Bush Didn't Even Not Serve

Let me get the disclaimer out of the way right away: I'm glad the women's soccer team won the gold. That said, I am more than happy to have missed the Jimmy Roberts segment, which most assuredly must have dealt with the grand social significance of the women's soccer team, with the subtext always being that it is such an injustice that their professional league wasn't viable. Look people, even the ABA went bust - and they had Dr. J with an afro that added about a foot to his height in addition to a red, white, and blue ball.

The women's soccer team has created many young fans of women's sports, most of whom are female, and that fan base will grow in time until there are enough women who will pay to see the pros. It will happen some day, but the fact that it hasn't happened yet is no injustice - it takes time for a business like this to build a demand. But I can hear the Jimmy Roberts Olympic segment background music - heavy on the violins no doubt - as he talks in tones that suggest that prior to the rise to fame of the women's soccer team, women in the US were required to wear burquas and never bear their ankles (which may happen, you know, if Bush gets re-elected).

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I have never linked to Mark Steyn before, but he is very conservative and very funny, and he even gets paid to write. Here is a small sample if you don't care to read the whole thing:

"I said a couple of weeks back that John Kerry was too strange to be President, and a week or two earlier that he was too stuck-up to be President. Since I'm on an alliterative roll, let me add that he's too stupid to be President. What sort of idiot would make the centrepiece of his presidential campaign four months of proud service in a war he's best known for opposing?

I wouldn't stand for Parliament on a family values platform because I know someone's bound to bring up the 123 gay porn movies I had a bit part in back in Amsterdam in the 1970s."

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I feel compelled to respond to a couple of the comments made by Professor Vic the other day. The first - "Bush, the guy who didn't even not-serve his country very well has now accused, in back-to-back elections, both John McCain and and John Kerry of cowardly actions in their Vietnam service. If Bob Dole (or JFK or Bob Kerrey or DDE) wants to make accusations, fine, but I find Bush's (or more precisely, Karl Rove's) actions pretty disgusting."

I won't even comment on the fact that didn't even not serve means he served - oops, I guess I did comment on that. As to the substance of the statement: Oh really, show me the transcript where Bush accused either of cowardly actions. Or give me the same from Karl Rove. Vic, you are going to be a father in days, and I fear that should I ever come visit you in a couple of years, I'll find you at the bedside of your toddler, going through the nightly ritual of assuring her that Karl Rove is not hiding in the closet.

Second - "it is not unpatriotic to point out that you think your country has made and continues to make serious errors. There were real reasons to believe that Vietnam was unwinnable at reasonable costs in American and Vietnamese lives. Perhaps some of the information upon which Kerry made his judgements later turned out to be untrue or unreliable (of course that has never happened before or since), but it is not unpatriotic to protest U.S. actions."

We clearly differ here - I believe it is unpatriotic to make up information upon which such judgments are made, and there is some evidence that he did just that. But even short of that, a man who has a prediliction for believing what turned out to be gross anti-American propaganda shows a lack of judgment, which might be excused by his youth, but unfortunately he refuses to back away from his ugly testimony, and even says today that people should judge him on his anti-war stance.

If he made a sober argument that the costs in American lives would be too high, I'd agree; but he didn't, instead he parrotted the Communist line that it was a civil war, and that the consequences of our staying there for the people of South Vietnam would be worse than if we left. He accused all levels of military command of condoning war crimes. These are serious charges, and they are ones that he should answer for getting so wrong. But he doesn't. He assumed the worst about US intentions, completely dismissing the possibility that they were noble, much as half of his rabid supporters do so today after we have liberated Afghanistan and Iraq. Since he hasn't shouted down these idiots, my guess is that he still believes the US is a force for evil in the world. That may qualify you to govern an insignificant nation like France, but in my view it disqualifies you here.

Third: Clinton dodging the draft by winning the Rhodes scholarship? Pulese! Click on that dodging link and you'll get the real story.

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Per my observations about the anti-Bush slant to today's publishing industry, I pass this along second-hand as the observations of another courageous and obviously very smart American:

"As a small aside, I walked into a local Barnes and Noble to browse a bit. Having been inspired by some of the weekend commentary, I found myself looking at the "Current Events" table near the front of the store, and took in some of the titles, authors, etc...with no particular
purchasing interest. The pattern of the books struck me a bit, so I decided to continue to circle and thought it might be fun to take a sample, and here's what my rough count came up with:
80 books total on the table (Titles, not actual books)
27 outright anti-Bush (no particular policy qualms, just anti "the man", with the requisite "buffoonery" cartoon or photo)
23 anti-war/anti-Bush (anti Bush in a more general "anti war" or "anti administration context)
4 pro Bush (again, not policy specific)
3 pro-war/pro Bush
8 anti "conservative agenda", or "anti-right wing media"
4 anti "liberal agenda", or "anti-left wing media"
The balance of the books did not outwardly appear "political" in nature (Al Quada, Islam, Terrorism, etc..)

But what was also telling was the positioning of the books, with "Anti Bush" works predominantly populating the 2 upper levels of the table, and "Pro Bush" tucked in the shelves in the bottom. Perhaps most telling was that Barnes and Noble's own best seller, "Unfit for Command" (the Swift-boat "Anti-Kerry" book), was tucked obscurely with only a small pile between similiarly paltry Sean Hannity and Anne Coulter piles down below, while the top level had not one but 2 books each from the likes of Michael Moore, Molly Ivins, and Maureen Dowd..."