Friday, August 20, 2004

Sellout



Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John KerryThis is interesting. Emphasis mine.

If most of Kerry's fellow Swift veterans don't support him, then who were all those guys with him at the Democratic Convention? They made it appear that Kerry has the complete support of his "Band of Brothers" from Vietnam.

John Kerry has been able to convince about 13 men who served on Swift boats in the Mekong Delta to support him, 7 or 8 of whom were at various times crew members on his own 6-man boat. Those are the men the Kerry campaign so prominently featured at the Democratic Convention. The photograph we have posted at SwiftVets.com shows Kerry with 19 of his fellow Swift boat OICs (Officers In Charge) in Coastal Division 11. Four OICs were not present for the photograph. Only one of his 23 fellow OICs from Coastal Division 11 supports John Kerry.

Overall, more than 250 Swift boat veterans are on the record questioning Kerry's fitness to serve as Commander-in-Chief. That list includes his entire chain of command -- every single officer Kerry served under in Vietnam. The Kerry game plan is to ignore all this and pretend that the 13 veterans his campaign jets around the country and puts up in 5-star hotels really represent the truth about his short, controversial combat tour.

The Swift boats fought in groups, so the other OICs who fought alongside Kerry know him well and can accurately describe what he did and did not do. In many cases Kerry's fellow OICs had a better perspective than his own crew members, since the latter had no way to determine whether he was following orders and how well he worked with his peers.

...Why do you want Senator John Kerry to release his entire military records?

We want Senator Kerry to tell the truth about his conduct in Vietnam to the American public. We were there. We know that there are many critical facts that Americans need to know -– facts that have not been disclosed. Releasing the complete set of Kerry's service records will provide some insight into that conduct.

...Hasn’t Senator Kerry already released his records?

No, Senator Kerry has disclosed only a selected portion of his records. Specifically, Senator Kerry has not disclosed the records leading to the award of the three purple hearts, the Silver Star and the Bronze Star. There are also missing performance evaluations (called “Fitness Reports”) for certain periods of his service as a Navy officer. We call upon Senator Kerry to authorize the complete release of his military records by filing a simple two-page Form 180.


Swift Boat Veterans FAQ

Does media bias really exist?



...People trying to persuade others to adopt their views are very likely to cite think-tank experts who agree with them. And the liberal lobbying group Americans for Democratic Action (their description of themselves) regularly grades politicians from 0 to 100 based on their votes on selected issues, with the most liberal members of Congress earning 100.

Two researchers have combined these two disparate ideas to come up with a measure of media bias that doesn't depend on journalists' own perceptions of where they fit on the political spectrum...

..."Our results show a very significant liberal bias," they write. "One of our measures found that The Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample. Our other measure found that Fox News' Special Report is the most centrist."...

...The authors say they expected to find that the mainstream media leaned to the left, but they were "astounded by the degree." So when people say, for example, that The New York Times may be tilted left, but people can compensate for that by watching Fox News, they don't take into account that the Times is much further from the center than Fox. "To gain a balanced perspective, one would need to spend twice as much time watching Special Report as he or she spends reading The New York Times."...


Researchers surprised by liberal bias of media and read the study: A Measure of Media Bias

One Giant Lift for Mankind



The race for the 1,000-pound bench press

Gene Rychlak Jr. is the best bench-presser in the world. Powerlifting experts coo over the 6-foot-1-inch, 380-pound behemoth's physical attributes. His short arms bulge with massive triceps that propel eye-popping weights to the ceiling in an instant. The big stomach comes in handy, too—anything that stops the bar a couple of inches closer to lockout position can't be bad. So, what does it all add up to? Rychlak can bench-press 965 pounds...


The race for the 1,000-pound bench press

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