….you don’t know a damn thing about training to fly jets?

I shall charitably assume you really didn’t mean to imply that pilots choose to be pilots in order to avoid ground-pounder assignments.

(Oh, wait: That means you can slam McCain too! Oh, double-wait, he made it over and spent time in the Hanoi Hilton….scratch that.)

“Either you agree with me, or you’re with the racists” could be Radley’s new motto.

But for the first two or three years I was reading this blog, I had no idea of his leanings. Given the great quality of his work, it doesn’t really matter. But there has been a noticeable drift (or coming out) lately — and recent converts to any belief tend to be the most dogmatic.

There were plenty of reasons to hate Bill Clinton and the Democrats in the 1990s (I did), and there are plenty of reasons to hate George Bush and the Republicans now (I do).

There are plenty of other outlets we can get our Two Minutes Hate toward Bush/wing-nuts/Iraq war/anti-immigration racists from, but only one site that has been investigation and documenting the abuses of the so-called “justice system.” It will be a great loss if he chooses the easier path and becomes just another pundit doing what 90% of them do, rather than doing what has made him stand out from the crowd.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, if he really feels it’s important to let the world know how much he hates the wing-nuts while being apologetic for the moon-bats.

what is it about (any kind of) media and leftward drift?

It’s too bad that Radley’s been getting more partisan lately; he’s probably going to alienate a lot of his readership.

My entire post actually ASSUMED the veracity of those statements, that is, my response was written as if I did not doubt that the statements were made (and I don’t doubt that they were – I was just snarking about your double-standard for sourcing). You completely ignored the substance of my post (as usual) to move the goalpost and complain about irrelevant things.

There’s a painful irony in you accusing ME of having my mind made up and ignoring the “facts.” I’m not the one trying to portray a guy who freely stated that he considered TANF (where he could be assured of never being involuntarily sent to Vietnam) to be a better option than _blowing his eardrums out_ or _moving to Canada_ as if he were eager to put his life on the line.

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2007/11/legislator_threatens_to_sue_au.html

Same guy. If I mention that he’s one of the most well-respected black leaders in central Alabama, I’ll be called a racist. So I won’t.

Yes; I do notice that the link is broken — and I also notice that you have utterly interest in tossing the broken link into http://web.archive.org/ to run it down to http://web.archive.org/web/20060614180758/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4271922/
….like I did.

Now why do you suppose that is?

I’ll tell you why: It’s because you’re lazy, you have your mind made up, and you’ll be damned it you’ll let the facts interfere with that.

For someone who is so critical of other peoples’ sources, that you are citing to a Wikipedia article — and worse, a wikipedia article whose specific footnote for the sentence you’re citing to is broken — well, the irony almost kills.

But in any case, your original claim was that Bush joined the TANG specifically for the purpose of obtaining the qualifications necessary to fly over Vietnam. Your wikipedia source, however, merely says that Bush asked about the program some during during his tenure in the TANG. Please note — huge difference.

By itself, your source doesn’t really corroborate your claim, and in addition, there are additional facts which strongly mitigate AGAINST your claim. Not the least of which is Bush’s comments on why he went into the TANG in the first place: “I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes.” (What a champ!)

Other factors that strongly mitigate against your reading: If Bush had really joined the TANG for the purposes of training to fly in combat, he would have _checked what kind of planes he would be able to train in to get over there_. He wouldn’t have waited until after he had trained with the wrong airplane to find out that, whoopise, no go. Additionally, if he had really joined for that purpose, he would have logged the hours he needed, and wouldn’t have skipped his physical, gotten himself disqualified from flying, and then skipped town to work on a Senatorial campaign.

As for your other claims about Dan Rather and my supposed “track record” — irrelevant, even if they weren’t false.

2. Radley didn’t give Ron Paul a pass for statements written in newsletters bearing his name and he shouldn’t give one to Obama either. There is a big difference between getting the endorsement of a minster with obnoxious views and having one as your spiritual guidance counselor for 20 years. Why is it acceptable to preach hate about whites and jews but not blacks? Just because a certain segment of our population believes the CIA sells crack to black kids and invented AIDS to kill africans doesn’t mean that holding those views is above reproach. Anyone who sat in a pulpit for 20 years while knowing Wrights views and didn’t take everything he said with a massive dose of salt is an idiot. You may have to be nice and put up with the crazy-conspiracy-nut uncle at thanksgiving, but you don’t go around seeking his wisdom and telling people how he and his guidance is what has made you such a swell guy.

If any particular conservative candidate were attending Robertson’s of Falwell’s church regularly while running on a pro-gay, pro-womyn and pro-violent video-game platform — then yeah.

…because that’s essentially what Obama is doing while preaching diversity (etc) while attending a church with clearly racist sermons of the sort that even Jesse Jackson has sense enough to avoid making.

Not if you’re training to fly jets, you didn’t. They don’t hand those out after three weeks of basic. (You needed to log 500 hours flight-time.)

> Instead, he joined a Champagne unit of the Texas Air National
> Guard which was a guarantee against being sent to Vietnam
> involuntarily.

Why would he worry about being sent to Vietnam INvoluntarily when he was attempting to get there voluntarily as a fighter pilot in the first place?

See here: “….Air National Guard members could volunteer for active duty service with the Air Force in a program called Palace Alert, which deployed F-102 pilots to Europe and Southeast Asia, including Vietnam and Thailand. According to three pilots from Bush’s squadron, Bush inquired about this program but was advised by the base commander that he did not have the necessary experience (500 hours) at the time and that the F-102 was outdated….”

==//==

Mary Mapes and Dan Rather got fired for vomiting up the same bullcrap you’re hinting toward here. You might have heard about — it was on all the news channels.

Do yourself a big, fat favor and avoid getting into arguments over who has a better track-record of getting his facts correct, because you’re already 0:1 this week.

I just have to reiterate how weasely it is to claim that Bush “backed up” his cheerleading comments about how cool it is to fight in combat by noting that he “flew jets during Vietnam” — and then getting self-righteous about how you never said he flew them “over Vietnam”! The implication of the argument in the first post is so clear that your lame attempt at wiggle room is painfully obvious.

It’s like someone claiming they backed up their support for the Iraqi war by volunteering to drive a fuel convoy during the occupation — and then finding out that their route was between Nebraska and Idaho. “Well I never SAID I drove it in Iraq!”