February 26, 2004
To hear the democrats talk, you'd think "George Bush's tax cuts for the rich" was some sort of magic bottomless bag of money.
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February 24, 2004
Still, i am very happy to hear that President Bush has called for an amendment to the Constitution that would define marriage as “a union of man and woman as husband and wife.” i fully support this move, for reasons that are somewhat different than the president’s.
i have always believed that this very important question should be decided through the political process and not by a handful of non-elected judges. But impatient liberal activists have recognized that their best hope of achieving their goal is not by democratic means, but by judicial fiat and extra-legal executive activism. President Bush explained as much in his speech today.
In recent months . . . some activist judges and local officials have made an aggressive attempt to redefine marriage. In Massachusetts, four judges on the highest court have indicated they will order the issuance of marriage licenses to applicants of the same gender in May of this year. In San Francisco, city officials have issued thousands of marriage licenses to people of the same gender, contrary to the California family code. That code, which clearly defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, was approved overwhelmingly by the voters of California. A county in New Mexico has also issued marriage licenses to applicants of the same gender. And unless action is taken, we can expect more arbitrary court decisions, more litigation, more defiance of the law by local officials, all of which adds to uncertainty.i totally agree. Make no mistake about my own beliefs in this matter. Same sex marriage is inevitable. i would rather see it come about in a democratic rather than an autocratic manner. For if the trend towards judicial activism continues unchecked, we will have a lot bigger problems down the road, on much more dangerous issues.. . .
On a matter of such importance, the voice of the people must be heard.
i personally have no doubt that a Defense of Marriage amendment will ultimately fail. You need two thirds twice, and then three quarters. It will never happen. The process takes too long and there will never be more support for the amendment than there is today, because the tide of public opinion is changing every day.
Right now, the president is able to say with accuracy that there is an overwhelming consensus against same sex marriage. But from where i sit, i see an overwhelming majority of people in my peer group and younger who are in favor of gay marriage. As the years go by, it is inevitable that gay marriage opponents will become a minority, just as opponents to segregation have dwindled to near extinction within a generation.
WhatÂ’s most important to me, even more important than the equal rights issues that concern Mayor Newsom and the Massachusetts Court, is the future of our democracy. And that is why i applaud the president for his call to remove this decision from the courts and return it to the people, where it belongs.
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February 22, 2004
Nobody's gonna vote for him this time. i mean, the democrats may be stupid, but they're not idiots. And the left wing wack-jobs who voted for him last time may be idiots, but they're not stupid.
People who voted for him the last time recognize they made a mistake, and they won't do it again,' predicted Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who is chairman of the Democratic Governors' Association. 'He won't have the resources to mount a major campaign, and people are focused on solutions, not symbols.'So just calm down freakazoids, have a latté, hug a tree, or whatever. Better yet, take a bath, i promise you'll feel better.
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February 21, 2004
Supposedly, a B-40 was fired at the boat and missed. Charlie jumps up with the launcher in his hand, the bow gunner knocks him down with the twin .50, Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off, shoots Charlie, and retreives the launcher. If true, he did everything wrong.Maybe it is fishy, but i'm not holding my breath for the media to look into this one anytime soon.(a) Standard procedure when you took rocket fire was to put your stern to the action and go balls to the wall. A B-40 has the ballistic integrity of a frisbie after about 25 yards, so you put 50 yards or so between you and the beach and begin raking it with your .50's.
(b) Did you ever see anybody get knocked down with a .50 caliber round and get up? The guy was dead or dying. The rocket launcher was empty. There was no reason to go after him . . . .
(c) Kerry got off the boat. This was a major breach of standing procedures. Nobody on a boat crew ever got off a boat in a hot area. EVER! The reason was simple: If you had somebody on the beach, your boat was defenseless. It coudn't run and it couldn' t return fire. It was stupid and it put his crew in danger. He should have been relieved and reprimanded. . . .
Something is fishy.
Here we have a JFK wannabe . . . who is hardly in Vietnam long enough to get good tan, collects medals faster than Audie Murphy in a job where lots of medals weren't common, gets sent home eight months early and requests separation from active duty a few months after that so he can run for Congress. In that election, he finds out war heroes don't sell well in Massachsetts in 1970, so he reinvents himself as Jane Fonda, throws his ribbons in the dirt with the cameras running to jump start his political career, gets [Sen. Claiborne] Pell [D-RI] to invite him to address Congress and has Bobby Kennedy's speechwriter to do the heavy lifting. A few years later he winds up in the Senate himself, where he votes against every major defense bill and says the CIA is irrelevant after the Berlin Wall came down. He votes against the [first] Gulf War . . . then decides not to make the same mistake twice so votes for invading Iraq -- but that didn't fare as well with the Democrats, so he now says he really didn't mean for Bush to go to war when he voted to allow him to go to war.
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February 20, 2004
First, Coyote brought up a pending case involving Dick Cheney, in which he believes Justice Scalia should recuse himself.
hmm,i agree with Coyote. Scalia should recuse himself. Whether or not Scalia can be unbiased is irrelevant. It's the perception of bias and conflict of interest that requires his recusal. Coyote continued:maybe the kids at amherst are protesting the death of credibility of a supreme court justice?
face it, the outright refusal to step away from the cheney case does tend to raise an eyebrow or two.
there is ex parte and then there is EX PARTE..
the supreme court should be far above all appearances of impropriety, and spending a weekend with someone who has a lot to lose in a case that might be decided by your vote does indeed smell a bit inappropriate.
scalia's actions have nothing to do with left or right. the point is that he is tossing his own credibility out the window by engaging in ex parte communication with someone who has a case in his court.Then i gave my two cents worth, picking up on the judicial bias and conflict of interest thread, and analogizing the situation with the Mayor Newsom lawsuit and the attempt to block the San Francisco gay marriages by seeking a court injunction. i said:there are two possible outcomes:
he finds for cheney, thereby removing any chance that his opinions are not seen as partisan political crap. this only serves to taint his leagacy. i'm sure scalia does not want his legacy to be one that screams "bought and paid for".
or
he finds against cheney in order to save face, thereby screwing the conservative cause of keeping the vp's energy discussions secret. i'm pretty sure that no one on the republican side of the fence wants those dicussions made public, as it would indeed add to list of problems facing the current administration.
if anything, consevatives should be very concerned about such a breech, as any short term victory (cheney winning his case) would be grossly overshadowed by the fact that this inappropriate behavior might well take the teeth out of any future rulings scalia might make. not to mention that the whole thing only serves to chip away at the honor and reputation of the supreme court. those nine are supposed to be above back room politics..
if i were a conservative, i'd be worried shitless that scalia will save his own reputation rather than look like a corrupt ass in the history books.
Judges hate to recuse themselves even when the conflict seems obvious. It's sad. Take for instance Judge Warren, who's going to hear the injunction case against what Mayor Newsom is doing in San Francisco. Judge Warren is gay. Conflict? He apparently doesn't think so.Then Hugo raised this strong challenge.
Annika, does that line of reasoning mean that Thurgood Marshall should have recused himself from hearing civil rights cases? Or that O'Connor and Ginsburg should recuse themselves from abortion cases? My dear girl, whom I love and admire, you come close to an unpleasant ad hominem argument there...Then, Coyote said:
Annie-Et tu Coyote?maybe judge warren should recuse himself if he was spending the weekend with the mayor of san francisco, chasing boys or whatever.. your intolerance and prejudice are showing here :-(.
you assume that judge warren's sexual preferances will cloud his judgement when it comes to gays?
thats exactly like saying that the revered scalia would not be able to judge fairly on a case involving mr bush sr's son, you know, the guy who was VP when Ronnie Regan appointed him to the court..
im with Hugo on this one.
i tried to clarify my position.
You don't understand the purpose of recusal. It doesn't matter whether Warren is influenced or not, if he upholds the marriages, his decision will be tainted by the perception of a conflict, the perception of bias, and for that reason he should recuse himself.Then Matt filed his amicus curiae brief against me. Matt said:Recusal is required not because of a fear of actual bias as much as a concern for perceived bias, which casts doubt on the independence of the judiciary. Apply your own reasoning to Scalia then, why don't you. If he tells us he won't be biased, why shouldn't you believe him and just leave it at that? You said it yourself, whichever way he decides will be tainted because of the perception. That's why he should recuse himself.
It is certainly reasonable for somebody to believe that a gay judge, who is at present personally excluded from participation in marriage, might have a personal interest in the outcome of a case involving the expansion of marriage's definition. He stands to personally gain or lose a fundamental human right, depending on his decision.
The Federal Code of Judicial Conduct says: "Any justice, judge or magistrate of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned." The California Code of Judicial Ethics says the same thing and adds that "a judge shall disclose on the record information that the judge believes the parties or their lawyers might consider relevant to the question of disqualification, even if the judge believes there is no actual basis for disqualification."
And i'm tired of being called prejudiced when it comes to this issue. i support gay marriage. This is a huge issue and i want to see it done right, especially since most of the country is against it. How does that make me prejudiced?
Oh, and, Thurgood Marshall, a personal hero of mine, didn't judge cases like Brown vs. Board of Education because he wouldn't have been allowed to! That's why he argued them instead. And if O'Connor and Ginsberg were pregnant and planning to have an abortion at the time they were hearing an abortion case, absolutely, they should recuse themselves.
First: I know the question was rhetorical, but I can't resist responding. The last time Scalia voted with the majority was January 26--the last time the Court issued opinions. Scalia's most famous for his dissents, but he doesn't always dissent!Matt, i'm tempted to take back all the nice things i said about you. ; )Second: I think the case for recusal for Scalia is much stronger than for Warren. There has to be a reasonable limit on what factors require recusal. Every judge has some interest in most cases, even if it's only in the sense that he agrees or disagrees with the legal principle(s) pertinent to the case. The fact that a judge may have a personal policy preference on an issue does not automatically give rise to a reasonable inference that the judge will allow that preference to improperly influence his decisions (imho, of course). I think the fact that a judge is a member of a minority group is too weak a basis, without more, for requiring that judge to recuse himself from cases involving that minority. It requires us to infer something about the judge's preferences based on his class membership (always an iffy proposition), AND to assume that this speculative, inferred preferences will improperly influence him. By that rationale, it would seem to me that no judge who's a member of a racial minority should ever sit in an employment discrimination or similar civil rights case brought by a minority (or at least a minority from the same group as the judge), no woman judge should ever sit in a sexual harassment case brought by a woman, and very few judges should ever sit in cases involving age discrimination (since judges tend to be older folks). Similarly judges who are devout adherents of most mainstream religions (like Scalia) shouldn't sit in cases involving asserted gay "rights" (since nearly every orthodox religion implicitly or explicitly condemns the idea of gay marriage), and judges who are gun owners shouldn't sit in cases construing the Second Amendment or state equivalents. Etc., etc., ad nauseum.
Of course these are ultimately metaphysical arguments. There's no way for us to know to a certainty what is going on or will go on in a judge's head, so typically all we can do is make educated guesses about what's likely to unduly influence him/her. But those guesses can't be knee-jerk; there has to be a little reasoned analysis. It's not "unreasonable" in the common sense of the world to think that membership in a general class is prima facie evidence of potential bias significant enough to require recusal. But I think it's "unreasonable" in any sense of the word that takes into account the realities of our judicial system.
Scipio added some background:
Chief Justice John Marshall refused to recuse himself from several cases that he had been involved in; one where he had been a lawyer for one side; another where he had been a judge on the case previously; and a third where he had a demonstrable pecuniary interest in the case.And Coyote further clarified his own position:
Annie-That is correct, Scalia should recuse himself. He won't, though. Just as Judge Warren won't. Like i said, judges hate to recuse themselves.What i meant about the prejudice is along the lines of what Matt has written. you pre judged that warren cannot make a just ruling because he belongs to the minority involved in the case.
the whole anology is some distance from scalia's predicament, when a week-end long ex parte sesssion with someone who has a case in front of him is most certainly a valid reason for a recusal.
but.. from the arguments you have made, it appears that you would indeed agree that scalia's best course would be to recuse himself.
But still, i think my opponents are missing my point. It's the perception of bias and the perception of conflict that requires recusal. It doesn't matter whether Warren can give an unbiased ruling. i'm not arguing one way or another whether he is in fact biased. It doesn't matter. He stands to gain from the outcome of the case. That's obvious. At present, as a gay man, he does not have the right to marry another man. It is now within his power to help give himself that right. That's a conflict. He should recuse himself because the perception of judiciary independence and non-bias is at risk if he doesn't.
Ask youself this. If you were a lawyer for the plaintiffs, would you consider appealing an adverse ruling on the injunction, based on Judge Warren's conflict? Of course you would. You'd be an idiot not to. If you support gay marriage, why give the plaintiff's that appealable issue?
What if this were about money? Maybe you'd be able to recognize the obvious conflict better. What if Judge Warren owned a '92 Taurus and a class action case came before him, brought by plaintiffs who claimed that all owners of '92 Ford Tauri deserved compensation for some defect. If the judge ruled in their favor, he would gain a benefit that he did not have before hearing the case. Should he recuse himself then? What if you and i both agreed that Judge Warren is a man of integrity who would not let his personal stake in the outcome affect his decision? The answer is clear. He should still recuse himself.
Matt said "The fact that a judge may have a personal policy preference on an issue does not automatically give rise to a reasonable inference that the judge will allow that preference to improperly influence his decisions." Of course. But when it is within a judge's power to give himself a benefit that he would not otherwise have, there is a reasonable question raised about his impartiality. The standard is not the actual existence of partiality or bias. How could one ever prove that? It's an objective standard. Does it look like he might not be impartial. If the judge stands to gain personally by the outcome, i believe the conflict is obvious.
Matt also makes other analogies, such as "it would seem to me that no judge who's a member of a racial minority should ever sit in an employment discrimination or similar civil rights case brought by [that] minority . . . no woman judge should ever sit in a sexual harassment case brought by a woman . . ."
Those examples are different than the situation with the gay marriage injunction. A woman judge does not stand to personally gain anything or lose anything by her rulings in a sexual harrassment case involving an individual plaintiff. Only the plaintiff can gain or lose, monetary damages in that case. In a sense, a woman judge gains when the rights of all women are upheld, but i agree that's not enough to require recusal. How could the system be arranged otherwise?
My point is, as a supporter of gay marriage, i want to see it done right. Ideally i'd have liked to have seen this kind of social progress made through the political peocess. By that i mean through acts of a legislature of elected representatives, not unelected judges. But, i'm realistic, too. This country is a long way from expanding the right to marry by legislative means. By going through the courts, Newsom and his supporters have forced the issue, and if it has to happen that way, i'd like to see it done with as much legitimacy as possible.
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February 18, 2004
As a Berkeley grad, this type of idiotic and childish behavior by academics and their brainwashed students shouldn't surprise me. But still, sometimes i am shocked. i guess i'm naive enough to believe that a university is a place where the "marketplace of ideas" concept should be encouraged.
Students wore black armbands to Scalia's address. Besides it being incredibly rude, what was the point of the black armband protest? Did somebody die?
[S]tudent groups, including the Pride Alliance, the Feminist Alliance, and College Democrats, decided that . . . [d]uring Justice Scalia's lecture, according to their official 'instructions,' members of these groups will wear black armbands to symbolize their mourning over the Justice's decisions. Other groups will wave homemade signs during the lecture, stand in protest, and chant slogans.What decisions? When was the last time Scalia voted in the majority on anything?
So childish.
A column by Ethan Davis of The Claremont Institute cites an example of the type of free discourse on might find at Amherst:
Austin Sarat, the professor of law, jurisprudence and social thought who was one of the signers of the faculty boycott letter [against Scalia], delivered a long monologue. 'The scope of legitimate debate on a college campus is narrower than in the world at-large,' he declared. 'Whether homosexuals are covered under the equal protection clause is not a debatable subject on a college campus.'Huh? Everything should be debatable on a college campus. Isn't that called free speech? i guess not. As Davis points out, at Amherst is symptomatic of what's happening at many other universities.
Legitimate discourse . . . begins after the acceptance of a radical left agenda.Sometimes i wonder how i managed to escape my own college education with my sanity intact.These are the same academics who complain that their ideas are censored and repressed by the outside world. But conservatives who disagree are 'divisive,' and their 'reactionary' viewpoints cannot be tolerated.
Update: It's not always bad on every college campus. Look at this report from Powerline.
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February 17, 2004
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February 16, 2004
Answer: Yes. One is pursuing a liberal goal and will be hailed as a hero, while the other pursued a conservative goal and has been condemned to a lifetime of obloquy.
Update: Does Rush Limbaugh read my blog? He'd never admit it if he did. But he made the above point almost word for word during his third hour today.
Update 2: It never fails. Just when i think i've had an original thought, within a day or two i find out some other blogger has thought of it first. Ouch, just when i was starting to think i was all that.
Looks like Rod Dreher at The Corner made the Moore/Newsom connection a few hours before i did. i guess this means Rush probably didn't steal the idea from me.
Crap.
DAMN YOU BLOGOSPHERE!
DAMN You to hell.
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On the eve of Presidents Day, John Edwards said that three of our great wartime presidents had no military experience: Woodrow Wilson, FDR and Abraham Lincoln. Wrong. Abraham Lincoln was a captain in the Illinois militia during the Blackhawk War of 1832. He volunteered and served 90 days, which may seem short, but the war only lasted four months.
John Kerry, who's whole candidacy revolves around his military experience, said that Vietnam was our nation's longest war. Wrong. Vietnam was 1961 to 1975, fourteen years. Some historians date The Plains Indian Wars from the 1854 Grattan Massacre to Sitting Bull's surrender in 1881. That's twenty-seven years. Other historians might even extend it nine more years to 1890 and the Battle of Wounded Knee.
Other things bothered me too. i loved how Kerry said: "There's only one thing wrong with the Patriot Act. Two words: John Ashcroft." Well, i wonder how Mr. Kerry can explain why he voted for it then, since John Ashcroft was Attorney General at the time.
Then there's the tired old line about how the prescription drug benefit is only a way to give tax money to the drug companies and the HMOs. Somebody please explain to me how else that program is supposed to work. Instead of the money coming from the elderly, now it comes from the government. Somebody has to pay for the drugs. Did they expect the pharmaceutical companies to give the stuff away for free?
Update: Another excellent point at Blather Review.
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February 13, 2004
It looks like Kerry has decided to do the same thing. i really can't blame him. i mean, Clinton did win in the end, didn't he? The country lost, but Clinton beat the rap.
Via brainstorming, this Reuters story:
U.S. Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry on Friday denied a report that he had had an extramarital affair with a young woman.As Kerry himself said, "Bring . . . it . . . on."Asked about the report by Internet Web site operator Matt Drudge, Kerry told reporters on his campaign: 'I just deny it categorically. It's rumor. It's untrue. Period.'
After denying the report, Kerry added: 'And that's the last time I intend to.'
Drudge, who broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal involving former President Bill Clinton, on Thursday said Kerry had had a two-year relationship, beginning in early 2001, with a young woman who had since left the country.
Emperor Misha still has the best take on this whole sad mess:
[W]e won't know the truth until Jean-Pierre Kerry stops 'stonewalling' and releases all the records of every single sexual encounter he's had for the last 30 years complete with DNA samples, pictures and audio recordings, not to mention affidavits from his partners, notarized and in triplicate. Until then, we must assume he's guilty. Isn't that how it goes nowadays?Exactly.
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February 12, 2004
This new Kerry scandal allegation just hit my ears. My first thought is that it doesn't matter, we've been through presidential candidate sex scandals before and we're beyond that now.
On the other hand, since we've been through it already, why would we want to go through it again? No matter what side of the Starr/Clinton fight you were on, you have to agree that it hamstrung the former president during his second term, making him largely innefective in office. That's arguably not good no matter what party you are from.
The Kerry news is cited as the reason Clark stepped back from endorsing Kerry and why Dean has not yet pulled out.
. . . Fast schäm' ich mich, mit ihnen zu schaffen.
i also heard on Medved's show that the new Kerry scandal arose from an investigation done by former Gore and Clark advisor Chris Lehane. i suggested earlier that Lehane's backbiting tactics would come back to haunt the Democrats, and that appears to now be the case. Although i'm skeptical whether this scandal will have legs, i'm also hopeful that it will indeed hasten them to their end.
Update: So far, outside the blogosphere, nobody but Drudge and talk radio will touch this story yet.
Update 2: It's simply hilarious how the old media refuses to mention this story. Do they really think they can ignore the blogosphere? Their arrogance is amazing.
On CNN, Aaron Brown went through tomorrow's newspaper front pages from around the world. He skipped the National Enquirer's, of course, even though i seem to remember him holding up the Weekly World News in the past.
It's not that CNN is reluctant to go with the story because they don't want to publish unconfirmed scurrilous rumors. No, it can't be that, because while i was watching and waiting for someone to mention the Kerry story, i saw them promote an upcoming interview segment dealing with the scurrilous and unsubstantiated rumor that Bush paid for some chick's abortion.
It reminds me of how the L.A. Times published every thin rumor they could about Schwarzenegger, while ignoring the story about Davis's physical and verbal abuse of his female staffers. It all depends on who's side the subject of the rumor is on.
Lou Dobbs pointed to the following curiously timed poll question for tonight's audience: "Do you believe that personal and private matters should be left entirely out of presidential politics?" ("No" is winning by almost two to one.) It's interesting that this sort of subtle push poll question would come out tonight.
Even Bill O'Reilly wouldn't discuss the story, although he made mention of certain "rumors circulating on the internet," in order to instruct his guest not to talk about them. Well, we all know how Bill feels about the blogosphere. His Talking Points was a plea to leave the past alone in presidential campaigning. Presumably, that would leave Bill open to talk about Kerry's present affair, if and when he and the rest of the old media deign to pronounce the subject "newsworthy."
Update 3: Question to the old media: If we don't deserve to know about Kerry's sexual habits because it's just about sex and it's irrelevant, then why the 24 hour wall to wall coverage of Janet's boob? Last i heard, Janet was not trying to be elected leader of the free world.
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The key quotes, from my point of view are this one:
The mission of the 147th Fighter Group and its subordinate 111th FIS, Texas ANG, and the airplane it possessed, the F-102, was air defense. It was focused on defending the continental United States from Soviet nuclear bombers. The F-102 could not drop bombs and would have been useless in Vietnam. A pilot program using ANG volunteer pilots in F-102s (called Palace Alert) was scrapped quickly after the airplane proved to be unsuitable to the war effort. Ironically, Lt. Bush did inquire about this program but was advised by an ANG supervisor (Maj. Maurice Udell, retired) that he did not have the desired experience (500 hours) at the time and that the program was winding down and not accepting more volunteers.and this one:
The Bush critics do not comprehend the dangers of fighter aviation at any time or place, in Vietnam or at home, when they say other such pilots were risking their lives or even dying while Lt. Bush was in Texas. Our Texas ANG unit lost several planes right there in Houston during Lt. Bush's tenure, with fatalities. Just strapping on one of those obsolescing F-102s was risking one's life.and also:
[T]he Kerrys, Moores and McAuliffes are casting a terrible slander on those who served in the Guard, then and now. . . . In the Cold War, the air defense of the United States was borne primarily by the Air National Guard, by such people as Lt. Bush and me and a lot of others. Six of those with whom I served in those years never made their 30th birthdays because they died in crashes flying air-defense missions.Link thanks to Prof. Hewitt.While most of America was sleeping and Mr. Kerry was playing antiwar games with Hanoi Jane Fonda, we were answering 3 a.m. scrambles for who knows what inbound threat over the Canadian subarctic, the cold North Atlantic and the shark-filled Gulf of Mexico.
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February 05, 2004
Truth be told, the F-102A was almost obsolete by the time George W. Bush began flying them. But in itÂ’s day, ConvairÂ’s Delta Dagger was pretty badass. It was billed as the first supersonic all weather fighter. It first flew in 1955 and began operational service about two years after the Korean armistice. Nine hundred and seventy-five were built by the Convair division of General Dynamics between 1955 and 1960. It was used sparingly in Vietnam. Later, some planes were sold to The Greek and Turkish air forces, and it flew during the Cyprus conflict of 1974.
It was big. If iÂ’m not mistaken, i think it was the biggest fighter weÂ’ve ever had. At over 68 feet long, it was almost six feet longer than the F-4E Phantom, which was no midget itself. But with only one engine, the Delta Dagger weighed half as much as an F-4.
The weight difference makes sense when you consider the mission of the F-102A. ItÂ’s kind of misleading to call it a fighter, because thatÂ’s a term that encompasses a wide variety of planes that were designed to do vastly different things. ItÂ’s more accurate to call the Delta Dagger an interceptor.
To understand the job of an interceptor, as opposed to a pure air superiority fighter, you have to remember what we were afraid of back in the Fifties and early Sixties. These were the early years of the Cold War, before intercontinental ballistic missiles. If a nuclear war happened, it would have been fought by long range bombers penetrating the enemyÂ’s homeland to drop bombs just like in World War II.
To defend against these long range bombers, the superpowers relied on early warning radar to detect an attack and interceptors to stop it. The idea was to shoot down the bombers as far away from the homeland as possible. Early warning radars needed to detect the bombers while they were still far enough away for the defending interceptors to take off and get within range.
Thus, speed was the one overwhelming requirement for a true interceptor. Maneuverability was not so important. These planes were like dragsters, not formula one cars. They needed to get within range of the bombers fast, so they could shoot them down before the bombers crossed into homeland territory or got near their targets. The Delta Dagger had no guns; interceptors werenÂ’t intended for dogfighting.
We had the Delta Dagger, and itÂ’s unbelievably fast successor, ConvairÂ’s F-106 Delta Dart. The Russians came up with the Yakovlev Yak-28 and the huge Tupolev Tu-28 Fiddler. Perhaps since it was the first of its kind, BushÂ’s Dagger was relatively slow compared to the Delta Dart and the Russian Fiddler. The DaggerÂ’s top speed was only 825 mph, while the Dart went 1,587 mph.
The strategy was for interceptor units to be ready to scramble on a momentÂ’s notice, in the event of a nuclear attack. They would race towards the incoming bombers and fire air-to-air missiles as soon as they came into missile range. i would guess that the range of an interceptor was important, but then the range of the air to air missiles would be added to the aircraft range.
i don't want to sound like iÂ’m minimizing the contributions of the brave pilots who flew the F-102A. Those men stood guard so my parents could sleep at night during a very dangerous period of the Cold War. Still, flying the F-102 was not the same as flying a Phantom over Vietnam. Interceptor pilots sort of pointed their plane in the right direction and stomped on the gas pedal. The radar automatically guided the plane into attack position and fired the missiles.
Thankfully, we never discovered whether interceptors would have been enough to stop a nuclear bomber attack. There was a period of time when military planners thought that the wave of the future would be faster and faster bombers. But that ended in the early 1970s when strategic planning had abandoned the idea of nuclear bombers penetrating enemy territory. The new method of nuclear war relied on inter-continental ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and submarine launched missiles. Obviously the interceptor was no defense against these newer strategic weapons. The nuclear missile made the long range bomber obsolete. And when the bomber was no longer needed, the interceptors became extinct too.
Although the Delta Dagger remained in service until 1974, the U.S. Air Force began moving its interceptors to National Guard units at the end of the sixties. So by the time George W. Bush graduated from his T-33A trainer into an F-102A at Ellington AFB, his unitÂ’s mission had already begun the transition from air defense on 24 hour alert status to pilot training.
ItÂ’s a tricky thing to try to place a value on one individualÂ’s service in the Armed Forces. Who am i to judge? i have a friend who has the seemingly cushy task of serving on the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman as an administrative clerk. Besides the fact that sheÂ’s sitting in a gigantic floating target, sheÂ’s doing a hell of a lot more to serve her country than i am doing, even if her duties are somewhat mundane. i would never denigrate her service, because she volunteered and every person in the military is there to protect me.
Obviously, flying an obsolete plane in a training squadron is different than driving a boat in the Mekong Delta. Still, they also serve who only stand and wait. Bush had the misfortune (or good fortune, depending on your perspective) of being born a few years too late for his chosen mission. We shouldnÂ’t hold it against him that he became an interceptor pilot at a time when that mission was winding down for reasons he probably was not aware of when he joined. If he had served in the 147th Fighter Interceptor Group a few years earlier, he would have been on the front lines of the Cold War, a far more important and potentially dangerous war than KerryÂ’s Vietnam. i donÂ’t think that lessens the value of his service to our country one bit.
Bonus trivia question: What is the plane in the picture doing?
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February 04, 2004
We must fact the fact that our Republican president was a DESERTER! He never even served in the REAL military. Instead he was in the Illinois state militia during the Blackhawk War and NEVER saw any combat. Captain Abraham Lincoln even admitted years later that the worst he suffered in the Blackhawk War was a bunch of mosquito bites. Not only that, even though Captain Abraham Lincoln mustered out of the militia on July 10, 1832, there is NO RECORD of a Captain Abraham Lincoln being in the militia (not a REAL army) from May 27, 1832 to July 10, 1832. One can only conclude, despite any facts to the contrary, that Abraham Lincoln was a DESERTER. At the very least he was AWOL.Note: the "Quaker Gun" reference is a bit obscure. Quaker Guns were logs painted to resemble cannons, which were placed by the defenders of Richmond to fool McLellan into believing he faced a stronger Confederate force than he actually did. McLellan took the bait and refused to move on the Confederate works, continually asking Lincoln for more men and more time. Until the Seven Days battles, when McLellan was whipped good by Robert E. Lee, cementing McLellan's reputation as a coward and Lee's as a genius. Read aboout it here and here.Contrast that sad military record with that of our great Democrat, George McClellan who bravely faced down Quaker Guns outside Richmond, VA in 1862. McClellan, who is now running for president, is absolutely correct in his assertion that Lincoln is a miserable failure as a president especially since he did not seek the advice and consent from our European allies in the War of Rebellion. I look forward to a political campaign featuring a distinguished REGULAR military officer with a chest full of medals up against a Republican deserter who slacked off in the militia, not the REAL army. One candidate spent the war slacking off and suffering from nothing more than a bunch of mosquito bites and the other candidate is a genuine WAR HERO who did not desert.
This November the choice is yours. VOTE for the Democrat candidate WAR HERO....NOT the Republican deserter.
p.s. Did I mention that the Democrat candidate is a WAR HERO?
Link thanks to Professor Hewitt.
Posted by: annika at
04:38 PM
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February 03, 2004
What about Edwards and Kerry? In my crystal ball, the only question is whether Edwards and Kerry will endorse Dean or Clark after they drop out.Brain fart.
In my own defense, i wrote that on January 16th, before Iowa, and nobody was giving Kerry or Edwards any chance back then. The media, with their far left goggles had fallen in love with Dean. Everyone else, including me, felt a temptation to accept the media's skewed judgement without question. In reality, the rank and file Democrat always had doubts about Dean, thus the "apparent" Kerry surge. i think media pundits and bloggers, on the left and the right, were hoodwinked by a little wishful thinking in regards to Dean. i can understand the traditional media falling for him and missing Kerry, but we bloggers are supposed to know better. We're the "new media" after all.
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07:37 PM
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