Let's compare records

Via Life and Deatherage comes a fair and balanced comparison between JKerry and Smirky:

Before he was 40, John Kerry graduated Yale with higher than Bush's 2.0 GPA, and volunteered for service in Vietnam. After earning all those medals, he returned to the US, testified before Congress about the War, and founded Vietnam Veterans for America. He was then accepted to Boston College Law School, graduated, and became a prosecutor in Boston. He ran for the US House of Representatives once and lost, but in 1982, he ran for Lt. Governor of Massachusetts and won. In 1984, at age 40, he was elected to the US Senate, where he's served for 20 years.

Before he was 40, George W. Bush was accepted as a "legacy" student at Yale University, where he blew off classes and graduated with a GPA variously described as 1.68 or 2.0. His family's friends pulled connections to get him into the Texas Air National Guard, and to get him accepted for flight training despite the lowest acceptable score on the test. In both cases, he magically jumped ahead of hundreds of other people on waiting lists for those positions through absolutely no merit or achievement of his own.

He expressly stated a wish not to serve overseas, though a later attempt to volunteer for a 3-month overseas tour was denied due to his lack of experience. With two years remaining on his enlistment, Bush refused to take a required physical (shortly after random drug testing began) and never flew again for the TANG, despite saying in his "autobiography" that he did. (Recently released records strongly suggest that Bush fraudulently collected pay and credit for months in which he did not serve.)

Upon discharge from the TANG, Bush worked on a failed Senate campaign in Alabama, and then earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, despite a complete lack of academic credentials that would get him admitted. He then, by his own admission, bummed around mostly drunk, participating in senior management of one failed company after another, until finally sobering up at the age of 40. (He then continued to preside over more failed companies, bailed out each time by family friends, until winning election as Governor of Texas during the big Republican sweep of 1994.)

Net Voices

SamuelJohnson: "This election is about President Bush," said Bill Kristol, an official in the previous Reagan and Bush administrations and now editor of the Weekly Standard. "It's his re-election, he's got to make the case for himself. He's entitled to criticize John Kerry, but John Kerry is more qualified to be president than Jimmy Carter was after four years as governor of Georgia and, arguably, than George W. Bush was after six years as governor of Texas."

Fiat Lux: Now I'm still willing to believe that our law enforcement agencies are sincerely trying to find and stop terrorists. But it would help me and I think a lot of other citizens be less cynical about the whole thing if we saw or heard more than just vague threat announcements ever so often. I'm not an expert on how terrorists get busted, but it seems to me that if our law enforcement services know enough about domestic plots to be able to provide warnings about specific times and places, they should know enough about who is doing the planning to make some arrests and make some cases in court (hint - Jose Padilla doesn't count). It also doesn't help credibility when the government can't even produce an accurate report on how many terror attacks have occurred recently.

How did it come to this?

You can buy anything over EBay, and that includes an adorable little rubber ducky who happens to be, ya know....HAUNTED!!

This is a true story about a Rubber Ducky. I don't feel that in good conscience I can keep this thing in my house, it wouldn't be fair to my family and frankly I've lost enough sleep over it as it is. I spoke at length with my Pastor and together we came up with the idea to sell it with full disclosure, any other method and we would risk the Duck falling into unsuspecting hands.

~snip~

I can't explain what happened, and the sooner I can put the events of that night and this duck behind me, the better off I'll be.

I will not be responsible for the duck after shipping, I will not field questions or help to explain its unusual mystique. I want nothing to do with it. The winning bidder must understand this. I don't want someone to find this thing in a Dumpster or buy it at a garage sale, I want the person who gets it to understand what they have and not to take it lightly, and for Gods sake I don't want it near children. I'd be just as happy if you buried it in the Tupperware container it's still in.

The whole world has gone to hell.




Via MikeBKnight.

What about the baby seals?

You want irony? I'll give you irony:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- A small cruise ship catering to eco-tourists was seriously damaged after running aground in the Aleutian Islands.

Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer Roddy Corr said about 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel spilled from the ruptured tank, as was some waste water. He said swift currents dispersed the spilled fluid before it could be cleaned up.

A preliminary investigation indicated that the ship was going about 5 knots when it hit uncharted rocks between two islands, said Doug Bolnick, a spokesman for Clipper Cruise Line, the St. Louis company that operates the tour.

Via Penguin Perspectives.

The Easy Way

Jake has it figured out:


No muss, no fuss, no unsightly paper trail.

Short and sweet

Ted boils it down:

Only 96 days remain to take back our country from the most secretive, hypocritical and dangerous band of ideologues in our governmental history. Let no doubt remain; this is the most important election of our time. Either we take the road forward to national unity and international cooperation, or we fall further into despair, division and dangerous isolation.

Our nation cannot go on like this - squandering brave young lives and hundreds of billions of dollars on unnecessary war, losing old friends and creating new enemies, abandoning the middle class while making the rich richer and saddling our children with unsustainable debt and pollution.

The Reagan Bounce

Ron Jr. is all over ChimpCo:

“When Mr. Bush talks about the economy, he is not talking about your economy. His economy is filled with pals called Kenny-boy who fly around in their own airplanes. In Bush’s economy, his world, friends relocate offshore to avoid paying taxes. Taxes are for chumps like you. You are not a friend. You’re the help. When the party Mr. Bush is hosting in his world ends, you’ll be left picking shrimp toast out of the carpet.

Oh and that's not all:

Reagan’s son, Ron, spoke at the just-concluded Democratic National Convention and writes in next month’s Esquire magazine that “George W. Bush and his administration have taken normal mendacity to a startling new level far beyond lies of convenience. They traffic in big lies.”

Republican values

Blogging out of Madras (Oregon) the Gr8ful Grind clues us in as to what kind of thinking it takes to be a Republican today:

The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.

A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

Also: up is down, black is white, and being The War President is the same as being The Peace President.