George has already handled the safety of the F-102 quite ably. I’d just like to point out that you should probably have left this non-sequitur and red herring out of the discussion. The F-104 Starfighter was designed as a high-altitude interceptor. At some point, the Germans decided that they could turn a plane with no visible wings into a low-altitude fighter-bomber. Lockheed protested that the idea was insane (although they went ahead and took the Deutschmarks and built the planes). After the first dozen or so F-104s crashed, Lockheed proposed that they design a new plane to do what the Germans really needed. However, the Germans decided that they new better than the manufacturer how to operate their planes, ordered some beefed-up engines and continued to send their pilots out on one-way test missions for almost a dozen years.
That I am aware of, no German F-104 crash involved a high-altitude interceptor mission. You could easily get the same sort of fatality rate by hanging bombs off the wings of a Boeing 737 and telling it to perform dive-bombing missions.
I am not saying that the century-series planes were wonderfully safe. They certainly suffered from problems of new technology (and the Starfighter was probably the hottest/most dangerous of the bunch), but to cite the dreadful German experience of forcing a plane into a mission for which it was not designed hardly provides evidence that the F-102 was a threat to the life of the pilot.
All this talk about Gore twisting facts, yet no one seems to notice when Bush does it. Last night, in the second Presidential debate, Bush claimed that all three murderers in the Byrd case were sentenced to death (he repeated this claim several times), but in fact, only two got the death penalty. He wasn’t too clear on the concept of hate crimes either. He claimed that all murders are hate crimes… the only problem with this position is that not all hate crimes are murders, and as has been reported by a number of human rights organizations, the Texas hate crimes laws are very vague and ineffectual.
As to Gore’s tendancy to stretch the truth… There’s an old addage that seems appropriate: “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”, and Bush sure does seem to have a lot of double glazing of his own…
http://www.newageinfo.com/bus/cymry/enemies/Bush/bush4.html
BTW, there are dozens of sites willing to expose Bush’s problems discerning fact from fiction. A simple search is all it takes to find out that Bush calling Gore a liar is the pot calling the kettle black.
Bottom line: Few politicians are capable of resisting the urge to embellish the truth. My problem is that a lot of folks seem to hold Gore up to a different yardstick than Bush.
I will say that I was quite impressed with Bush’s performance in the foreign policy discussions. However, I draw a definite distinction between comprehending the history of recent foreign policy and actually having lived it. Bush hasn’t lived it - Gore has. Also, I thought it was ironic that, for the most part, Bush agreed with nearly everything the Clinton administration has done, yet his closing plea was for the American people to “choose change”. I guess I just don’t get it…
Well, I was asking you to cite this (which you haven’t), but since you asked:
You also provided not a single cite for your claims about Bush flying the plane, and the plane’s safety record. You just categorically assumed one was true and provided what is at best random statements to back up the other. In fact, other people have contested these claims with actual cites and quotes. Maybe you’d care to do the same?
Seems to me you’ve been caught in a lie (or at least an “embellishment of the truth”)…
I just went back and read your first and second posts. They give no examples at all. Nor do any of the links given in this thread point out any new lies; in fact, they refute the assertion that Gore is a liar. All you are saying is that you think that it’s intuitively obvious that Gore lies, so it’s beneath your dignity to be bothered to give any examples.
Incidentally, before you get over your modesty enough to tell us about your tremendous academic achievements, let me recite mine, since I have no false modesty. I have master’s degrees in both math and linguistics (and I was about halfway to a third master’s in computer science when I left grad school). I got a 772 on my math SAT and a 719 on my verbal SAT, despite the fact that I grew up in a struggling working-class family where neither of my parents went to college and none of my grandparents went to high school. Perhaps that’s why I won’t be particularly impressed with your academic achievements.
Wendell, my response on academic achievement was to CHD. He asked me specifically “And which college did you graduate with honors from, again?” The implication from the post was obvious.
I gave an appropriate response. That is, I was proud of my academic achievements, but felt they had no bearing on this thread or how Gore did or did not excel at his schooling. Why he or you would consider it false modesty not to go into details, I’m not sure. I feel I answered the question fairly and with appropriate restraint.
I’m also not sure where you get the idea that I was asking you to post your credentials. They have as much bearing on this debate as mine. Maybe if someone had asked you, you would have an excuse.
You say you read my first and second posts. They contain my opinion on why I believe Gore is not very politically astute. It is my impression that…well, I’ve posted my impression 3 times now. The fact that he is still being called on the carpet for things he was warned about in the late '80s about sums it up.
Back to CHD. I never said that “everyone who attended Harvard graduated with honors.” You can direct a response at my actual post, if you desire, but there is no need to overstate my assertion in order to knock it down.
My question as to how many people graduate with honors from Harvard is germane to the discussion of a cum laude achievement. I’ve read that the average ivy league GPA is a B+. I am genuinely curious what the GPA cutoff for “honors” status is. You come back by stating it must be 0.78 dontcha know. If what I have read is true (maybe I can find confirmation or denial of this), then it seems to me a whole lot of people graduate with this distinction. The bar does not seem to be set too terribly high if one can finish in the bottom 5th of one’s class for two years running and still graduate cum laude.
I still don’t see how questioning my academic achievements says anything one way or another about Gore’s schooling. I could be the dimmest bulb on the planet or the next incarnation of Cecil Adams, and it wouldn’t counter (or affirm) anything that Gore has or has not achieved.
Sorry about your Irish nerve, CHD, but if you didn’t want me to answer, why did you ask the question? More importantly, why did you feel if was necessary to make snide comments about the academic achievement (Whatsamatta U?) of someone of whom you know nothing? It’s not like I’m running for office or something.
I hope you noticed that of the 15 F-102’s that were lost in Vietnam, 8 of them were lost in accidents. That means you were more likely to die in an accident in your F-102 than from actual combat. And remember that the people flying those planes were already highly experienced jet pilots (I think 300 hours was the min requirement for a combat tour). How many accidents do you think there were during training and initial qualifications when the pilots were very inexperienced?
I should also point out that the military considered 8 accidental crashes in one squadron to be an EXCELLENT safety record for these types of planes. I don’t know how many total hours they flew over Vietnam over 9 years, but given that it was only one squadron I’m guessing the number was pretty low.
I’m having a hard time digging up accident rates for the various 100-series fighters. The reason I posted the F-104 stats was because they were the only ones I could find at the time. And I did put a disclaimer on the message that the accident rate I was quoting was higher than for 100-series fighters in general.
There were only 873 F-102’s built. They were deployed in dozens of squadrons. ONE squadron lost eight airplanes due to accidents, and this was considered an excellent safety record. Any guesses as to how many overall operational losses there were of F-102’s? Or more to the point, how many might have been lost in the four years that Bush was actively flying? If one squadron had an average of one crash a year (and this was considered excellent safety), then we might extrapolate that as many as 10-30 F-102’s crashed each year. Out of a total fleet of 873.
If you were in a fighter squadron in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, you’d hear stories almost daily about someone who crashed an airplane somewhere. I knew a person who flew F-104’s for Canada in Germany, and he told a lot of harrowing stories.
The point I was making is that flying those fighters was DANGEROUS. I was trying to point out that Bush hasn’t used that fact to puff up his image (as a counter to Gore’s claim that he was shot at in Vietnam while walking through the elephant grass, again trying to imply that he was a combat vet when he wasn’t).
I’m sorry… Does anyone dispute that Bush flew F-102’s? I didn’t think that I’d really have to provide proof of that. It’s common knowledge. As for the plane’s safety record - I made the original comment because I have some familiarity with the history of these planes, and I know how dangerous they are.
I stand by my claim that you were probably more likely to be killed flying an F-102 stateside for two years than as a random draftee during the Vietnam war. But unfortunately I can’t find specific numbers, so I suppose I’ll just have to leave it at that and you can dispute it if you want.
Of course, if Bush were to take that tactic, I feel fairly certain that someone would ask him just where he was during the latter part of 1972 and early 1973 when his commanding officer had planned for him to return for flight duty… Bush was no where to be found… leaving his commanding officer to write the following in his performance report:
Ah… the privileges of political power. Me thinks anyone else would have found himself employed breaking rocks after such a transgression.
> I’m too modest to post the specifics of my academic
> achievements, but I assure you, the terms M.S., 4.0,
> and ‘hard science’ curriculum play a large part.
This is what I call false modesty. It’s pretending to be modest and then bragging about something.
I’m still waiting for you to give some specific examples. Give us some examples of the following:
> More important for a politician, he certainly doesn’t
> learn from his mistakes. A smart politician would have
> listened to his campaign managers back in '88 when they
> told him to knock off the exaggerations.
and some for this which you quote from a Mona Charen column:
> “Mr. Gore is a solipsist: Everything and everyone is
> interesting only insofar as it relates to Himself. If he
> wasn’t there, it couldn’t have been important. But it
> clearly was important, so he had to be there.”
And don’t tell us that there’s lots of examples in the news which we should have memorized by now. I haven’t seen lots of examples; indeed, I’ve seen mostly explanations of why his supposed lies are in fact mostly true. Are you really interested in persuading us by telling us something we should know, or are you in this thread so that you can brag about the fact that you already know everything and can’t be bothered to teach us anything?
If I were bragging WW, I would have filled a whole page. Or I might have posted my SAT or GRE scores and talked about overcoming hardships, working two jobs, or whatever. No, someone (not you) made a couple of comments I felt warranted a response. I provided just enough information to counter the snide implication. Nothing ‘false’ about it.
My mistake, I see now, was in responding originally to another poster rather than the OP. I have not addressed Gore’s “lies” once in this thread. I’ve discussed Gore’s academic achievement; and I have made my opinion known that Gore doesn’t strike me as being particularly smart. Nothing about lies. Yet you keep asking.
My statement about him not learning from his mistakes, and my agreement with tradesilicon and Mona Charen are just my opinions. It is an impression that I get. You may get a different impression. That’s fine.
The only specific thing that I have mentioned as evidence was the 1988 memo advising Gore to lay off the exaggerations. To keep you from asking again; I’ll post part of it:
The fact that Gore is giving the same impression today as believed by his own campaign 12 years ago, is evidence (to me, at least) that Gore has not learned what his own people have been trying to tell him. I’m approaching this as an issue of political acumen, not whether or not any given story is a lie, exaggeration, or 100% verified truth. Given that, I must apologize from diverting this thread (and your attention) away from the topic you wish to discuss.
not to sidetrack this thread but this reminded me of a joke:
A little kid watched the drunk marine go into the bath room and as the marine was taking a leak the kid asked, “Are you really a marine?” The marine replied, “yes, do you want to wear my hat?” The kid said, “Oh yes,” and the marine gave him his hat.
A minute later a sailor walked into the restroom and the kid said, “Are you really a sailor?” The sailor said, “Yeah… ya wanta suck my cock?” The kid pulled off his hat and said, “Oh no!! I’m not really a marine!”
Yes, if the money didn’t go to a tax cut, it would also be spent or invested. It is not at all clear that the tax cuts will generate more jobs and growth than if the money were used in other ways.
Well, some of Gore’s targetted cuts go to actually explicitly encouraging saving…admittedly not for the ludicruously wealthy…but for the middle class. For what it’s worth, by the way, I have heard it said that our current economic boom is more demand-driven than supply-driven.
Great. The numbers are similar for me…Under Gore, I might not get anything. (Don’t know for sure…haven’t looked that closely.) Under Bush, I’d get about $1500~$2000. I prefer Gore’s plan because I think it is fairer and because I don’t really think people like me need a tax cut at the moment. I’d prefer to see improvements in the rest of our society.
Well…actually…it is the people who are paying income taxes. There are also payroll taxes, sales taxes, and lots of other taxes to consider…These are much more regressive taxes. And, the last time we gave huge tax breaks to the rich, the thing that really took off was the Federal Deficit when the miracles that the supply-siders were anticipating never materialized.
And I’m more likely to die in an accident in my car than walking. Is it inherently dangerous to drive my car to the store? Not really. Should I be considered brave for driving? Only in LA.
The point being that the evidence has shown that these were in fact * safe * planes to be flying, and only your wacky interpretation and anecdotal evidence says otherwise.
I’m disputing that. I didn’t know that, and I’m fairly common. So enlighten me with some proof. Also, * how much * did he fly? I’ve jumped off of the roof before (in a moment of stupidity). Saying “he jumps off the roof; he’s a brave man” would be false, or at least bending the truth.
I move now to discard this from the record, as the claimant has failed to support it in any way, shape or form. :rolleyes:
Also, you still haven’t shown me any proof of the random attacks you made on Gore. I guess I’ll just have to take that as an admittance that they were inaccurate rantings.
Which I think argues more to the general usage of the F-102 than any real safety problem.
I dunno. I suggest you type “www.google.com” into the nearest conveniently located web browser, and when the search engine comes up, type “F-102” into the little box that appears. Should the resulting flood of information prove overwhelming, you might try “F-102 safety record” or “F-102 accidents” or something along those lines. Come back and tell us what you find.
We might, rabbit, if the name of the game was “pulling numbers out of our ass” Since we’re stamping out ignorance, I’m afraid you’re going to have to do better.
And you’d wonder why they didn’t ground that guy.
Since we’re extrapolating, I will point out that the number of people killed in the entire history of aviation by plane crashes is something like 1/3 the number of people killed annually in US car accidents, I read in a Skeptical Inquirer article reviewing that new book about why Americans are afraid of the wrong things.
I think Gweeb is wisely avoiding stories of his days of the air guard. The last thing he wants is the press digging through his records.
Sounds pretty “DANGEROUS” to me.
I remain skeptical of how much actual time Bush spent in the air in an F-102.
I can’t find numbers on the fatality rate of the F-102 in the ANG in the years 1968 to 1972, but I was able to find information suggesting how dangerous military service from 1963 to 1972 was:
Actually, most of the points that have been rasied recently regarding Gore and his facts are not focused on exagerations but on detail anomalies. I have to believe that Bush’s advisors told him, “What ever you do, don’t screw up the details”, yet he, too, continues to make these mistakes. It strikes me that both Bush and Gore are equally fallable when it comes to facts, but we must remember they’ve got a bunch of those facts spinning around in their brains. It’s clear to me that Bush is simply manipulating the media and the public to make it seem that Gore is less than trustworthy (a common trick), but enlightened people don’t fall for simple tricks.
Al Gore may not be the most personable guy in America. Let’s face it, his charisma kinda sucks, but I do think he will make an excellent (as he put it) ‘CEO’ of the United States. He has demonstrated all the right skills and I like his priorities. Bush has demonstrated all the behaviors and policies that I find repulsive in American politics.
With the Mid-east on the verge of new ugliness, and a mess or proto-mess in the Balkans, I think we need a chief executive who can find those places on a map. That’s why, PK, I support a guy who says, uh…he wore a rep tie to the office that day when actually (the cur!) it was paisley.
-Reagan claiming that he was at a concentration camp when it was being freed when, in reality, he had only seen a movie of it?
-Reagan’s claim that trees were the greatest polluters?
-Clinton saying he did not have sexual relations with that Lewinsky woman?
Not that I’m defending Gore but it seems that his exaggerations are focused on because they come across as blatant name-dropping and are easily verifiable. After the FEMA gaffe in the first debate, it seemed very strange that he used the same example format in debate #2 (“I was on a plane with General XXXXXX going to Rwanda…”).
I have an answer to my questions of a couple of days ago:
and
All I got here was sarcasm; so, I called Harvard University and spoke with Thurston Smith of the Registrar’s Department. Here is the Straight Dope:
Cut-off levels for honors distinction:
(Note, Harvard uses a 15-pt. scale rather than GPA.)
cum laude (overall): 11.5, which corresponds to a ‘B’
cum laude (within field): 10.5, which corresponds to a ‘B-’
magna cum laude: 12.0, which corresponds to a ‘B+’
summa cum laude: vote of faculty
Of last year’s graduating class of 1655 students:
80 were summa
567 were magna
401 were cum (overall)
412 were cum (within field)
I asked to make sure the last two were separate. That is, no student was counted twice by fitting into both categories. I confirmed the remaining number (195 students) by simple subtraction, and also by asking Mr. Smith directly, to be sure there was no mistake.
That means that 88% of students come out of Harvard with honors distinction. It also means that one can slip in with a ‘B-’ average. It is hard to pin down an exact GPA, but it seems like my recollection of an overall ‘B+’ average is not out of line with these results. I now see how Gore could finish in the bottom 5th of the class and still graduate “with honors.”
