Mark Steyn has finally figured out why Kerry seems like he flip flops. It’s all an illusion:

When Kerry talks about ”any Benedict Arnold CEO or corporation that takes American jobs overseas,” he’s not referring to someone who ”takes jobs overseas.” Perish the thought! He’s all in favor of taking jobs overseas. It wasn’t him who attacked all those ”Benedict Arnold CEOs,” just his ”overzealous speechwriters.” And the minute he discovered it was going on, he called them to say, ”Look, that’s not what I’m saying.”

I mean, OK, it was what he was saying in the narrow technical sense of words emerging from between his lips, day after day, night after night, all through primary season. I had a quick rummage through the Nexis database, and found a mere 746 citations for Kerry and the expression ”Benedict Arnold.” I myself have personally been present on three occasions when he attacked ”Benedict Arnold CEOs” who ”take jobs overseas,” and on two of them he didn’t have a TelePrompTer or even a script. He just stood in front of us and the words came out of his mouth, almost as if they were what he himself believed…

…Well, it’s good to know the senator has finally found a way to neutralize the flip-flop question. Many of us assumed that, when he was for the war and then he was against it and then he was for it again, that he kept changing his mind. But now it’s possible he was just being entirely consistent — he’s always been for it, or against it, it’s just that his ”overzealous speechwriters” kept putting the wrong words in his mouth.

RTWT

Of the people baying for Don Rumsfeld’s head now, I’ll take the ones seriously who were demanding the same of Janet Reno in 1993 after Waco.

[sound=”crickets chirping”]

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This kind of obnoxious demagoguery is one of many reasons that I cannot pull the lever for Kerry for president.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Thursday if he were president he would not be “the last to know what is going on in my command…”

Like most or all of Kerry’s promises, there are scant details on how he thinks that he could make such a guarantee.

I heard an interview on NPR last night with the guy who ate McDonalds for a month to prove that it wasn’t healthy to do so, and had many of the thoughts that Jacob Sullum expresses about it.

I wouldn’t enjoy eating exclusively at McDonalds for a month straight, but I could certainly do so and remain healthy (or at least as healthy as I am now). This clown went out of his way to eat as unhealthily (and otherwise live unhealthily) as possible, and then blame the fast food industry for the fact that he gained twenty-five pounds. As Jacob says:

Spurlock easily could have eaten three meals a day at McDonald’s while staying below the 2,500 calories his doctor said he needed to maintain his starting weight of 185 pounds. For instance, an Egg McMuffin, orange juice, and coffee for breakfast; a grilled chicken bacon ranch salad and iced tea for lunch; and a double cheeseburger, medium fries, and diet Coke for dinner total fewer than 1,800 calories. By contrast, Spurlock says he consumed some 5,000 calories a day, while deliberately avoiding physical activity. In short, his experiment proves nothing but basic physics.

Kerry’s first Purple Heart is looking increasingly bogus, and part of a plan for an early ticket home, having gotten his tickets punched and establishing his JFK creds. According to the attending physician:

Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a mortar round at close range to some rocks on shore. The crewman thought that the injury was caused by a fragment ricocheting from that mortar round when it struck the rocks.

That seemed to fit the injury which I treated.

What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry’s arm. The metal fragment measured about 1 cm. in length and was about 2 or 3 mm in diameter. It certainly did not look like a round from a rifle.

I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the skin with forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than 3 or 4 mm. It did not require probing to find it, did not require any anesthesia to remove it, and did not require any sutures to close the wound.

The wound was covered with a bandaid.

Emphasis mine. Even ignoring the unsubstantialness of the wound, if it occurred as his boatmates claimed, it wasn’t the result of enemy fire, which would make him ineligible for the medal. In fact, if he really did that, it should have resulted in discipline.

That may be just a tip of an iceberg of self-aggrandizement that resulted in this morning’s press conference (click on the “Media” link), in which many of his band of former brothers declared him unfit to be Commander-in-Chief. A press conference which, by the way, the media seems to be studiously ignoring. The only mention of it that I can find with a quick Google is in the Boston Herald.

And no, before anyone asks, I’m not saying that he fired the mortar round deliberately to injure himself. I rarely attribute an act to conspiracy that is as easily explained by incompetence. I’m just saying that it strongly appears that he was looking for every wound he could to get to his magic three.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s the letter that the other Swift Boat vets sent to Kerry.

[Wednesday morning update]

The Globe has covered it now. Interestingly, the supposedly right-wing Fox News doesn’t seem to have any web coverage of it, at least not on their politics page.

Kerry’s first Purple Heart is looking increasingly bogus, and part of a plan for an early ticket home, having gotten his tickets punched and establishing his JFK creds. According to the attending physician:

Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a mortar round at close range to some rocks on shore. The crewman thought that the injury was caused by a fragment ricocheting from that mortar round when it struck the rocks.

That seemed to fit the injury which I treated.

What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry’s arm. The metal fragment measured about 1 cm. in length and was about 2 or 3 mm in diameter. It certainly did not look like a round from a rifle.

I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the skin with forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than 3 or 4 mm. It did not require probing to find it, did not require any anesthesia to remove it, and did not require any sutures to close the wound.

The wound was covered with a bandaid.

Emphasis mine. Even ignoring the unsubstantialness of the wound, if it occurred as his boatmates claimed, it wasn’t the result of enemy fire, which would make him ineligible for the medal. In fact, if he really did that, it should have resulted in discipline.

That may be just a tip of an iceberg of self-aggrandizement that resulted in this morning’s press conference (click on the “Media” link), in which many of his band of former brothers declared him unfit to be Commander-in-Chief. A press conference which, by the way, the media seems to be studiously ignoring. The only mention of it that I can find with a quick Google is in the Boston Herald.

And no, before anyone asks, I’m not saying that he fired the mortar round deliberately to injure himself. I rarely attribute an act to conspiracy that is as easily explained by incompetence. I’m just saying that it strongly appears that he was looking for every wound he could to get to his magic three.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s the letter that the other Swift Boat vets sent to Kerry.

[Wednesday morning update]

The Globe has covered it now. Interestingly, the supposedly right-wing Fox News doesn’t seem to have any web coverage of it, at least not on their politics page.

Kerry’s first Purple Heart is looking increasingly bogus, and part of a plan for an early ticket home, having gotten his tickets punched and establishing his JFK creds. According to the attending physician:

Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a mortar round at close range to some rocks on shore. The crewman thought that the injury was caused by a fragment ricocheting from that mortar round when it struck the rocks.

That seemed to fit the injury which I treated.

What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry’s arm. The metal fragment measured about 1 cm. in length and was about 2 or 3 mm in diameter. It certainly did not look like a round from a rifle.

I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the skin with forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than 3 or 4 mm. It did not require probing to find it, did not require any anesthesia to remove it, and did not require any sutures to close the wound.

The wound was covered with a bandaid.

Emphasis mine. Even ignoring the unsubstantialness of the wound, if it occurred as his boatmates claimed, it wasn’t the result of enemy fire, which would make him ineligible for the medal. In fact, if he really did that, it should have resulted in discipline.

That may be just a tip of an iceberg of self-aggrandizement that resulted in this morning’s press conference (click on the “Media” link), in which many of his band of former brothers declared him unfit to be Commander-in-Chief. A press conference which, by the way, the media seems to be studiously ignoring. The only mention of it that I can find with a quick Google is in the Boston Herald.

And no, before anyone asks, I’m not saying that he fired the mortar round deliberately to injure himself. I rarely attribute an act to conspiracy that is as easily explained by incompetence. I’m just saying that it strongly appears that he was looking for every wound he could to get to his magic three.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s the letter that the other Swift Boat vets sent to Kerry.

[Wednesday morning update]

The Globe has covered it now. Interestingly, the supposedly right-wing Fox News doesn’t seem to have any web coverage of it, at least not on their politics page.

I thought that would be more kind than “I don’t fall, that son-of-a-bitch sand ran into me.”

Of course, the worst thing about this, from the standpoint of the Kerry campaign, has to be the picture. It’s no Dukakis in a tank, but it’s definitely geek central, even without the daisy zipper pull.

I thought that would be more kind than “I don’t fall, that son-of-a-bitch sand ran into me.”

Of course, the worst thing about this, from the standpoint of the Kerry campaign, has to be the picture. It’s no Dukakis in a tank, but it’s definitely geek central, even without the daisy zipper pull.

I thought that would be more kind than “I don’t fall, that son-of-a-bitch sand ran into me.”

Of course, the worst thing about this, from the standpoint of the Kerry campaign, has to be the picture. It’s no Dukakis in a tank, but it’s definitely geek central, even without the daisy zipper pull.