Anatomy of a Flip-Flop

I had a half written post on this a few days ago, then I ditched it because I thought it was just too obvious. The point of the post was that we aren't clear on the meaning of the term "flip-flop." Then I read this on The Corner just now:

FLIP-FLOPPING [Jonah Goldberg]

Interesting point from a reader:

Sir:
You and Kerry both miss the point of the flip-flopping charge. Changing one's opinion isn't a problem. It's changing one's opinion (the flip), then changing BACK to the original opinion (the flop). THAT is what Kerry keeps doing, and Bush doesn't.

Posted at 12:45 PM

Maybe it isn't so obvious, so let me make a stab at reconstructing what I wrote.

"Flip-flop" is in the dictionary and has several definitions, one of which is the sandal. But it's the political definitions that we care about when we call Kerry a practitioner of the low art of the flip-flop, not some choice in esoteric orange footwear. Let's get the dictionary definitions out in the open first, this from American Heritage:

flip-flop
n.
The movement or sound of repeated flapping.
A backward somersault or handspring.
Informal. A reversal, as of a stand or position: a foreign policy flip-flop.
A backless, often foam rubber sandal held to the foot at the big toe by means of a thong.
Electronics. An electronic circuit or mechanical device capable of assuming either of two stable states, especially a computer circuit used to store a single bit of information.

It's interesting that in the online listing at dictionary.com, there is no entry for a verb (yet). Maybe that's just waiting for this post (except my title employs it as a noun!)

As the email writer above sent to The Corner, the way that we're using the term to describe John Kerry really isn't the way the dictionary defines the noun. There the closest definition is summed up as "a reversal." What we're saying, however, is what the ads run by the Bush campaign (and others) make pretty clear: John Kerry tacks back and forth on issues in the same fashion that he does while he's windsurfing into the wind. To use language closer to the metaphor implicit in the term, Kerry is showing one side much as would a fish laying on a dock, he flips over to show the other side, and that amounts to the equivalent of the reversal as defined above. But then he goes one side further and flops back to the original side. He may do this repeatedly, as he has on Iraq.

By this new usage we're claiming, his famous statement that "I voted for the war before I voted against the war" does not comprise a complete flip-flop on the war when taken in isolation. That is a flip. (Or maybe a flop, depending on what he said before this isolated statement, but it's not both when take by itself.) It's his complete record of positions on the Iraq war that comprises his flip-flopping.

This distinction is important because of the Democratic accusations that Bush has flip-flopped on issues:

The flip-flopper, Democrats say, is President Bush. Over the past four years, he abandoned positions on issues such as how to regulate air pollution or whether states should be allowed to sanction same-sex marriage. He changed his mind about the merits of creating the Homeland Security Department, and made a major exception to his stance on free trade by agreeing to tariffs on steel. After resisting, the president yielded to pressure in supporting an independent commission to study policy failures preceding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Bush did the same with questions about whether he would allow his national security adviser to testify, or whether he would answer commissioners' questions for only an hour, or for as long they needed.
--MSNBC, Sept. 23, 2004

They offered above a series of flips, not what we are calling flip-flops. Bush was against the idea of a Department of Homeland Security at first, but he changed his mind and supported it after some debate. No one with a lick of sense will find anything wrong with someone changing his mind after hearing argument, seeing new evidence and giving the matter more thought. That is called rational behavior.

The problem with Kerry is that he has changed his mind so often, and with no real explanation that he has changed his position or that he has changed his reasoning, on so many positions, that we can't keep track of where he stands at any given moment. I'm not at all convinced that he can either. As when he's out there on his windsurfing rig, he seems to feel the local winds of public opinion shift and adjust accordingly, rather than basing his course and stance on any internal combustion engine of policy, belief or conscience. A politician that does this really well can be very good at his job as a representative of his voters, but it's not at all clear that such a politician makes a good leader. A good leader leads based upon internal energy and drive, not on how he's pushed about by externals.

While the Democrats may find and point to an instance where Bush has flip-flopped in the past, it's not going to be as easy a task as it is to point to instances where Kerry has. And this difference is what leads us to perceive Kerry as a flip-flopper when compared to Bush. In an election what we must do is compare and contrast, not measure against some absolute standard. A man who has routinely flip-flopped in the past can be expected to continue doing so. It's become a habit of mind. A man who does so uncommonly has formed the opposite habit of mind. We know to expect him to stand by a position, and only change it when new evidence, or new thinking, leads to rational reasons to shift.

Right now it is in our best interest, as a country at war, to present to the rest of the world a solid image of resolve. That is, we must if what we plan to do is win this war.

re·solve

n.
Firmness of purpose; resolution.

Not John Kerry.

Tools for Democracy

I am on the mailing list for Spirit of America and got an email today on one of their success stories:

The Iraqi Construction Apprenticeship Program (ICAP) and Spirit of America's donation of tools to the Iraqi graduates. ICAP is a SeaBees/Marines effort to rebuild Iraq, create jobs and provide tangible improvements in the lives "ordinary" Iraqis.

The tool kits they present to the graduates of the program go for $150 and Federal Express donates the shipping. Check out the site and the other programs too. There are many organizations such as Spirit of America doing good work in Iraq, I just happened to latch onto this one early on.

Back some time ago I wrote a post about my concerns with whether Iraq was ready for democracy, whether there were enough citizens with the will to make the necessary sacrifices to ensure that blood (and sweat) that is needed to fertilize the roots of the Tree of Liberty was available ("Does Iraq Deserve to be Free?"). I now believe that there are. What began convincing me was reading Iraqi blogs, especially Iraq the Model. The expressed willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice, if necessary, despite real fear, was a strong sign to me of hope. Reading (not in the major media usually, sad to say) of the thousands signing up to serve in the police forces, despite the very real and very immediate threats to their lives did more. And in the case of this particular program:

The Iraqi men participating in ICAP are risking their lives to build a better future for themselves and for Iraq. When I was in Iraq in June these men were getting death threats from terrorists opposed to progress and a free Iraq. With good reason the Marines were concerned that the apprentices would never show up for classes. Now they're graduating and appearing on CNN. These men, like our troops, are at the front line of the struggle for progress in Iraq and they deserve our support.

CNN ran a recent story on this program. You can see the video on the Spirit of America site.

Spirit of America is a 501c3 organization, so your gifts to support democracy are tax deductible. This is a win-win-win situation: you get back a bit of what you give in tax savings, you do a truly charitable deed, and you support the creation of democracy in what has been a desert.

There's that old Chinese saying that everyone knows: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. In this case we can help the Seabees and Marines teach these men a skill, we can provide them with the tools to practice that skill, and then they can make a living to feed their families, and contribute to their society in a meaningful way. It especially meaningful in that it promotes individual responsibility for their own fates, and it serves as a bootstrap in an economic process that, when combined with the historical industry of the Iraqi peoples, can fuel a feedback economic loop resulting in prosperity.

What I especially like about Spirit of America and similar programs is that they operate on the principle of the doable. In this case they're looking for 400 tool kits. I also wrote a post chiding Teresa Heinz Kerry about putting her money where her mouth is just a few days ago. That sort of applies to me too. While Teresa could easily cover the whole amount with the saving on taxes resulting from the Bush tax cuts, that wouldn't leave us the chance to be virtuous in this.

399 kits to go. Your turn.

Just do it.

Right now.

It's an investment in our future.

The Mystic Power of the Left (updated)

Johann Hari writes in "In enemy territory? An interview with Christopher Hitchens:"

This encapsulates how many of Hitchens' old allies - a roll-call of the left's most distinguished intellectuals, from Edward Said to Noam Chomsky - now view him.

This was written yesterday, September 23, 2004. I knew the left was powerful and wielded tremendous influence in high places, but this leaps far beyond what I expected. On September 25, 2003, New York Times said Edward Said was dead. I suppose the above means he is actually above and looking down on Hitchens. Or maybe it's just that leftists and facts do not cohere; where you find one the other is invariably absent? Or maybe the New York Times got its facts wrong. Again. No, I checked, there's a consensus that Said is dead.

Okay, I'm being snarky. But it's entirely appropriate to the tone of Hari's post, which while not quite snarky, does have a certain wry irony in the opening. The article is worth reading. I came to it by way of "Hitch 'n' Hari" at Daimnation!, via
someone, when I figure out whom I'll add the link.

The Independant's version is "Christopher Hitchens: In Enemy Territory."

In the article Hari interview's Hitchens about his conversion experience. To Hitch the burning towers and Pentagon wing provided the light to allow him to see:

"The United States was attacked by theocratic fascists who represents all the most reactionary elements on earth. They stand for liquidating everything the left has fought for: women's rights, democracy? And how did much of the left respond? By affecting a kind of neutrality between America and the theocratic fascists."

But when the goal of the attacker is to consume the world, there is no room for neutrality. That same light also permitted greater depth perception. The surface similarities often pointed to by the moral relativists shrank to insignificance when the full depth of the picture became visible:

"However bad the American Empire has been, it is not as bad as this. It is not the Taliban, and anybody - any movement - that cannot see the difference has lost all moral bearings."

Hitchens - who has just returned from Afghanistan - says, "The world these [al-Quadea and Taliban] fascists want to create is one of constant submission and servility. The individual only has value to them if they enter into a life of constant reaffirmation and prayer. It is pure totalitarianism, and one of the ugliest totalitarianisms we've seen. It's the irrational combined with the idea of a completely closed society. To stand equidistant between that and a war to remove it is?" He shakes his head. I have never seen Hitch grasping for words before.

Hitch goes on, and it really requires no commentary. This is as clear and lucid as analysis gets:

Some people on the left tried to understand the origins of al-Quadea as really being about inequalities in wealth, or Israel's brutality towards the Palestinians, or other legitimate grievances. "Look: inequalities in wealth had nothing to do with Beslan or Bali or Madrid," Hitchens says. "The case for redistributing wealth is either good or it isn't - I think it is - but it's a different argument. If you care about wealth distribution, please understand, the Taliban and the al Quaeda murderers have less to say on this than even the most cold-hearted person on Wall Street. These jihadists actually prefer people to live in utter, dire poverty because they say it is purifying. Nor is it anti-imperialist: they explictly want to recreate the lost Caliphate, which was an Empire itself."

He continues, "I just reject the whole mentality that says, we need to consider this phenomenon in light of current grievances. It's an insult to the people who care about the real grievances of the Palestinians and the Chechens and all the others. It's not just the wrong interpretation of those causes; it's their negation." And this goes for the grievances of the Palestinians, who he has dedicated a great deal of energy to documenting and supporting. "Does anybody really think that if every Jew was driven from Palestine, these guys would go back to their caves? Nobody is blowing themselves up for a two-state solution. They openly say, ?We want a Jew-free Palestine, and a Christian-free Palestine.' And that would very quickly become, ?Don't be a Shia Muslim around here, baby.'" He supports a two-state solution - but he doesn't think it will solve the jihadist problem at all.

And it just keeps coming:

He is appalled that some people on the left are prepared to do almost nothing to defeat Islamofascism. "When I see some people who claim to be on the left abusing that tradition, making excuses for the most reactionary force in the world, I do feel pain that a great tradition is being defamed. So in that sense I still consider myself to be on the left." A few months ago, when Bush went to Ireland for the G8 meeting, Hitchens was on a TV debate with the leader of a small socialist party in the Irish dail. "He said these Islamic fascists are doing this because they have deep-seated grievances. And I said, 'Ah yes, they have many grievances. They are aggrieved when they see unveiled woman. And they are aggrieved that we tolerate homosexuals and Jews and free speech and the reading of literature.'"

"And this man - who had presumably never met a jihadist in his life - said, ?No, it's about their economic grievances.' Well, of course, because the Taliban provided great healthcare and redistribution of wealth, didn't they? After the debate was over, I said, ?If James Connolly [the Irish socialist leader of the Easter Risings] could hear you defending these theocratic fascist barbarians, you would know you had been in a fight. Do you know what you are saying? Do you know who you are pissing on?"

Hari proceeds to question whether Hitchens can't support the war without supporting Bush. He cannot. Hitch explains how he came to find himself aligned with the neo-Conservatives he had thought he abhorred. From there he moved to his current position, which Hari describes as:

He has replaced a belief in Marxist revolution with a belief in spreading the American revolution. Thomas Jefferson has displaced Karl Marx.

Hitch goes on to distinguish between a Cheney camp and a Wolfowitz camp in the adminitration. The latter are what he considers the pure strain of neo-Conservativism:

"The thing that would most surprise people about Wolfowitz if they met him is that he's a real bleeding heart. He's from a Polish-Jewish immigrant family. You know the drill - Kennedy Democrats, some of the family got out of Poland in time and some didn't make it, civil rights marchers? He impressed me when he was speaking at a pro-Israel rally in Washington a few years ago and he made a point of talking about Palestinian suffering. He didn't have to do it - at all - and he was booed. He knew he would be booed, and he got it."

Hari ends it with a plea, "Come home, Hitch - we need you." But Hitch believes that he is home. What we need is for Hari and other rational thinkers on the left to learn to feel at home in the same place.

Read it all.

Hari has also added "Late thoughts on the Hitchens interview."
In this Hari sets out all the other issues that matter to him beyond the "single issue" that now drives Hitchens:

Like Hitch, I believe that Islamic fundamentalism is a depraved threat to human rights, on a par both morally and intellectually with fascism.

What's interesting is that I agree with about half of Hari's positions on the issues, and disagree vehemently with him on the other half. He also believes that the current administration is on the wrong side of every one of these additional issues except that of ending tyranny. He exaggerates. Bush is on the opposing side of many, but not as many as he believes. I suspect the issue is the manner in which Bush aims to address those issues, not any disagreement that they must be addressed.

But it is an interesting and considered list of issues that matter to the left. Hari makes the point of segregating the first two "because unless they are dealt with, there might not be any human beings left to deal with all the other issues." Those two are:

- The fight against climate change
- The fight against the continuing existence and potential use of nuclear weapons

Hitchens clearly considers his "single issue" to be superior to both or, at least, intertwined with the latter. Hari doesn't see the irony in saying those two stand apart, while apparently not seeing the Hitch feels the same way about the threat of Islamofacism. Everything else comes second to that.

Allawi's Command Performance

Ayad Allawi sure talks oddly for a puppet. One expects puppets to stick to the party line, not deviating or criticizing, to jerk their knees in the correct directions as dictated by the tyrannical strings tugged by their master.

But when Allawi took questions from the Washington Post editors and reporters, he wasn't shy about criticizing agents of the Bush administration. It was nuanced in that he never said Bush's name, he stuck to the acronym "CPA," but the provional authority was authority derived from Preisdent Bush's administration. When answering questions on the situation in the troublespot of Fallujah, he said:

No, no. They formed this militia, it's a militia like in Fallujah a brigade, in Fallujah to take over Fallujah. And we advised against it. I was the head of the so-called then the governing council, the security committee, and I said to the CPA I said oh what are you doing? What ? this brigade? This is going to backfire. You can't get ex, some of them were ex-officers in Saddam's inner circles, special Republican Guards and so forth. What are you doing?

So that's what went wrong in Fallujah.

I can't say I disagree with his analysis either. I had the same reaction to the CPA's decision.

That's not to say, by any means, that all he did was criticize. In fact, he mostly talked about what his interim government was doing, what are its strategies, not about what the U.S. did or plans to do. His answers to their questions focused mainly on Iraq and the situation there. He spoke of successes and remaining challenges. And he mentioned some failures of the recent past. He sounded to me like a pragmatic national leader.

I was not immediately impressed with Allawi, and I still have some reservations. I don't think the handling of Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress was all that deft. That said, I can't say that Allawi was behind it, though he has permitted it to persist longer than it should have. Also in the news today we hear that the Judge has dropped the conterfeiting charges that can only be described as trumped up. That suggests the judicial system isn't badly broken. Politics is probably still exerting more influence than it should in judicial matters, but the trend is in the right direction if that's any indication. Chalabi returned to Iraq and faced his accusers and they admitted they had no case, rather than insisting their evidence was true, even if it was fabricated.

But seeing Allawi handle what cannot be described as a friendly press has raised him several notches in my esteem. I'd judge there's a thread of exasperation in his replies, but it never overwhelmes the obvious consideration he gives to making his points. His less-than-perfect English adds some ambiguity, but if one reads for context, rather than isolating clauses where he misspeaks slighty, there isn't left reasonable doubt as to his meaning.

Early on he was prodded about whether his trip now wasn't just to serve a political purpose for the Bush campaign. He made it very clear that he had decided when to come. He said he was invited to come two months ago, but he decided to wait until now based partly on the need to meet with local regional leaders first, then come to visit London and D.C. to give his thanks to each country for our aid to his, and at the same time to catch the U.N. General Assembly in session. Part of his reason was to avoid going too far from Baghdad at what he saw as a critical time. The Sadr episode was still in progress then also.

You know, frankly let me tell you, I was asked, invited to come here and to go to London by Prime Minister Blair and others about two months ago. But I frankly suggested to them that I would rather prefer to visit the region as a first step and then come to see you and to thank you for whatever you have done for Iraq.

My first trip was really to the region, to meet the Arab leaders of the Arab states, and to explain to them that what happened in Iraq and to get Iraq back into the fold of the Arab world and the Muslim nations.

It so happened that the General Assembly is being held now of the United Nations and I thought it is a good time to come to London and Washington and see how their leaders who really have stood and helped Iraq and liberated Iraq and to thank the people of the United States and the president for their attitude and helping Iraq both before liberation, during liberation and after liberation. And this is why I am here. Unfortunately, it seems it coincided with the heat of the elections here and I don't want to be dragged into internal politics of the United States.

The Wapo follks also prodded him a lot about the upcoming Iraqi elections, whether they would indeed happen on schedule and whether the whole country would vote, or whether certain troubled areas would be excluded. This was one set of questions that sparked that hint of exasperation when he replied.

No, no, no I'm not suggesting that, no. You are saying that there are parts based on the statement of the Secretary of Defense, that there would be probably parts of Iraq who are not going to be part of the elections. Isn't that what your question?

I don't want to comment on theoretical issues, that may be or maybe not. What I am saying is that we will have the elections, all Iraqis eligible to be part of the elections, will be part of the elections. The elections should take place in all the country. I don't want to really go into theories whether a village in Basra is not able to cast their votes or a village, I don't know, these are all theories.

The plan is to hold the elections in January. Allawi refuses to play prediction games about exactly how that will unfold. Doesn't WaPo understand that this is a puppet, not a prophet, they're questioning? Since he's a puppet he's going to hold to the Bush administration line, right? That means agreeing with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Wait, he didn't do that. Well, maybe the questioner misquoted Rummy and he really is agreeing with Rummy. That must be it.

Then there was the everpresent question of exactly who it is that's causing all the trouble in Iraq. Allawi maintains that many are foreigners. In fact:

The day I left Iraq, as I was boarding the plane, we had big operation the night before which lasted till dawn and our section of Baghdad called Haifa Street and they arrested and killed I don't know how much but they arrested 60 or 62 people. The 62 people were not Iraqis and they were caught red handed in their houses a lot of explosives in their safe houses, Syrians, Yemenis, Saudis, Palestinians, mostly were Palestinians. Maybe 50 percent were Palestinians.

Aside from the report of a successful anti-terrorist op by the Iraqis themselves, what's interesting here is all the peaceful Palestinians that somehow got mixed up in the net. Such a high percentage of Palestinians started me wondering if this is because of the wall the Israelis built. Perhaps these budding young lovers (of death and mythical virgins) have decided their chances of successful self-immolation in a manner consistent with martyrdom are higher in Iraq than in ramming against an Israeli wall. Or maybe I have that backwards. Maybe Iraq is a more enticing honey for these swarming bombjackets. But that doesn't seem right. Pass up the chance to kill Jews for one to kill Iraqis or Americans? That seems out of character.

Or maybe the situation in Iraq poses, in their perception, a greater threat to the longterm success of their mission. Considering their mission seems most often to be martydom, that doesn't make sense either. I think I've gotten off track trying to make sense of the motives of Islamic terrorists. That's a rathole for a reasoning person if there ever was one.

If there's an equivalent western rathole it is trying to understand the reason why the Western major media so often appears complicit with those terrorists. This too has Allawi expressing disbelief:

It's unbelievable. We are fighting and yet we see in the media you are this, you are that, you are not having elections. This is a time when really everybody they need to help, need to be part of fighting these evil forces. Even the media. You should not give them oxygen, you should not give them the luxury of presenting their case in the press, we should be hard on them, as hard as we can, all of us whether we are in the media, whether we are in running countries, whether we are in the armies -- because they are ultimately, it's not fair, they are not only after us, they know that once they are through with Iraq, they'll come after you here in Washington and New York and Cairo and everywhere.

If this man is a puppet of the Bush administration, I'm impressed. The puppeteer is amazingly adroit, for this is a very believable performance. If I hadn't been told by the Kerry campaign that this was a puppet, I'd have thought it was a tough, pragmatic politician who's doing his best to wrestle his country through a delicate and difficult time. He may not be Abraham Lincoln, but he finds himself in a place and time where Old Abe would be rolling up his sleeves and getting down to some serious work.

If he wasn't a puppet, I'd be wishing him luck and hoping for him and his newly liberated country all the best.

But since Joe Lockhart says that Allawi is a puppet, I just don't see why Joe and company don't go fishing or do something else productive. Do they think they stand a guppy's chance in a school of piranha facing a puppetmaster the likes of the one behind Allawi?

Best of luck, Prime Minister Allawi, to you and to all of Iraq. I pray that you succeed in achieving a fair and just system of government, and that the Iraqi people learn to live together in peace.

Allah has a brief post that put me onto this article. There's a hint of exasperation there too.

A lot of people have commented on the Kerry campaign reaction to Allawi's visit, including Joe Lockhart's statement on Allawi being a puppet of the Bush administration:

"The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips," said Joe Lockhart, a senior Kerry adviser."

See the following for more:
Instapundit: FROM THE I-THOUGHT-KERRY-WAS-A-DIPLOMAT DEPARTMENT
Charles Krauthammer: The Art Of Losing Friends
The Belgravia Dispatch: Allawi's Speech
Roger L. Simon: September 24, 2004: Profiles in Courage - The Sequel
In DC Journal: Surprising Takes on Allawi
Kerry Haters: Kerry Campaign Scum Lockhart

and don't miss Ali at Iraq the Model on Allawi's speech: Who's Lying?

The Fictional Mainstream Media

I can't read fiction in the same fashion that I did when I spent days cocooned in books in my room ignoring the thunderous roar of tropical rain on our aluminum roof. Back then I disappeared into books, tuning out everything else. Books became my world. All of existence was inside those books. It wasn't an exercise of imagination to me, it was a step into life.

Books remain a way of stepping apart, but now they act more as alternate windows into life. Rather than escape, they provide new angles of view, new perspectives. Often it's an exercise in contrast. Sometimes what's there in the book is plain wrong, but error can illuminate truth in the same way that a dark background makes a light image more visible. In other cases a slightly difference perspective acts to solidify things. What was two-dimensional and flat, becomes three-dimensional and gains depth and heft.

So while there has been tremendous hullaballoo on the blogs I read about the Ra^thergate sequence of events, I've mostly played observer. I've been more involved in the Swift Veterans for Truth campaign to give the American public a different view of Kerry's status as Vietnam war hero. And I've been reading fiction. And while I read that fiction I can't help but cross-compare. The world in which I live impinges upon the world inside those books, unlike many years ago in those downpours.

While reading John Sandford's Rules of Prey, I came across this bit of dialog about handling the media:

"We should talk to the publishers and station managers or the station owners," Lucas said after a moment's reflection. "They can order the heat turned down."
"Think they'll do it?"
Lucas considered for another moment. "If we do it right. Media people are generally despised, but they're like anybody else: they want to be loved. Give them a chance to show that they're really good guys, they'll lick your shoes. But it's got to come from you. Like, top guy to top guy. And maybe you ought to take the deputy chiefs with you. Maybe the mayor. That'll flatter them, show them that you respect them. They're going to ask some stuff like, "You want us to censor ourselves?" You've got to say, "No, we don't. We just want to apprise you of the dangers of public panic; we want you to be sensitive to it."
"Do I have to share those thoughs with them?" Daniel asked sarcastically.
Lucas pointed a finger at him. "Quit that," he said harshly. "No humor. You're dealing with the press. And yeah, say share. They talk like that. 'Let me share this with you.'"

While I found this not devoid of insight, I don't think it describes well the state of things today. In Sandford's defense, he must have written that around 1989 since the book was published in 1990.

Or maybe my problem with that is that Lucas is perceiving the major media as one-dimensional here. The character of Lucas is smarter and more perceptive than that. That he, as an underling, is the one counseling the Chief of Police and the Mayor in the book on how to handle the media shows that Sandford intends him to understand the media well.

But the underlying assumption is that the media, collectively, wants to do the right thing. That is, they want to do what people of goodwill generally perceive as being the right thing. In Sandford's book, that holds generally true.

But I think a large number of us question whether in this case art mirrors nature. Part of the reason for that question, which has become even more central since the scandal of CBS errupted, is that the media, collectively does not obvious hold to the same values as the majority (though I will not say "vast majority") of American citizens. If this is true, then the media, collectively, might still be trying to show that they're really good guys, but defining "good guys" in a manner that is outside the norm. If that is indeed the case, and many argue it is so, the majority of the American public must understand that the major media will not act in what the American public sees as the public's best interest. The major media will act in what the major media sees to be the major media's best interest, which it also believes to be the American public's best interest, through projection.

Put another way, to hope that major media will come around and do for us what is right (according to the standards of the majority of Americans) because they are good guys, is simply not rational. The rational thing for major media to do is to do what major media believes to be right for America, assuming the major media sees itself as good guys. If the major media doesn't see itself as good guys, all bets are off.

Reading Tom Clancy's Red Rabbit provoked some thought on exactly this. He's talking about the early Reagan era Soviet politboro, not the American major media, but the insight pertains. Here Jack and Cathy Ryan are speaking, Cathy, who is a doctor, is leading:

"Yeah, it's hard to look inside somebody's brain. And you know what?"
"What's that?"
"It's harder with the sane ones than the crazy ones. People can think rationally and still do crazy things."
"Because of their perceptions?"
She nodded. "Partially that, but partially because they've chosen to believe totally false things--for entirely rational reasons, but the things they believe in are still false."

The point here is that the Soviets made some very wrong assumptions, and this led them to do some things that appeared to us to be irrational, but that follow rationally from their base, but wrong, assumptions. This is the situation the major media is in today. Clancy recognizes this:

"We can't even leak what we know about that to the media--"
"And if we did the media still wouldn't print it," Moore observed. After all, the media didn't like nuclear weapons either, though it was willing to tolerate Soviet weapons because they, for one reason or another, were not destabilizing. What Ritter really wanted to do, he feared, was see if the Soviets had influence on the American mass media. But even if it did, such an investigation would bear only poisoned fruit. The media held on to their vision of its integrity and balance as a miser held his hoard.

In this passage is a short laundry list of media wrong assumptions. The media assumes nuclear weapons are destabilizing in the case of the United States, and not so in the case of the Soviets. It's difficult to understand the logic of that unless one operates under some other assumptions. The key ones are that the United States is imperialist in intent and that the Soviet Union was not. To a nation bent only on defending itself, weapons are a shield. Defenses stabilize. To a nation bent on aggression, weapons are a sword. Offenses destabilize. Those are my assumptions. They appear grounded pretty well based upon history. City walls created stability; cannons destroyed the city walls and the stability (though later new stability emerged). It's not clear that major media agrees with even these last two assumptions; but they certainly see the U.S. as imperialistic, and for decades argued that the Soviet Union was not, even in the face of overwhelmingly contrary evidence in events, not to mention in the very "sacred works" of communism itself.

As long as the major media holds these assumptions, there is great danger that any conclusions they draw rationally will be very wrong, perhaps exactly opposite to what is right. When you start from a basis of black is light and white is dark, you are going to end up with some very wrong color combinations when you try to mix those with blue, yellow and red. Your light blue is going to look more like a night sky than a day sky.

Likewise, if you start with the assumption that America is at its very core imperialistic, every single action that the United States takes must be viewed 180 degrees differently from the way that those of us who believe the opposite, that American is fundmentally not interested in taking over other countries, or the world, will view them. The problem is not that major media is stupid, though they like to believe the rest of us are, the problem is that they base all their reasoning on things that contain too many wrong "facts." That's the generous conclusion.

Of course, if they listened too well in school, they may believe there is no such thing as a "fact," that there are only observations by discrete observers, and all else is a political battle to determine whose view will rule. If that is the case, all bets are off. The media are the bad guys. You cannot believe that there is no good and there is no evil, only different views, and be good guys. That concept cannot even exist within a frame of reference where there is no good or evil, and thus there are no good or bad guys. There are only those in power, and those out of power. Those in power are those who control the perceptions of the rest.

Does that sound a little familiar?

Thank God, that isn't the case, much as some wish it were so. If we're careful about from whom we accept our facts, if we seek to verify those facts (as Reagan put it, "trust but verify," the Apostle Thomas shared that sentiment) ourselves as best we can, and if we are conscious of our own assumptions, and consider how our positions might shift if those assumptions are wrong, we can control our own views of reality.

And that's what is really terrifying the mainstream media at the moment. Collectively, they really have come to consider themselves "the fourth estate," an unelected branch of our government. They are not. They are a pack of elitists who seek to exert influence from outside government. They really believe they know better than the rest of us. There's nothing inherently wrong in that. I admit to a certain knee-jerk elitism myself (I'm writing this, after all). It becomes a problem when we allow them more power than this system our forefathers designed allows for. If they can act like a fourth branch, they destroy the delicate balance of a three-branch equilibrum. A fourth estate is a threat to American democracy.

A bunch of private citizens exercising their right, and responsibility, to free speech on matters political, religious or anything else, is not. That's what our system is intended to encourage and protect.

We've allowed the self-proclaimed "fourth estate" to garner too much power because the cost of entry to mass communications was so high. It takes a fortune to start and run a newspaper, a radio network or television network. But those have provided real benefits to us in collecting, sorting, selecting and spreading news (information, facts, opinions) rapidly and widely. In order to encourage the technology, we granted limited monopolies to some who would take the risks of creating the businesses to perform the needed function. But some saw opportunity in the power granted by that process. Over time there has resulted a real usurpation of power. The major media was able to, did, and has become accustomed to "shaping public opinion."

That was not its intended function. It was meant to broadcast information, and hopefully facts and truth. It has gone beyond to attempt to define what is fact and ultimately truth, and in doing so control the shape of American government. The intent was to provide information so that the public could make informed decisions. The reality is that major media carefully selects data such that any rational person who receives information mostly from that media will arrive at the conclusions that media has determined to be desireable.

But that day is passing. The cost of entry to mass communications has fallen lower than the cost of owning a car. The result will be millions of competing voices that provide information that, we, the consumers, must wade into, select from, and use to form our own views on the world.

The paradigm has shifted. No more is the process of staying abreast of current events one of allowing the chef to present his meal. The process already resembles better a smorgasborg, where we consumers belly up to a buffet that extends out of sight. We pick and choose the order and timing of our courses. We eat as much or as little at a time was we choose. And if we choose dessert first, there is none to slap our wrists.

The communication of information has traditionally been very linear. That has changed. Control of the flow of information, and thus of the conclusions formed by a rational mind, depends upon controlling the content and the sequence of the information. The new media removes most or all of these controls. Determining the content of the infomeal is now the responsibility of the infoconsumer. If we are wise, we will struggle to prevent such controls from returning.

Communism, and other forms of tyranny, depend upon the control of information to keep their populations compliant. Democracy depends upon the lack of controls on information to keep our governments compliant. The major media is a control on information. For a time the tradeoff was necessary, it no longer is. It's fighting to retain its power; we must not let it win.

That is not to say the media must be destroyed. What must be destroyed is its role of control over opinion-making. No more must we allow the "shaping of opinion" by elites who wish to do so by controlling our access to information. The way to prevent that control is to encourage alternate flows of information. In a free market that means one thing: consume widely. Do not allow yourself to become dependent on a limited set of information channels.

Unlike CBS, verify, only then trust.

A Trophy Fish

Stanley Fish is an extremely intelligent and marvelously articulate man. I remember fondly a debate I saw between him and William F. Buckley, Jr. some years ago (wish I had that on video). While I agreed nearly down the line with Buckley, listening to Fish's argument was both wonderfully entertaining and educational. The result of observing the friction of two minds of this quality rubbing against the hardness of the issue was that I understood my own beliefs, and the reasons supporting them, better, while at the same time gaining a better understanding of how others could, due to different underlying assumptions, believe that positions near opposite to mine could be true.

So it was with interest, and not a little eagerness, I followed the link from The Buck Stops Here to Fish's article in the New York Times. "The Candidates, Seen From the Classroom" is, shock of all shocks, an article which praises the speechmaking skills of President Bush, while at the same time delivering a devastating criticque of John Kerry's. It is very important to note that this is not an endorsement by Fish or his class of the politics of Bush or an attack upon the politics of Kerry. As Fish says immediately in his opening:

My students were not voting on the candidates' ideas. They were voting on the skill (or lack of skill) displayed in the presentation of those ideas.

And by an overwhelming vote of 14 to 2 (including Fish himself, who gives Bush the smile), they award Bush the laurel of rhetorician.

Amusing are their findings, and how the black of the major media's positions on this subject end up being the white of the class's, and vice versa. Where it's commonplace to hear criticism of Bush along the lines of "he is too simple and direct," here he is praised for being exactly that. Kerry, in contrast, is criticized for being too complicated and nuanced. It's very hard to keep track of what Kerry is saying. This consensus delivered the one belly laugh that exceeded the numerous smiles the article evoked. It was Fish's favorite too:

"he's kind of 'skippy,' all over the place."

That could be the caption to a certain ad the Bush campaign as been running recently.

Fish's conclusion is devastating to Kerry (emphasis mine):

And - this is a common refrain among Kerry supporters - doesn't Mr. Bush's directness and simplicity of presentation reflect a simplicity of mind and an incapacity for nuance, while Mr. Kerry's ideas are just too complicated for the rhythms of publicly accessible prose?

Sorry, but that's dead wrong. If you can't explain an idea or a policy plainly in one or two sentences, it's not yours; and if it's not yours, no one you speak to will be persuaded of it, or even know what it is, or (and this is the real point) know what you are. Words are not just the cosmetic clothing of some underlying integrity; they are the operational vehicles of that integrity, the visible manifestation of the character to which others respond. And if the words you use fall apart, ring hollow, trail off and sound as if they came from nowhere or anywhere (these are the same thing), the suspicion will grow that what they lack is what you lack, and no one will follow you.

It's amazing how well this describes Kerry's problems and Bush's successes. While this is already enough to put a smile on the face of Bush supporters everywhere, and have us nodding in satisfaction, Fish isn't quite finished undermining the overly-crenellated walls of Kerry-supporters' hopes:

Nervous Democrats who see their candidate slipping in the polls console themselves by saying, "Just wait, the debates are coming.'' As someone who will vote for John Kerry even though I voted against him in my class, that's just what I'm worried about

You must read it all. Though I've quoted large parts, it deserves reading as an organic whole. Fish is a superlative thinker and writer. Too bad he's wrong about politics.

Hadleyville, Iraq, 2004

It's been a long time since I watched High Noon, but now it seems especially appropriate. I'm not sure Hollywood could make a film like this today. To make my point for me, here's the description of the film from the first site I checked for a cast list:

The story of a man who was too proud to run.
I beg to differ.

It's the story of a man who isn't afraid to make a unilateral stand, even in the face of universal pacifism. It's the story of a man who knows you can't run in the face of terror; terror will follow you. It's the story of a pragmatic and wise man, who does fear his enemy, but knows the enemy must be faced now, at a time and place of his own, not the enemy's, choosing.

Against him stands even his wife of one hour, who is a Quaker, and who threatens to leave him if he won't leave with her and leave the town to the returning terrorist. For that's what Frank Miller is, a terrorist. As one lady puts it in church, a decent woman couldn't walk on the street even in daylight, and no one wanted to raise kids in the town.

But Marshall Kane had put together a coalition of townfolk who worked together to put Frank Miller behind bars, at least until some authority far away in Texas saw fit to pardon Miller. That's the problem with trying to stop terror with law and order tactics. Terror knows no limit and and does "correct" itself. And leaving terrorists alive is asking for some idiot who doesn't feel threatened to let the terrorists go, most likely to once against practice their beloved terror.

Now, Frank Miller is arriving on the noon train. He's sworn to kill Kane, and the townfolk, in one manner or another, think everything will be okay if Kane will just leave town. They don't imagine it could go back to the way it used to be. They believe that they can appease Miller if Kane will just stop trying to confront him. Frank Miller knows: as long as Kane is alive he is a threat. Men that stand in the face of terror are those who end terror. Terror must first eliminate those, before it can go back to its lovely practice of casual terror.

Kane had, in fact, turned in his badge and ridden out of town with his new bride, before he realized he couldn't run. Miller would come after him. If he ran now, he'd always be running. He'd become just another terrorized victim, and there would be none to end the terror. The time to face down the common (though many townfolk considered themselves the friends of Frank Miller) enemy was now. That would be best not only for him, but for his wife, and for the town, even if he didn't articulate it fully in exactly this way.

When he took up his badge and gun again, and sought men to form a posse to defend the town, one man offered his help. A boy of 14 offered also. In the end the Marshall turned them both away, the boy because he really didn't understand and would be little help, the one good man because it was obvious he was afraid when he found out it would be two against the gang.

Kane's deputy tried to impose demands on his aid. He resigned when Kane refused his demands. In the end he tried to prevent Kane from facing Miller by attacking him with the intent of sending him unconscious out of town. The Marshall was forced to beat down what should have been his ally before he could even face the real enemy.

When the Marshall seeks even in the town church for help, saying flatly, "I need help," after much discussion, the pastor, Dr. Mahin, says:

The commandments say 'Thou shalt not kill,' but we hire men to go out and do it for us. The right and the wrong seem pretty clear here. But if you're asking me to tell my people to go out and kill and maybe get themselves killed, I'm sorry. I don't know what to say. I'm sorry.

And while they all appreciate what the Marshall has done for the town, how's he's been the best Marshall they've had, and may well be the best Marshall they'll ever have, they will not stand at his side. The wise thing, they say, is for him to leave town. His presence is what creates the danger. Frank Miller is coming to town because of him.

When Mrs. Kane asks why the Marshall won't go, Helen Ramirez answers, "If you don't know, I cannot tell you." There is the defiition of duty. The Marshall must do what needs doing beause he's the one who knows the need, he's the one who can perhaps fulfill that need, and he's the one who cannot live with knowing the need remains unfulfilled. He can try to explain it, but those who don't themselves see the need viscerally just can't understand. If they don't know, they cannot be told.

"I don't care who's right or wrong, there's got to be a better way to live," the new Mrs. Kane insists. But there can only be a better way to live if someone faces and deals with terror. In the end she herself discovers this truth. She both confronts terror, and is terrorized. Miller uses her as hostage to force Kane into the open. Of course, the promise to let her go if Kane comes out into the street is not kept. Mrs. Kane only escapes Miller's clutches by joining Kane in further action, she claws his face and uses that to pull away far enough that Kane has a clear shot.

Then the grateful townfolk abashedly emerge. The boy pulls up a wagon for them. Marshall Kane hands his wife up onto the seat, then slips off his badge and drops it in the dirt.

I don't think I need to draw the parallels to our current situation too closely. I suggest you watch again, if you have seen it, with the current issues facing our country (and indeed the world) in mind. If you haven't seen it, you must.

Do we want to live in a "town" where decent women can't walk the streets in daylight, like in areas of France with high populations of Muslims, or in towns where it isn't safe to bring up kids, like in Beslan?

Watch it, then think about who would make the better Marshall, and who is playing the ambitious, but not dutiful, deputy.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing."
--Edmund Burke

The Case of the Missing Reverend Alston

David Alston exploded onto the national consciousness at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, July 26, 2004. Of the speeches that evening, his probably drew the most attention.

As other bloggers have noted, we are actually a bit lost in the funhouse when it comes to how all this is being displayed to the world. But a few people I've talked to have said that David Alston's speech received unbelievable praise...
--"The Reverend David Alston," The Stakeholder, Democratic National Campaign Comittee Weblog

Alston was awesome. We need that man on the campaign trail.

I heard Alston on C-Span radio this evening, driving home. He rained down thunder from the sky! I hope the Kerry campaign knows what a treasure it has here...

Rev. Alston was magnificent!
--comments on TalkLeft.com, July 26-27, 2004

Another inspirational moment for me was listening to the Reverend David Alston, who served under Lieutenant John Kerry. He recalled how Lieutenant John Kerry was a brave, caring and decisive leader when he was the captain of his swift boat in Vietnam. He painted a picture of a leader who can be trusted and one who made the right decisions under chaotic circumstances.
--Senator Boxer's Democratic Convention Diary, Monday July 26, 2004

Over the next couple of days there were scattered comments, mostly very positive, then he vanished with scarcely a ripple. How is it that such a clearly effective speaker and a strong supporter of John Kerry is allowed to slip quietly beneath the media waves?

The Democratic National Convention, while Alston's first national spotlight, was not the first occasion he came to the attention of the public in this election cycle.
The John Kerry-Campaign Organization, South Carolina website, which shows as its earliest copyright date 2003, lists Reverend David Alston as a supporter. It's unclear from this when his name was added, but we do know that Kerry was in contact with Alston in 1996, when the Boston Globe ran an article accusing Kerry of being a war criminal.

In early February of 2004, Kerry ran a compaign ad in South Carolina featuring Alston in his role as a Swift Boat Veteran who served with Kerry in Vietnam:

Kerry has blanketed the state with a commercial in which the Rev. David Alston, a black military veteran from Columbia, describes Kerry's cool when the Viet Cong fired on their patrol boat.
--"Edwards bids for S.C. blacks' votes," The News & Observer, February 1, 2004.

Kerry's campaign also has been running a dramatic television commercial in which an African-American former crewmate in Vietnam, the Rev. David Alston, extols Kerry's leadership.
--"Campaign 2004: Black voters play lead role in South Carolina," Post-Gazette, February 3, 2004.

The emphasis in this last story on the black vote is probably key to understanding Alston's intended role in the campaign. A look at the photos chosen for Kerry's "Band of Brothers" on the campaign website makes the point in black and white:

Kerry's 'Band of Brothers,' presented as his crew at the DNC

Alston was meant to play the role of Kerry's close friend and supporter inside the black community. Further support for this is evident in Kerry's Martin Luther King Day speech on January 30, 2003:

I believe we need to reclaim the kind of citizenship. It's a citizenship seared into me 30 years ago when I served with a band of brothers in Vietnam. We were all living together, working together, taking care of each other, kids from Arkansas, Iowa, California, Massachusetts, and a young African American gunner by the name of David Alston, from South Carolina. Color, religion, background, all of it just melted away into an understanding that we were 'Americans.' It shouldn't have to take a war to remind us understand that we're all in this together.

A press release went out on BlackPRWire, "COLEMAN, ALSTON: KERRY/EDWARDS LIFETIME OF STRENGTH AND SERVICE CONNECTS WITH AFRICAN AMERICAN VOTERS," on July 27, 2004 citing Alston:

Reverend David Alston said today during a roundtable discussion at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

“I have had the honor to serve in combat with John Kerry and I am proud to call him my friend,” said Reverend David Alston. “He has proven his ability to lead under the toughest condition and I am confident he will be a strong Commander-In-Chief.”

And Alston made a very brief cameo appearance on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" that same night:

BRIAN WILLIAMS, NBC ANCHOR: Here with David Alston, who this group heard from earlier, better known perhaps as John Kerry‘s swift boat gunner.

Well, Reverend, first of all, your reaction to President Clinton, his use of scripture, be not afraid.

REV. DAVID ALSTON, KERRY CREW MATE IN VIETNAM: Well, after—following the war in Vietnam, we learned not to be afraid.

John Kerry was a very brave young man at that time and still is today, and we love him. We‘re here today because of the decisive decisions that he made in combat. He‘s a warrior. And we would go back to war with him any day.

WILLIAMS: So that‘s what you would take away from how you got to know this kid from Massachusetts and how it applies to the job of president?

ALSTON: Brian, I just can‘t say enough about John.

John treated us five guys with the utmost respect. We were young, all of us, at that time, very hazardous duty. But he was a loving, caring young man. And he always sought to bring us through the terrible things that we were facing. And I believe today that John Kerry would make the greatest president the United States ever had.

WILLIAMS: Reverend, thank you very much for being with us. It‘s a pleasure to meet you.

ALSTON: Thank you.

I haven't found anything further in the way of campaign appearances so far.

This gap remains open. It's both amusing and amazing that a candidate for the party that has depended on and taken for granted the black vote could only offer Alston, and has allowed him to vanish without finding a replacement. I say "could only offer Alston" because of what followed his national appearance on that DNC stage.

The problem was, what Alston so effectively said on the DNC stage was at least partly fabrication. While Alston may have served under Kerry for about a week, he was not present in Kerry's crew in the incident he described, the one which resulted in Kerry's Silver Star award. Riverrat, Captain Ed and others have covered this extensively, compiling timelines from released Navy documents, biographies and media articles and transcripts. They began making their findings public around August 13^th, two weeks after the convention, but the launch of the first Swift Veterans for Truth ad on August 4, 2004 probably sounded the dive alarm for Alston and the Kerry campaign. They had to know that the story as told at the DNC, and as had been told in other appearances going back to 2002, as Captain Ed shows in "The Alston Story Goes Back Farther Than First Thought," would not stand up to focused scrutiny.

One of the things that has intrigued me about this story is that Alston was touted as "a minister from Columbia, South Carolina" in most of the stories, but any mention of a specific denomination, or even religion, or a church with which he's affiliated, were missing. Perhaps that is the new norm for Democrats. It's interesting that there is some sort of claim to authority in pointing out someone is a minister, as was the case here, but there is a vagueness in details to avoid offending the sensibilities of others. It took some digging to find reference to more details of Alston's ministry. I finally came across a Charlotte Observer article by Anna Griffin, "Crewmate knew 'great things' in store for Kerry," (which was published on July 27, 2004, of course) that got a bit more specific:

Alston returned to Rock Hill, married and had two sons. He moved to Columbia in 1978 and today works at the Westinghouse nuclear fuel plant in Columbia. He became an ordained Baptist minister five years ago.

"Being down in Vietnam and going through the rivers, I asked God to deliver me. I prayed constantly, `Lord, if you bring me back, I will serve you faithfully,' " Alston said. "I didn't do that. I got into alcohol, and I had some problems. But the good Lord didn't give up on me, and finally he called me to serve."

Alston stayed in sporadic contact with Kerry after the war. Kerry invited him to his first wedding, to Julia Thorne in 1970, and sent Christmas cards to Alston's parents' house. Kerry aides contacted Alston in 1996, after a story in a Boston paper "accusing him of being a killer," Alston said.

"That was just false, and I was happy to tell people that," Alston said. "In Vietnam, killing an enemy soldier meant saving men's lives. It was something that had to be done."

It's amazing to me that a Baptist minister could be party to such a twisting of the truth. But it shouldn't be. All men are sinners, even those saved by grace.

But Reverend Alston should mind his own words: "That was just false, and I was happy to tell people that." When he stood up for John Kerry, and defended him against accusations that he was a war criminal (despite Kerry's own testimony before the U.S. Senate which sure suggested that Kerry himself thought he was), he claims he did so because the accusation was false. Considering what we now know, that Alston went on to join Kerry in a joint lie that they had participated in specific actions together, when in fact they had not, and to imply a much longer record of service together than the documented facts show could have been possible, we have reason to question Alston's motives.

It doesn't seem that falsehood makes him so uncomfortable that he didn't spend a couple of years spinning lies with Kerry.

If Reverend Alston is indeed the Christian that he claims to be, he should be suffering severe pains in the area of his conscience. I will grant that there is a small possibility that there is a truthful explanation for the apparent conflict between his (and Kerry's) story of these events and the facts, but if he is indeed seeking to serve God, speaking truth and not abiding falsehood is part of that service. Reverend Alston should not allow us to continue in our doubts of what is truth when he has the ability to eliminate that doubt. He can confess his own error, if such was the case. Or he can assist us in illuminating the truth by explaining as best as he can, and by signing a release that will open his U.S. Navy records, adding more documentary evidence to what is currently available.

It's also interesting that Kerry thought he could get away with this deception. He had to know that someone would note that Alston could not have been present in the engagement where he was awarded the Silver Star, or that Kerry himself could not have be present in an angagement that took place before he was given command of PCF-94. Clearly, however, Kerry felt that any such notice would come to nothing. The only reasonable explanation for believing the truth would not out is that he believed the major media outlets would shield him. In light of the recent Rathergate events, I can't see how that was an unreasonable assumption.

Where he failed in his calculation was in assuming that the major media would retain its iron grip on the dissemination of information and thus could shield him. He didn't spot the rust on those fingers, nor see the specs of light glimmering through what had become a paper-thin lattice. And so, rather than just sailing bravely in the face of a light blow of conflicting facts, Kerry found himself in a veritable typhoon. As he did at least once in Vietnam, finding heavy seas, he turned tail and hid from the worst. He himself became very difficult to question or interview, and Reverend Alston has effectively disappeared from the public eye.

Oh, Kerry does have enough friends in what remains major media that reporters hungry for a story aren't dogging Alston's steps, but the truth is out here. And far more people than Kerry ever expected have discovered that with a little effort that truth can be found.

It may not be exactly what Fox Mulder meant when he said, "the truth is out there," but with enough voters out here, come November 2, Kerry will be just another folder in the X-Files.

A Dislogue for Teresa

Speaking at a fundraiser in Arizona, last night, Teresa Heinz Kerry criticized the President for his tax cuts, which became "permanent" today:

She said she was embarrassed to receive tax cuts advocated by Bush and supports her husband's efforts to roll them back for higher incomes and use those funds for education, health care and deficit reduction.
--The Business Journal

Someone needs to sit Teresa down and have a little, friendly chat with her along these lines, I think:

Teresa, I know you weren't born and raised here, and I know you probably don't understand all the ins and outs of American living. I mean, you may know of them, but that's not the same. But just in case you aren't aware, you can give money to the IRS. We really wouldn't want you to feel embarrassed about accepting the tax cuts, and we know you can probably afford to pass them up without making John give up next year's new bicycle, so why don't you calculate your recalculate your taxes for 2001-2004 based on pre-2001 rates and remit the difference?

This would accomplish several good things. First, it would decrease the deficit. I know you worry a lot about that too. I've heard your husband, John, complaining that it's gone up a lot because of those tax cuts. Second, it would show voters that you really do care. And, of course, it would also alleviate that nasty embarrassment.

Teresa, we have a saying there in America that applies pretty well here: "put your money where your mouth is." Now, that isn't too be taken literally. Even as amusing as the thought is of seeing you stuff your mouth with wads of $100 bills, that isn't what I'm suggesting. What it means is, well, to use another saying: "don't just talk the talk, walk the walk." Actions speak louder than words. If you're going to preach something, live it.

Break out those tax returns and a spreadsheet. Wait, you don't do those things. Okay, grab your secretary and have him call your tax attorney and he can have it done. And while you're at it, would you please release copies of your tax returns for the last few years so the American voters can understand better exactly what John Kerry is offering us in this package deal he's proposing on November 2?

Kerry's Top Secret

Beldar has a long brief up on the material covered by the sixth Swift Veterans for Truth ad: "SwiftVets' sixth ad focuses on Kerry's Paris meeting (or meetings) with America's enemies — Did he "betray his country"?" This one addresses Kerry's trips to Paris to meet with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese while yet an officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve, and while his country remained in a state of war with those parties. I've mentioned these events several times, before, but Beldar's brief is a well-considered look at the actual evidence (Kerry's own on-the-record statements, mostly) and the applicable laws. His conclusion is that while there is not enough evidence available to actually conclude that Kerry betrayed his country, there is enough to show that his judgment was very poor in the matter:

I have no hesitation, however, in agreeing that even in what Sen. Kerry has admitted, his actions in meeting even once with our nation's enemies during wartime, while the uniform of a Naval Reserve officer still hung in his closet, showed a profound foolishness — not a casual or trivial mistake in judgment by a callow youth, but a reprehensible misjudgment by a young man then already in his late 20s who ought to have known far better.

Kerry and his team haven't said much, if anything, about these meetings. Considering how he has touted his anti-war activities in other ways, it would seem strange that this has been quietly ignored were it not so obvious that it's a real problem. I've already mentioned how these meetings are not mentioned, much less analysed, in Tour of Duty.

But one angle on this that I haven't seen mentioned, and that just occurred to me as I read Beldar's brief, is that Kerry held a Top Secret clearance. I'm uncertain of the regulation in the early 1970s, but I believe that under current regulations all holders of clearances are prohibited from unauthorized communications or contact with enemies of the U.S., and if any such occur the holder of the clearance is required to report such contacts as soon as possible to his security officer.

I'm uncertain that Kerry's clearance was active once he transferred into the Reserve. It's possible it had lapsed. But I haven't seen any discussion of this topic. That he held a Top Secret clearance, however, demonstrates that he was not ignorant of regulations surrounding trusted citizens (and, in this case, officers) of the United States and their contacts with foreign nationals, and most especially with enemy agents. He knew, from the time he received his first security training, that meetings of the sort he was party to in Paris are inappropriate and possibly worse. Even if his clearance was not active, that he had held a clearance, and thus was fully apprised the regulations concerning contacts with enemies of our nation, shows just how bad was, and probably still is, his judgment.

What has he done since to demonstrate his judgment has significantly improved?

To put this episode in proper context, John O'Neill said this of these meetings:

It would be like an American today meeting with the heads of al Qaeda.

The Kerry Spot's take on this quote is:

Team Kerry better have a good defense to refute that talking point, because if that one sentence comparison breaks through the media static and gets into voter's heads, Kerry will make Walter Mondale look like Bill Clinton.

Parlock, Revisited

Michelle Malkin has connections:

Just received a call from the IUPAT, which has now identified the union member who grabbed the Bush/Cheney sign from Phil Parlock's daughter and threw the pieces at the family as they left the event. "We are taking steps to deal with the individual," the union told me.

My earlier coverage on this is below.

I question Phil Parlock's judgment in taking Sophia to Democratic campaign events to hold up Republican signs when he knows this sort of reception is likely. But I condemn any person on any side that feels making this sort of assault on one expressing an opposing political view is permissible.

Navy Looking Into Kerry's Silver Star Citation?

NewsMax claims that the U.S. Navy has launched a "new probe" into John Kerry's Silver Star citation. "Navy Launches Second Kerry Medal Probe," datelined today, cites Monday's New York Post as its source, but I can't find any reference to that article at the moment.

The U.S. Navy has launched a new probe into Sen. John Kerry's Silver Star citation after the Navy secretary whose signature appears on the document said he never signed the award.

"It is a total mystery to me," former Navy Secretary John Lehman told the Chicago Sun-Times in August.

"I never saw it. I never signed it. I never approved it. And the additional language it contains was not written by me," he complained.
The Lehman document is the last of three versions of Kerry's Silver Star citation that have been posted on Kerry's campaign Web site.

On Friday, Navy Inspector General Adm. R.A. Route closed out a superficial probe into the circumstances of Kerry's war decorations, one that verified only that appropriate procedures were followed when the commendations were issued.

For those who aren't aware of the issue, there are three different Silver Star citations for John Kerry's medal. Each is signed by a different person, and each time the language is adjusted to be more flattering to Kerry. Idexer has a very nice chart that compares them.

Rope-a-dope

In the CNN transcript of the Wolf Blitzer discussion with Jeff Greenfield (hat tip: The Kerry Spot), we read this (bolding mine):

BLITZER: I hope you are right, that optimist in Jeff Greenfield. But let's talk a little bit about that. CBS news itself is suggesting they were warned by some experts they consulted before they went to press, before they went to air, with their "60 Minutes" report, they were warned, you know what, you've got a problem with these documents, and the day after, you're going to be swamped with criticism. Yet they went to air with it, nevertheless, because the White House did not say to them supposedly the next day when their White House correspondent interviewed Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, he did not raise questions about the authenticity of the documents.

The argument you hear from a lot of conservatives and critics of CBS News is that they were so anxious to report this, they so wanted to embarrass and hurt this Republican president, they didn't care about the warnings that they were getting from their own experts going into the report. A lot of people believe that out there. They just had a mind set, they wanted to rush to press.

This point that the White House did not raise questions about the authenticity of the memos has been much discussed. CBS wanted us to believe that it was somehow the White House's responsibility to prove the memos to be fakes. Critics of CBS pointed out that it's CBS's responsibility to authenticate its facts, as they now admit they failed to do.

But that does leave open the question of why the White House did not question the authenticity of the memos when they must have had someone who had the same reaction that many others had at first glance: "Hmmm, this doesn't look right." I admit to a certain niggling suspicion that the White House has again been misunderestimated^TM. If the memos were so obviously fake that within hours of release the alarms were sounding all over the "blogosphere," what purpose would it serve the White House to proclaim them fake? If anything that might be counterproductive, pulling the White House into a partisan war about something that pertained to events 30 years ago. Proclaiming them fake might become an equivalent moment to Kerry's "Reporting for duty!"

On the other hand, not raising questions under the circumstances (and in hindsight) was a very interesting tactic. There was no need to proclaim them fakes since they were so obviously fake that the truth would out on its own. By remaining silent until the rest of the world (with a very few exceptions that had very vested interests) had solidified around the opinion that they were forgeries, the White House managed to both make an annoying subject much riskier to approach for other critics, and at the same time allowed CBS to prominently blacken its not-so-open eye by ramming it against this story one too many times and too eagerly. Perhaps the concussion this time will serve fatal.

Saying nothing is saying something, just as doing nothing is doing something, when it comes to politics. What isn't always clear is what's being said by the silence, or done by the inaction. Sometimes, waiting is the smart thing.

Bloggers, all left feet?

Hindrocket of Powerline notes the upcoming Time issue will carry extensive coverage of the CBS Ra^thergate story. Powerline, of course, played a central role in compiling all the bits and pieces into a "goto" file. If the preview continues on through the process to become the newstand issue, the Powerline guys will feature on the cover. Well, some of them will. Hindrocket says it will be Trunk's back and his own left foot. There should be a better picture inside, but Hindrocket seems satisfied:

But, hey, I can't complain. From now on, I'll be able to say that my left foot made the cover of Time.

My question is, should he be? Why the left foot? Isn't there something sinister about putting the left foot of a prominent member of the great right-wing conspiracy, along with, I must add, the "behind" of his blog-partner, Trunk? What exactly is Time suggesting?

Maybe I'm overreading. Maybe it's just one more sign that Time cannot help but show its own leftist bias. Or maybe it's actually the GRWC in action! Maybe the Powerline guys are running their own cryptic flag up the pole:

Time, left behind.

Can we see a pattern yet?

For those who haven't been following the controversy over John Kerry's service in Vietnam, John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson of Powerline and Ed Morrissey of Captains Quarters have collaborated on two New York Post articles which summarize the basics pretty well. In "The Mysteries of John Kerry's War Record" they examine the unraveling of a couple of Kerry's tall tales, his Christmas in Cambodia myth and his adoption of Alston as one of his "band of brothers." Both of these falsehoods have been exposed, and as a result the campaign has backed away from them.

The "Christmas in Cambodia" has become "he was in Cambodia sometime in January on a mission," though zero evidence of even that has been put forth. Alston has disappeared from the campaign, after analysis of the timeline from Navy records on the Kerry site and other supporting documentation, including Brinkley's puff bio (see much more below) and Boston Globe's articles, showed that Kerry and Alston could not have been together on the missions they jointly claimed. One of those missions was actually a mission led by Lt. Tedd Peck, who Kerry replaced as PCF-94 commander. In fact, Kerry replaced Peck because Peck was seriously wounded on that mission. Kerry has stopped claiming credit for Peck's mission, and little or nothing has been said about Alston since this story broke.

"Kerry the Antiwar Activist" looks at Kerry's post-war activities. These have been less covered so far in the major media and even here online. Partly this is due to the focus of the Swift Veterans for Truth on Kerry's time in Vietnam, where they have personal knowledge of his actions. This shorter article mentions Kerry's Senate testimony following the "Winter Soldier hearings" in Detroit where purported veterans of Vietnam described what they claimed to have seen or participated in first hand. Many of these testimonies have since been discredited. Some of those claiming Vietnam veteran status never set foot in Vietnam, fo example. The statement Kerry made before the Senate was based on these testimonies. While Kerry has never apologised for false testimony, he has backed away from it somewhat, saying that he may have overstated the case in the heat of the moment.

The article also mentions the Kansas City meeting of the VVAW at which the assassination of pro-war senators was discussed and voted upon. Kerry had long claimed to have resigned before that meeting and that he was not present. Following the release of FBI files under a FOIA request, it was proven that he was there, and he has backed off from his claim to not have attended.

Can we see a pattern yet?

The major piece missing (there are a lot of minor details that could also be "fisked" in Kerry's "record") is the post-war meetings Kerry had with North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in Paris on at least two occasions. There he reported he discussed how to end the war and the repatriation of prisoners of war. For many years Kerry claimed he only met them once, in an opportunistic meeting while he happened to be in Paris on his honeymoon. (It's interesting that I don't recall Brinkley mentioning Kerry was in Paris on his honeymoon. He does mention a loaned house on a Carribean island... Jamaica?) When the FOIA request resulted the release of Kerry's FBI files, he had to back away from that position. Kerry himself is quoted in a newspaper article speaking of a second trip to Paris to talk to the Vietnamese enemy. Both of these trips happened while Kerry remained a Lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve. U.S. Navy records on Kerry's campaign site (as of now, but they too might disappear, if history is any indicator) prove this conclusively, despite his campaign's spin to make it appear he was either "honorably discharged" before this period, or in the standby reserve ("inactive"), not the ready reserve.

All of this would be clearer if the parties involved released their full records. Kerry has refused repeated requests that he sign a Form 180 which would grant full access to his U.S. Navy files. Some things are exempt from FOIA requests that are pertinent in this case. Likewise, Alston has refused to sign the form. Actually seeing Alston's records would establish if he ever served under John Kerry, as both have claimed, or if it's just one more Kerry fabrication.

I pray that American's have enough sense to wonder why Kerry has so consistently lied about his past. I pray that we will wonder why he's so reluctant to release his full records. Remember, John Kerry has admitted to the fabrications listed above.

The pattern is clear to any who will look.

DSL went out on me for a large part of the day, so just catching up on my online reading. I wasn't entirely offline, I did have my slower wireless connection, but that laptop is SWG central, and too slow to support both a game session and any real browsing.

I hope to have something up tomorrow of a little more substance.

Creative Research Concepts

Several of the blogs instrumental in driving the CBS exposure (namely: Allahpundit, Little Green Footballs, Powerline, Wizbang, Instapundit and InDCJournal) have noted an article in PRWeek where Creative Research Concepts appears to claim credit for their activities. I thought I'd poke around a little and see what more I could discover about the company, since it's Virginia based, and I'm in Arlington. I found their website easily. It showed a list of clients that include very large companies and others that are smaller, but important to conservative causes. It struck me as odd that a company that claims to represent Media Research Center, for example, would make the claims in the article.

So I checked the press room, and found this:

Regarding PR Week's article of 9/17, (http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story_free.cfm?ID=222586&site=3)

CRC President Greg Mueller released the following statement:

"Please understand, we never meant to imply that the blogosphere is something we did, or even could, control or direct. No one controls the bloggers. The extraordinary depth and breadth of their talent and resources only breeds one thing: a fierce independence much needed in the country. They are a force the PR industry and news media need to pay greater attention to.

"In the interview with PR Week, we tried to communicate that the bloggers, and then CNS www.cnsnews.com, were moving this story, which we then began pushing to conservative media, news websites and "mainstream" press.

"If anything, we're just proud that our client, CNS News, provided some hard news reporting to add some gasoline to the already rampant wildfire that the bloggers had started. Do we deserve credit for that? Not nearly as much as the guys at PowerLine, Instapundit, LittleGreenFootballs, INDCJournal, Allahpundit, and so many others deserve."

Fair enough. It's unclear if CRC overstated its role initially, or if their statement was embellished, but they have moved pretty quickly to set the record straight.

That matters. The speed with which they corrected the record when compared to CBS is almost the speed of blogs. Wait, that's not fair, CBS hasn't corrected the record yet, so CRC is infinitely faster than CBS as of now.

Crying Girl or Crying Wolf?

Rather than continue putting updates in the earlier post, I'm going to start a new one to deal with the questions surrounding the picture below. I will leave a pointer there with a note that there is more up-to-date information here.

These are the newpaper accounts of the event I've located so far:
Democrats accused of ripping Bush signs, The Washington Times, September 17, 2004.
Edwards greets supporters at airport, The Herald-Dispatch, September 17, 2004.

Rising Hegemon's The Bogus Assault -- Father Freeper of the Year (should buckhead not be able to serve) suggests that this picture is not what it's presented as being. No, it's not apparently a forgery, the picture is a real AP picture, but it may be political "theatre." In other words, what the picture portrays may be a posed scene that misrepresents actual events. If this is shown to be the case, this man is really no different from Dan Rather. Both deserve the excoriation of honest people everywhere.

When I searched the online Charlestion (WV) Daily Mail archives for articles on Phil Parlock I initially came up empty. My fault. I was searching the current online edition, not the archives as I thought. The area for that was off the bottom of my screen when I clicked on the "Search Archives" button. Once I noticed that, I did get the two summaries to the articles cited in the blog entry mentioned above:

SIGNS FOR BUSH TAKEN AT RALLY, FATHER, SON SAY

Page: P1A Headline: SIGNS FOR BUSH TAKEN AT RALLY, FATHER, SON SAY Byline: SAM TRANUM DAILY MAIL STAFF Phil Parlock didn't expect to need all 12 of the Bush-Cheney signs he and his son Louis smuggled in their socks and pockets into...
Published: October 28, 2000
Words: 952

DOLE SUPPORTERS FIND IT ROUGH AT CLINTON RALLY

"We always try to give them a warm Republican welcome,' said Painter, a recent graduate of Marshall University. Phil Parlock's experience was less calm. The Huntington man said he was knocked to the ground by a Clinton supporter when...
Published: August 27, 1996
Words: 347

Google also turns up mention of Phil Parlock, though not in the reported context:
Five vie for two Cabell BOE seats
BOE candidates weigh in
Lynch may affect perception of women in combat

Rising Hegemon makes in interesting observation about the photo also. The young man in the backwards baseball hat, who many have taken to be a union goon who ripped up the Bush-Cheney sign, looks a lot like Phil Parlock. Check out the family picture posted there and compare. Rising Hegemon says, "This guy is a serial disrupter with pretty much the same story every time." I am unwilling to accept that conclusion based on the evidence presented, though it is a possibility.

First: Since when is holding up an opposition sign, especially if it's away from the main group of the opponents as it's described here, "a disruption?" That's very clearly within the bounds of acceptable political behavior.

Second: While there is a pattern here, it is not clear what is the significance of this pattern. What we know (from the news report archives) is that similar events have happened twice before. The explanation that Rising Hegemon offers is plausible. It is not the only plausible explanation.

If Phil Parlock regularly attends this sort of political event, especially as a "counter-demonstrator," the odds of some sort of incident involving him rises. As long as it's just turning up and standing off to one side holding up an opponent's sign, it can't really be called "disruption," but it could become annoying to the hardcore Democrats who may have come to recognise him. If this is the case, and I don't really have enough information to judge, it's not that unlikely that he might have signs torn away and ripped up or trampled. If you doubt this, you aren't reading the news.

I submit that while I don't have evidence to stake my hat on this latter interpretation, Rising Hegemon is on equally shaky grounds. If he has more evidence, he hasn't offered it.

What we know is Phil Parlock shows up at Democratic events and counter-demonstrates. To all accounts I've seen, he does this peacefully, though sometimes perhaps intrustively. There is mention of smuggling in the signs. He didn't this last time insert himself and his family into the Democrats' crowd as the VVAW and Kerry supporters tried to do at the Vietnam Veterans for Truth rally did this weekend, for one example. But it isn't clear that he didn't do that in the 2000 incident where the smuggling of signs is mentioned. He has done this at least three times in eight years. I'd guess that he has been at more events, but that is a guess. If these are the only events he has attended, this would, in my opinion, support Rising Hegemon's conclusion. If he has been at, say, ten times this number over eight years, I'd say Rising Hegemon's conclusion is on very shaky ground.

The other articles that I found suggest a possible motive that would support Rising Hegemon's conclusion. Phil Parlock may be seeking publicity to help in his attempts at entering local politics (he seems to need all the help he can get, from the election returns for the BOE position he sought). Of course, his motive could simply be that he wishes to see Republican candidates elected, and he's just running his own family campaign to promote those candidates. Another motive is his expressed desire to educate his children on the excesses to be expected from the Democrats' supporters.

So, I don't see that Rising Hegemon's conclusion is sufficiently supported by the facts he has supplied to date. I do agree, however, that this incident is not clearly what the caption of the picture describes it to be.

If Phil Parlock is attending events and counter-demonstrating and having his signs taken away and ripped up, that is still bad behavior on the part of those supporting the opponent candidate. The proper response is the one I saw this weekend. Those who noted the Kerry-Edwards supporters insinuating themselves in the crowd simply pointed them out to the local police presence. Those potential disruptors (and one was disruptive, chanting during a speech) were approached by the police, warned as to the limits of acceptable behavior, and, if appropriate, escorted to an area outside the main crowd. From the description in the Washington Times article, Phil did not try to insinuate himself in the crowd.

If Phil Parlock is attending these events and faking these attacks, that's terribly dishonest and possibly illegal. And if he can be prosecuted under some pertinent law, he should be.

We need more evidence. I hear Phil was on the Glenn Beck show this morning. Maybe a transcript from that will provide more information. I can't listen to the audios at the moment, but they are here:
Listen to Glenn Beck interveiw Phil Parlock on his show:
Glenn Beck Interveiws Phil Parlock - Free Audio
Glenn Beck Follow-Up Interview with Phil Parlock - Free Audio

Here are a few posts on this:
3 year old Sophia Parlock crying at protest, was it FAKED? at Passionate America.
Coinkydinks at Eschaton.
Kerry/Edwards Supporters Assault 3-Year-Old Girl (UPDATE: Scam??) at Captains' Quarters.

I posted a tongue-in-cheek comment elsewhere about the timing on the DU post, but it was 4:22am, well after this broke. Kudos to Rezmutt for noticing something odd about the story, whether or not he nailed the right conclusion.

Update: After reading one of the old articles closely, I can see Phil does go to events with the expectation of having his signs taken away. From experiences documents (on video!) elsewhere, that's a resonable expectation. I'm not sure that I think he's entirely wise for taking his 3-year-old daughter to this event, when he had reason from experience to believe he might face violence (if relatively minor), but what's the real problem here is that that sort of violence is to be expected.

The tone of the article is questioning whether he's reporting facts, or embellishing, but he sounds pretty reasonable, and a sense of humor even seems to come through the slightly sceptical reporting.

One question that needs to be asked, based upon this statement: Does Phil Parlock know Sandy Berger?

He and Louis brought a supply of Bush-Cheney signs and smuggled them into the rally. They stuffed plastic ones in their socks and pockets and folded paper ones inside Gore-Lieberman signs.

As of this moment I partially accept Rising Hegemon's conclusion. Phil Parlock is deliberately placing himself in a position where he knows he may be attacked for holding up opposition signs. I think it's unwise to bring very young children along, but I also think it's a crying shame that a father needs to worry about the safety of a young child at a political gathering. But I don't believe the assertions that the signs are being destroyed by Phil and his family themselves. There is no evidence of that, and recent history shows that signs opposing Democratic candidates have been destroyed rather often. Should any such evidence be put forward, I stand by my earlier assertion that he then should be prosecuted if possible. Let a jury decide.

I categorically reject any suggestion that attacks upon him are justified. The proper course of action is to ask that the police place him away from the crowd if he attempts to insinuate himself with it. In the case of an event with rules about signs, as the one described in the 2000 incident was, they should ask the police to eject him, not take matters into their own hands (and his signs into theirs in order to destroy them). Anyone who is not a proper authority who takes signs from a peaceful protester and destroys them is at best a vigilante, at worst a thug and a thief.

Update: The union involved has issued an apology (hat tip: Captain's Quarters), which makes clear that the union itself, International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, believes that a member did participate in the incident in a less than proper manner:

The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades believes in the fundamental right for civil discourse, freedom of speech and activism to support our candidates and issues.

What happened in Huntington, West Virginia yesterday is an affront to everything we, as a union, pride ourselves to represent. We extend our apologies to the Parlock family, especially Sophia, for the distress one of our overzealous members caused them.

I have personally taken steps to address this issue internally, and will take immediate disciplinary action to the fullest extent allowed under U.S. Department of Labor regulations and the constitution of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades.

It is my hope that this incident reminds all of our members that every last citizen in this country has the right to express his or herself freely. Not one single one of us has the right to tell them otherwise.

General President James A. Williams
The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades

And Michelle Malkin adds more: THE LEFT IS DESPERATE FOR A HOAX

A commentor adds:

This afternoon, I called the Union headquarters. According to the general president's staff, the union is still investigating the incident and has NOT identified the man in the picture. I was informed that the apology was issued in the possible event of the jackass in the photo being a union member. Claims that the union believes him to be a member are incorrect. They are investigating. That is all for now.

That's fair enough. But that the union is doing so speaks to my point that we do have a problem: the sort of behavior the union is looking into is not unexpected. Were it, the union would say "we are looking into the possibilility that a member might be involved, but we don't really believe that's the case." I will add, I do appreciate their quick response. They could be pulling a Rather and denying everything.

I've listened the the Glenn Beck interviews now. Phil says he's done this other times without violence of any sort resulting. That adds to my earlier statement that this result may not be the norm, as Rising Hegemon assumes. But I do think