FLYING BELOW THE RADAR

This blog is not one of the popular ones. It probably never will be. That bothers me. Not much, because I mostly write this for myself, and anyone else reading it is kind of a bonus. But it would be nice to be widely read, too.

Steven denBeste has what, in my opinion, is one of the best sites on the web. It is interesting, wide ranging, well written, and well argued. He even reads and (mostly) responds to the email people send him by the terabyte. He is, as a result, widely read. And just as widely criticized. All three regular readers of this site will know that I think most of the criticism of Cap'n Clueless is unwarranted and ill founded, but I suppose it comes with the territory. It's an unfortunate fact of Life On The Net that the moonbats will try to make your virtual life miserable, and that those attempts will be increase in frequency, stridency and viciousness as your readership increases.

And apparently for denBeste, the moonbats have managed to surgically remove any trace of enjoyment from doing what he does. So he says he won't be doing it again for at least a while. He's complained about it. He's tried to deal with it, in a number of other ways, as well:

Turning off the comments on his site.

Consigning people to the Bozo Bin.

Asking (nicely in the beginning, more pointedly towards the end) not to write letters commenting on peripheral or irrelevant minutiae in his posts.

Addressing the criticism, both privately and publicly.

And they still managed to shut him up (even if only temporarily). And it remains to be seen whether the Captain's self imposed hiatus is temporary.

That's a shame. DenBeste is a very smart guy who writes well and has a lot to say. I enjoy hearing from him, and would like to do so more, not less, often.

But he certainly has no obligation to continue to provide me with enjoyable reading material, and he has this problem that won't go away. It's not a problem I have, so I wonder whether any advice I could offer would be effective. But I'm going to anyway. You just knew that was coming, didn't you?

There are two basic ways to approach the problem: Reduce the amount of annoying commentary and reduce the annoyance caused by said annoying commentary.

The first approach is not within even denBeste's ability if he is going to continue to do things as he does them now. Publicly posted material will draw public comment. So maybe he can change things so that, if the muse strikes and he pens another essay, he could email it to subscribers. Then his essays would at least start out life in a less public manner and would presumably be sent only to those he found not to be annoying. More work? Maybe. I don't know. I think it might be less expensive than the way he does things now, since the bandwidth usage on his website would be reduced.

As to the second approach, I think that Steven's problem is almost entirely internal to him. That's the bad news. The good news is that this means he can fix it by himself. He gets so much crap from various quarters in part because it has a visible effect on him, and therefore invites more of the same. This, of course, is easy to say, coming from one who does not get any grief by reason of posting here, much less the volume directed at the Captain.

But still. Why the hell should denBeste give two shits what Moonbat Mary from East Bumfuck thinks of his post. Or his character, or his motivations or his intelligence or... or ... or ... And, for that matter, why should he care what anyone, important or not, rational or not, informed or not, thinks. What matters, or rather what should matter, to him is what he thinks of the post, not anyone else. At least that's the way it is for me, otherwise I would long since have given up on this blog, because practically no one thinks anything, good or bad, about what is written here, except on a few infrequent occasions. But I am not facing the constant drip drip drip of minor annoyances by reason this site that denBeste is as a result of his. So maybe I'm full of it.

Illegimiti non carborundum.

Don't let the bastards wear you down, Steven.

And send out some more of that free ice cream. The portions have been too small and too infrequent lately.

 
KERRY AND THE VETS

Elton John should do a song with that title.

Anyway. Drudge reports that Kerry called the leader of the Swift Boat Vets group and tried (and utterly failed) to defuse the situation. Stephen Green notes the story. And in the comments is this gem. (Sorry, I can't link to an individual comment. Click the link and scroll down to the comment by Peter, posted on August 24, 2004 11:38 PM.) Quoth Peter:

Hell, gang, the Swifties are just the tip of the iceberg. Hang around the milblogs and see what some of the POWs have to say. Then look at what a few of the Medal of Honor Veterans say.

Jennifer Martinez's A Collection of Thoughts is a good place to start. Sorry that I don't know how to post the link.

I know how. This is the site being referred to, and it's well worth a look.

If you keep at it long enough you'll come to the men like me. My service was undistinguished enough, the most I can say for my two and a half tours in Viet Nam is that I didn't disgrace my uniform. My only desire was to forget the war and live in peace. Yet every once in a while the men I served with came to my mind, the men who died came to my dreams.

Now here is John Kerry, the man who, more than any other single human being, stole the honor of those men I served with, asking for my vote. Wrapping himself in that stolen honor, standing on their very corpses to give himself the stature he so sorely lacks so that he can command the young men and women defending America.

It won't wash. Better men than I will speak, men of braver deeds and far more eloquence. There are many men more fit to speak than I. Yet I won't be silent, I cannot. I do not think I'm alone. I thought that those young men, the ones who never grew old, were gone from my dreams. They're back. They're demanding that I speak, however poorly, for them. They want their honor back from those who stole it.

Kerry has a big problem.

 
Chris Muir, the anti-Oliphant.

 
JUST ASKIN'

The "new JFK" has been stung by the latest Swift Boat Vets ad. His campaign has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission about it. In addition, I could have sworn I saw a Drudge banner saying that Kerry was attempting to prevent the publication of the Swift Boat Vets' book, Unfit for Command, but I couldn't find it again when I looked.

Update: Aha! I did see it. Via Outside the Beltway quoting Drudge:

The Kerry campaign calls on a publisher to 'withdraw book' written by group of veterans, claiming veterans are lying about Kerry's service in Vietnam and operating as a front organization for Bush. Kerry campaign has told Salon.com that the publisher of UNFIT FOR COMMAND is 'retailing a hoax'... 'No publisher should want to be selling books with proven falsehoods in them,' Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton tells the online mag... Developing...

The most recent ad, which drew the FEC complaint from Kerry's campaign, shows clips of Kerry's 1972 Senate testimony in which he repeated charges that war crimes and atrocities were routinely committed by US soldiers in Vietnam. One of the vets in the ad states that Kerry was making those charges himself. He wasn't. He was repeating the claims of others.

I think its fair to say that Kerry does not believe those claims now. If he didn't believe the charges when he repeated them in his Senate testimony, that's a whole different thing, involving false testimony to Congress, so I want to think he believed the charges then. But Kerry would be entirely unelectable if he said he still believed those charges today, and he knows it. (He would be seen as Howard Dean, except boring when speechifying.) So I think he would not be running at all if he still believed the claims to be true.

In addition, let's assume for purposes of discussion that the Swift Boat Vets are dead wrong in their claims. All of them. The Kerry campaign has admitted that the Swift Boat Vets are correct about his Christmas in Cambodia embroidery, but leave that aside. The one thing I won't assume is that the Swift Boat Vets know their claims to be false. Just as I won't believe that Kerry repeated claims he knew to be false before Congress until I'm provided with some really strong evidence to the contrary, I won't believe the Swift Boat Vets are making charges they know to be false without similarly strong evidence. And despite the efforts of the the Washington Post, the LA Times and the NY Times, that evidence has not yet been provided. (Registration is required for each of those newspaper sites. Go to Bugmenot.com for help getting in without the annoying spam.)

Okay. Does that mean that Kerry should not be called out for having repeated what turned out to be malicious lies which were unimaginably hurtful to veterans, generally, (and POWs in particular) and damaged this country's ultimately fruitless effort to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam? If Kerry can repeat malicious, damaging lies for political gain with impunity, why cannot the Swift Boat Vets?

Just askin, is all.

Is Kerry's conduct more than 35 years ago during the war in Vietnam relevant to the election? Well, Kerry chose to make his Vietnam service the centerpiece of his campaign. Karl Rove did not shove a gun in his back and force him to line up Vietnam vets onstage at the convention and "report for duty." Kerry clearly believes that his Vietnam service qualifies him to be President, so his Vietnam service is fair game for comment by the other side.

 
MOTION DENIED, AND THEN SOME

Ouch!

Provenance:

From Overlawyered.

Who got it from the Curmudgeonly Clerk.

Who got it from Begging to Differ.

This one's been making the rounds.

 
KERRY'S NEW CAMPAIGN SONG

The Kerry Campaign announced a new campaign song today, sung to the tune of "The Magic Bus," the sixties hit by The Who.

THE MAGIC HAT

Every day that I campaign (Too much, the Magic Hat)
I carry the hat that brought me fame (Too much, the Magic Hat)
In my briefcase, all the time (Too much, the Magic Hat)
Goin’ to the White House, it’s gonna be mine (Too much, the Magic Hat)

Thank you, Ted, for getting me here (Too much, the Magic Hat)
You'll be rewarded, have no fear (Too much, the Magic Hat)
I won't wear western headgear (Too much, the Magic Hat)
But the Magic Hat makes W fear (Too much, the Magic Hat)

Nooooooooo!

I don't care how much you jeer (Too much, the Magic Hat)
I’m gonna wear my Hat this year (Too much, the Magic Hat)
I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to ... (You can't wear it!)
Stump speech, travel every day
Just to beat that Bush doofay
Stump speech, travel every day
’Cause I must beat George Bush today

Magic Hat, Magic Hat, Magic Hat ...

I said, yes I've got my Magic Hat (Too much, the Magic Hat)
I said, yes I've got my Magic Hat (Too much, the Magic Hat)
I will beat George Bush today (Too much, the Magic Hat)
Each time I’ll say things a different way (Too much, the Magic Hat)

I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to ...

Some day you'll see the Hat (Too much, the Magic Hat)
Brought it home from ‘Nam and that’s a fact (Too much, the Magic Hat)

My apologies to Pete Townshend and The Who.

 
McGREEVEY RESIGNS

James McGreevey (D, NJ) resigned as governor today because he is a "Gay American" and had a homosexual affair while he was married. He is timing his resignation so as to avoid a special election in November.

I could care less about what McGreevey does in bed with other consenting adults. He says that his resignation is necessary because he had a sexual liason with someone other than his wife during his marriage. But his wife seems to be cool with it. (I wouldn't be. If I were her, I'd probably be calling Tony Soprano right now to have him whacked. But she was at the press conference, presumably to support him.)

That said, the avalanche of jokes will start soon. We definitely need a new slogan for those "Come to New Jersey" ads.

"New Jersey: Any way you like it, baby!"

"New Jersey: We bend over backwards for you!"

How about a contest? Email your slogan to me. Winner will receive a prize of absolutely no monetary value.

UPDATE:

From The Daughter:

"New Jersey: Out of the closet since 2004!"

"New Jersey: San Francisco ain't got nothin on us!"

 
CHRISTMAS IN CAMBODIA

I've been holding off commenting on the charges that KERRY LIED!!! about his service in Vietnam. My initial take was that the man has been through numerous elections and the fact that these charges surfaced now is suspicious. But it seems that at least Kerry's story about spending Christmas in Cambodia in 1968 is false.

Kerry clearly stated on multiple occasions that he was physically present with his swiftboat and crew in Cambodia on Christmas Day. The only Christmas Day he was in Southeast Asia was 1968. He says he had a kind of "Apocalypse Now" moment when he came under fire from Cambodians, Khmer Rouge troops (which would later successfully oust the US installed government of Lon Nol, the only world leader in history ever to have a name which didn't change when you spelled it backwards) and our putative South Vietnamese allies (who were drunkenly celebrating Christmas by firing their weapons into the air, with Kerry apparently located squarely in the landing zone of the bullets).

The Swiftboat Vets' book charges that Kerry was never in Cambodia. We bombed Cambodia secretly during the Nixon administration (which did not take office until early 1969) and openly invaded (we called it an "incursion") sometime around 1972. But on Christmas Day, 1968, we just weren't there. And apparently neither was Kerry, since he later claimed that he never said he was in Cambodia, only near it.

But, in fact, Kerry did claim to have been in Cambodia. Da Blogfaddah cites the Kerry claims, as reported in:

The Congressional Record (from a March 27, 1986 speech on the floor of the Senate attempting to keep us out of Nicaragua)

The Boston Globe (from a 1979 interview)

And, via JustOneMinute, in an AP story

Why is Kerry's story about where he was 35 years ago important? Just ask James Lileks:

If Kerry’s story is a lie, it’s significant, but not because we have a gotcha moment – gee, a politician reworked the truth to his advantage, big surprise. This is much larger than that. This is like Bush insisting that he flew an intercept mission with the Texas Air National Guard to repel Soviet bombers based in Cuba, and later stating that this event was “seared in his memory – seared” because it taught him the necessity of standing up against evil governments, such as the ones we face today. In other words, it would not only be a lie, but one that eroded the political persona he was relying upon in the election. Kerry has made Vietnam central to his campaign. If he’s making crap up, it matters.

Or Craig Henry:

Kerry didn't just use his Vietnam experience to enhance his stature as a man or leader. His campaign used it to shut down debate on his Senate record. They made the biography the issue.

Or Will Collier (on Vodkapundit, discussing the Henry quote linked above):

Exactly. That's why this is important--and why the press's silence would be inexplicable, if we didn't already know that they've taken sides in the election.

The silence of the press may be explainable given that they have largely taken sides in this election. But allowing the fact that you have covertly taken sides to control (not affect, control) your coverage on news stories is inexcusable.

 
I GOT YOUR ADVICE RIGHT HERE

It seems that all and sundry are dispensing advice to first year law students, so I might as well join the crowd.

I hated high school. I didn't fit in at all. College was mostly so-so (same problem, but more interesting courses). But I had a great time in law school. I did pretty well, too.

I went to New England School of Law in Boston. Formerly known as Portia, it was one of the few law schools for women. It went coed some time ago, which is why I got to attend. Part of the reason I so enjoyed it was the fact that it was in Boston. That is a great city in which to go to school. A good part of the rest of the reason I had a great time in law school was that I did well there.

My school was large by Boston's standards. There were something like 200 people in my class. The way the first year was run, the class was divided in half, alphabetically. The first half of the alphabet had classes from 9:00 to 1:00 five days a week. The second half attended classes from 1:00 to 5:00. There were no electives. The first year curriculum was Property, Torts, Criminal Law/Criminal Procedure, Civil Procedure, Contracts and a writing/research methods class. Every class except writing had all 100 or so people in my section in it.

Since I was in the first half of the alphabet, that forced me to get up every morning. That, in and of itself, saved me from disaster. Neither the administration nor the faculty gave a damn whether you attended classes, but fear got me out of bed and into school every day. If I had been in the afternoon section, I really wonder what might have happened, since I would undoubtedly have slept late and stayed up later. As it was, I had a convenient schedule:

9-1: Attend class
1-2: Lunch
2-5: Go to the library and read.

Although I tried, I hardly ever managed to do any work after five or on the weekends (exam preparation was an exception), and I never managed to do any work at home. There were just too many other things to do. That's why the afternoon classes might well have been a disaster for me.

I was a smoker, which also contributed to some degee to my grades. I joined a study group early on, but it mostly did not work out. There was a "floating" group that ran into each other in the library smoking/discussion room. Since I was smoking a pack a day at the time, I usually camped out in the smoking room. People came in and out and discussed various issues. I just listened, and joined in when I had something to contribute.

So, the three most important things necessary for success in the first year of law school are, in order of decreasing importance:

1. Have a name in the first half of the alphabet. If you do not now have such a name, get one right away. If a lot of people take this advice, your name will have to begin with "A".

2. Go to school in Boston. There are lots of choices. Last I looked, Boston had 6 law schools: Hahvahd, BU, BC, Northeastern, New England and Suffolk. New England and Suffolk are tied for last in terms of prestige.

3. Smoke like a chimney. Your future depends on it.