KATHY KINSLEY survived the hurricane. Follow the link for a status report.
Archive for 2004
August 16, 2004
MARK WHITTINGTON has thoughts on the Kerry space policy.
BLOGGER ARTHUR CHRENKOFF is in the Wall Street Journal today.
DANIEL DREZNER is applying Kerry-like nuance. And it’s working!
UPDATE: And Hugh Hewitt’s latest blog post was inspired by Atrios! And it’s working, too. . . .
JESSE WALKER NOTES THE CHAVEZ SPIN, pro- and anti-. Meanwhile you might want to check out some Venezuelan blogs, here, here, and here.
TOMMY FRANKS’ NEW BOOK, AMERICAN SOLDIER, IS NUMBER ONE on the New York Times bestseller list, but it’s not getting a lot of attention. Max Boot explains:
It is a good read, thanks to the work of veteran ghostwriter Malcolm McConnell; the early sections on Franks’s blue-collar upbringing and Vietnam service are particularly affecting. But it has not made as much of a media splash as some other accounts of the administration, because it is not hostile to George W. Bush.
To the contrary, American Soldier rebuts some criticisms directed against the president. Bush has been accused, for instance, of taking his eye off Afghanistan by ordering the plan for a possible war with Iraq in the fall of 2001. Franks writes that, given the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, this was a sensible request, and that “our mission in Afghanistan never suffered” as a result.
Scores of pundits have accused the administration of lying, or at least distorting the evidence, about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. But Franks reveals that the leaders of Egypt and Jordan told him that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons. Though no weapon of mass destruction was ever found, he writes, “I do not regret my role in disarming Iraq and removing its Baathist regime.”
Another charge made against the administration is that political appointees failed to give the generals enough troops in either Afghanistan or Iraq. In fact, Franks writes, it was his own choice to employ limited forces in order to avoid getting bogged down. Instead of relying on sheer size, he thought surprise and speed were the keys to victory — a judgment largely vindicated by events.
I hate to buy into a theory as seemingly simplistic and cynical as “if it makes Bush look good, it’ll be buried” — but I can’t deny its explanatory power.
UPDATE: Thoughts from a bookseller on this phenomenon.
SOME THOUGHTS ON WORLD WAR IV, in Commentary.
LET’S HOPE THIS STORY PANS OUT: Thin film fuel cells may make fossil fuel-burning electric plants obsolete.
I DON’T DO THAT MUCH ECONO-BLOGGING or business-blogging here at InstaPundit. But you can get loads of both at The Carnival of the Capitalists, which is up for this week over at The Frozen North. Check it out!
The Kerry campaign has needlessly distorted the stem cell issue — there is no “far-reaching ban on stem cell research” as this official campaign press release claims. Private companies are free to conduct whatever research they wish using stem cells, just not with federal funds. Still, the bottom line political lesson here is that Americans strongly support medical research that they believe could someday help them or their loved ones. After November, Bush and his supporters may have plenty of time to reflect on this fact.
I tend to doubt that stem cells will swing the election. On the other hand, the Democrats seem to feel otherwise.
UPDATE: Here’s a link-filled roundup of stem cell news.
“BAND OF BROTHERS” UPDATE: Reports that David Alston, who stood up with Kerry at the DNC, never served with Kerry are not true, according to Byron York: the two served together for at least seven days, and perhaps as long as two weeks.
As I learned in college, you can form a very intense relationship in that time.
UPDATE: Related comments here.
IN PLACE OF HIS USUAL COVERAGE, Jeff Soyer is looking at media reporting on Olympic shooting sports, and finds it surprisingly good.
There is a real story in the personal and family tragedy surrounding James McGreevey’s decision to resign as New Jersey’s governor on Thursday. There’s also a story in the difficulties of someone being gay and holding high public office. But the bigger story here isn’t about Mr. McGreevey. It’s about how the elites of a major state, one with the nation’s second-highest per capita income and one of its most educated and skilled work forces, have allowed it to be so poorly governed by both parties over a span of decades.
There does seem to be a problem.
Last Wednesday Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan sent me a statement saying that “During John Kerry’s service in Vietnam, many times he was on or near the Cambodian border and on one occasion crossed into Cambodia. . . . On December 24, 1968 Lieutenant John Kerry and his crew were on patrol in the watery borders between Vietnam and Cambodia deep in enemy territory.” I asked for clarification as to whether the “one occasion” was Christmas Eve 1968. “No,” was the reply.
“Watery borders” is something of an evasion, intended to imply that Mr. Kerry’s “seared” memory might have been easily confused. But according to both the maps and the testimony of swift vets, the Mekong doesn’t run along the Cambodian border but bisects it, such that the coincidence between the two is obvious. In any case, Mr. Kerry’s own journal, as cited in Douglas Brinkley’s biography, records him being 50-some miles from the border at Sa Dec on that day contemplating visions of “sugar plums.”
Does this matter? Well, if President Bush was found to be using tall tales from his National Guard days to justify his policies in the war on terror it would certainly attract some attention. So the would-be commander in chief can hardly complain of being subject to scrutiny, especially since he’s joined in criticism of Mr. Bush’s war record and made his own a campaign centerpiece. Never mind the anti-Kerry swiftees. So far the veteran whose testimony is doing John Kerry the most damage is . . . John Kerry.
Jim Wooten has more thoughts, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
UPDATE: Comparisons of how the media treated the Bush/AWOL claims with the non-coverage of the Cambodia story — even after the Kerry campaign has admitted its falsity — can be found here and here. The double standard is pretty amazing.
LESSONS FROM GOOGLE’S IPO TROUBLES: “The experience of Google shows that investors are keeping their eyes on metrics like earnings, revenue, margins and market share.”
D’oh! How am I going to get rich off the InstaPundit IPO if they persist in looking at things like those? If only it were still 1999. . . .
THE BELMONT CLUB PREDICTS:
Two taboos are about to fall in the coming days. The first is the protective mantle conferred by one of the holiest Shrines in Islam upon those within. The second is the guaranteed access of the Western press to the battlefield.
Read the whole thing.
ANOTHER FAILURE for campaign finance law. I’m surprised that this one has gotten so little attention, though.