Post number two in the "Kerry will say or do anything" series.

Again, I'm well behind everyone else, but this is an issue that deserves to be kept close to the surface. It shows just how venial Price John is. And how he will say anything in his effort to obtain an office that he thinks he's simply entitled to.

Last week Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ilyad Allawi visited the US. This guy not only has our trust, but he's stepped into what may well be the most dangerous job on the planet. He's a true Iraqi patriot. Anyone else with any different motivations would work things from behind the scenes or from a cave somewhere. A man with no motives other than self-promotion would not be in Allawi's position right now. Quite honestly, he may very well not live to see the first elections.

So what's Kerry's reaction to his visit? Kerry calls him a liar. And Kerry's number one advisor, Joe Lockhart, calls him a puppet.

I don't care whether or not you agree with the war in Iraq, for a public figure to insult an ally like that is completely bereft of class.

And some people actually want this guy as our president...

I guess maybe Kerry can only speak well of the French. At least if he's elected Franco-American relations will improve.

Big deal.

I'm beginning to wonder if there is anything that John Kerry won't say or do in his pursuit of the presidency. I honestly think that he simply believes that he's entitled to the position for no other reason than the fact that he's John Kerry, ergo anything goes.

As I pointed out, long after many others in the "blogosphere", the whole draft thing is an utter canard. He invented an issue that doesn't exist and is making a huge deal of it. He hints darkly that if Bush is reelected a resurrection of the draft will necessarily ensue. And his surrogates Max Cleland and Fritz Hollings have gone a step further and flatly said that it WILL ensue.

And now there's an email circulating, primarily amongst college students. Here's the text via Powerline:

YOU HAVE BEEN DRAFTED!

http://action.rockthevote.org/ctt.asp?u=906763&l=4476

This is not a real draft, but a real one may happen soon if the current situation doesn't improve.
As it is, our military is stretched almost to the
breaking point trying to maintain troop levels in Iraq and around the world.
If Pakistan, North Korea or other nations begin to pose new military threats, how would we expect to meet the demand for troops?
Did you know that:
* It would only take two to three days for Congress and the President to authorize a draft and set the Selective Service System's plans in motion?
* Twenty-year-olds would be the first to be inducted?
* Women are very likely to be included in the next draft?
It's up to us to educate ourselves. In the
event of a draft, we won't have much time to form an opinion. And with just 34 days left until the election and only a few days left before many state registration deadlines, we need to take a stand now by registering to vote:
http://action.rockthevote.org/ctt.asp?u=906763&l=4476
Copy this URL into your web browser to get the facts about a potential draft, and to find out what you can do:
http://action.rockthevote.org/ctt.asp?u=906763&l=4476
Sincerely,Rock
The VoteandAlliance For Security

http://www.rockthevote.com/draft/

Not surprisingly, there's no link for feedback on the "Rock the Vote" page. They know it's an utter lie and don't want to be outed on their own page.

Here's the official Selective Service position on Kerry's bald-faced lie. And yes, that's what it is by now. A lie.

Yet another post bemoaning the utter lack of civility on the left. Got this item from A Little More to the Right via Electric Venom.

What is is with those people? Like I said earlier, "Fuck Bush" seems to be a standalone statement, no explaination or discussion required.

And now we have this. I have no citations for it, but apparently a Painters' Union has stepped in to offer compensation to the father, so it would appear that this is genuine.

Hope Smiley there on the left is real proud of himself...

Fucking punk.

Michelle Malkin addresses Kerry's draft scare tactic and points out that the administration is opposed to the idea.

I just can't stop posting tonight, I'm finding too much good stuff. Of course it's all other peoples' material, but I'll freely admit that I'm not the deepest thinker around.

Anyway, in the wake of all of the Abu Ghraib hoopla, I thought all of the military haters and Bush haters out there would like to see photos of even more US atrocities in Iraq.

Got this story via the Little Green Footballs weblog, one of the better ones.

I'll resist the urge to editorialize and just let the story speak for itself.

John Kerry Smeared a Hero: My Dad

What a canard. Kerry is scaring little old ladies in West Palm Beach by insinuating that if Bush is reelected, reinstitution of the draft will follow. An out and out canard.

There are currently two people in Congress who are talking about reinstituting the draft-Charles Rangel and Fritz Hollings. Neither of these gentlemen have ever been mistaken for Republicans.

Rep. Rangel has introduced a bill in the house and Sen. Hollings has introduced a bill in the Senate.

So the only people talking about the draft are Democrats, yet Kerry darkly hints that reelecting a Republican administration will lead to reinstatement of the draft. Is there anything this guy won't say?

UPDATE: I guess it wasn't enough to scare elderly women in Palm Beach. Seems Kerry surrogates Howard Dean and Max Cleland are doing the college circuit threatening college kids with the draft if they vote for Bush.

I've spent a lot of time bemoaning the absolute lack of civility and intolerance for any discussion on the part of Kerry (anyone but Bush?) supporters.

I know a certain internet chat room where people can spend hours discussing miosis, mitosis, base pairs, kreb's cycle, genetics, molecular biology--you name it. Yet as soon as politics come up the atmosphere degrades to infantile. "Fuck Bush" gets repeated over and over, as if it's an intelligent, productive statement. Challenging them to actually discuss issues is an invitation to further derogatory comments. All of these supposedly intelligent people, yet "Fuck Bush" is considered a legitimate and unassailable statement.

I thought it was just me, then I caught this link from Captains Quarters. Someone might be tempted to invoke Godwin's Law, but it ain't the same. This is pure, unadulterated (by the way, that common phrase is redundant) hatred. This stuff isn't legitimate disagreement, it's people looking for someone to hate and finding Bush in their sights.

Here it is.

Nice, convenient analogies for people who simply want to hate Bush, but simplistic to the point of gross stupidity. I've visited two Nazi concentration camps and one Nazi death camp. Specifically; Dachau, Bad Toelz (a satellite of Dachau) and Auschwitz. Most people probably have no idea since studying history interferes with their X-Box time, so I'll make it easy--Auschwitz was the death camp. Big time. Dachau and its satellite were labor camps. Not much difference in the end. You either walked from the train into the gas chamber or worked yourself to death over a few months. Either way you ended up in the crematorium. Anyway--to compare Bush's actions and policies to the Nazis is stupid at the very least. To actually believe it? You need professional help.

Go to Auschwitz some time. The museum as it were. First you visit underground chambers in which the Nazis performed their first experiments with poison gas on Soviet and Polish prisoners. The experiments were a resounding success. What sort of people were they for Chrissake? Their mothers must be so proud...

Then you go above ground to a hall of exhibits. They have glassed-in rooms full of luggage which was taken from the arrivals. Then they have glassed-in rooms full of the clothing taken from them. Then rooms full of wigs and such taken from the arrivals. You look at these exhibits knowing that this was the act of leaders who were utterly insane. And who somehow managed to persuade large numbers of people to follow them into the realm of absolute insanity. This isn't making fun of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

We know the things that came out of it--lampshades made of human skin, soap made from human tissue, grotesque experiments in human survival...

Then you get to a glassed-in room in which resides a mountain, and I mean a mountain, of children's shoes. Thousands and thousands of shoes which were taken from children who were then ushered into gas chambers.

You want to compare Bush to Hitler?? You've got a very long way to go. You only expose your own ignorance (and hatred) by that analogy.

Well, the end of the "assault weapons" ban draws near. A typical Clintonian ban which favors style over actual substance.

You see--assault weapons are capable of fully automatic fire. That's the definition. Sorry. But the "assault weapons" ban simply banned a number of firearms based on cosmetics. Fully automatic weapons have been illegal in the states for some years now. There are still some in private possession, since the law against fully automatic weapons was "grandfathered", but the ban on "assault weapons" had no effect since "assault weapons" are no longer legally obtainable in the US. In other words, ban something that's already banned. Typical Clintonian language.

I might also add that although possession of machine guns and assault weapons was permissable for a while as long as the possessor had a Class 3 Federal License, no legally owned machine gun (assault weapon) has ever been used in an illegal act in the US. Yeah, Al Capone used them, but he didn't get them at the local sporting goods store. It's a true fact, inconvenient to Dianne Feinstein who is just full of self righteousness over the expiriation of the ban, but that's our history. No crime has ever been comitted with a legally owned machine gun.

On to the "assault weapons". By definition an assault weapon is a shortened rifle (carbine, perhaps) which is capable full-auto fire. You know what that means. The M-16A2 sort of stretches the definition. It has no full-auto mode, but it has a three round burst mode. In other words every time you pull the trigger it goes full auto, but only for three rounds. Wanna call that an assault weapon? I won't argue, at least not too much.

BUT--A semi-auto rifle IS NOT an assault weapon. With one (stretching it) exception, every characteristic that congress set out as defining an "assault weapon" was purely cosmetic. One characteristic was a bayonette lug. This would enable a bayonette to be attached to the rifle. When is the last time any of us have heard of bayonettes being a huge crime problem??? There are millions of M1 rifles in this country (and they're semi-autos----quake in fear) and many of those owners also own bayonettes. Yet there seems to be no national crime wave involving M1 bayonettes. After that the only possible functional objection to "assault weapons" is magazine capacity. Hmmm. I can't get 30-round magazines anymore, but I can easily buy 50 ten-round magazines. Fire ten rounds, drop the mag, slap another in and resume fire. Not all that inconvenient. Don't know about you, but I can keep up one hell of a rate of fire with ten-round magazines.

They make a point of being able to fire grenades from the muzzles of certain weapons. Holy shit!! Not for literally 50 years now. Rifle-launched grenades were WWII relics by the time we went into Korea. They were totally eliminated by the late 50's in favor of the M79 grenade launcher. Lanching one of those old grenades required an adapter and an M1 Garand, which is still around as it doesn't have the cosmetic features that make it an "assault weapon". Oops--it has bayonette lug, but it's very long, so it can't be an assault weapon despite the fact that its length makes it more lethal with a bayonette.

The ban is based on purely cosmetic features. Not functionality. It's been bullshit from Day 1.

Fact is, "assault weapons" barely register on the scales of what sort of weapons are used in US crimes. They're not a menace on the streets, and never have been. More people are beaten to death each year with toilet seats than are gunned down by assault weapons.

And as far as terrorists, you'd have to live in a fantasy world to think that they're going to shop at Bob's Guns for pretend assault weapons when the Soviets have salted the planet with millions of AK-47s--real assault weapons. Consider, too, that the worst ever act of terrorism utilized box cutters and airliners.

I grow weary. Have to go.