show of force yesterday, the department rolled out its arsenal to show reporters the techniques it is using during convention week.

But even anarchists who are against violence are warning of trouble and admit that they are planning acts of civil disobedience, including blocking intersections, staging "chaos on Broadway'' when the delegates attend Broadway shows on Sunday night, holding a "die-in'' near Madison Square Garden, sneaking into parties and other functions and generally harassing the 4,853 delegates and alternate delegates.

"This is where much of the real business happens, the business of buying and selling our laws to the highest corporate bidder,'' said a message on an Internet discussion list on Tuesday that included the sites of several corporate parties planned during the convention. "Excellent targets for street actions! Please spread the word.''

Jamie Moran, the 30-year-old anarchist from Brooklyn who, with a few colleagues, operates the RNC Not Welcome Web site and discussion list, makes a point of casting himself as the moderate face of the movement. He calls police suggestions that they may be attacked "fear-mongering'' and has urged his fellow anarchists to cast off their dark clothing and body piercings in favor of more conventional attire, if only to blend in better.

Like many anarchists, he disavows violence against people. But things get murkier when it comes to property, particularly property belonging to perceived corporate enemies.

"I never cry over the destruction of corporate property,'' Mr. Moran said in an interview. But "that doesn't always mean it's strategic. It can be indiscriminate and un-strategic.''

Sarah Strombeck, 27, is one self-described anarchist who says she is fed up with the disruptive techniques of her colleagues. She said she was jailed for two weeks after being arrested during a demonstration at the 2000 Republican convention, and says protests have largely been ineffective.

"They cost the movement so much,'' Ms. Strombeck said. "People just get beat up. Some don't want to put the time and effort into community organizing'' advocating for better schools, health care and fair wages.

Part of the difficulty in discerning which ideas floated for disruptions are real and which are not is that the anarchists, a subculture that includes young people disaffected with political parties and graying adherents to a political philosophy at least a century old, are far from a monolithic group. They pride themselves on organizing in collectives and "affinity groups" that operate autonomously and make decisions by consensus, eschewing hierarchy or any whiff of commands from on high.

Chief John Timoney of the Miami police, whose officers scuffled with anarchists during a World Trade Organization meeting last year and in 2000 during the Republican convention when he headed the Philadelphia police, said they pose a number of challenges to the authorities. He said in many cases the violence can be attributed to a small, hardcore band that moves from city to city, instigating violence.

"These guys are pretty sophisticated and just wait for opportunities,'' said Chief Timoney, who as a ranking officer with the New York police confronted anarchist demonstrations during the 1992 Democratic convention. "They are going to look to provoke the cops. It's all a game.''

With an obscenity, he dismissed allegations that his officers needlessly roughed up demonstrators in Miami, saying anarchists and other anti-authoritarians had repeatedly provoked the police.

In Philadelphia, he said, groups of anarchists simply ran down streets, prompting officers to pursue them and creating the impression of chaos. In Miami, he said, they swarmed around officers seeking to arrest troublemakers during otherwise peaceful demonstrations.

Police officials typically send undercover operatives to gatherings of suspected protesters and watch postings on the Internet, but they usually do not know exactly what is planned until the moment it happens. In addition, some of it could be idle chatter or disinformation: Internet plans to throw acid at officers, for example, were not fulfilled in Miami, nor was a plot to damage news media trucks fulfilled at the Democratic National Convention in Boston last month.

"At the end of the day there is too much information,'' he said. "You need be able to decipher the wheat from the chaff and it is not clear. You can't overreact to the Internet because it can be a 16-year-old kid in Chicago mouthing off.''

Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, however, said the police were taking all threats seriously.

"We're taking the wheat as wheat,'' he said, adding that the threat posed by anarchists "is nothing the N.Y.P.D. can't handle.''

Two years ago, at the World Economic Forum in Manhattan, the police thwarted many attempts to disrupt traffic and vandalize property, making 150 arrests and keeping the violence to a minimum. Some protesters said afterward that they had largely given the city a pass in deference to the Sept. 11 attack.

But New York may represent a different challenge given the passions over the war in Iraq and the fact that the city has its own vibrant, if fragmented, anarchist scene.

There are "Anarchist Soccer" games on Sundays in Tompkins Square Park, Anarchist People of Color picnics in Central Park, salons and even a small makeshift bookstore in the East Village called Mayday almost entirely devoted to anarchism.

Definitions vary but most see anti-capitalism as the bedrock of their ideology. They question and disdain authority and hierarchal government as corrupting and intrusive in personal affairs. "Neither slave nor master'' is a common slogan.

Some are zealots; others see anarchism as a way to raise awareness of problems like hunger, greed and materialism.

"My guiding vision is a society without a state, but I am not necessarily a fundamentalist,'' said Meddle Bolger, 29, an anarchist from Sonoma County in California, who has led several San Francisco Bay Area demonstrations as part of Green Bloc, an anarchist group with an environmental bent. He said he is in New York now to take part in the Aug. 31 day of civil disobedience and rehabilitate community gardens in the South Bronx.

Chuck Munson, a 39-year-old anarchist in Kansas who runs the anarchist site infoshop.org, said he has observed more young people, particularly those once drawn to the "do-it-yourself politics'' of the punk movement, drawn to anarchism after the first Persian Gulf war and the fall of the Soviet Union.

After those events, "people saw the traditional radical left as not as relevant any more,'' he said. "I think it opened up interest in anarchism.''

The 1999 Seattle protests, known in anarchist circles as "the battle in Seattle,'' is now seen as a turning point. Many anarchists believe that, despite any sullying of their reputation, it raised awareness of what they consider the evils of global capitalism.

The standard mass marches of chanting slogans and waving signs, they believe, hardly make as forceful a point.

"Direct action gets the goods,'' Mr. Moran, the Brooklynite, said.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Simply Joel]

August 23, 2004
Everybody Loves Obama

In a remote East African village, an old woman in a tin-roof hut spoke recently of "welo mang'eny maok ang'eyo" - that's Luo, her tribal language, for "many strange visitors." Yes, the media have descended on the farm of Sarah Hussein Onyango Obama, the 80-something grandmother of Barack Obama, the new star of the Democratic Party, front-runner for the United States Senate seat from Illinois, the Hawaii-born, Harvard-educated son of a Kenyan and a Kansan. Will she be traveling to her grandson's victory bash in Chicago in November? "If he invites me," she told Reuters.

Obamania is sweeping Kenya. The Kenyan press, rapturous after Mr. Obama's keynote address at the Democratic convention, speculates on a future presidential bid. Parents are naming their newborns Obama, following a tradition to honor great Africans that produced an earlier generation of Kenyans named Lumumba and Nkrumah. Bar patrons in Nairobi reportedly ask for "Obamas" when ordering the barley beer called "Senator," while tribal elders are planning to slaughter bulls for a celebratory feast after the election.

As John F. Kennedy was to Ireland, Mr. Obama is to Kenya, living proof to a nation that its children have it within themselves to achieve great things. The melancholic note is that Kenya itself is no longer a land of opportunity. Heralded a generation ago as a model for post-colonial Africa, Kenya is today locked in a desperate struggle against poverty and corruption.

People of all nations are proud when their kin thrive elsewhere, but for many Kenyans, it must often seem as if elsewhere is the only place to thrive. That accounts in part for Obamania. Kenyans understand, perhaps better than Americans, what Mr. Obama meant when he spoke of "the audacity of hope."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Simply Joel]

A VERY KERRY CHRISTMAS

Some people wondered how long the major media would be willing to ignore the Christmas-in-Cambodia story. Well, the answer is in: at least 10 or 11 days. I first noticed the story Aug. 6 on Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit blog. Soon it was all over the Internet, the conservative press, talk radio and some cable shows. But the networks, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and other major media didn't run the story. Some papers, like The Kansas City Star, got protests from readers on what appeared to be a news blackout.

Finally, after an agonizingly slow response from the Kerry campaign, big media took account of the issue, muffling and burying the story they didn't want to carry in the first place.

The story is simple and by now well known. For 25 years John Kerry has said repeatedly that on Christmas or Christmas Eve of 1968, he took his swift boat into Cambodia on a covert and illegal mission. He said he got shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians or by "our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas." In 1979, Kerry wrote a piece for the Boston Herald noting that "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." Kerry was wrong about Nixon, who was not yet president at the time -- a minor and unimportant slip -- but he said the memory of the Cambodian Christmas "is seared -- seared into me."

The anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth book, "Unfit for Command," argued that Kerry had never been in Cambodia. That charge was easily challenged as partisan. But a book supportive of Kerry and written with his help, Douglas Brinkley's "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War," said Kerry was on patrol 50 miles from the Cambodia border on Christmas Eve 1968 and spent Christmas Day writing journal entries back at his base. As The Washington Times argued in an editorial, all living commanders in Kerry's chain of command denied that Kerry had been in Cambodia, and three of Kerry's swift boat crew denied they or their boat had been in Cambodia during Christmas 1968. Two others refused comment.

Like the issue of President Bush's National Guard service, the Cambodian Christmas story is important only for the light it may shed on a candidate's mind and character. But unlike the Bush story, Kerry's Cambodian story set off no media frenzy. Glenn Reynolds wrote of the big media: "They're damaging themselves as more and more people notice that they're ignoring it." Boston Globe reporter Anne Kornblut was asked to comment on the Cambodian Christmas story on "Meet the Press." She blew off the question, possibly because her paper hadn't yet bothered to report the story.

When the Los Angeles Times finally decided to notice the story, it had an obvious problem: How should it report news it had ignored for 11 days? Simple: Lump it in with Kerry's other Vietnam controversies in a long, boring and indecisive report ("What actually happened about 35 years ago along the remote southern coast of Vietnam remains murky"). And high up in the story, to let readers know that the Times thinks the issue is old, irrelevant and narrowly partisan ("The (anti-Kerry) ad, the book and the people behind them have become staples of conservative talk shows and Internet sites"). Of course, one reason it was a "staple" of conservative media is that the major news media ignored it.

The Times did come up with one nugget of information: An archived Navy report said Kerry's boat destroyed a junk on a beach on Christmas Eve. A coordinate used by the military fixed the site at 40 to 50 miles south of the Cambodian border. This information seemed damaging to Kerry, but the Times helpfully pointed out that the junk incident occurred so early in the day (7 a.m.) that Kerry had plenty of time to take his boat over the Cambodian border before nightfall. Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan offered a slightly different explanation -- Kerry was on or near the Cambodian border on Christmas. This seems like a smooth way of withdrawing the Christmas-in-Cambodia claim.

This is odd. Previously, Kerry was very specific -- it was definitely Christmas or Christmas Eve, and he was 5 miles inside Cambodia, not at or near the border. The event was "seared" into his memory. Perhaps Kerry is vague because he was on a secret mission, but if it was so secret, why did he spend 25 years talking about it?

Perhaps the Christmas in Cambodia was just a self-dramatizing touch that Kerry made up and never expected to get called on. He has said he was heading upriver like Martin Sheen in "Apocalypse Now." An interesting story. It isn't too late for a big-time media outlet to grow curious about it.

COPYRIGHT 2004 JOHN LEO

[Simply Joel]

August 24, 2004

The Vietnam Passion
By DAVID BROOKS

I'm launching a major investigation into whether the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth organization is being secretly financed by the Kerry campaign. For today that organization begins airing ads drawing attention to John Kerry's 1971 testimony against the Vietnam War.

If voters see that testimony, they will see a young man arguing passionately for a cause. They will see a young man willing to take risks and boldly state his beliefs. Whether they agree or not, they will see in John Kerry a man of conviction.

Many young people, who don't have an emotional investment in endlessly refighting the conflicts of the late 1960's, might take a look at that man and decide they like him. They might not realize that man no longer exists.

That conviction politician was still visible as late as the 1980's. When Senator Kerry opposed aid to the contras, or took on Oliver North, he did it with the same forthright fire.

But then in the early 1990's, things began to evolve. First, Kerry relied on his post-Vietnam convictions and ended up casting the vote against the first Iraq war that threatened his political future.

Then the political climate changed. Bill Clinton came to power and suddenly the old Vietnam-era liberalism was no longer in vogue. The future belonged to triangulating New Democrats. Then Newt Gingrich came in and the frame of debate shifted further to the right. John Kerry was now in a position to run for national office - and thus needed to be acceptable to a national constituency.

Kerry's speeches in the 1990's read nothing like that 1971 testimony. The passion is gone. The pompous prevaricator is in. You read them and you see a man so cautiously calculating not to put a foot wrong that he envelops himself in a fog of caveats and equivocations. You see a man losing the ability to think like a normal human being and starting instead to think like an embassy.

Tough decisions are evaded through the construction of pointless distinctions. Hard questions are verbosely straddled. Kerry issued statements endorsing the use of force in the Balkans so full of backdoor caveats you couldn't tell if he was coming or going. He delivered a tough-sounding speech on urban poverty filled with escape clauses he then exploited when the criticism came.

Most people take a certain pride in their own opinions. They feel attached to them as part of who they are. But Kerry can be coldly detached from his views, willing to use, flip or hide them depending on the exigencies of the moment.

For example, on Aug. 1, Kerry told George Stephanopoulos: "I think we can significantly change the deployment of troops, not just [in Iraq] but elsewhere in the world. In the Korean peninsula perhaps, in Europe perhaps."

When Bush went ahead and outlined a plan along those lines, Kerry blasted the president, saying it was reckless to embrace the idea he had endorsed two weeks before.

Even more psychologically corrosive is Kerry's continual suppression of sincere belief. Almost every American has a view about whether this Iraq war is worthwhile or a big mistake - except John Kerry. He's both called himself an antiwar candidate and said he would even today vote for the war resolution. He's either lost the ability to make a clear decision on this central issue, or he thinks it would be imprudent to express a view.

Even on vital, personal matters, he radiates an air of calculated positioning. He now declares that marriage is between a man and a woman, but does anybody think he actually believes this? He's said life begins at conception, but has he ever acted on this profound belief?

All this is odd for a person who is such a child of the 1960's. "Authenticity" was such a big concept then. Nobody would accuse the current John Kerry of that. In fact, the Democratic convention dwelt obsessively on the period in his life when Kerry was authentic, so it could evade the last 20 years of rising inautheticity.

In short, he's not the flaming liberal the Republicans sometimes try to portray. He's not flaming anything. If today's Kerry had been called before that 1971 Senate committee, he would have prudently told the throngs that he was for the goals of the war but against the implementation, for the idea but against the timing, for the troops but against this nuance and that nuance and the other one.

Nobody accomplishes much in politics without consuming ambitions, but sometimes they are changed along the way.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Simply Joel]

Swift Boats And Old Wounds

Tue Aug 24, 1:00 AM ET

By David S. Broder

Will we ever recover from the 1960s?

What's happening with the bitter dispute over John Kerry's role in Vietnam confirms my fears that my generation may never see the day when the baby boomers who came of age in that troubled decade are reconciled sufficiently with each other to lead a united country.

I remember precisely when this premonition of perpetual division first struck me. On Aug. 19, 1992, the third night of the Republican National Convention in Houston, Barbara Bush and Marilyn Quayle were the featured speakers. The first lady praised her husband's fine qualities and Mrs. Quayle turned her fire on the Bill Clinton Democrats, who had just finished their convention in New York.

Through almost gritted teeth, Marilyn Quayle declared that those people in Madison Square Garden, who were claiming the mantle of leadership for a new generation, were usurpers. "Dan and I are members of the baby boom generation, too," she said. "We are all shaped by the times in which we live. I came of age in a time of turbulent social change. Some of it was good, such as civil rights; much of it was questionable."

And then she drew the line that has not been erased: "Remember, not everyone joined in the counterculture. Not everyone demonstrated, dropped out, took drugs, joined in the sexual revolution or dodged the draft. Not everyone concluded that American society was so bad that it had to be radically remade by social revolution. . . . The majority of my generation lived by the credo our parents taught us: We believed in God, in hard work and personal discipline, in our nation's essential goodness, and in the opportunity it promised those willing to work for it. . . . Though we knew some changes needed to be made, we did not believe in destroying America to save it."

When she finished, I turned to my Post colleague Dan Balz, a contemporary of the Clintons and the Quayles, and said, "I suddenly have this vision -- that when you guys reach the nursing homes, you're going to be leaning on your walkers and beating each other with your canes, because you still will not have settled the arguments from the Sixties."

Now it is 12 years later. The United States is at war. It is threatened with terrorist attacks. The economy is under stress. And the presidential campaign has been usurped -- by what? An argument among aging boomers about who did what in Vietnam and in the protests against that war.

The ferocity of the dispute over John Kerry's Vietnam wounds and decorations -- and about his testimony when he decried U.S. atrocities in that war -- is explainable only as the latest outburst of a battle that has been going on now for more than three decades. Neither Kerry nor his critics in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth will yield an inch. On both sides, the unending culture war is as searing as it was when it first burst into flames.

Having lived with that legacy since the start of his political career, Kerry may be judged naive to have thought that Vietnam would be a golden credential for the presidency -- and not an inevitable source of controversy. When he chose to make his Navy combat in Vietnam the principal metaphor for his dedication to public service and the proof of his toughness in a time of terrorism, he might have guessed that the skeptics would not remain silent. In a 2002 conversation, Kerry told me he thought it would be doubly advantageous that "I fought in Vietnam and I also fought against the Vietnam War," apparently not recognizing that some would see far too much political calculation in such a bifurcated record.

John McCain, unlike Kerry, insisted that Vietnam was not the defining experience of his life and refused to build his 2000 presidential campaign on the foundation of his heroism as a POW. He was right to call the attacks on Kerry's combat record dishonest and dishonorable and urge President Bush to disown them.

But the reality is that on both sides of the '60s culture war, the wounds are so deep that they apparently cannot be forgotten or forgiven. Whatever collusion may or may not exist between the Bush campaign and the Swift Boaters, these veterans' disdain for Kerry is as genuine and deeply felt as his resentment of them.

The only thing that will save the country -- and end this breach in its leadership -- is that the boomers are now in their sixties. Another generation will eventually come to power, and the country will finally be spared from constantly refighting these same battles.

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