Kerry and the Military

You can tell John Kerry reads the newspaper. According to DefenseLINK News, he noticed at least one in a series of articles in the Boston Globe in June of 1997, entitled "Casualties of Peace". Following a letter to the Inspector General of the DoD, a partial report was published via the DoD defense link.

These reports quantify the disproportionally low number of combat casualties we are suffering in the clean-up of Iraq, compared with the number we lose to accidents and training even during peacetime. This and more are argued by this Sacramento Bee article from December 2003.

Maybe I'm wrong, here, but is it possible George Bush is responsible for fewer military deaths in war than Bill Xxxxxxx (no profanity on this site) produced in peacetime?

You GO, John.

Democratic Doublespeak


What an amazing sight tonight at the Democratic debate. After the debate I watched Sean Hannity interviewing the publicists for Wes Clark and John Kerry. He asked both of them specific questions about their candidates' changing positions on the war in Iraq and published statements from both candidates. In both cases, the pundits claimed that their candidates had been perfectly consistent in their historical remakrs, in spite of specific statements that anyone can read which are obviously different, and transparently formulated for political expediency.

These statements should be impossible to shy away from, impossible to deny to anyone, including the Democratically challenged. Sadly, there seems to be no proof for those who just will not admit the obvious.

Just today I related to a close friend who happens to hang out with all the wrong sorts (self inclusive, I guess) and therby at least has an excuse for her positions. I carelessly commented on the State of the Union address, and Nancy Pellosi's stupefied response. Imagine how embarrased a normal person would be to find that a statement they spoke on broadcast TV had been PROVEN inaccurate before you said it! (I refer to the President rendering void any accusation of a lack of international support for our actions toward Saddam's regieme by specifially mentioning the names of all but 17 of the countries who have been participating in that cation with us. She commented that we should not be acting unilaterally, and emphasized that President Bush's actions were specifically unilateral.)

To my surprize, my friend stated that she thought that unilateral meant to act without the UN, and implied dictating policy to other participating nations. O.M.G!!!
In what alien universe does "Unilateral" mean "Acting with other nations, just not the right other nations???"

Well, apparently it exists in the typical Democratic mind. Of course, we all know that they still don't know what the definition of "Is" is.

What putrid stupidity. If you can't start by agreeing on terminology and definition, how can you hope to negotiate laws and goals and such? It doesn't surprise me that Democrats don't understand economics - they don't have to.

If they want there to be prosperity, they simply call the status quo prosperous.

This also describes why they believe President Bush to be evil. They will never have to prove it...they just say it is true...and to them, it is true.

How sad for our country. These people would have willingly walked into Hitler's death camps... -and would have invited their friends to come along with them.

The New Project


By the way, the new motorcycle project came home yesterday. News as events warrant.

Environmental Motives

I took the boy to the Orlando Science Center today for a day out. They have an interesting flight and aeronautics display set up with wind tunnels, simulators, and a possible authentic sliver of fabric from the original 1903 Wright Flyer, signed by Orville Himself. It's an interesting thing to watch a young mind learn about aviation, technology and history in one short year.

Thanksgiving, I took him to Dayton to visit the Air Force Museum, a really remarkable assemblage of WW1 to modern aircraft, nicely arranged and available for close-up inspection, photography and everything. We took time to see the Wright Bicycle shop, visit the local sights, etc., and had a great trip. After Christmas, we drove to Norfolk, stopping on the Outer Banks long enough to visit the Wright Brothers memorial at Kitty Hawk, briefly. We did a day at the Smithsonian, but Trek, now a mature aviation reviewer, and had little time for re-visiting aircraft he had already seen in Dayton. We missed seeing the new annex at Dulles because he was so impatient about his visit downtown.

So anyway, we went to the Science Center today, and one of the noteworthy events was the pleasant enjoyment of a movie in the CineDome about Fantastic Caves. You can see the website of one of the authors here. One of the most repeated phrases I recall from the viewing of this piece was how all their research and investigation was to see if perhaps some beneficial microbe might be lurking in the muck, ice or water in one of the caves they spent so much time and effort to get to and into. I wouldn't think of discounting the potential benefits of the discovery of beneficial plants or animals, but it stood out in sharp relief how asinine and shallow the arguments for preserving pristine environments sometimes are.

For example, if we act to preserve the rainforests for the sake of the discovery of a new beneficial vaccine, are we not doing this for humans? It seems to me that the ones accused of destroying the rainforests are humans, and rightly the humans who live there. So are we saying that the benefit of vaccines for rich developed nations and the pharmaceutical agencies that will develop them outweigh the benefits to those who wish to clear land to feed their families, because they have no means to buy food from other sources? Seems rather selfish to me.

Too bad. If we could have an honest discourse about resources, rights, development and environmentcal care, maybe more people on the earth would benefit with less damage to our environment.