Demosophia

I No Longer Understand Democrats

I just listened to Juan Williams attempt to make a case that the 60 Minutes documents might be legit, and that anywho the real issue has to do with Bush's actions (the "substance" of the memos). Isn't that a little like saying the real issue is whether a dog can quack, or a duck can bark? I don't get it. All this time I thought the evidence of the substance was important, but I guess not. Where'd we get the idea that Bush disobeyed a direct order, if not from that memo? So, what "substance" does the allegation have, beyond the memo? None, right?

Which means the authenticity of the memo is pretty important.

I worked for a period of time in the printing industry in the early 1980s, went to art school to study calligraphy with Margaret Dehn (who was the official White House calligrapher chosen to do formal invitations and the like). I also spent a lot of time phutzing around with various early computer fonts and spacings in an attempt to duplicate proportional fonts used in the printing industry. It's just enormously difficult to get those fonts to synch up. Unless Microsoft deliberately modelled its default font and spacing to correspond to a 1970s IBM Selectric, the odds of getting things to match up are approximately the same as the odds of getting a Ford Fairlane carburetor to work in a Ford Taurus without modification. I admit it's theoretically possible that MS made that design decision, except that they didn't.

Look Juan, and the rest of the Democrats sinking into this bog of unknowing, those documents were forged. Not just because of the wildly improbable formatting on a typed document of that era, but because the officer spoken of in the "sugar-coating" reference (Staudt) was no longer in the Guard at the time the memo was supposedly written, and the date that Bush was supposedly ordered to take his physical by Killian was weeks or months before the allowed time limit elapsed, according to a Guardsman who served with Bush. And that's just for starters.

I've been a Democrat since I was 20 years old, but for the first time I think I'm going to change my registration. Look, fellow Dems, the way to respond to this is to acknowledge that the items were faked and that Dan Rather attempted to do a political hatchet job on George Bush, and probably ought to be put out to pasture for it. I mean, it's not as though the guy hasn't had a pretty good run. But the hatchet job ends up not being on George Bush, but on CBS and the Democrats. How in the hell could we trust a party that can't seem to acknowledge such an obvious fraud with the security of the country? What's the first lesson of cover-ups? Acknowledge the mistake early, and the wound will close and heal. Cover it up and it festers, grows, and becomes deadly.

As for the Daily Kos's arguments regarding the fine detail of the supposed font... What detail? The memo was a zerox of a zerox of a... all done to "age" the piece, and whatever calligraphic detail existed in the original was simply bled out by repeated copyings. At any rate, LGF has a standing offer of $10,500 for anyone who can reproduce the memos in question using an IBM Selectric available in the early 70s. Somehow I think their money is a lot safer than we would be if we elected a Democrat this time around.

I'm sorry, but I'm just tired of listening to folks like Juan, and Robert Reich, and... whoever. We're at war. Grow the heck up.

Posted by Demosophist at September 11, 2004 01:20 AM | TrackBack