September 29, 2004
PRINCIPLED LEADERSHIP
"It's always the children's fault, isn't it, Seymour?" John Kerry continues his compelling impersonation of excuse-prone fellow Vietnam veteran Seymour Skinner.
UPDATE. Mark Steyn:
Posted by Tim Blair at September 29, 2004 04:59 PMIf it weren’t for the small matter of the war for civilization, I’d find it hard to resist a Kerry Presidency. Groucho Marx once observed that an audience will laugh at an actress playing an old lady pretending to fall downstairs, but, for a professional comic to laugh, it has to be a real old lady. That’s how I feel about the Kerry campaign. For the professional political analyst, watching Mondale or Dukakis or Howard Dean stuck in the part of the guy who falls downstairs is never very satisfying: they’re average, unexceptional fellows whom circumstances have conspired to transform into walking disasters. But Senator Kerry was made for the role, a vain thin-skinned droning blueblood with an indestructible sense of his own status but none at all of his own ridiculousness. If Karl Rove had labored for a decade to produce a walking parody of the contemporary Democratic Party’s remoteness, condescension, sense of entitlement, public evasiveness and tortured relationship with military matters, he couldn’t have improved on John F Kerry.
Blaming his aides? Shonky indeed, but it's not like John Howard's never done it.
Posted by: Karl at September 29, 2004 at 07:18 PMTim's not talking about Howard or Latham, he's talking about John Kerry.
Posted by: david at September 29, 2004 at 08:09 PMDid everyone see that CBS has got hoaxed again? This time over the bogus "Bush will reinstate the draft" issue.
Seriously, a thousand monkeys with a thousand IBM selectrics couldn't run an organisation this ineptly.
Posted by: Quentin George at September 29, 2004 at 10:27 PMIs it just me, or is there a whiff of an accusation from the Kerrys that Outdoor Life manufactured the quotes? Read the linked NY Times story and tell me I'm insane.
Posted by: Brian Jones at September 29, 2004 at 10:57 PMOK, Brian, anything to please - I read the linked NY Times story, and you are insane.
But not wrong, I think.
BTW, why do you want people to call you insane? Working on some kind of medical or legal claim, or something?
Posted by: Parker at September 29, 2004 at 11:51 PM"Senator John Kerry's campaign said yesterday that Mr. Kerry did not own a Chinese assault rifle, as he was quoted as saying in Outdoor Life magazine, but a single-bolt-action military rifle"
A "single-bolt-action" rifle? Hee-hee. I love when Dems and/or reporters try to talk about guns. It's like chicks trying to talk about football.
"blaming aides who filled out the magazine's questionnaire on his behalf for the error."
Of course.
"Michael Meehan, a spokesman for the campaign, said Mr. Kerry... owns...the rifle, which Mr. Meehan said Mr. Kerry "keeps as a relic" and had never fired."
A version of "I didn't inhale" - "I have a gun, but I never shot it." I can believe that, though, since it's Kerry we're talking about - he wrestled it away from a VC in hand-to-hand combat and beat him to death with it. That's how he got his Croix de Guerre.
"Mr. Kerry "got it from a friend"
Yeah, that's what I told my mom about the pot.
"My favorite gun is the M-16 that saved my life and that of my crew in Vietnam," said Mr. Kerry"
Oh, great. Now Johnny single-handedly saved his crew with his M-16. Jesus Christ, Sgt. Rock with his Tommy gun has nothing on this stud.
"four pages that included many long, conversational answers using first-person pronouns, Mr. Meehan said Mr. Kerry's portions were written by his staff."
Well, that's actually believable. His staff knows him better than anybody, so they'd have no trouble impersonating his vainglorious pompousness.
I'm not surprised about the bolt action/assault rifle mix-up. Dems think _everything_ is an assault weapon.
I just hope Arch-whats-his-name isn't reading this. The poor dear would be going fetal with all this gun talk.
Posted by: Dave S. at September 30, 2004 at 01:44 AMWHich is it:
Senator John Kerry's campaign said yesterday that Mr. Kerry did not own a Chinese assault rifle,
or
Michael Meehan, a spokesman for the campaign, said Mr. Kerry... owns...the rifle, which Mr. Meehan said Mr. Kerry "keeps as a relic" and had never fired."
Both of these statements cannot be true.
Both of these statements cannot be true.
They can be in Kerry's Oompa-Loompa Land.
Posted by: Robert Crawford at September 30, 2004 at 02:06 AMBoth of these statements cannot be true.
"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Alice in Wonderland.
Well, all military rifles have a bolt that requires action to reload. Some are manual, some are automatic (gas or recoil). And there any such rifle has only one bolt.
So I suppose, with extreme nuance, one could say that any assualt rifle might be described as a "single bolt action rifle".
But I would have a hard time keeping my face straight.
Posted by: The Real JeffS at September 30, 2004 at 11:46 AMDavid, I think I understand when Tim's talking about John Kerry and when he's talking about Mark Latham. My point was that no matter how much Howard has blamed aides and advisor's Tim would never mention it because he thinks the man's a god and isn't afraid to wear his bias on his sleeve. Sure, there's political bias in every media outlet these days, but I'm here and commenting on Tim at this moment. A real alternative media would put the heat on everyone - no favours.
And thanks for stating the obvious.
Posted by: Karl at September 30, 2004 at 03:05 PMKeep to the subject Karl. Any more off-topic posts will simply be removed, as will any subsequent complaints about your "dissent" being "censored." If you'd like to know why you've been singled out, it's because you've been a real pissant so far.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at October 1, 2004 at 02:01 AM