David Adesnik posts “here”:http://oxblog.blogspot.com/2004_08_15_oxblog_archive.html#109306453754409344 and “here”:http://oxblog.blogspot.com/2004_08_15_oxblog_archive.html#109306102432801244 about the whole Swift Boat Veterans thing. The posts are funny:
I still haven’t gotten to the heart of the matter, which is who is telling the truth, the Vets or the Times. … While it is hard to trust anyone’s memories of events that happened thirty-five years ago, it is extremely hard to trust such memories when they’re coming form individuals who had different memories of the same events quite recently … contemporary records confirm Kerry’s account and Louis Letson, the army doctor who says Kerry lied, admits that “I guess you’ll have to take my word for it” … According to Larry Thurlow, one of the Swift Vets who witnessed the events in question, there was no enemy fire. However, the WaPo recently got a hold of the citation for Thurlow’s Bronze Star (which he won during the same battle). In it, there are multiple reference to enemy fire. … As I said before, *I haven’t come to any firm conclusions about the Swift Vets accusation. My mind is still open* and I’ll be happy to look at further evidence. But so far, things are looking pretty good for John F. Kerry.
Amazing. In his “earlier post”:http://oxblog.blogspot.com/2004_08_15_oxblog_archive.html#109306102432801244 David even chastises those politically naive people who complain that the Ads are being funded by unscrupulous rich Republicans:
But more importantly, who do you expect to fund anti-Kerry attack ads? The College Republicans? No, of course not. It’s going to be rich and well-connected GOP backers who take it on themselves to be the President’s hatchet men.
Sooo, the charges contradict the contemporary written records, they contradict previous statements by the SBV people praising Kerry’s conduct, and hard-headed political observers like Oxblog know the only reason we’re hearing any of these guys is that they’re being financed by “hatchet men” for the Bush campaign. But don’t expect us to make up our mind in favor of Kerry! For exit-strategy purposes, David’s conceding that “things are looking pretty good” for Kerry but still, this is not the time to “come to any firm conclusions.”
Look, if you don’t like Kerry or have no confidence in the New York Times as a news source, or don’t see anything wrong with unsupportable hatchet-jobs, let’s just come out and say it, OK? But honestly — the kind of faux “open-mindedness” that refuses to draw warranted conclusions from the evidence is better left to “the Tortoise and Achilles”:http://www.fecundity.com/pmagnus/achilles.html.
{ 51 comments }
liberal japonicus 08.21.04 at 6:07 pm
This is the kind of open-mindedness where the brain plops in front when you go to tie your shoe, right?
djw 08.21.04 at 6:49 pm
Yes, yes, yes. Nicely done. That all reads like a reductio ad absurdum of centrism, which you see fairly often from both Right-center and Left-Center of the blogosphere. We tend to aplaud the RC version because it’s much nicer and more reasonable than, well, the rest of the right, but we shouldn’t, especially when it’s crazy like that.
kevin donoghue 08.21.04 at 6:55 pm
Are you trying to rush David Adesnik into closing his mind? He says GOP backers “take it on themselves to be the President’s hatchet men†and you jump to the conclusion that they are “hatchet men for the Bush campaign.†But they are not Bush-appointed hatchet men, that’s the thing. They are mavericks whose activities Bush neither condones nor condemns, while deploring all that sort of thing in a general sort of way. (It reminds me a bit of Gerry Adams on the IRA: we must look at deeper causes, dialogue, advancing the process etc. etc.)
I think Josh Marshall has put his finger on it: the point is to show that Kerry isn’t able to look after himself in a brawl. Either he ignores it and looks like a wimp or he gets into a huff about it and looks un-Presidential.
Or he demonstrates that lurking inside every dilemma there is a trilemma, or whatever philosophers call it.
Matt McGrattan 08.21.04 at 6:59 pm
Admittedly my reading of OxBlog is intermittent to say the least — they infuriate me more than any of the more crazily right-wing pundits — but they’ve never struck me as being centrist.
They appear to take a pro-Bush (and pro-Likud) line on almost everything even if it is couched in slightly less strident rhetoric than others of that ilk.
Adesnik’s comments quoted here just seem part of the same process — deeply partisan support for one side of the ‘debate’, even in the face of convincing evidence of wrong-doing or deceit on the part of that group, draped in bipartisan or centrist rhetorical cover.
Barry 08.21.04 at 7:12 pm
Yes. Don’t be confused by reasonable-sounding language, because some unreasonable people know to use it.
David Sucher 08.21.04 at 7:45 pm
People tend to believe what they want to believe; and it’s interesting that the folks who these days seem most devoted to the notion that there are no standards of either behavior or truth — it’s all “a matter of perspective” and whether it makes you “feel good” — are Republicans (I won’t say conservatives because our current day Republivans are hardly conservative.)
Anyway, as to OxBlog, hey! they are very young.
Eric Rasmusen 08.21.04 at 8:00 pm
None of the above mentions that Kerry has actually admitted to one charge: that he lied repeatedly about being in Cambodia. Or, that the Swiftvets claim that Kerry has only selectively released his military records, so the “written record” available to us naturally favors Kerry.
Rob 08.21.04 at 8:21 pm
Thanks to Eric we can continue the idea that there are secret files showing the truth. Thet are right next to Nixon’s secret plan to end the war.
JP 08.21.04 at 9:59 pm
Kieran, why are you getting so unhinged and wild-eyed? If a couple of intellectually dishonest Rhodes scholars annoy you this much, what will you do when the mullahs come after you? Clearly, your opinion on political matters can’t be trusted.
susie q 08.21.04 at 10:03 pm
Hey, they might be young, but is that a good enough reason for them to be so insufferably smug so often?? And as someone else here has said, they cloak their partisan rhetoric in reasonable-sounding clap trap. … hmm… little Karl Roves in training??
Thank you Kieran.
russkie 08.21.04 at 10:06 pm
Tom Maguire at http://justoneminute.typepad.com is the source that’s making the most serious attempt to evaluate the Swiftie claims for truthfulness. He was the first AFAIK to get to the bottom of the Cambodia stuff.
Can anyone really claim that the media would be treating the Swifties in the same way as they are if it was Bush that they were slamming?
Jim Urquhart 08.21.04 at 10:06 pm
(and pro-Likud) line
What the fuck does Ariel Sharon’s party have to do with the Swift Boat propagandists (at least one of whom was quoted mouthing some vile anti-semitic crap about Kerry)? Oh, I see… Adesnik is Jewish (I’m guessing), so it’s simply cherchez Israël, eh?
russkie 08.21.04 at 10:07 pm
Tom Maguire at http://justoneminute.typepad.com is the source that’s making the most serious attempt to evaluate the Swiftie claims for truthfulness. He was the first AFAIK to get to the bottom of the Cambodia stuff.
Can anyone really claim that the media would be treating the Swifties in the same way as they are if it was Bush that they were slamming?
Neil Sinhababu 08.21.04 at 10:26 pm
If it was Bush they were slamming, they probably wouldn’t have any play in the mainstream media. I rank these stories at about the same level as the “Bush used cocaine” rumors, which the mainstream press never ran with.
Phill 08.21.04 at 10:37 pm
There is a lot of evidence that suggests Bush took drugs, like the fact that he refuses to deny taking drugs at all but did deny taking them in the past 14 years.
It might just be me, but do other folk also suspect that maybe the point of sending so many National Guard members off to Iraq was to mislead people into thinking that Bush did not join the Texas air national guard to avoid Vietnam?
Bush is planting these smears to hide the fact that he has a yellow streak all the way down his back. In time of need he read My Pet Goat. He does not even dare face any audience that is not made up of pre-selected toadies.
Steve 08.22.04 at 1:43 am
Lots of people ignore the “obvious.”
Consider: http://hammorabi.blogspot.com/
What he thinks is obvious many others do not.
As for Kerry, I’ll bet the unreleased parts of the record don’t add anything.
Michael Murphy 08.22.04 at 1:54 am
“Bush is planting these smears to hide the fact that he has a yellow streak all the way down his back.”
Just so I understand. You actually believe that Bush is personally making up the contents of the swiftboaters’ story? Bush is personally “planting” these stories?
JP 08.22.04 at 2:06 am
Just so I understand. You actually believe that Bush is personally making up the contents of the swiftboaters’ story? Bush is personally “planting†these stories?
No, you dishonest, idiotic troll, his campaign staff made up the stories and is disseminating them with Bush’s knowledge and approval. Do you think we can’t see you trying to distort the issue here from a mile away?
JP 08.22.04 at 2:07 am
Just so I understand. You actually believe that Bush is personally making up the contents of the swiftboaters’ story? Bush is personally “planting†these stories?
No, you dishonest, idiotic troll, his campaign staff made up the stories and is disseminating them with Bush’s knowledge and approval. Do you think we can’t see you trying to distort the issue here from a mile away?
Zizka 08.22.04 at 4:26 am
Elsewhere I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of the “unreleased Kerry records” question. After about 5 queries, Troll Al said that the WaPo had filed to get them. No link, no date.
Troll Al has no idea what is in those records, but he mentions them about 3 times per thread in tones of high indignation. Pure Fishing expedition. One poster believes that the records not released are actually posted on Kerry’s site, but WaPo wants originals.
There’s a loony symmetry to troll allegations. As I said elsewhere, if Bush is ever accused of torturing a helpless armadillo, we’ll almost immediately hear that Kerry may once have tortured a helpless groundhog.
There are a lot of specific records which Bush has not released.
roger 08.22.04 at 6:07 am
It is very hard to have sympathy for John Kerry in this fight. By trying to pin his presidential campaign on the idea that he was a hero of the Vietnam war, a sort of Audrey Murphey we’d never heard of before, but suddenly discovered, at sixty, sitting in the Senate — he made himself absurd. Surely someone should have winced about his daughter actually calling him a hero in that awful speech to the convention. What he really needs to do is shuck the hero crap. Instead of treating the offense here as consisting simply in the fact that he was attacked — it does seem that Kerry assumes that any attack on him, per se, is a bad thing, a case of lese majeste at which we should all be properly shocked — he needs to get down with the two hundred fifty years of dirty politics in American history and say, hey, that’s how the system works — and then treat this as a providential occasion to escape the fatal heroic posture and make himself out to be a common soldier whose medals were secondary to the job he did. The contrast to the job Bush did at the same time is the right note. He’s allowed himself to be backed into a position of quid pro quo with the Bushies — in exchange for withdrawing their diry ad, Kerry will agree not to make an issue of Bush’s non-existent record. That’s what comes from framing everything in procedural terms — Kerry’s seeming compulsion — you tend to create unfavorable outcomes. If this were a normal election, this whole thing would be hilarious. This isn’t about whether dirty politics is right or not — it is about whether you can use it or not. Kerry should apply one of those testosterone patches Andrew Sullivan uses, and go down the low road. He might even find that it is fun.
The man does seem like a complete goose. Alas, he’s our only hope in this election.
roger 08.22.04 at 6:09 am
It is very hard to have sympathy for John Kerry in this fight. By trying to pin his presidential campaign on the idea that he was a hero of the Vietnam war, a sort of Audrey Murphey we’d never heard of before, but suddenly discovered, at sixty, sitting in the Senate — he made himself absurd. Surely someone should have winced about his daughter actually calling him a hero in that awful speech to the convention. What he really needs to do is shuck the hero crap. Instead of treating the offense here as consisting simply in the fact that he was attacked — it does seem that Kerry assumes that any attack on him, per se, is a bad thing, a case of lese majeste at which we should all be properly shocked — he needs to get down with the two hundred fifty years of dirty politics in American history and say, hey, that’s how the system works — and then treat this as a providential occasion to escape the fatal heroic posture and make himself out to be a common soldier whose medals were secondary to the job he did. The contrast to the job Bush did at the same time is the right note. He’s allowed himself to be backed into a position of quid pro quo with the Bushies — in exchange for withdrawing their diry ad, Kerry will agree not to make an issue of Bush’s non-existent record. That’s what comes from framing everything in procedural terms — Kerry’s seeming compulsion — you tend to create unfavorable outcomes. If this were a normal election, this whole thing would be hilarious. This isn’t about whether dirty politics is right or not — it is about whether you can use it or not. Kerry should apply one of those testosterone patches Andrew Sullivan uses, and go down the low road. He might even find that it is fun.
The man does seem like a complete goose. Alas, he’s our only hope in this election.
Kimmitt 08.22.04 at 6:29 am
They are mavericks whose activities Bush neither condones nor condemns,
Well, no, his campaign is actively promoting them.
Nic 08.22.04 at 7:07 am
a sort of Audrey Murphey
Well, sort of. That’s Audie Murphy.
we’d never heard of before, but suddenly discovered, at sixty, sitting in the Senate
You’d never heard of before, Roger.
escape the fatal heroic posture and make himself out to be a common soldier whose medals were secondary to the job he did.
Like he chucked those medals over the Vietnam Memorial to escape the fatal heroic posture and make himself out to be a common soldier whose medals were secondary to the job he did.
bad Jim 08.22.04 at 9:22 am
The second attack on Kerry from his former “fellow veterans” focuses on his work for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, accusing him of stabbing America in the back by telling the truth in wartime, that terrible things were being done by his fellow soldiers, which they were doing then as they are being done now.
His line, “How can you ask a soldier to be the last to die for a lie?” sounds just as good now as it did thirty years ago, which is even worse.
Motoko Kusanagi 08.22.04 at 10:18 am
His line, “How can you ask a soldier to be the last to die for a lie?” sounds just as good now as it did thirty years ago…
Unfortunately Kerry seems to be unaware of this. BTW, didn’t the coward say “mistake” rather than “lie”?
bad Jim 08.22.04 at 11:14 am
“Lie” seems to fit the bill, no matter who waves it about.
Russkie 08.22.04 at 11:48 am
Can someone suggest a serious left-leaning site where there are honest attempts to evaluate the Swiftees’s claims and the Kerry camp’s counterclaims?
If they’re willing to talk about “Cambodia” (even if it’s just to dismiss the whole thing as irrelevant), that’s a real plus.
I’m afraid that if I speak my mind here I’ll be blackballed and never get tenure.
Matt McGrattan 08.22.04 at 12:12 pm
Jim Urquhart wrote:
“‘(and pro-Likud) line’
What the fuck does Ariel Sharon’s party have to do with the Swift Boat propagandists (at least one of whom was quoted mouthing some vile anti-semitic crap about Kerry)? Oh, I see… Adesnik is Jewish (I’m guessing), so it’s simply cherchez Israël, eh?”
The pro-Likud comment had nothing to do with the Swift Boat veterans controversy. I was making a general point about the views expressed on OxBlog. Their sympathies in many of the comments on their blog clearly lie with the Bush side in the US (rather than the Democrat side) and with the pro-Sharon/Likud side in Israel (rather than any of the Israeli left or centrist parties or opposition groups).
To the extent that their views consistently support one particular side their bipartisan or centrist rhetoric is just that – rhetoric.
If you read what I wrote rather than going looking for anti-Semitism that isn’t there you’ll see that my whole post is about OxBlog in general with a comment about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth episode tacked on at the end with the comment that it’s part of the same general process.
[I don’t know why I’m even explaining myself here …]
KCinDC 08.22.04 at 3:15 pm
Roger: If you think this garbage is just run-of-the-mill negative campaigning, and something to emulate, consider what the media reaction would have been to a similar attack by the Clinton campaign against Bob Dole in 1996 (see Atrios). Republicans get a free pass from the media on making these attacks; Democrats don’t.
Jim Urquhart 08.22.04 at 3:25 pm
Matt McGrattan,
I read (and quoted) exactly what you wrote. If the reference to Israel had nothing to do with the Swift Boat propagandists, then it had no business being in your comment. It stuck out like a very sore thumb. The OxBloggers have positions on many matters I disagree with, but, unlike you, I don’t feel the urge to raise them impertinently.
Russkie 08.22.04 at 3:46 pm
>Republicans get a free pass from
>the media on making these attacks;
>Democrats don?t.
How does your assertion square with the fact that both the NYTimes and WaPo have, from the get go, spun the Swiftee accusations as if they were obviously baseless partisan attacks?
To say nothing of the fact that both papers ignored to whole issue of Kerry’s “amplifications” about Cambodia.
geeno 08.22.04 at 4:06 pm
Because, russkie, they ARE obviously baseless partisan attacks. ALL extant documentation AND the previous statements of the not-so-swifties themselves contradict the Scum Bag Liars for Bush. There ARE people closely connected to Bush and Rove and even one of Bush/Cheney’04’s senior campaign officials involved with the SBV”T” and Republican party sites around the country are soliciting for them and advertising local appearances by the swifties. A clear 527 violation that Kerry has already filed with Federal Election Commission. They’re a front for the Bushies and they’re lying through their teeth.
As for Cambodia, Kerry has said he doesn’t really know for sure if he was in Cambodia on Xmas eve – they didn’t have big “Welcome to Cambodia” signs on the Mekong, and may have confused that time with a subsequent mission into Cambodia. Kerry admits his memory of events 35 years ago may shaky. OOOOO – he’s clearly unfit. Christ! Is that the best you can do?
roger 08.22.04 at 4:23 pm
kcindc, Really, who cares if it gets a free pass from the press or not? Because the Republicans are the establishment, they get a free pass, as you say, from the press. So be it. Any campaign that is afraid of the press is going to spend its time dancing around them, to its detriment.
Nic, the comment “You’d never heard of before, Roger,” with me presumably snoozing through the last thirty years of American history, doesn’t really make much sociological sense. Brinkley’s book about Kerry came out thirty some years after the events in Vietnam. If you were asked about John Kerry in 1980, would you have said oh, the Vietnam War hero? No. Would you have said it in 1990? Honestly? Roger’s ignorance, here, isn’t the peculiarity of an intellectual slob — no, it has been shared by the mass of the blissfully ignorant population.
As for the medal tossing – hooray for Kerry. To bad that wasn’t emphasized in any part of his campaign so far. It does show, however, that he is capable of making the move I describe. Hope he does it.
Matt McGrattan 08.22.04 at 5:06 pm
Jim – I tried to take this to email but your email addressed bounced.
Anyway, all I really have to say is this:
My intention in mentioning Likud and Bush in the same context was to illustrate that the OxBlog guys consistently take positions on the political right. These stood out as examples since, inevitably, given that the main subjects for discussion on OxBlog are the US political scene, the Middle East conflict and the war on Iraq these are the ways in which any political ‘bias’ on the part of the OxBloggers will become clear.
Incidentally I think it’s perfectly OK for them to take a pro-Bush and/or pro-Likud position I just don’t think it’s fair to characterize anyone taking such a position as a political centrist or bipartisan since both parties occupy – in their different political contexts – the right end of the political spectrum.
If their subject matter had been different then I might have chosen other examples. If, for example, they had written a great deal about the UK domestic political scene and had consistently aligned themselves with the Conservative party then I might have written “pro-Bush (and pro-Tory)”. You can choose to believe what I say here or not but I can assure you I am being sincere.
moriveth 08.22.04 at 7:22 pm
Thus spake Jim Urquhart:
If the reference to Israel had nothing to do with the Swift Boat propagandists, then it had no business being in your comment. It stuck out like a very sore thumb.
Jim, you appear to suffer from some lobotomized right-wing PC notion that one should not mention Israel even in a neutral context. Or perhaps you believe this here intar-net thingie is your personal debate class.
The mention of Likud that so offends your delicate sensibilities clearly supports Matt’s point about the Oxbloggers’ thinly-veiled partisanship. Your insinuation of anti-Semitism, by contrast, is truly out of line.
howard 08.22.04 at 7:48 pm
Roger, good grief: John Kerry has been known for being the decorated soldier who turned against the war since 1971. Yes, i would have known it any year since then, and so would anyone else who pays attention to politics. (As a side note, we’ve also known john o’neill since then as well, and one of the strongest arguments against the swifties in the first place is why o’neill and colson wouldn’t have used the “he didn’t deserve his medals” line back in 1971, when they were first trying to discredit kerry?)
Nor is it a reasonable approximation of reality to say that kerry’s campaign is about his war service. His war service is an important indicator (just as bush’s lack of service is an indicator, too): his campaign is about rolling back tax cuts above $200K to fund intelligent expansions of health care coverage; restoring intenrnational alliances to a meaningful role in our foreign policy; stop using stop-loss orders as a backdoor draft and instead increase the size of our military; restore environemtnal protections sytematically gutted during the bush years; alter the tax code to make it cheaper to hire new workers in america; restore respect for science to the executive branch – you know, policy matters like that.
russkie, the idea that the times and the wapo are carrying water for kerry against the swifties doesn’t actually withstand scrutiny of the times and the wapo. nice try, though.
susie q, i agree completely: the reason i don’t pay attention to the oxbloggers is that they are insufferably smug little people who pretend to gravitas that they don’t possess. Being in England is the worst possible thing for their personalities….
momo 08.22.04 at 7:54 pm
Jim, what Matt pointed out is clear as daylight to anyone who’s read OxBlog a little.
Israeli politics is one of the major topics they’ve written about, and just like about Iraq and US and this Swift Boat Veterans affair, they like to portray their views as moderate and “keeping my mind open” while all along they’ve consistently taken overtly right-wing stances, which makes their claim to be centrist-bipartisan-moderate whatever you like to define it a bit hypocrite.
That’s all. Nothing “impertinent” in observing the same attitude applies to their views on Israel. You’d have to be completely unfamiliar with their blog not to get Matt’s point.
russkie 08.22.04 at 9:43 pm
>russkie, the idea that the times
>and the wapo are carrying water
>for kerry against the swifties
>doesn?t actually withstand
>scrutiny of the times and the
>wapo. nice try, though.
Hmmm…. I thought that this site attracted academic types who had some inkling of what constitutes an intelligent discussion or a logical argument. Disappointing…
praktike 08.22.04 at 9:59 pm
The OxBloggers are a product of the Yale history and political science departments, and their biases reflect that.
nick 08.22.04 at 11:34 pm
For Adesnik, denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
Jim Urquhart 08.23.04 at 12:37 am
Matt et al,
I know what the OxBlog position is on Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Israel, the U.S. domestic and foreign policies, economics, etc. (generally the opposite of mine). I also know that Israel is not the subject at hand and that the reference to Likud is gratuitous at best. It just gets very tiresome when a political point cannot be made without dragging Israel into the discussion. Nevertheless, I’ll accept your explanation in good faith, Matt, and we’ll leave it at that. (I won’t sully this comment with any reference to “Moriveth”.)
Thomas 08.23.04 at 3:00 am
Kieran might not be the best example here. Lest anyone forget, Kieran was the one who credited the Bush-was-AWOL charges despite the fact that they were contradicted by the documentary evidence. But, as we know, that’s a whole different story with entirely different standards of proof.
howard 08.23.04 at 5:40 am
Russkie, yawn….
Have you actually bothered to read the times and the wapo? If you had, you wouldn’t make the claim you make, so what else is there to say?
momo 08.23.04 at 8:27 am
Jim, Matt’s original words were simply: “They (Oxblog) appear to take a pro-Bush (and pro-Likud) line on almost everything even if it is couched in slightly less strident rhetoric than others of that ilk.”
What’s not clear? Where is the gratuitous part? Doesn’t Israel have a right wing and a left wing too, like America? A right-wing that happens to be at the government there, too? Don’t Oxbloggers write often about Israeli politics too? It’s nothing to do with “good faith”, it’s a statement of fact. When people pretend to be bipartisan yet are overtly supporting the governing right wing, in the US or Israel, they should simply be more honest and stop pretending to be bipartisan and neo-liberal-centrists and whatnot. That’s it. I don’t know why that cannot be said of Oxblog’s views on Israel since they do make a big part of what they wrote about, so it is very relevant to their positions and their habit of cloaking them as moderate and circling around statements with disclaimers about being “open minded”. It’s that simple. That’s not “dragging Israel” into the discussion anymore than Oxblog “drags Israel” into their political commentary!
I’m sorry for flogging this horse but I just cannot understand how you can be shocked by a simple observation like that. I didn’t know it was something of a taboo to mention someone’s views on Israeli politics when those views have been made prominently clear and are very much in line with their overall political views and ways of expressing them, _which is the thing one is commenting upon_…
If they’d written in the same way about Berlusconi and his right-wing government, one could have mentioned that as instance of those fake-moderate tactics too. Would it have been inappropriate? Why?
I mean, I just don’t get it.
MFB 08.23.04 at 10:27 am
Well, momo, you’ve been encouraged to make a series of statements on something utterly meaningless and irrelevant, instead of talking about something worthwhile.
If I were a right-winger of the Americo-Likudnik persuasion, I should consider getting you to do that on a weblog a job well done.
Maybe not feeding the trolls is a good policy decision. Look how it got filthy little Russkie’s smelly panties in a knot!
(apologies to any Russians inadvertendly offended; Georgi Zhukov was indeed a jolly good general)
Ian 08.23.04 at 11:51 am
of the Americo-Likudnik persuasion
Jim Urquhart,
I was beginning to wonder whether your antennae weren’t a bit too sensitive on this issue. Particularly concerning Matt McGrattan, whose reference to Likud seems entirely above board. But now that others are crawling out from under the rock, I see what you are getting at. The locution above (by “MFB”) is a new one to me…
momo 08.23.04 at 2:12 pm
mfb: say again? I don’t get what you’re talking about either. Feeding which trolls? I’m honestly confused now.
Anyway, nevermind, you’re so right, whatever you meant.
(I guess it should have been soo obvious straight away that commenting on the political views and writing style of Oxblog in a post about the political views and writing style of Oxblog is _irrelevant_. OK! if that is so, let it be so, and let this irrelevant matter about relevancy be settled once and for all.
I also will from now on consider “above board” any mention of Israel at all, in any context, because it would appear that is the country whose politics shall not be named or discussed, even if it’s actually _someone else discussing them_ and you’re merely pointing out _their_ stance on that, which happens to be consistent with _their_ stance on US politics, and with _their_ semantic acrobatics to avoid drawing the inevitable conclusions about the story _they’re_ commenting on. Oh what an outrageous proposition to suggest someone is applying the same right-wing-disguised-as-open-minded approach all across in the way they voice their opinions about their favourite politically compatible positions in different countries. What an absolutely gratuitous reference, really. Totally insensitive and offensive. Of who, I don’t know, but I can only take so much blinding truths in one go.)
momo 08.23.04 at 2:15 pm
… should have been: consider NOT “above board”, obviously…
james 08.24.04 at 8:19 pm
The swifties statements on this issue have changed over time. Kerry’s statements on this issue have changed over time. Neither side has been 100% consistent. The evidence has supported the swifties on certain charges and Kerry on certain charges. It hasn’t been as one sided as either party is trying to portray.
This most likely is a backlash for Kerry’s comments on the Vietnam war. While he was running for office in Massachusetts it wasnt a big issue. Now that he needs votes from a generally more moderate or conservative constituency, its an issue.
elmerfudd 08.27.04 at 8:15 am
let swift boat vets know what you think:
Joe Ponder, (352) 473-2451, 6986, Deer Springs Rd, Keystone Heights, FL 32656
George M Elliott, (302) 645-5071, 124 Gills Neck Rd, Lewes, DE 19958
Adrian Lonsdale, (508) 758-4046, , Mattapoisett, MA 02739
Van Odell, (281) 395-1703, 1622, Crescent Point Dr, Katy, TX 77494
Grant W Hibbard, (850) 932-7001, 3830 Bangkok Cv, Gulf Breeze, FL 32563
Letson Louis E Dr Jr, (256) 259-1555, 323 Parks Ave Scottsboro, AL 35768
(256) 259-5580
Roy A Hoffman, (804) 935-0943, 3221 Coppermill Trce, Richmond, VA 23294
John O’Neil (713) 654-7600, 1000 Louisiana St, Houston, TX 77002
John Bare, 422 Mill Creek Road, Bird in Hand, PA 17505
Kenneth Buchholz, (972) 355-7623, 1516 Wildflower Lane, Flower Mound, TX 75028
Jack Chenoweth, (573) 964-6872, 108 Hidden Acres, Lake Ozark, MO 65049
Tom Costarino, (703) 748-1602, 2039 Lord Fairfax Rd, Vienna, VA 22182
Morton Golde, (904) 221-7093, 689 Sandringham Dr, Jacksonville, FL 32225
Charles R. Grutzius, (703) 620-0929, 3221 Wildmere Pl, Herndon, VA 20171
Mike Kovanen, (509) 628-9560, 279 Gage Blvd, Richland, WA 99352
Dennis Spranger, (262) 637-6736, 3000 Olive St, Racine, WI 53405
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