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 On
Saturday night we attended a Greenbelt multi-birthday party for Ellen,
Hopi, Peter May, and Anja. The resident Greenbelt party DJ, Mike, put
on some great dance tunes, many from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. We happily
danced away the night and returned home after three AM.On Sunday we played with the rest of the Greenbelt drum jammers at the New Deal Café, from three until five o'clock in the afternoon, and then hung around for another hour or so. Monday, after cleaning our laundry room, which is really just a big messy closet, and finding lots of junk that I didn't know was in there, I contemplated our website, and all of its buried junk. I decided to give our website its own constantly updating directory, a closet, if you will, full of practically everything on the site. That way we can dig around in there (and so can you!) and maybe find inspiration to clean out the skeletons every now and then. Take a look, but don't be surprised if the program does something peculiar. The closet is just two days old. I'm still debugging and massaging the code. G: I get all sorts of emails from activist groups of all kinds, including True Majority and MoveOn.org. Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry's ice cream) is the founder of True Majority, and I got an email saying they were having a press conference to launch a new campaign called The Computer Ate My Vote. I've been interested in this issue and decided to accept the invitation to attend. I called Izolda and she said she'd go with me, so Tuesday morning we drove to a Hyatt Regency hotel in D.C. We weren't sure what to expect, we dressed warm and thought we might be outside shouting things, but it was a sophisticated event in a fancy function room. Ben Cohen spoke, as did a fellow who was a computer expert, and the Secretaries of three states; New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine, who support the ideals of this campaign. In fact, you probably do too. Wouldn't you appreciate knowing that if a computer made a mistake or was tampered with, there'd be a hard (paper) copy of your vote that could be recounted? After the speeches, they served a one-time-this-occasion-only ice cream, called Fudged Election Confection. As we prepared to leave, we found that parts of the room were adorned with chocolate sculptures! Regular and white were used in different ones, with bowls of chocolate kisses nearby to attend to a sudden urge to bite into one. Among the goodies was a white chocolate Statue of Liberty, about 2½ feet high, and a small Rodin's Thinker statue in brown. We went to Dupont circle for lunch at Kramer's books and Afterwords café, had a great lunch, browsed and bought some books, then Izolda showed me around the area a little. She showed me the house she once lived in, and we admired many other houses and embassies in the area before going home. J: Here's a rebuttal I wrote to one of my brothers about an article he forwarded in an email. The article, Vetting the Vet Record - Is Kerry a proud war hero or angry antiwar protester? by Mackubin Owens, appeared in the National Review. OK, I can't stand it any longer. Since
you submitted it for my review, I will. The attached article fails on
several counts.
The title, "Is Kerry a proud war hero or angry antiwar protester?" is a question that makes no sense. Why can't Kerry be both a proud war hero AND an angry antiwar protester? The title reminds me of that old joke question, "Do you walk to school or carry a lunch?" Since the question is meaningless, and it's the title of the piece, it presages logical inconsistencies to come. The article goes on to describe Kerry's return from Vietnam and his eventual part in the protest, throwing somebody else's medals over a fence, testifying before Congress, and including results of the Winter Soldiers Investigation in his testimony. The WSI claims were subsequently investigated by the NIS and found to be wrong. Kerry's claims are found to be incorrect, well after the fact, and then morph into lies later in the article, when the Dr. Owens asks, "Were you lying in 1971 or are you lying now?" I see absolutely no evidence in this discussion that Kerry lied about anything. He may have been wrong, but he didn't lie. It's a lot like claiming that Bush lied to congress when he said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and then not backing it up with anything. If you claim that someone is a liar, you must present evidence that he had knowledge at the time of his fallacious statement. The article ends with a question more galling than the title's question: "If he believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn't possibly be proud of his Vietnam service. Who can be proud of committing war crimes of the sort that Kerry recounted in his 1971 testimony?" This question implies that Kerry committed war crimes, but nowhere in the article does it show that Kerry committed any. I find it quite reasonable that Kerry was both proud of his service and, at the same time, against the war and outraged regarding war crimes he heard from other vets and an investigation he trusted. So, after reading this piece, I see no contradictions, and no lies, at least by Kerry. The most questionable action that he took was throwing someone else's medals over a fence. -- jwc As a postscript and example: I am proud of my brother's service in Iraq. Even though I don't know any details of his tour, I trust him implicitly. I'm absolutely positive he is an honorable soldier. Nonetheless I am morally opposed to this war. I consider it to be unjust and a long term mistake for our country. Am I proud of my brother or an angry anti-war activist? Yes. |
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