CONFESSIONS OF A BELGIAN MIND.

(the following post started out in the comments section as a response to the Krauthammer article Scott linked to. When it got a little out of hand I decided to post it here)


Haaaaaaaaaaa!!!!! Finally something from Krauthammer. You know, the last time I read him in Time Europe was some weeks before OIF started, in February 2003. I can testify that, over the course of one year, Time has banked sharply to the left, joining the anti-Bush hysteria. And this has become SO obvious in the latest issues. Let me enlighten you on the following columns by Joe Klein, leftwing columnist and Clinton biographer:


1° Sept 20 issue: "All you have to do is believe"

top quote: Bush seems to believe what he says, even if it doesn't always match reality.


2° Sept 13 issue: "Tearing Kerry down"

top quote: Bush at the convention, an effective though sometimes sleazy affair


3° Sept 6 issue "What the Swifties cost America"

top quote: The Swift Boat imbroglio overshadowed Kerry's meeting in Philadelphia


4° August 30 issue "Kerry in a Straitjacket"

top quote: The Swifties' ability to dominate the news with incendiary nonsense is, I believe, a direct result of Kerry's unwillingness to dominate the news with tart, controversial substance by challenging the President on Iraq.


5° August 16 issue "America divided? It's only the Blabocrats"

top quote: A flying squad of Vietnam veterans - not directly related to the Bush campaign - launched a slime attack on John Kerry's war record.


6° August 9 issue: "The audacity of hope"

top quote: Kerry is not going to bug out of Iraq or abandon the broader war against Islamist radicalism.

Huh Joe? But he just said it was the wrong war at the wrong place during the wrong time????

etc. etc. etc. quack quack quack...


Anyway, you get the picture. I took a Time Europe subscription some 3 1/2 years ago. Back then it was reasonably balanced and Klein had columns spaced several weeks or more apart. Over the last 1 1/2 month ago, he's in every issue, becoming more hysterical every week. I'm seriously beginning to regret having renewed my subscription. I get enough Dubya hatred in my own press already. On the ferry to Scotland I bought a copy of "Stern", a leading German magazine and it was almost literally steaming with hatred against the Prez. One thing keeps me from throwing Time Europe overboard, that's that the nonpolitical stuff is quite good. But if I could, I'd swap it for Kristol's The Weekly Standard. Just don't know if I can get it over here.


Alright, now over to the article Scott linked to. Well, it's a brilliant exposure of how Kerry's flipflops have to do rather more, imho, with opportunism than with not being able to take a stance. Not that he has convinced me yet he IS able to take a stance! But the example with voting against the 87 billion $ to support the troops is neatly explained here as an attempt to quell Dean's surge back in those early days. I don't know how it is with you, but it's the first time that I see it in this light. I mean, revealing how Kerry's shifting opinions have everything to do with the most obvious political trend in a particular timeframe makes you see it all in a different perspective. Well, if I would live in the States I would now be even less inclined to ever vote for Kerry. A fella who is shifting positions on any given issue because he can't make up his mind is one thing. A guy who shifts positions to please a target group at a time it seems appropriate is even worse.

I mean, you have guys who can't decide whether they will go after Stella, Susan, Lauren, Sherilyn, Cindy or Jessica. I can sympathize, oooooh yessir, I can, not in the least because I once was in a simila....

... forget about that!

And then you have guys who first take one wife because in a particular time frame it seems the right thing to do, and then decide for another one when, well, when they like to smear their French fries with something else than mayonaise.

Nah, thanks. Then I'd rather have a cowboy please.



MFBB