Kissing Contests - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Kissing Contests
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MOUTH TO MOUTH
Re: Wlady Pleszczynski’s Hugs and Kisses:

Oh mon Dieu! It wasn’t until I read “Hugs and Kisses” that I realized that the Harlequin Romance candidates have not actually kissed! They need Hall Monitor Hillary there to cool things down.
Kitty Myers
Painted Post, NY

The burning question is, if John and John were to reprise the Britney-Madonna moment at the convention, on national television, what are the chances that the FCC has the fortitude to send Terry McAuliffe the fine? Odds anyone?
John McGinnis

I thoroughly enjoyed your op-ed concerning Kerry Edwards and incisive manner you penetrated the core of these men.

Perhaps for your next article you could ruminate on the glad-handing, high-fiving, jive-man smiling that Donald Rumsfeld performed on Saddam Hussein way back in 1983 while the United States looked over Saddam’s shoulder as Iraq pounded Iran with chemical agents — you know, weapons of mass destruction — over and over again.

Or, perhaps you could craft a treatise on Dick (“f–k you — no, f–k me — no, f–k you’) Cheney’s days presiding over Halliburton’s $180,000,000 in money contributed to a slush fund for the sole purpose of illegally greasing the gears in creating one of the world’s largest refineries in Nigeria. Perhaps you could tilt the orientation of your column towards investigative journalism and attempt to ascertain the manner that Halliburton itemized these funds on their quarterly SEC filings.

What do you say, Wlady, shall I continue to forward more ideas for topics for you to fiddle with? Or do you feel confident in your very own powers of observation, wit and postulation?

Your friend,
Ryan Monaghan

And yet — I rue the thought that so many American voters and, in particular, women voters will “fall” for the faux affection the two Johns are demonstrating towards each other publicly, seemingly oblivious to the blatant patronization.
Cathy Thorpe
Columbus, Georgia

I hope the author didn’t take more than 15 seconds to write that drivel in today’s column. Of course Rush thought it was great. What garbage…what drivel…
Ron Doherty

WATERPROOF
Re: Dave Stevens’s When It Rains:

Uh, so what’s the point?

— That flat roofs in higher rainfall regions is not a good idea?

— That lots of rain in a short period of time causes flooding?

— That the author needs to address roof maintenance issues?

I was looking for a punch-line to this rain tragedy story and I’m still waiting …
Phil Gilbert
Atlanta, Georgia

FOXTROTS
Re: Lawrence Henry’s Looking Aslant at the News Biz:

A great piece by Larry Friday. It’s amazing that my liberal friends consistently bash Fox for having a bias in their news reporting. It represents the inability of them to recognize the built-in bias of the “lame stream” media. Those on the left who don’t see the liberal bias of Couric, Rather, Jennings, 60 Minutes, NY Times simply don’t have either the ability or the intellect to view their news sources critically.

To me it’s symbolic of the left’s inability to view most topics counter-intuitively. Great examples are the knee-jerk reactions of propping up education and the poor by throwing more money into ineffective institutions. Forget introducing competition in education. Forget the concept of allowing individuals to ascend to their own level of productivity by taking away the crutches of welfare. The typical lefty is for loosening immigration restrictions and minimum wage. Sounds good on the surface, but give it a little thought and you realize the two can’t possibly co-exist.

So Fox has an obvious right-leaning bias. Big whoop. It’s about time. If your typical liberal had the intuition to question the motives of the traditional sources of their news, then Fox’s motives wouldn’t be such a big deal.
William H. Stewart
Boston, Massachusetts

Mr. Henry hit the nail on the head about what ails ABCCBSNBCCNNMSNBCCNBC, as well as the partisan print media, and what drives their success-envy of Fox News. It appears that not only are minds of the partisan media and its advocates foggy, but their news noses are stuffed. I guess the therapy and/or surgery they need to correct those conditions will continue to come in the form of lost revenues through lost viewers and readers. Thing is, will that cure them of their bias and navel-gazing, biased news reporting and get them unstuck from the reality warp in which they either make news or avoid reporting it?
C. Kenna Amos Jr.
Princeton, West Virginia

Since these people are incensed that Fox doesn’t toe the party line they can start their own station and people will flock to it. They could give it a catchy name, like, say, Air America, or something like that. They can get popular spokesmen, like, say, Al Franken, so people can trust him to tell the truth without any slant to the news. I’ll bet it would take right off (pun intended).
Tom Latina
Winsted, Connecticut

APPOINTING NORTH
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s Who’s to Run the CIA?

Hmmmmmm…

You write “Jean Pierre Kerry”???

I believe you avec ‘errored. Since JFK must be the initials, it
would perhaps be “Jeanne Franchette Kerry”….not so???

Also, my own candidate for CIA Director is Oliver North.

That ought to shake things up, a bit, and should make for
somewhat interesting confirmation hearings.
G. J. FeigHavre, Montana

NATURAL BIRTH
Re: John McGinnis’s and James E. Smith’s “Born Free” letters in Reader Mail’s Doing the Right Thing and C.D. Lueders’ letters (“One Last Round”) in Reader Mail’s Talking Back:

THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, Article II. Section 1. Clause 5:

“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”

Suggest you folks check with the INS! I had two children born overseas at military hospitals. Although issued a “Report Of Birth Abroad Of A U.S. Citizen,” they still have to be naturalized even though it was a formality. Naturalized is naturalized, regardless of the circumstances.

Whether I am right or wrong, I would like to have someone who can really tell us what the situation is. The question has been around for a long time without official resolution and with the McCain love affair it is becoming more and more important.
C.D. Lueders
Boca Raton, Florida

Re: C.D. Lueders’s letter alleging that John McCain is constitutionally ineligible to be President because he was born in Panama, and concluding with the question “Am I wrong?”:

Yes, sir, you are.

From Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution:

“No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President…”

A “natural born Citizen” is anyone born to an American citizen, period. The birthplace could be the far side of the Moon, or in the Kremlin during a Comintern pow-wow.

Having been born abroad (the U.K.) to American parents, I’ve had to go over this too many times to count. Senator McCain is hardly the first politician to be the target of such ignorant whispering campaigns: remember Barry Goldwater and George Romney?
Joel Brigham

RAPTOR LYRICS
Re: Michael Fumento’s in Reader Mail’s Doing the Right Thing:

Mr. Fumento’s rebuttal of Mr. Mirvish’s charges against the Raptor make the mistake of taking Mr. Mirvish too seriously. He gives the game away with the following jewel, “Ground support of infantry … has been one of the two most historically useful air force missions (the other is reconnaissance).”

Mr. Mirvish is not opposed to the Raptor /per se/, he wants us to go back to the Army Air Corps, and the Raptor just isn’t needed for that.

Tell me, was it reconnaissance or ground support that ended WWII, saving four million lives in the process? Or was that not particularly useful?

Was it reconnaissance or ground support that sunk the Bismarck and the Arizona, won Midway and Leyte Gulf? Or were these not particularly useful missions?

That whole island-hopping thing — not particularly useful?

Were the first six weeks of Desert Storm ground support or not all that useful? (That didn’t look to me like a reconnaissance mission.) I suspect I can find more than a few grunts that would not have minded for that phase of the operation to last another six weeks.

Air power’s primary mission is interdiction–you can use air power to deny the enemy use of land, air, or sea. Radar, electrical power, or communications. Ground support is just interdiction where the friendlies are so close to the hostiles that you have to go low, slow, and dangerous to do it.

As for the “mess” when two flights of aircraft engage each other–how much do you think the average pilot would give to add an extra 1/4 or 1/2 second delay to his enemy’s lock time?

I agree that Mr. Fumento’s description was of a jack of all trades, and seemed to deliberately embrace incompatible technologies. It is criminal that Congress added ground support — the “geometry of combat” is so different there that you want & need a different type of aircraft (sonic booms are just SO indiscriminate).

We should have different aircraft for ground support (Wartog & Specter, thank-you very much), wild weasel (F-117), bomber (B-2), recon (SR-71) and air superiority. Yes, there can also be a place for mixed-mission aircraft. But stealth and supersonic airspeed are incompatible, and neither is highly useful for ground support. Trying to put them all on one airframe is likely to be, well, expensive.

The problem is that we have aircraft being flown by the great-grandsons of the original pilots! (B-52s) This is no way to take care of our men–or to succeed in our missions. While I would not have specified the Raptor’s mission profile, we desperately need to get something better out there. Congress going cheap (again) on us is the problem–don’t this one Lockheed or the Pentagon.
Nathan Zook
Veteran, USAF
Veteran, Tenn ANG

COUNT ME IN
Re: Ken Shreve’s letter (under “Feeling Left Out”) in Reader Mail’s Doing the Right Thing:

Ken Shreve’s letter hit the nail on the head and has given the reason for NOT staying home on Election Day. Like him, I too, had reservations about Bush and I also had a good friend in Texas I consulted about him. Yes, Bush has waffled on some areas but given the direction this country has gone in recent years and the “caliber” of those seeking public office, at least Bush is a step in the right direction. It is my biggest fear that Kerry will get elected by default and that would plunge this nation into the worst crisis we’ve had since Carter was president. I work as a late night cashier in a supermarket (I’m retired) and I had a customer come in telling me I just had to go see Moore’s film ( Lies 9/11). I “asked” this person how they could go see a film so full of lies and treasonous as this one. I told them point blank what I thought of Moore. All I got back was a blank stare and the words, “I really don’t follow politics and I don’t understand the issues but this movie was well done.” This is what we have to deal with and if we don’t do our duty, the ignorant will once more set our national policy. In other words, no matter what you think of Bush, that’s the best we’re going to do right now.
Pete Chagnon

HERE WE GO AGAIN
Re: The “One Last Round” letters in Reader Mail’s Talking Back:

Why in the world would anyone want to replace Dick Cheney (a extremely good and bright individual and solid conservative) with the likes of John McCain? Condi Rice would have been a good pick, but if Cheney was replaced, I know of a number of conservative or “True” Republicans who would or will not Vote Period. Pseudo Republicans such as P. W. not withstanding!!
Stanley A. Fawcett
Holden, Utah

OUTFOXED
In the “Another Perspective” column “Dump Cheney?” by William Tucker, he claims that Bill Clinton played the sax on MTV. In fact, his appearance was on the Arsenio Hall show, which was syndicated through Paramount, mostly on Fox affiliates (yes, Fox!).

FYI,
George

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