Mr. Phelps....

Your mission, should you choose to accept it ....The DNC is attempting to stack the after-debate Polls in Kerrys' favor.

You know what to do.

You will find a manual for observing the debate here, use it wisely.

Mr. Green will provide commentary and real-time group surrveilance can be found here.

.....this post may self-destruct 15 seconds after John Kerry says "Quagmire."

OHMYG*D Curious, and Curiouser

You have to see this one for yourself.

Oh Please, Oh please... let the Globe run it.

UPDATE: There something very odd going on with this story and the Professor...the PDF now says that he didn't use a typwriter to make the comparisons...but likely typefaces, likely available at the time(?!) and he is editing the docs not realizing that his folders are in an unprotected directory.

UPDATEII: Get yourself over to Kevin's ...it's a mystery in many acts...unfolding as we type.

Not Exactly Presidential Material

By his own admission John Kerry was unable to react or think clearly under duress, makes inappropriate remarks when overly tired, can't tell time , and is distracted by flashing lights.

Like the Clintons, John Kerry fudges, embellishes, and/or dissembles when the simple truth would serve him better. Why not say he was wrong and spin it to his advantage, especially since stubbornness or an inablity to admit mistakes is among his litany of character failings/charges against Bush.

Oh. Right, that "W" means Wrong thing...hmmmm.

Get These Guys Some Jammies

Little to no posting until mid-afternoon...a Powerpoint deadline looms...but INDC posts an interview with CBS...it's...um... illuminating.

Karas(CBS): "The truth of the e-mails were absolutely irrelevant to the piece, because all the story said was that people were worried. It’s a story about human beings that are afraid of the draft. We did not say that this (e-mail) was true, it’s just circulating. We are not verifying the e-mail."

The truth is CBS reports biased viewpoints, innuendo, junk e-mail and gossip.

UPDATE: Lileks turns a nice phrase:

big media operations are too lardy to move as quickly as they should. They’re brontos lumbering into velociraptor territory.

The War of Ideas

Perhaps Jimmy Carter should be assisting the Pali's with their voter registration and election rather than pestering Floridians.

Palestinians Greet Voter Drive With Apathy, Skepticism

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Three Palestinian election workers idle the morning away here at a voter registration center crammed into a narrow guardhouse at the entrance of the Friends School.

A banner spanning the street is meant to lure prospective voters, but the first Palestinian registration drive in more than eight years has drawn only a trickle of people.

Though a date for a vote hasn't been set, Palestinian reformers hope the sign-up will create momentum for municipal and general elections within a year that would resuscitate the Palestinian Authority. The beleaguered authority has held just one presidential election since it was formed 11 years ago.

With Hamas encouraging its followers to register, an election could be the first political showdown between Yasser Arafat's Fatah party and the Islamic opposition. But so far, the registration effort has been met with apathy by Palestinians disillusioned with their government.

"It's not our problem," said Samar, an employee of the Palestinian election commission who declined to give her last name. "We can't bring them from the street and force them."

Contrast that with Afghani's risking all manner of violence, mayhem and day long lines in order to register to vote and it is not difficult to see the results when people have a choice of candidates and the promise of self-governance.

Kerry Spotting

Geraghty might want to back off the caffine a tad.

At that point, Soros pulled back his mask to reveal himself as Latverian dictator Doctor Doom, who cackled, "Fools! You think you can defy my will at the ballot box! My henchmen the 527-men and I will destroy you all with my Destructo Ray! Bwahahahahahaha!"

However, this is not funny, not one bit, nor is it a surprise to Californians and Chicagoans.
I predict, that just as Gore's court shopping ploy failed, so this too will fail in the end. Instead of legions of legal eagles and party oficials scrutinizing chads, it's going to be voter reg cards. Election 2004 maybe become known as "The Legal Profession's Full Employment Act of 2004"...except for Edwards, of course.

A Leopard Can't Change It's Spots

Let's pause the DNC/Kerry campaign denouncements of Allawi and dismal Iraqi election scenarios and fire up the way-back machine to Nicaragua and El Salvador 1982-85, shall we?

WAAAAmmmmmm.... Oh My, Contras, Commies and Donks!

Kerry adamantly opposed President Reagan's policy of preventing a communist takeover of Central America. Evidence showed that communist Cuba and the then-Soviet Union were coordinating a massive assault on the Western hemisphere. Reagan had set them back with the liberation of Grenada and the overthrow of a communist gang there. He was also supporting a resistance movement, known as the Contras, opposing the communist Sandinistas who had taken control of Nicaragua.

In an article in the American Spectator, entitled, "The Bolshevik in Kerry," George Neumayr wrote, "Kerry's limousine liberation theology led him into one of the most embarrassing moments of his early Senate career—his disastrous Neville Chamberlain-style diplomacy with Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. Shortly after becoming a Senator, Kerry took off for Nicaragua with Tom Harkin on a free-lancing fact-finding tour, the purpose of which was to stymie congressional support for the Contras by 'finding' that the Sandinistas weren't such bad guys after all."

An interesting sidebar to the above quoted article is that the heavy hand of the MSM was clearly seen white-washing Kerry's unpalatable views. Different leopard, same spots.

Shortly after being sworn as a senator, Kerry and Tom Harkin went to Managua and held secret talks with Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. He came back with a plan that didn’t include any dialogue with the unified democratic opposition.

On the floor of the Senate in an emotional April 23 speech, Kerry presented the document as something new.

"I share with this body the aide-mémoire which was presented to us by President Ortega," he told his colleagues -- without mentioning his own role and that of his aide McCall in its drafting.

He took Ortega's word for everything.

"Here," he pronounced to the Senate, "is a guarantee of the security interest of the United States."

Kerry continued: "My generation, a lot of us grew up with the phrase 'give peace a chance' as part of a song that captured a lot of people's imagination. I hope that the president of the United States will give peace a chance."

Of course the usual suspects Sens. Edward Kennedy and Robert Byrd heaped praise on Kerry after the Managua trip. When criticism rained down on Kerry and Sen. Barry Goldwater assailed his plan, what was Kerry's response?

Kerry shot back that he was "a veteran of Vietnam who fought and was wounded in that conflict."

Had we followed Kerry's advice, Nicaragua, El Salvador and perhaps even Mexico might be communist today. But no thanks to Kerry, the communist insurgency in El Salvador collapsed and assumed the role of a political opposition party.

Kerry's continues to provide aid and comfort to enemies of the United States by allowing himself to be used in order to win political battles at home.

David Brock sees similarities between Kerry's view of El Salvador then and Iraq now:

The Insurgency Buster

Conditions were horrible when Salvadorans went to the polls on March 28, 1982. The country was in the midst of a civil war that would take 75,000 lives. An insurgent army controlled about a third of the nation's territory. Just before election day, the insurgents stepped up their terror campaign. They attacked the National Palace, staged highway assaults that cut the nation in two and blew up schools that were to be polling places.

Yet voters came out in the hundreds of thousands. In some towns, they had to duck beneath sniper fire to get to the polls. In San Salvador, a bomb went off near a line of people waiting outside a polling station. The people scattered, then the line reformed. "This nation may be falling apart," one voter told The Christian Science Monitor, "but by voting we may help to hold it together."

Conditions were scarcely better in 1984, when Salvadorans got to vote again. Nearly a fifth of the municipalities were not able to participate in the elections because they were under guerrilla control. The insurgents mined the roads to cut off bus service to 40 percent of the country. Twenty bombs were planted around the town of San Miguel. Once again, people voted with the sound of howitzers in the background.

Yet these elections proved how resilient democracy is, how even in the most chaotic circumstances, meaningful elections can be held.

Reagan was right, Kerry was wrong.

Kerry is still wrong; the wrong candidate, with the wrong plan, for the wrong time.

UPDATE: Deacon reached the same conclusion.

Crazy Like A Fox?

When I first read this piece in the International Herald Tribune I agreed with Hindrocket's analysis and gut reaction, but after thinking about about it over a sandwich and Pale Ale, that may be too obvious a take on it.

France seeking to put pullout on agenda

Paris also wants 'all forces in Iraq' at proposed talks

WASHINGTON France said Monday that it would take part in a proposed international conference on Iraq only if the agenda included a possible U.S. troop withdrawal, thus complicating the planning for a meeting that has drawn mixed reactions.

Paris also wants representatives of Iraq's insurgent groups to be invited to a conference in October or November, a call that would seem difficult for the Bush administration to accept.

[...]

A U.S. State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, was asked Monday about the French conditions for taking part in an international conference. He declined to comment directly.

"This is something that the Iraqis are taking the lead in putting together," he said. "So I would refer, you know, those kinds of questions to them."

On the underlying question of a troop withdrawal, Ereli said, "We've always made clear that our goal is to - is to work ourselves into obsolescence."

The international conference, if it is held as announced, would include Iraq neighbors like Iran and Syria, both of which U.S. officials have accused of interfering in Iraqi affairs.

Powell met last week in New York with the Syrian s foreign minister, Farouk al-Shara, at least partly to discuss cooperation along the Iraq-Syria border. Referring to the international conference, Powell told CNN on Sunday, "This was a way to reach out to Iraq's immediate neighbors and persuade them that this is the time to help Iraq, so that the region can become stable."

Powell had said Friday that the administration was working with interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi of Iraq to invite major Western democracies, some Middle Eastern countries, and China to a conference aimed at bolstering Iraq's election process. Allawi has promised elections for a national assembly by the end of January.

On Sunday, Powell said that the conference could take place in Amman or Cairo. The conference would aim to confer greater legitimacy on the election process, encourage more Iraqi dissidents to participate, and reach an accord barring interference by neighboring countries.

Read the whole piece and contrast it with Kerry's recent position/criticisms. No matter the outcome of the conference, even if Europe withdraws in a snit, it leaves Kerry no where to go. The French media seems to think Bush has outmaneuvered Kerry.

A commentary in the French daily Le Monde said that "if it had wanted to pull the rug out from under the feet of the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, the Bush administration would not have gone about this any differently." Powell rejected the notion that the administration was behind plans for the event. "That's not the case," he told Fox News on Sunday. "This is an idea of Prime Minister Allawi."

Allawi. Priceless.

Breaking Out

A alarming reaction to John Kerry's speech in Spring Green Wisconsin today, as herds of disgruntled dairy cows left their farms and made their way to Tomah, where the massive black & white herd began to trudge West on Rt 90. Minnesotans were said to be organizing a vigilante posse in an attempt to turn the bovines south at Rt 35 into Iowa and save their own stocks.

Fred Loertscher, a startled Spring Green dairyman watched helplessly as his prize Holsteins disappeared into a river of bawling bovines. He said that it was something about Bush's secret plan to hurt dairy cows, a pair of Flip-flops, changing horses and California cheese that panicked the cows. The dairyman appeared to be confused after attending a Kerry campaign event where students behind wire screens were served bottled water and contorted rhetoric.

Kerry: Bush Would Hurt Dairyland

SPRING GREEN, Wis. -- Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry told voters in America's Dairyland on Monday that President Bush had a secret plan that would hurt milk producers after the election.

Kerry tried to convince voters in this rural community, where he is practicing for Thursday's debate, that he would look out for dairy farms here even though he hadn't always in the past.

In the 1990s, Kerry supported the Northeast Dairy Compact, a regional pricing program that propped up prices for Northeastern dairy farmers over objections from their Midwestern counterparts.

However it appears the cows understood the Senator perfectly.

That's The Ticket

Thank you notes? Yes, yes, a very nice gesture, but as a member of the VRWBC (Vast Right-Wing Blogger Conspiracy) we bloggers were really in it for the cash and the super-secret, two-way communicator devices to coordinate the Rovinator's next attack on the MSM.

Check, schmeck, I'm gonna frame mine.

You Think This Is About You

Doesn't this conjure up an image of a svelte MoDo clicking around her chic digs in Manolo's?



Update: Iraqpundit is not amused.

Dowd writes "It's hilarious that the Republicans have trotted out Mr. Allawi as an objective analyst of the state of conditions in Iraq when he's the administration's handpicked guy and has as much riding on putting the chaos in a sunny light as they do."

This is a laughably parochial reaction. Does Dowd think that Allawi is only talking to her and her ilk? Iraqis know very well that Allawi was flown to the United States for U.S. election purposes. What Dowd forgets is that Allawi knew that Iraqis too were listening to his speech. As a leader, he has to sound positive for his own people about the future of the country. Morale is vitally important to the nation's future.

It's exactly that future -- the Iraqis' future -- that Dowd can't be bothered with. To her, it's an occasion for cheap sarcasm. "Faced with their dystopia," she writes, amusing herself. "the utopians are scaling back their grand visions for Iraq's glorious future."

Critics like Dowd see Iraq and Iraqis as beyond redemption, if not beneath contempt. Not everyone has abandoned the Iraqi future. For example, David H. Petraeus writes in the Washington Post that he sees tangible progress. The Army Lt. General, who is training Iraq's security forces, writes there is reason for optimism. One of Dowd's own colleagues writes in today's New York Times that if the U.S. were to withdraw, Iraq would only get wors.

But it's the Dowds who seem to have the floor. The vast majority of Iraqis who want to make the country succeed and are willing to take risks and work hard to achieve that goal are all fodder for her snide jokes. Rest assured, Iraqis know Allawi's history very, very well. Iraqis know about his Baathist past; they know that he is no Nelson Mandela. But for now, he's their chance. For figures like Dowd, Allawi and indeed all his fellow Iraqis are just punchlines. But if this is about sarcasm and jokes, we'll see who -- the Iraqis or the sneering press -- has the last laugh.

Indeed.

Daisy Redux?

Is this a Flip? Or a Flop?

Kerry says Bush administration scaring Americans over war on terror

ST LOUIS, Missouri, Sept 10 (AFP) - Democratic White House challenger John Kerry on Friday accused President George W. Bush's administration of trying to scare Americans over the war on terror.

Speaking on the eve of commemorations for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, Kerry said the battle against terrorism should be more than a political battle in the United States.

Kerry told an election rally in St Louis, Missouri that the administration was "talking about the war on terror, trying to scare Americans.

"It is real, we've got a war, we've got a problem but we should do more than just talk about it, try to scare people about it and make it a political issue," Kerry charged.

I post, you decide:

Kennedy says Bush makes U.S. more vulnerable to nuclear attack

WASHINGTON (AP) The Bush administration's failure to shut down al-Qaida and rebuild Iraq have fueled the insurgency and made the United States more vulnerable to a nuclear attack by terrorists, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said Sunday.

In a speech prepared for delivery at George Washington University on Monday, Kennedy said that by shifting attention from Osama bin Laden to Iraq, Bush has increased the danger of a ''nuclear 9/11.''

''The war in Iraq has made the mushroom cloud more likely, not less likely,'' he said in the remarks released late Sunday.

Instead of more image makers, pollsters and flacks, the Kerry campaign needs a continuity team, they can't seem to keep track of their position on any given day.

Do the Dems really think mere words erases the horrendous images of Beslan in the minds of American women? If anything, scare mongering will only heighten the unease and fear and that helps Bush, not Kerry.

MSM Out Of Touch

Heh.

Yeah, like how to use Google.

You Can't Take Them Anywhere

Lyndon Johnson once remarked that the Democrats had a tendancy to piss into their tent, not outwards. That's exactly what Kerry and his surrogates did last week...except it was America's tent. Allen Forkum nails it:

Here's how Al-Jazeera reported Kerry's comments to the Middle East: Allawi's Congress speech draws flak. First they quote a "regional analyst."

"Iraq is not free nor is it stable. There is nationwide chaos. Its infrastructure has been destroyed and its wealth pillaged and plundered by the US occupation," [Mustafa Bakri, editor of the weekly Egyptian news magazine al-Osboa] told Aljazeera.net.

Then they introduce Kerry's comments:

The most severe criticism, however, came from Kerry, who claimed Allawi's speech was an attempt to put the "best face" on an Iraq campaign that is out of control.

You think al-Sadr and al-Zarqawi smiled when they read that? I do.

Me, too, if Kerry continues to go negative on Iraq, he will only isolate our current allies, harden the resistance in Iraq and embolden al-Qaeda. It is not a winning strategy for America, or Kerry.

Oh, Meeeeckey!

John Ellis pulls off the best Rathergate line of the day: "a hostage-taking over Cheerios."

(via Kausfiles)

It's That F-ing Dog

So we are to take John Kerry on his word that he has a better plan for the war in Iraq, that he will keep us safer, provide universal health care and make the trains run on time.

However, the dog seems to have eaten yet another piece of homework:

Senator John Kerry's campaign said yesterday that Mr. Kerry did not own a Chinese assault rifle, as he was quoted as saying in Outdoor Life magazine, but a single-bolt-action military rifle, blaming aides who filled out the magazine's questionnaire on his behalf for the error.

Michael Meehan, a spokesman for the campaign, said Mr. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, owns two guns, a double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun and the rifle, which Mr. Meehan said Mr. Kerry "keeps as a relic" and had never fired. Mr. Meehan said the gun had no make or model markings on it and that Mr. Kerry "got it from a friend years ago," adding that such rifles were first manufactured in Russia more than 100 years ago and were used by the North Koreans and the Vietcong.

Is Kerry's campaign the gang that can't shoot straight? or is Kerry shooting off his mouth for effect? Given that his current campaign message is that "Bush Lied", getting caught in such a stupid lie, seriously undercuts his "Trust me, I'll tell you the truth." meme-of-the-week.

That dog won't hunt, Senator.

UPDATE: Whist struck in traffic, it occured to me that Kerry had no idea which weapons he voted to ban. That does not bode well for a man who supposedly obsesses over detail. (ED-Yes, I know it's utterly pathetic, but someone has to think about this stuff.)

Lessons Learned

Absolutely required reading: Iraq isn't Vietnam, it's Guadalcanal.

(via Allah)

A New Meme?

Harsh, but accurate.

You're So Vain

Here's another example of the deepening rift between Europe and the US from the WSJ.

NEW YORK -- Underneath the gleaming countertops at Tiffany & Co.'s flagship store, classic gold watches feature "IIII" as their fourth digit. John Loring, Tiffany's design director, says he wouldn't have it any other way.

"You cannot possibly balance the weight of the VIII on the left by putting an IV on the right," he says. "It unbalances the whole thing."

But now IV watches are sold at Tiffany, too, including models made by the tony Swiss watchmaker Patek Philippe, of Geneva. The company has started using IV because that allows more features to fit on a dial.

The success of several new IV watches sold by Gucci Group's Bedat & Co., another Swiss watchmaker, is similarly challenging a central tenet of watchmaking that IIII goes better with VIII than IV does.

The new styles associated with European luxury and sophistication have sparked an outcry among purists who maintain that IIII is the proper way to represent 4 o'clock. "We clock people maintain that the Romans marked their fours that way, so that's why we do it," says John Metcalfe, former curator of the National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors' museum in Columbia, Pa.

Historians agree. "IIII is probably the more normal ancient usage," says James J. O'Donnell, professor of classics and provost of Georgetown University in Washington. Though the ancient Romans sometimes used IV to save space, he says, the shorthand didn't catch on until after the Middle Ages when people began using Roman numerals as decorations and IV started appearing in textbooks. Some horologists -- experts on timepieces -- theorize that the Romans used IV as an abbreviation of the name Jove or Jupiter and therefore wouldn't have wanted the name of a god to appear as a number.

Those in the IV league say it's time for a change. "It's unique and different from the industry," says Christian Bédat, who founded Bedat with his mother, Simone Bédat, in 1996.

The clash over the fourth digit deepens a rift between European and American watchmakers. While the Europeans traditionally have emphasized handcrafting and limited collectors' items, Americans have focused on simpler watches that are easier to produce. Four I's was seen as the plainest way to represent 4.

"The American time industry was built on mass production," says Daryn Schnipper, director of Sotheby's Watches and Clocks department. "There were production contests over how many could you make in a day."

We clock people? BUWHAHAHAHA!

However This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around

Half a dozen Web sites have sprung up in defense of the IIII method. The National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors maintains a file on the subject.

Well. Files are kept, names taken.

No matter where you come down on the issue of IV or IIII, this is just wrong:

Bedat dials also stand out because they replace the Roman numeral eight with an Arabic eight, eliminating the need to balance a heavy VIII with a heavy IIII. "On my dial it balances. It's subtle, and lighter than the four bars," says Mr. Bédat of his IV. He says he has never heard a customer comment on the IV -- though many notice the 8.

Tiffany's intrepid Mr. Loring refuses to budge even in the face of damning evidence:

The IV also appears in some unexpected places -- on the clocktower known as Big Ben in London and on a fall 2001, $65 Eddie Bauer watch. Even the 151-year-old Tiffany clock adorning the company's Fifth Avenue store features an IV, despite the more traditional view of Tiffany's Mr. Loring.

"The basic way of counting is on your hands," he says, "and your hand clearly has four fingers to get to four."

It's nice to know that we in the West have our priorities in order; the proper number 4 on our $45,000 Patek Philippe watches.

(Ed- You checked your watch, didn't you?)

The "K" Team

Aieeeee!!!!! My eyes!!!

Media Snark

The media just can't help themselves as this pool report of Bush Surprise Visit To Troops Headed to Iraq demonstrates. They had to add this snarky sentence:

Potus took the limo the few hundred yards between the two planes.

Hello? Media to earth, there is a nutjob with a rifle stalking Bush, I doubt we''ll see Bush in the open until they catch the guy.

Interestingly, Milbank, a bush-hater, and one of the credited pool reporters didn't include the line in his WaPo report, and Time doesn't have it up. Wonder who actually wrote the pool text?

Via Power Line...check out the photos.)

Another Media Malfunction?

Just when we thought it was safe to change out of our jammies, an interesting development from Power Line re the WATimes article on Kerry's 1997 flip-flop:

UPDATE: A transcript of the 1997 CNN show has surfaced via Lexis/Nexis, and, while it has some similar comments by Kerry, it does not include the language quoted above from King's tape. So what gives? I don't know; for now, we're suspending judgment. Congressman King was on the show himself, so it's not like someone handed him the tape in an envelope at a livestock show. No doubt we'll learn more soon. In the meantime, we won't add this one to Kerry's Hall of Fame collection of flip-flops.

Did CNN alter transcripts or did the Washington Times edit the material given them by King? Someone's in a bind here.

Must Read

Charles Krauthammer's column in the WaPo The Art Of Losing Friends makes a point that many of us have been saying for months, the Dems are undermining our allies and strengthening our enemies.

Of all our allies in the world, which is the only one to have joined the United States in the foxhole in every war in the past 100 years? Not Britain, not Canada, certainly not France. The answer is Australia.

So how are the Dems repaying Howard's leap of faith and Aussie sacrifice and loyality?

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has taken great risks and much political heat for his support of America. There is a national election in Australia on Oct. 9, and the race is neck and neck between Howard and Labor Party leader Mark Latham. Latham has pledged to withdraw from Iraq.

This is a critical election not only for Australia but also for the United States. Think of the effect on America, its front-line soldiers and its coalition partners if one of its closest allies turns tail and runs. The terrorists' objective is to intimidate all countries allied with America. Make them bleed and tell them this is the price they pay for being a U.S. ally. The implication is obvious: Abandon America and buy your safety.

That is what the terrorists are saying. Why is the Kerry campaign saying the same thing? "John Kerry's campaign has warned Australians that the Howard Government's support for the US in Iraq has made them a bigger target for international terrorists." So reports the Weekend Australian (Sept. 18).

Probably to be expected as the anti-war left becomes more desperate and reckless, but here's the kicker:

This Kerry spokesman, undermining a key ally on the eve of a critical election, is no rogue political operative. She is the head of Americans Overseas for Kerry -- Diana Kerry, sister to John.

It is simply astonishing that the Kerry camp would condone, let alone run a scorched earth strategy to peel off members of the coalition when we are at war. How can this possibly help him if he wins?

Hillary must be laughing her ample arse off.

UPDATE: Touché

There you have it, a preview of John Kerry’s diplomacy: for short-term domestic political gain, he will deride and insult anyone. He learned his French well, mais oui?

The Hive Memory

Lileks totally geeks out today...

...bless his heart, for who else can evoke childhood memories such as Woolie's paper cone & metal soda holders? He omitted the cloying scent of Paris Nuit perfume and Coty face powder wafting over the entire store like a cloud of WMD...but that would be carping.

Enjoy.

That's A Lot of Ketchup

Guess who made the Forbes 400 Richest in America? Yep, Teresa.

389 Kerry, Teresa F Heinz 750 66 Fox Chapel , PA inheritance

Heinz Kerry claimed she was ashamed to receive the Bush tax cut, but hasn't released her tax records so we can see how much the Kerry's and her adult children actually took from the mouths of the working poor.

Perhaps Heinz Kerry will write a check and give it back, you can do that you know.

Payback is a bitch, ain't it?

Combat Over Iraq

Rob T posts a new set of photos from his second tour in Iraq.

Click for full size

If that photo didn't make the hair stand up on the back of your neck and your heart swell with admiration and pride, then you're either brain dead or a Kerrynik™.

(Via Insta)

Swap The Vote

Is this cheating? It feels wrong to me, but I'm old-fashioned, I value the privacy of the voting booth as much as the vote cast. Auctioning one's vote may be a slippery slope to loss of individual franchise. How about if a lot of us signed up and didn't swap? (hint, hint, wink, wink)

I'm waiting for the Democrat whinge over this.

U.S. Jews in Israel wooed for votes

JERUSALEM — Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jewish Americans who have lived in Israel for decades without casting a U.S. ballot say they are planning to vote in November's presidential election.

Their newfound enthusiasm is the fruit of a first voting drive among the strictly devout, or Haredi, community in Israel, and local Republicans are delighted.

After the 2000 presidential election was decided by a few hundred Floridians, Republicans and Democrats are working harder than ever for the votes of about 7 million Americans living abroad. Israel's 250,000 Americans — many of them holding dual Israeli citizenship — make up the third-largest collection of such expatriates outside of North America, and a large proportion of them are ultra-Orthodox.

[...]

Kory Bardash, chairman of the Israeli chapter of Republicans Abroad, immediately saw an opportunity.

Although American Jews historically have voted for the Democrats in overwhelming numbers, Orthodox Jews are more likely to vote for Republicans because of the party's socially conservative platform and support for privately funded religious schools, Mr. Bardash said.

President Bush's unwavering backing of Israel's aggressive war against Palestinian militancy is expected to boost his standing among Jewish voters who make Israel their top issue.

"We couldn't be happier," said Mr. Bardash, who has provided booklets on how to register and vote. "The people-of-faith vote goes with the Republican ticket."

Where is the ethical line? When does voter education/registration become manipulation/corruption or was that Rubicon crossed in 2000?

Sour Grapes

The Belgravia Dispatch wasn't impressed with Kerry's performance today either:

Wow. Strong speech. Advantage Allawi (and Bush).

Kerry looks, er, very small today. I mean, was this statement for real? In its discombobulation, utter lack of grace (all but calling Allawi a liar--a man almost axed to death by Saddam's henchmen in the U.K. and under constant threat of assassination today), near absurdities ("Let me tell you, if the 4th Infantry Division and the diplomacy had been done (ed. note: whatever "done" means) with Turkey, you wouldn't have had a Fallujah"), pleading tone ("And ask the military leaders. Go ask the military leaders")--it reads more like a bona fide Deanian (or Goreian?) meltdown than a serious policy statement/press conference.

And am I the only one concerned that Kerry opened his remarks by proclaiming: "I want victory. I want to win." Er, shouldn't that be assumed? Why does a candidate for the U.S. Presidency feel compelled to state that? How very odd. Of course, if he is serious about us winning--he should instead act like a statesman, head to Washington, and assure the new Iraq PM that there is a bipartisan consensus to support Iraq during its perilous path towards democracy whoever wins in November.

But no. Instead, a sour, rambling statement from the sidelines. As I said, small. Very small. I'm tempted to say he needs new advisors--but he's already gone through quite a few batches. At some point, the buck stops with the principal, no? [emphasis added]

(via Instapundit)

You go, Girl

While John Kerry is busy dissing the Iraqis, the Missus is trash talkin' Arizona:

It comes in a local Arizona television station's interview with Teresa Heinz Kerry. To see the video, go to this Arizona Republic page and click on the link that says, "Teresa Kerry talks about the campaign in Sun City."

The exchange goes like this:

12 News Reporter: Most of the polls are tracking that Sen John Kerry as doing a better job on the economy. My question is, why hasn’t that transferred overall in the poll numbers?

Teresa: It has, of course. Of course it has.

Reporter: He’s still down.

Teresa: He’s not. Did you see the polls today? You saw Zogby and ARG —

Reporter: Yes, but he’s still down in Arizona.

Teresa: Oh, who cares? You know, one state is not a whole state. In the whole United States, he is even, even, and in some of them one point ahead, and in some one point behind.

BUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

(A big wet kiss on the lips to Jim Geraghty for that one, I needed a good laugh.)

Kerry Trash Talks Allawi

Is this an example of Kerry's "more sensitive" approach in dealing with Iraq?

Shortly after Allawi, the interim government's prime minister, gave a rosy portrayal of progress toward peace in Iraq, Kerry said the assessment contradicted reality on the ground.

"The prime minister and the president are here obviously to put their best face on the policy, but the fact is that the CIA estimates, the reporting, the ground operations and the troops all tell a different story,'' Kerry said.

Allawi told a joint meeting of Congress that democratic elections will take place in Iraq in January as scheduled, but Kerry said that was unrealistic.

Kerry also claimed: "I will do a better job of dealing with Iraq and winning the war and fighting the war on terror, period.''

Well, he's off to a fine start demonstrating he has little grasp of Arabic culture and Iraqi society in insulting Allawi, his clan and tribe. Which sound bite/pull quote do you think Al-Jazeera will run? Congressional applause or Kerry calling Allawi a liar?

Yeah, that's the ticket, John, undermine and piss off the Iraqi's who risk their life in working with us. That'll work.

UPDATE: After hearing the various sound bites and lame ass comments from the Kerry surrogates about how wrong Bush's approach was and is to Iraq; I hit the Google Way-back machine. In 1990 Saddam invaded Kuwait and defied eleven UN Resolutions, posing a threat to the world's oil supply. Bush 41 had 500,000 troops in place, a coalition of 109 countries, including France and Germany, UN Resolution 678, Nov. 29: Authorizes the use of force to uphold resolutions unless Iraq withdraws by Jan. 15, 1991, and the Saudi's to pick up the tab, the optimum conditions Kerry claims are required to win in Iraq. What did Kerry do? He voted Nay.

“I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work and against a resolution giving the president the immediate authority to go to war” January 22, 1991. Nine days later on January 31, 1991, he said this, “From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis and the policy goals he has established with our military deployment in the Persian Gulf”. [emphasis added]

I'll Have Whatever She's Smoking, Please.

Tina Brown opines in the WaPo:

Now the conventional wisdom is that the media will be kept honest and decent by an army of incorruptible amateur gumshoes. In fact, cyberspace is populated by a coalition of political obsessives and pundits on speed who get it wrong as much as they get it right. It's just that they type so much they are bound to nail a story from time to time.

Wait a minute, did she just call the Blogoshpere a bunch of monkeys? Ms. Brown might want to avoid typewriter metaphors whilst discussing the CBS document fraud. Unfortunately she has more to say about that which she knows nothing.

The rapturing about the bloggers is the journalistic equivalent of the stock market's Internet bubble. You can see the news chiefs feeling as spooked as the old-style CEOs in the '90s who had built their companies over 20 years and then saw kids in backward baseball caps on the cover of Fortune. It finally drove them nuts. It was why we saw Time Warner's buttoned-down corporate dealmaker Gerald Levin tearing off his tie and swooning into the embrace of AOL's Steve Case.

The equivalent today is when news outfits that built their reputations on check-and-double-check pick up almost any kind of assertion and call it a "source." Or feel so chased by the new-media mujaheddin they start trusting tips garnered from God-knows-where by a partisan wack job in Texas.

No, no, no. It's P-A-J-A-M-A-H-A-D-E-E-N, it's such hard work correcting these old media types.

Ms. Brown continues into the Kerry tank:

Documents or no documents, everyone knows Bush's dad got him out of Vietnam. Everyone knows he thought he had better, funner things to do than go to a bunch of boring National Guard drills. (Only a killjoy like John Kerry would spend his carefree youth racking up high-minded demonstrations of courage and conscience, right?) Like O.J. Simpson's infamous "struggle" to squeeze his big hand into the glove, the letter was just a lousy piece of evidence that should never have been produced in court. Now because CBS, like Marcia Clark, screwed up the prosecution, Bush is going to walk.

This last graf makes so little sense that I will just let you baste in the pointless comparison of a blood-soak glove from a grisely double murder scene and a bogus memo alledging cronyism in Texas politics, as Tina has a boffo closer:

As for Dan and CBS, it wasn't really politics that drove them over the edge, was it? It was romance. That's the sad part. How good did it feel when they broke the Abu Ghraib story just a beat before Seymour Hersh at the New Yorker? How satisfying is it when a real news sensation takes hold instead of some tabloid trash moment (like Janet Jackson's flashing breast)? A veteran newsman is in the twilight of a long and distinguished career. He just wanted to taste that sweet medicine one more time.

Sweet medicine? An odd metaphor...so ole Dan is a junkie longing for his last peer approval fix, eh? Jeebus with friends like Tina Brown, Dan Rather doesn't need the blogosphere to harsh his mellow.

Jeff Jarvis isn't buying into it and neither is the public or the street.

Kerry's Imaginary Coalition

In remarks at New York University Monday, Kerry laid out the steps we must now take. "First, the president must secure international support."

Oh really, from whom? These fine folks?

Court allows political asylum from Germany

Afghan fled Soviets first, then neo-Nazis

An Afghan woman who fled to Germany after the Soviet occupation, and fled again 17 years later after her family was threatened by neo-Nazis, is eligible for political asylum in the United States, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

{...}

The lawyer said the family started encountering anti-foreigner violence in 1990, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

According to the court, Farid Mashiri was beaten twice by passengers in his taxicab in 1990, mobs attacked foreigners near the family's home in 1993 and 1996, their tires were slashed twice and their apartment ransacked in 1995, and the children were frequently attacked at school.

Several incidents had Nazi overtones, the court said. The mobs shouted "Heil Hitler,'' and the same phrase was included in a death threat left on their car windshield.

Authorities provided little help, the court said. School officials took no action to protect the children, and police made no arrests in any of the attacks. When the older son, then 14, was followed home from school by four neo-Nazis in 1996 and badly beaten, police told the mother that foreigners had to take care of themselves. [emphasis added]

We took this woman in to protect her, not from the Taliban or al-Qaeda, but GERMANS.

A article in The International Herald Tribune discusses the contradictions and difficulties Old Europe faces, it does not provide much hope for Kerry's powers of persuasion.

Politicus: Trying to put Islam on Europe's agenda

About nine months ago, Francis Fukuyama, the historian, said that one of the big things distinguishing America from Europe was that, while the United States had staged its great debate on race, Europe hid from dealing frontally with how much Islam it could live with inside its borders.

Now, Fukuyama, author of the celebrated essay "The End of History," has taken this message to the Europeans. In a speech in Germany about two weeks ago, he urged Europe to stop being intimidated about using its right to defend its own humanist culture. He even employed the expression "leitkultur," or leading culture - touchy among Germans because of its supposed elitist resonance - to describe the legitimacy of shoring up a distinctly European identity.

Fukuyama will return to speak in Europe this month and next. His desire to raise the issue of Islam and Europe is intriguing at the least, and surely intrusive for some Europeans. But it reflects a central concern of other leading American academics. Samuel Huntington of Harvard and Bernard Lewis, the Princeton emeritus professor and Middle East expert, men sometimes schematized with Fukuyama as conservatives (although Huntington and Fukuyama are tough critics of aspects of America's involvement in Iraq), have recently questioned the extent of Europe's stability over the coming century as a result of Islam's growing presence.

[...]

Huntington, in his book "Who Are We?" says that in essence "multiculturalism is anti-European civilization" because "it is basically an anti-Western ideology." In a conversation, he contrasted Hispanic immigrants in the United States with Arab and Turkish immigrants to Europe by saying the Muslims show "greater resistance to integrate."

"I am fascinated by how Europe and the Muslims there are confronted by redefining their religious identity," Huntington said. The forces in play, he found, were such that "Europe may be deeply divided in 25 years."

Lewis, in a little-noted question-and-answer session with the German newspaper Die Welt this summer, predicted Western Europe's coming Islamization. He reiterated this view in private talks with senators here in September.

"Europe will be a part of the Arab West or Maghreb," he told the newspaper. "Migration and demography indicate this. Europeans marry late and have few or no children. But there's strong immigration: Turks in Germany, Arabs in France and Pakistanis in England. At the latest, following current trends, Europe will have Muslim majorities in the population at the end of the 21st century."

Lewis also went on to point out to Die Welt what he saw as ambiguous feelings among Europeans about Muslims and the United States, saying: "In this connection, the European Union could rename itself the community of envy. Europeans have reservations about an America which has surpassed it so clearly. And that's why the Europeans understand the Muslims - because they have similar feelings about America."

Lewis regards plans in France and the Netherlands to train their own French and Dutch imams with national instincts and loyalties as illusory. And although the United States supports Turkey's entry into the EU, other Americans consider naïve the European elite's argument that a link to Turkey will be a bridge to Islam and an example to the Arab world. Rather, they say, the resentment lingering from the Ottoman Empire's historical subjugation of the Arab nation makes unlikely any Turkish secular role-model for the Arabs.

Although France's defense of its secular, republican tradition against Islamic head scarves was seen as an important development, and the Netherlands was cited for a rare level of political frankness in its national debate on Islam, there was concern among the scholars about how stubbornly Europe would make the case for its identity. Reality was also a report this summer from a French government internal security agency telling of 300 areas in the country where separatistlike situations, grouping Islamic fundamentalist preachers, contempt for France and the West, and violence held sway.

Isn't it interesting that the MSM hasn't covered an issue that is roiling the EU and key to Kerry's success in creating a new coalition. The wrangling over a very minor French union contract is illustrative of the larger issue facing the EU and France in particular.

Liberty, equality - apathy

By blindly insisting that all its citizens are equal, France is failing to tackle social injustice, writes Jon Henley

"Not a reflection of the France I know," said the agriculture minister. "Scandalous... reminiscent of the occupation," said the industry minister. "Discrimination based on ethnic criteria... wholly contrary to the spirit and values of the Republic," said the deputy president of the centre-right UMP party. "Shocking," said the head of the Socialists' parliamentary group.

So what sparked this extraordinary outburst (the above was just a fraction of it) from France's political establishment? A particularly racist recruitment policy? More rabid rantings from Jean-Marie le Pen? Another depressing TV item about Arab couples being turned away from a club because it was full, only to see the white couples behind them admitted?

No. The outrage followed an announcement made this weekend, at the end of a two-week strike by the Société Nationale Maritime Corse Méditerranée, a ferry company that carries something like 25m passengers a year between the beautiful but impossibly unruly island of Corsica and Marseille on the French mainland.

[...]

This is increasingly becoming a concern for France: the knee-jerk defence of principles that were once (and may, indeed, still be) valuable in the abstract, but are plainly not effective in practice.

The insistence that all French citizens are equal, for example, is now preventing the country from addressing some of its most pressing problems: the desperate need to raise the status of its Muslim community, the scandalous under-representation of ethnic minorities in politics and the media, as well as unemployment on Corsica.

The extraordinary response in Paris to a small clause in a corporate agreement that may eventually help maybe a couple of hundred Corsicans find work is another example of the inflexibility of the Republic and its incapacity to adjust to contemporary concerns.

Is such stubborn and inflexible thinking possible in the great enlightenment that is Europe?

COTV #105

In a galaxy closer than you might expect, Carnival Of the Vanities plays a limited engagement at the infamous interstellar saloon and rumpus room The Eleven Day Empire. Free speeder parking and all the Hune you can glorb.

They're Here! They're Here!!

The bodysnatchers struck New York or else my eyes are playing tricks. Big. Time.

ABC reports: Kerry: Draft Likely to Return Under Bush
John Kerry Raises Possibility That Military Draft May Return if President Bush Is Re-Elected

But, but .... This isn't Bush. Is it?

Rangel introduces bill to reinstate draft
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Rep. Charles Rangel introduced a bill in Congress Tuesday to reinstate the military draft, saying fighting forces should more closely reflect the economic makeup of the nation.

Hmmmm.... none of these people are George Bush either.

H.R.163
Title: To provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Rep Rangel, Charles B. [NY-15] (introduced 1/7/2003) Cosponsors (14)

Rep Abercrombie, Neil [HI-1], Rep Brown, Corrine [FL-3], Rep Christensen, Donna M. [VI], Rep Clay, Wm. Lacy [MO-1], Rep Conyers, John, Jr. [MI-14], Rep Cummings, Elijah E. [MD-7], Rep Hastings, Alcee L. [FL-23], Rep Jackson, Jesse L., Jr. [IL-2], Rep Jackson-Lee, Sheila [TX-18], Rep Lewis, John [GA-5], Rep McDermott, Jim [WA-7], Rep Moran, James P. [VA-8], Rep Stark, Fortney Pete [CA-13], Rep Velazquez, Nydia M. [NY-12], Rep Norton, Eleanor Holmes [DC]

Will the MSM never learn to check Google before they publish DNC talking points? Yahoo changed the story, but here's the AP version, which as you see many newspapers and broadcasters ran without bothering to do a skerrick of research.

UPDATE: Via Geraghty

"Good heavens, this is the new message from all corners of the party! From John Edwards and Max Cleland and Howard Dean!"

Here’s Dean:

Former Kerry rival Howard Dean, now traveling the country to drum up support for Kerry and raise money for Democratic candidates, said last week at Brown University in Providence, R.I., “I think that George Bush is certainly going to have a draft if he goes into a second term, and any young person that doesn't want to go to Iraq might think twice about voting for him.”

Letterman Disses Kerry

The MSM was all a-twitter over Kerry's appearance on Letterman Monday night. Maybe they should have watched last night as well. Letterman did a bit on each candidate taken from recent campaign footage. Kerry's sound bite was edited as per the forward slashes:

A MESSAGE FROM JOHN KERRY:

"And I'm not kidding you / I am / the most catastrophic, bad choice / for America."

Followed by Letterman's trademark startled stare.

Bush's didn't require comedic editing:

GEORGE W. BUSH TERRORISM UPDATE: From a July 4th speech in Charleston, West Virginia:

"And that's why their actions have grown more cruel and sadt. . . . statis . . . . sadit . . . sadistic."

Letterman laughed and commented that he's had nights on-air when his mouth wouldn't work either.

The Kerry campaign should have known better, only a few Pols, such as former Mayor Rudy Giuliani receive a geniune reaction from Dave. Letterman always extracts a price for being used during campaigns, after the ratings bump, of course.

Movie Alert!

"Beat The Devil" (1953) a rare cult comedy is running on Turner Classic Movies, check your cable listings, you won't be disappointed.

Five deperate con artists out hustle each other in Italy to catch a steamer to East Africa where they plan to swing a big uranium swindle, but when their boat breaks down off the North African coast they are taken prisoner by Arab officials who smell money. Things reach a farcial pitch as the adventurers are caught up in a bewildering cross current of personal betrayal and double dealing on an international scale.

Black & white, directed by John Huston, written by Huston and Truman Capote.

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley and Peter Lorre.

Yes, We Have No Pajamas

There's a blog on our screen
It's run by a Geek.
Another posts many things he's seen
But you should see this one link!
When you ask a question, he never answers "no".
He just mocks you to death,
As Mr. Green, pours a drink...
"Yes! We have no pajamas
We have no pajamas today!!

But yes, we have no pajamas
We have no pajamas today."

(lyrics & Music by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn -1923. Cheesy midi warning!)

All Byte, No Bark

Bloggers join the big dogs on the porch.

Andrew's TIME column A Blogger's Creed and How to knock down a story repleat with a photo of Power Line's John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson...alas, pajamas are no where to be seen.

One Eye To Deceive Them All

"I gave you the chance of aiding Kerry willingly, but you elected the way of the Pajamahadeen."

Courtesy of Metallicity via Jim Geraghty

Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Kerry said "Invading Iraq was a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight,"

A war with no end in sight began on 9/11 and with another senseless murder by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi demonstrates, we've only begun.

Kerry claims: "Falluja…Ramadi… Samarra … even parts of Baghdad – are now “no go zones”…"

Yet a Major on the ground in Baghdad writes:

You may not have even heard about the city of Samarra. Two weeks ago, that Sunni Triangle city was a “No-go” area for US troops. But guess what? The locals got sick of living in fear from the insurgents and foreign fighters that were there and let them know they weren’t welcome. They stopped hosting them in their houses and the mayor of the town brokered a deal with the US commander to return Iraqi government sovereignty to the city without a fight. The people saw what was on the horizon and decided they didn’t want their city looking like Fallujah in April or Najaf in August.

Boom, boom, just like that two major “hot spots” cool down in rapid succession. Does that mean that those towns are completely pacified? No. What it does mean is that we are learning how to do this the right way. The US commander in Samarra saw an opportunity and took it – probably the biggest victory of his military career and nary a shot was fired in anger.

Perhaps Kerry should hire better researchers as the Major's report and more in the same vein are widely available on dozens of blogs and through the milblogs ring.

Kerry's latest Chicken Little ploy of shouting Iraq! Iraq! Iraq! sounds hollow to all but partisan ears as Kerry has changed positions too many times.

John Kerry on Meet the Press a year ago:

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe that we should withdraw American troops from Iraq?
SEN. KERRY: No.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe we should put more American troops in Iraq?
SEN. KERRY: No.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe that we should reduce funding that we are now providing for the operation in Iraq?
SEN. KERRY: No. I think we should increase it.
MR. RUSSERT: Increase funding.
SEN. KERRY: Yes.
MR. RUSSERT: By how much?
SEN. KERRY: By whatever number of billions of dollars it takes to win. It is critical that the United States of America be successful in Iraq, Tim.

Kerry on Iraq reminds me of the lines from The Talking Heads "Life In Wartime"

I changed my hairstyle, so many times now,
I don’t know what I look like!

CBS Deeply Regrets

CBS regrets Dan Rather is unable to apologize today,
He is sorry to be delayed,
But last week down in Abilene he strayed, Madam,
Dan Rather regrets he is unable to apologize today.

When CBS woke up and found, that their reputation was gone, Madam,
They ran to Mary Mapes who had lead them so far astray,
And with a collective frown,
Lawyers took a vote and shot the memos down, Madam,
Dan Rather regrets he is unable to apologize today.

While bloggers debunked the bogus memos with glee, Madam,
His principals Dan was forced to flee,
And the moment before their story was denied,
CBS lifted up their sorry heads and cried, Madam,

"CBS deeply regrets...Dan Rather is unable to apologize today."

Apologies to Cole Porter.

[ Click to hear Cole Porter's rendition written for actor Monty Woolley's birthday party and first performed on stage in 1934. Original lyrics here. A perennial favorite, "Miss Otis Regrets" has been recorded by such diverse talents as Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Jose Feliciano, Brian Ferry and The Pogues.]

Busted

In today's climbdown, CBS says they report "without favoritsm".

Pardon us if we giggle.

LGF posts a photo that demonstrates that anti-GOP bias is so pervasive in the organization that CBS employees openly display anti-Bush signage on company news vans parked in front of the CBS building.

One suspects there will be more than a few pink slips in the next pay period's envelopes.

The Dog That Barked

Hindrocket posts a very cool bit of news, even if TIME does get it wrong.

Mike at rathergate.com notes that Howie Kurtz incorrectly quotes a source in his Media Notes on the WaPO website and to his credit, Kurtz quickly corrects.

Looks like old dogs can learn new tricks.

Punk'd

The centerpiece of Kerry's latest campaign theme "Strong At Home" is to call into question Bush's judgement on Iraq. Kerry said today: "Bush's mistakes, Kerry said, "were not the equivalent of accounting errors. They were colossal failures of judgment — and judgment is what we look for in a president."

Yes indeedy, unfortunately the more Kerry speaks of war the more his own flawed judgement comes to the forefront, as Mark Steyn points out:

In the usual course of events, Kerry's terrible judgment in the '70s would render him unelectable. Instead, over two decades he morphed into a respectably dull run-of-the-mill pompous senatorial windbag. Had he run for president in the '90s or 2000, he might even have pulled it off. But the Democrats turned to him this time because the tortured contradictions of his resume suited an anti-war party that didn't dare run as such. Ever since the first cries of ''Quagmire!'' back in the early days of the Afghan liberation in 2001, the left have been trying to Vietnamize the war on terror. They failed in that, but they succeeded in the Vietnamization of the election campaign, and that's turned out just swell, hasn't it? Remember that formulation a lot of Democrats were using last year? They oppose the war but ''of course'' they support our troops. Kerry's campaign is a walking illustration of the deficiencies of that straddle: When you divorce the heroism of soldiering from the justice of the cause, what's left but a hollow braggart?

The Vietnamese government used Kerry's 1971 testimony as evidence of American war crimes as recently as two months ago. In Aden, Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, but in Hanoi Kerry's psychodrama-queen performance is a gift that keeps on giving. It would be a shame if they understood him more clearly than the American people do.

That Kerry cannot find his footing six weeks from the election is that Kerry is simply not believeable as CINC. InstaPunk points out:

It may be understandable if unacceptable that the Michael Moores of the nation forget that George W. Bush is our commander-in-chief in a time of war. There is no excuse for John Kerry to forget it. He is aspiring to be commander-in-chief. If he does not respect the office, he is not qualified to fill it.

There is no excuse for a presidential candidate to declare that the sitting President is "unfit for command" when American troops are in the field. There is no excuse for a presidential candidate to suggest that a draft status 30 years in the past has any bearing on the qualifications of a sitting president who has already served four years as commander-in-chief and has exposed himself to personal peril on multiple occasions. There is no excuse for a presidential candidate to imply that a sitting president is a coward when the office he is competing for has a 9-percent assassination rate and an 11-percent casualty rate. There is no excuse for a presidential candidate to undermine the perceived honor and integrity of the commander-in-chief in a time of war.

There are honorable ways of debating the alternatives in Iraq and in the War on Terror. But only a patriot would think to discover those ways in the poisonous world John Kerry helped bring into being thirty-some years ago.

Read the rest of InstaPunk's fisking as he enummerates the reasons Kerry's anti-war activism resonates stronger than his feckless conversion to hawk. Campaign re-tooling, focus-grouping, ring-knocking or ernest thundering from the podium cannot not disguise that John Kerry is running from John Kerry, not against George Bush.

Scent of a Rat

One smells a rat in the MSM's gloom & doom Iraq coverage as one reads comments from the military in the field.

Smash passes on "From Where I'm Sitting" from a US Marine Corps major in Baghdad.

IMO-the opening graf is right on point:

“Doom & Gloom about Iraq’s future... I don’t see it from where I’m sitting.”
[For those of you who haven’t gotten my “Thoughts” before, I’m a Major in the USMC on the Multi-National Corps staff in Baghdad. The analysts and pundits who don’t see what I see on a daily basis, in my opinion, have very little credibility to talk about the situation – especially if they have yet to set foot in Iraq. Everything Americans believe about Iraq is simply perception filtered through one’s latent prejudices until you are face-to-face with reality. If you haven’t seen, or don’t remember, the John Wayne movie, The Green Berets, you should watch it this weekend. Pay special attention to the character of the reporter, Mr. Beckwith. His experience is directly related to the situation here. You’ll have a different perspective on Iraq after the movie is over.]
The US media is abuzz today with the news of an intelligence report that is very negative about the prospects for Iraq’s future. CNN’s website says, “[The] National Intelligence Estimate was sent to the White House in July with a classified warning predicting the best case for Iraq was ‘tenuous stability’ and the worst case was civil war.” That report, along with the car bombings and kidnappings in Baghdad in the past couple days are being portrayed in the media as more proof of absolute chaos and the intransigence of the insurgency.

[...]

The US media is abuzz today with the news of an intelligence report that is very negative about the prospects for Iraq’s future. CNN’s website says, “[The] National Intelligence Estimate was sent to the White House in July with a classified warning predicting the best case for Iraq was ‘tenuous stability’ and the worst case was civil war.” That report, along with the car bombings and kidnappings in Baghdad in the past couple days are being portrayed in the media as more proof of absolute chaos and the intransigence of the insurgency.

From where I sit, at the Operational Headquarters in Baghdad, that just isn’t the case. Let’s lay out some background, first about the “National Intelligence Estimate.” The most glaring issue with its relevance is the fact that it was delivered to the White House in July. That means that the information that was used to derive the intelligence was gathered in the Spring – in the immediate aftermath of the April battle for Fallujah, and other events. The report doesn’t cover what has happened in July or August, let alone September.

The naysayers will point to the recent battles in Najaf and draw parallels between that and what happened in Fallujah in April. They aren’t even close. The bad guys did us a HUGE favor by gathering together in one place and trying to make a stand.

The Major has no reason to color events or lie, read the rest and compare with what you're being told by the MSM.

Shifting Gears

Paul at Sanity's Edge posts:

From our man in Kuwait "Ranger Bob, our correspondent in Kuwait, filed this story in an attempt to cheer me up. And it did."

Me too. However, this one made me laugh out loud.

Dupee or Duper

As this article notes, Dan Rather and CBS are not the only members of the MSM who have either not done their homework or are glossing over a key detail of Kerry's naval record.

The MSM is obssessed with parsing every word of Bush's TANG documentation for a gotcha, yet no one noticed that Kerry's enlistment contract shows he enlisted in the inactive US Naval Reserve, not the US Navy as his online Bio claims.

I recall it was just as difficult to get a slot in the Naval Reserves as it was the Air National Guard. Why hasn't the MSM asked the obvious question?

How did John Kerry get an officer's slot in the Naval Reserves?

(hat tip to Instapundit)

Wrong

An article in the Boston Globe reinforces my recollection in an earlier posting Back Up the Truck Johnny, that draft deferments were widely obtained in the 60's. The author notes that two of Cheney's deferments occured before the Vietnam Draft began.

Author says Cheney draft deferments weren't unusual

WASHINGTON -- Democrats now accuse him of ducking a war that defined his generation. But when 18-year-old Dick Cheney became eligible for the draft in 1959, compulsory military service did not loom large in the future vice president's life -- or for many other young men of his generation.

True, Elvis Presley had just been drafted into the Army, but the pace of inductions was slow. The Cold War was on, and few Americans gave any thought to troubles in Southeast Asia.

Over the next eight years, though, the draft cast a growing shadow over Cheney and others like him as the United States plunged into a military conflict in Vietnam that forced many young men to answer their country's call.

Records indicate that Cheney received his first draft deferment in March 1963, two years before President Lyndon B. Johnson launched a large military offensive in Vietnam. [emphasis added]

[...]

But George Flynn, a retired professor of history at Texas Tech University and author of a book on the draft, said it was not unusual for men like Cheney to have multiple deferments, especially if they were in college. Flynn said many students returned periodically to local draft boards to renew deferments. He likened Cheney's case to that of a former Democratic president who was famously a student and not a soldier during Vietnam.

''Cheney got legal deferments, as did thousands of others, including Bill Clinton," Flynn said. ''Nothing odd about this behavior. What is odd is that Kerry, a Yale graduate with terrific credentials and opportunities, decided to volunteer for the war."

Cheney received four student deferments, a category called 2-S, according to Patrick Schuback, a spokesman for the Selective Service System. They were dated March 20, 1963; July 23, 1963; Oct. 14, 1964; and Nov. 1, 1965.

The deferments were issued as Cheney was in the midst of an on-and-off college career. He started at Yale in 1959 but flunked out, by his own admission, and eventually earned bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Wyoming.

His last deferment, dated Jan. 19, 1966, was category 3-A, usually issued to men with a family hardship. That was given as the Cheneys, who had married in August 1964, were expecting their first baby.

Deferments were common in the 1960s. More than 3.5 million men received 3-A deferments the same year Cheney got his, Schuback said. And 1.7 million others got 2-S deferments that year. More than 343,000 were drafted from July 1, 1965, to June 30, 1966.

Cheney's record also shows he was twice given 1-A status, indicating he was able to serve. The first instance was Feb. 15, 1962, when he was first exposed to the draft because government policy then was to confer that status on men who had reached their 20s, specialists say. The second time was May 19, 1965. As a result, there were apparently several months -- especially in 1965 -- when he could have been drafted. In all, 1.8 million men were drafted from 1964 to 1973.

By John Edwards' logic, there are 5.2 million middle-aged cowards among us. Given that the country is evenly divided between the two parties. One could extrapolate that 2.6 million of these cowards are Democrats. Edwards' rhetoric is not only offensive, it's Wrong on every level.

Can we drop the deferment/draft-dodger meme now?

Hacks & Flacks

Liberal bias in the MSM? None, nada , zip.

Katie bar the door

Katie at Replendent Mango, fisks a campaign beg letter from MaryBeth Cahill. It's a pip.

Selling out for power

Have the Dems lost their minds? Don't they realize that this gives aid to the enemy? Murtha's security clearance should be revoked immediately and the Pentagon officials who leaked this info cashiered.

John Kerry accused Bush of hiding his troop plan. No shit, let's broadcast it on Al-Jazeera John. Unfuckingbelievable. Kerry is so desparate for power that he will say anything, no matter how many troops die as a result. He will point to those deaths and say "See, I was right!"

Kerry said. "He won't tell us that, day by day, we're running out of soldiers and that we're now resorted to a backdoor draft of our reservists and our National Guard." [emphasis added]

Come Nov. 3rd the only people who will return John Kerry's calls are Al and OJ.

Dole=1, Kerry=0

Kerry exhibits a brass pair.

Dole Defends Swiftees in Call From Kerry

Presidential candidate John Kerry telephoned former Sen. Bob Dole this morning to complain about Dole's demand a day earlier that he apologize to Vietnam veterans for protesting the war, the one-time Republican presidential candidate revealed Monday afternoon. [emphasis added]

"John Kerry called me this morning, which surprised me," Dole told radio host Sean Hannity.

"He said he was very disappointed, we'd been friends. I said John, we're still friends, but [the Swiftvets] have First Amendment rights, just as your people have First Amendment rights.

Dole told Kerry, "I'm not trying to stir anything up, but I don't believe every one of these people who have talked about what happened are Republican liars.

"And very frankly, Bush is my guy, and I'm tired of people on your side calling him everything from a coward to a traitor to everything – a deserter."

Dole said he urged Kerry, "Why don't you call George Bush today and say, 'Mr. President, let's stop all this stuff about the National Guard and Vietnam – and let's talk about the issues."

Dole said Kerry responded, "I haven't spent one dime attacking President Bush."

But the Republican war hero shot back: "You don't have to. You've got all the so-called mainstream media, plus you've got MoveOn.org and all these other groups that have spent millions and millions of dollars trying to tarnish Bush's image."

"Don't tell me you don't know what some of these people are doing," he told Kerry.

"Everybody likes quiet heroes," Dole added, saying he told Kerry, "John, everybody knows you were in Vietnam and the less you say about it, the better."

Dole said he tried to end the tense conversation cordially by telling Kerry, "I wish you good luck, up to a point."

(hat tip Ace of spades, don't miss Ace's addendum: Ace's Top Ten Signs That Bob Dole Is On Fricking Fire)

CBS=0, Jammies Brigades=2

Following the CBS fraud story via the Freepers has become the equivilent to tuning in a police scanner in real life. They picked up this story from ABC News:

Speaking Out Air National Guard Colonel Denies Bush Got Preferential Treatment

Sept. 17, 2004 — The man cited in media reports as having allegedly pressured others in the Texas Air National Guard to help George W. Bush is speaking out, telling ABC News in an exclusive interview that he never sought special treatment for Bush.

Retired Col. Walter Staudt, who was brigadier general of Bush's unit in Texas, interviewed Bush for the Guard position and retired in March 1972. He was mentioned in one of the memos allegedly written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian as having pressured Killian to assist Bush, though Bush supposedly was not meeting Guard standards.

"I never pressured anybody about George Bush because I had no reason to," Staudt told ABC News in his first interview since the documents were made public.

The memo stated that "Staudt is pushing to sugar coat" a review of Bush's performance.

Staudt said he decided to come forward because he saw erroneous reports on television. CBS News first reported on the memos, which have come under scrutiny by document experts who question whether they are authentic. Killian, the purported author of the documents, died in 1984.

Staudt insisted Bush did not use connections to avoid being sent to Vietnam.

"He didn't use political influence to get into the Air National Guard," Staudt said, adding, "I don't know how they would know that, because I was the one who did it and I was the one who was there and I didn't talk to any of them."

‘Highly Qualified’

During his time in charge of the unit, Staudt decided whether to accept those who applied for pilot training. He recalled Bush as a standout candidate.

"He was highly qualified," he said. "He passed all the scrutiny and tests he was given."

When he interviewed for the job, Bush was eager to join the pilot program, which Staudt said often was a hard sell. "I asked him, 'Why do you want to be a fighter pilot?' " Staudt recalled. "He said, 'Because my daddy was one.' He was a well-educated, bright-eyed young man, just the kind of guy we were looking for."

He added that Bush more than met the requirements for pilot training. "He presented himself well. I'd say he was in the upper 10 percent or 5 percent or whatever we ever talked to about going to pilot training. We were pretty particular because when he came back [from training], we had to fly with him."

(rathergate's got the scoop and Bill Hobbs has more)

Very Interesting

Seems not all Democrat operatives find Rupert Murdoch's money as unappealing as his politics.

An item from the *K Street Files:

Is Fox Funding the Kerry Campaign? You Decide

Several of the Democratic strategists hired last week to help turn around the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) share a peculiar financial backer. Before accepting official positions to help defeat President Bush, the Democrats or their consulting firms were on the payroll of media giant News Corp.

That’s right — the Rupert Murdoch-owned company that Democrats love to hate because of its allegedly anti-Democratic bias.

Earlier this year, News Corp. hired Democratic strategist Howard Wolfson to head an aggressive campaign to block Nielsen Media Research from changing the television ratings system in way that reduced viewership for Fox and its affiliate, UPN.

Wolfson and his public relations firm, Glover Park Group, ran a lobbying, advertising and grassroots campaign designed to persuade black and Hispanic lawmakers to pressure Nielsen to scrap the new ratings system.

Last week, Wolfson and partner Joe Lockhart took temporary leave from the Glover Park Group to help out the Kerry campaign. Wolfson joined the Democratic National Party as a senior adviser for communications while Lockhart, a White House spokesman for then-President Bill Clinton, agreed to help strengthen the rapid-response communications for the Kerry campaign.

During its battle with Nielsen, News Corp. brought on two other firms run by Democrats who have recently signed up with the Kerry effort: Dewey Square

Group, a public relations firm founded by Democratic consultant Michael Whouley, and Grassroots Enterprises, which is chaired by former Clinton spokesman Mike McCurry.

Last week, Whouley was tapped to run the general election operations for the Democratic National Party and McCurry agreed to help Kerry negotiate the format for this fall’s presidential debates.

What are the odds that McCurry will appear on Fox as a Kerry spokeman?

(*Roll Call subscription req'd)

Eh?

A tidbit from *Heard on the Hill:

O, Not Canada! Yet another Member of Congress has uttered the “C” word in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers. And the Canucks, who get very sensitive about this issue, are just as irked as they can be.

This time it was Rep. Rubén Hinojosa (D-Texas), who tied the hijackers to Canada when talking about the need for stronger border security last week. He said the terrorists “entered the United States from Canada on September 11, 2001, using passports that the Canadians accepted as valid despite the fact that the documents were doctored.” He repeated the comments in a press release on his Web site.

Oooh. That really burned some Canadian bacon. Canadian Ambassador Michael Kergin whipped off a letter to Hinojosa on Wednesday telling the Congressman that his statements were false. “None of the September 11th hijackers entered the United States through Canada,” Kergin said.

To back up his assertion, the ambassador quoted Attorney General John Ashcroft, who said, “None of the terrorists from the Sept. 11 carnage came to the United States through Canada to my knowledge.” Kergin also quoted Ashcroft thanking Canada for its efforts in fighting terrorism.

Let’s hope the Canadians’ efforts fighting terrorism are, indeed, as good as their efforts fighting bad press. One day after the ambassador sent his letter to Hinojosa — and shortly after Hinojosa realized that HOH had a copy of it — the Congressman corrected the record.

In a statement provided to HOH, Hinojosa said, “The references to Canada have been stricken from the remarks I submitted for the record. Earlier today, I informed the Canadian Embassy that these steps have been taken.”

Bernard Etzinger, a spokesman for the Canadian Embassy, said that by his count, at least seven Members of Congress have made the same mistake as Hinojosa since the 9/11 attacks.

“It happens all the time. It’s an urban myth,” he said. “There is no mention in the 9/11 commission’s report on any of the September 11th terrorists having entered the United States through Canada.”

(*Roll Call subscription req'd)

Scent of a Talking Point?

Do I detect a DNC talking point? Stuart Rothenberg in *Roll Call remarks

Bush’s lead in most of the recent surveys is based on a strong Republican bias in the “likely voter” sample. That bias results from greater Republican enthusiasm, and reflects Kerry’s weakness.

Rothenberg posits a Kerry Surge, well maybe, sort of, perhaps.

President Bush has gone from embattled incumbent underdog to surprising frontrunner as Americans have started to evaluate the presidential candidates in terms of their ability to lead the fight against terrorism. Republicans are energized, while Democrats are criticizing the campaign of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.).

Seems like the perfect time for me to predict a Kerry Surge.

As was the case with the Bush Surge, I have no data to warrant such a prediction, nor has any evidence emerged that a Kerry Surge (or Comeback or Rebound, if you prefer) is under way. But I think we’ll see some sort of tightening of the race before Election Day.

Mind you, I’m not saying Kerry will (or will not) overtake Bush and win the White House — just as in June, when I predicted the Bush Surge but didn’t assert that it would carry him to victory. For now, all I’m certain about is that there will be a flurry of media excitement — and probably even some polling — about a Kerry Comeback.

Bush has had a terrific six weeks. Starting shortly after the Democratic convention, his numbers began to improve, and unlike Kerry, Bush had the kind of convention that apparently changed the way voters view the presidential race.

Plus, of course, Kerry’s campaign has seemed to be in total disarray.

[...]

Over the past few days, Kerry has turned to more traditional Democratic themes, including gun control and alleged Republican insensitivity toward the black community. This may or may not indicate a turn to the left that would motivate the party’s base — as both Dukakis and Gore did in ’88 and ’00, respectively — but even if it doesn’t, Kerry is likely to take steps to energize his base over the next few weeks.

Problem with grasping the gun control issue/straw, is that the Dems blame gun control for losing control of Congress and had no appetite for extending the bill either. The Kerry's campaign's lack of diversity gives lie to the Rothenberg's second point. One only has to look at the Bush Administration to see who walks the walk. Rothenberg concludes:

Unfortunately for Democrats, even a Kerry Surge does not guarantee a victory. The Republicans have successfully defined him in an unflattering way and have made the contest a referendum on the war on terror. And under those terms, Kerry is in big, big trouble.

The MSM really doesn't get it...9/11 made the War on terror the issue, not Carl Rove.

(*Roll Call subscription req'd)

CBS=0, Jammies Brigade=1

Byron York in the WSJ online:

The Camera Blinks
...By Wednesday, CBS signaled it would make a statement. Some giddy netizens expected the network to cave, but after a day of delays and rumors, CBS rolled out an almost surreal "fake but true" defense, in which it seemed to concede the possibility that the documents were forgeries but insisted that they nevertheless conveyed the truth about Mr. Bush's Guard service.

Will that quiet the storm? Not likely. The moral of it all is that it is infinitely more difficult for journalists to make questionable assertions in the age of the blogosphere than it was in years past. There is an army of well-informed fact-checkers out there, all connected on the Internet. There are people who know about things like computer fonts, or IBM typewriters circa 1972, or the arcane terminology of the Air National Guard. Pick a completely different subject, and there will be people who know about that, too.

CBS was clearly angry that its judgment was questioned-- by nobodies! "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances \[at the network\] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing," said one former CBS executive who defended Mr. Rather.

Well, it turned out that the guy in his pajamas was right, at least this time.

Indeed.

Tar Baby #2

Mr. Minute notes that the AP blows it again

...The convention of more than 4,000 Guard officers responded far more coolly to Mr. Kerry than it had to Mr. Bush. The hall, which had been full on Tuesday, had scattered empty chairs on Thursday as Mr. Kerry arrived, and the group, which repeatedly interrupted the president's speech with standing ovations and hoots of approval, offered Mr. Kerry a polite but quieter reception.

At the point that Mr. Kerry said Mr. Bush had not told the convention the truth, a man shouted out "No!" As Mr. Kerry finished speaking, a few officers sat in their chairs, arms crossed. Col. Joanne F. Sheridan, of the Louisiana National Guard, got up and walked out before he was done.

"Mine was a silent protest to what he was saying," Colonel Sheridan said later. "What he was saying about George Bush not telling the truth on Iraq - I just don't believe that. George Bush did tell us the truth, so I guess I couldn't believe what Kerry was saying. Here, he came before a military audience, but he said what he said for the media, for the television cameras - not for us, that's for sure."

The comments in the above post are pretty much on point as well.

Blackfive has email from a Guard buddy who was there and a few trenchant comments to add.

You want my vote, fellas? How about a huge pay increase so our Sergeants don't have to use food stamps to take care of their families? How about funding a massive increase in troops to support a rotation overseas that will minimize time away from families and reduce dependence on the Guard and Reserve? How about funding better weapons, better armor, and better training? How about ACTUALLY SHOWING UP TO VOTE FOR ONCE!

How about supporting HR 4323 and getting it through the Senate? That bill would provide money for emergency purchases of body armor and materials to up-armor vehicles. That bill could actually save lives.

The Kerry campaign's disconnect with vets, active duty miltary and reality continues. Stay tuned.

The Scent of a Loser?

The WaPo has yet another critique of the Kerry campaign and the message is very easy to read between the lines.

New Blood at Heart of Kerry Campaign

A new center of power has emerged inside John F. Kerry's presidential campaign, with several veteran Democratic operatives moving quickly to consolidate their influence and effectively take over the nominee's daily message and strategy in the six weeks until the election.

This is a shocking admission that 6 weeks out from an election that Kerry is not the center of his campaign. I disagree, he is and that is the problem, not the operatives. Try to recall one clear position on any issue, you can't. He's been all over the map. This graf doesn't provide much comfort either.

One of the abiding truths about Kerry -- and one that is often frustrating to his aides -- is that he will listen to anyone. He is known as a political loner, but he is also constantly on the phone and will take counsel at any time from any number of parties, be it fellow senators, longtime friends, advisers in ill-defined roles such as Shrum or freelancers such as Begala. Kerry is not a micro-manager, friends say, but he is prone to engaging in a vast and drawn-out process by which his decisions are informed.

It's quite apparent from this article and other recent Democrat critiques of his campaign that Kerry has difficulty adapting to a fluid situation. One really can't get any sense of how Kerry would handle a crisis and his changing message does not instill confidence in his ability to react quickly under circumstance fraught with uncertainty such as an attack on the US. As much as partisans cry foul whever this standard is mentioned, it is the key issue of the election that crosses all voter demographics.

Since the CBS debaucle, MSM has begun to realize that Kerry is a tar baby of sorts. This laughable spin by Al Hunt amply demonstrates how far out on a limb many will go.

What If the Polls Are Wrong?

Presidential elections are poll-driven. The candidate ahead in the surveys usually gets better coverage, and the results energize supporters. The one behind often comes across as doing little right, and campaigns and constituencies lose confidence.

But what if the polls are wrong, and we aren't surveying the real likely electorate?

This might be more than an academic issue. A number of polls this presidential race show a gap in the preferences of registered voters vs. likely voters. In these models, the president usually does better with likely voters, the figure most news organizations emphasize. To get to likely voters, all polling organizations use what is called a "screen," asking questions to determine who is likely to actually turn out on election day.

The heart of his problem is is not the picture painted by the GOP, the Swifties, media, dirty tricksters or polling data. It is Kerry. Perhaps he will manage to bring enough Clinton operatives aboard the campaign to control and project an image, but a MSM spun/poll/focus group driven cardboard cutout will not dispell the serious questions about his leadership.

It will always come back to 9/11. The Dems still don't get it.

CBS Clarifies

Love it.

Gobsmacked

I'm with The British Pickle on this one.

Mo D 'Splains

The Opinion Journal's Best of the Web offers proof of that Dr. Dean's metrosexuals do indeed exist.

Maureen Dowd's Mystery Sex

From a comment by Maureen Dowd in a New York Times online forum on "women, the presidency and the election":

The latest CBS News poll shows that among George W. Bush supporters, 51 percent are men and 48 percent are women--and of John Kerry supporters, 41 percent are men and 43 percent are women. . . . In the last election, out of those who voted for Al Gore, 42 percent were men and 54 percent were women. Of the people who voted for George W. Bush, 53 percent were men and 43 percent were women.

Hmm, let's put this into tabular form:

	2004 Bush	2004 Kerry	2000 Bush	2000 Gore
Men	51%	41%	53%	42%
Women	48%	43%	43%	54%
Total	99%	84%	96%	96%

This means that, if Dowd is right, 16% of Kerry supporters are neither men nor women. What are they? Perhaps she'll explain in a future column. But also note that only 1% of Bush's supporters belong to the mysterious third sex, down from 4% in 2000. If there really are voters who belong to neither sex, this could spell trouble for the incumbent.

Cancel! Cancel!! Cancel!!!

I rather doubt the Kerry campaign had anything to with the bogus CBS memos, they can barely manage a speaking schedule.

Who Does He Think He's Fooling?

A quote from Kerry's address to the National Guard in Las Vegas:

Kerry said, "I believe you deserve a president who isn't going to gild that truth, or gild our national security with politics, who is not going to ignore his own intelligence. . . ." The country deserves a president "who will give the American people the truth, not a fantasy world of spin," Kerry said.

Spin? No, surely not.

You know your campaign is in trouble when even the Arab press isn't buying your convention conversion to hawk.

Kerry was against US support for anti-Communist fighters in Central America and Afghanistan in the 1980s. In 1991 he voted against US participation in the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. In 2001 he was against military intervention in Afghanistan.

[...]

The real Kerry’s brand of politics has won almost 60 percent of all elections in Western Europe since the mid-1940s. And, unless it is honestly presented to the American votes, we will not know how well or how badly it might do in the United States.

In despotic societies, dissimulation, always prompted by fear, is part of an individual’s self-defense mechanism. But what about democratic societies?

Should the fear of losing an election force a candidate into selling the electorate a bill of goods?

Kerry may yet win the election. But if he does he would know that he did so thanks to dissimulation. And that could put his presidency on the wrong track right from the start.

Irony Writ Large

I don't which is funnier the obvious pun or the ironic twist.

Swim or get out of the pool

At least Judicial Watch is finally good for something.

Couldn't agree more.

Voter Roll Reflux

You may need a swig of Maalox after you read this.

(thx to Vodkapundit)

Gray Lady Aced

I don't know what to make of this. You decide.

The one guy you know. The other guy you'll soon know-- he's David Van Os, Bill Burkett's lawyer.

Does anyone in the MSM know how to use Google? Jeebus.

A Farce in Five Acts

After watching the latest version of Rathergate on 60 Minutes II and reading blog and media feedback, nothing has changed. CBS has not proven their case nor quelled the issue of faked documents. In presenting Ms. Knox without revealing that she is a partisan, they further muddied the waters. As the Houston Chronicle reported :

Last week, Knox said she had no firsthand knowledge of Bush's time with the Texas Air National Guard, although she did recall a culture of special treatment for the sons of prominent people, such as Bush and others.

The NY Times spun out a graf quoting Bill Burkett's lawyer that is a laughable defense of the CBS position.

"If, hypothetically, Bill Burkett or anyone else, any other individual, had prepared or had typed on a word processor as some of the journalists are presuming, without much evidence, if someone in the year 2004 had prepared on a word processor replicas of documents that they believed had existed in 1972 or 1973 - which Bill Burkett has absolutely not done'' - then, he continued, "what difference would it make?" [emphasis added]

Where did this guy get his law degree Johnny Cochran U?

Lileks sums it up perfectly, it's really about soccer badgers.

The Commissar adds to the discussion about Burkett. I agree, we shouldn't spin off the deep end, as Burkett may be a willing red herring. CBS producer Mary Mapes has been working on this story for FIVE years and two months before the election documents appear? Mapes is one busy worker bee. One would think an experienced news producer would ask why now? A well-connected dirty trickster is hidden in the CBS weeds.

Insta notes that Opus wasn't buying Rather's debunked 1988 story either.

The WaPo reports:

Yesterday, reporters from several news organizations were camped near Baird, Tex., outside Burkett's home, which is on a working ranch, with a gate barring access to a one-story farmhouse and a pickup truck outside. At 6 p.m. Central Time, Burkett walked to the gate on his cane with a black dog by his side to collect his mail. He refused to answer questions about whether he provided the documents to CBS.

Perhaps the DNC will dispatch Max Cleland to the Burkett ranch with a demand for the "real" documents.

Maybe not.

Given their current credibility problems one is puzzled why CBS news would run this parody as it sounds more plausible than Rather's story.

That the mighty juggernaut of news, CBS, has been reduced to a joke is really rather sad, pun intended. CBS knew Rather was a loose cannon when they appointed him managing editor of the news bureau and network anchor. It was only a matter of time.

UPDATE: Another "fact" the crack CBS news team missed via The Corner:

MORE RE: MRS. KNOX [Jed Babbin]
Just spoke to another one of Dubya's squadron mates from the 111th. (I don't know how to do superscripts on e-mail). He passed on the Question of the Day for Mrs. Knox: You said that Mr. Bush got into the National Guard on the basis of preferential treatment "...because there were a lot of other boys in there the same way." Does that include your son, Ted, who joined the squadron in about 1972?

UPDATE: Pete Nelson has a common sense observation about Mary Mapes, the CBS producer whose "credibility has never been questioned".

What does that say about CBS, their methods, and their biases? For more than five years, Mary Mapes has been trying to prove, without success, that President Bush was AWOL or in some other way didn't fulfill his responsibilities while he was in the National Guard. After over five years of effort this is the best that they could come up with. That isn't reporting, it's stalking. After five years, they have nothing to show, other than the statements of known Democratic party partisans and operatives and some forged documents. Utterly pathetic.

The Long Knives Are Out

CBS continues to dig hole:

Statement by the President of CBS News, Andrew Heyward:

"We established to our satisfaction that the memos were accurate or we would not have put them on television. There was a great deal of coroborating [sic] evidence from people in a position to know. Having said that, given all the questions about them, we believe we should redouble our efforts to answer those questions, so that's what we are doing."

Killian's fromer secretary will appear with Rather tonight to confirm that the documents are forgeries. No. Wait. That's not right.

CBS has lost it...big time. what are they thinking?

Even if one believed that Killian grumbled to his secretary about the young Bush receiving special treament in the Guard, that is not news, nor a viable charge to lay on an incumbant seven weeks before an election, it is gossip.

CBS is pulling a classic bait & switch.

CBS's most serious charge, that Bush ignored a direct order to take his flight physical, was based on a forged document. That is a serious charge and if it can't be documented it is slanderous in the least. CBS needs to address their mistake on air or provide real documentation. Heresay of partisans is not good enough.

Rather brazenly demands Bush answer the charges contained in forged documents. What is he smoking and where can I get a bag?

The MSM realizes what is at stake even if CBS is too blinded by Rather's obsession, the competition will not back off any more than they backed off the Jayson Blair story.

On Fox, even Kerry cheerleader Juan Williams scoffed at the idea that the secretary confirms the story and justifies going to air.

I predict that after tonight's 60 Minutes II attempt to shore up the story, and a wholesale rejection and piling on from the MSM, Viacom will force an embarrassing capitulation and Rather will never recover his reputation.

Jeff Quinton is blogging the events as they unravel. Nick Queen thinks through the statement.

Odd Bedfellows

Here's a headline I never expected to see: Russia rejects Powell's criticism, joins forces with Israel.

Powell's way off the mark, an Israeli-Russian rapprochement will produce valuable intel and another resouce for doing what we no longer have the cajones to do.

Deja Vu All Over Again

John Kerry on Imus this morning re Iraq:

"Now it's obviously, with the situation on the ground, much more complicated; I have to acknowledge that. It is more complicated. But I would immediately call a summit meeting of the European community. They haven't lived up to the obligations of their own resolution that they passed at the U.N."

What piffle, this is the sort of people we're dealing with in Europe.

Imus pressed Kerry to name his advisors or perhaps a cabinet appointment or two.

IMUS: Well, just give us one name.

KERRY: No, I was just going to say to you, I'm not going to start appointing people to positions, and I think that's completely irresponsible and not appropriate, but...

IMUS: Either give us a name or we won't vote for you.

KERRY: But there are people who are advising me and who are very respected in the community.

IMUS: Holbrooke?

KERRY: He is one who is advising me. I have Joe Biden is advising me. There are -- Madeleine Albright obviously you know.

IMUS: That's a mistake.

KERRY: There are a number of -- General McPeak, General Clark. There are a group of about 10 or 12 admirals and generals.

IMUS: OK.

KERRY: I mean, there's a very solid group of people waiting. You have people like Sam Nunn and George Mitchell, and really extraordinary group of capable people.

IMUS: Those are pretty good names.

KERRY: Beg your pardon?

IMUS: Those are pretty good names. Madeleine Albright is a huge mistake. I mean, come on.

KERRY: No, she gives advice. She gives good advice. And I think she gives good advice, frankly. And she has a very, very strong sense of that region and of other regions and would have made much smarter decisions than this group has.

Albright's "good advice" in the Balkans fractured our relationship with Russia and Europe and her North Korea policy was a fraud of CBS proportions. That he would even consider Albright tells you all you need to know about John Kerry's plan to defend and protect the US; Clinton retreads, failed policy and appeasement. Kerry has so bungled his opportunity that he is now little more than a Clinton hand puppet.

(Hat tip to Michele for the Barcepundit link)

COTV #104

Carnival of the Vanities, The Second Year, as it will no doubt be known on DVD release, is up at Silflay Hraka where it began.

The Carnival Turns Two
When I first started the Carnival I never expected it to last for a year. Last year around this time, had you asked me if it would last another, I would have considered the possibility for a moment or two before answering, "Nah."

I'm a candle in the darkness, I am. In fact, the long life of the Carnival--long in terms of the Internet, that is, for if a calendar year is the equivalent of seven for a dog then surely it is something along the lines of a decade in Internet time--is due to the fact that, not only does it keep on keeping on, something that I've long considered essential to blogging success, it's developed the primary characteristic of a successful meme--the ability to survive and prosper in a changing environment.

Aw shucks Sid, you're much too modest, your inspiration and dedication to the meme keeps the Carnival rolling as much as the creative spark you lit two years ago.

Rats Contemplate Shore

It appears Bob Schieffer is not prepared to see his reputation sink with the CBS news ship, athough he parrots the company line.

Bob Schieffer Calls Upon CBS to Give More Proof

On the air over the years Dan Rather has repeatedly called him "one of the most experienced political correspondents in the nation." After covering so many stories, CBS Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer has seen plenty of stonewalling and knows it when he sees it.

Speaking at a news conference in Sioux City, Iowa, Schieffer said CBS needs to do more to prove that the suspect photocopied memos are not phony.

"I think we have to find some way to show our viewers they are not forgeries,'' Schieffer said, although he didn't "know how we're going to do that without violating the confidentiality of sources.''

Although Schieffer said he didn't believe someone was trying to set up Dan Rather, he did acknowledge the memos could have been planted by the opposing campaign as a political smear, something he's certainly seen plenty of in his career.

"People ask me, 'Do I think somebody was trying to set up Dan Rather?' I say, No that's completely out of the question.'"

"Would somebody do this in an effort to smear George Bush? That may be so. We're in the middle of a political campaign, and this would not be the first campaign where somebody on one side slipped something to a reporter because he feels it would hurt the guy on the other side.''

Rather won't admit that the planting of memos could have been an effort to gain political advantage.

Although it's not absolutely proven that the Kerry campaign placed the documents, the campaign is still enthusiastic about CBS's reporting, and have run political ads with footage of Dan Rather.

This is not the first instance of Rather's poor research/bias as this article by Anne Morse at NRO shows, it's a pattern.

On June 2, 1988, CBS aired an hour-long special titled CBS Reports: The Wall Within, which CBS trumpeted as the "rebirth of the TV documentary." It purported to tell the true story of Vietnam through the eyes of six of the men who fought there. And what terrible stories they had to tell.

[...]

The The Wall Within was hailed by critics who — like the Washington Post's Tom Shales — gushed that the documentary was "extraordinarily powerful." There was just one problem: Almost none of it was true.

The truth was uncovered by B.G. Burkett, a Vietnam veteran and author of Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History (with Glenna Whitley). Burkett discovered that only one of the vets had actually served in combat. Steve Southards, who'd claimed to be a 16-year-old Navy SEAL assassin, had actually served as an equipment repairman stationed far from combat. Later transferred to Subic Bay in the Philippines, Steve spent most of his time in the brig for repeatedly going AWOL.

And George Gruel, who claimed he was traumatized by the sight of his friend being chopped to pieces by a propeller? Navy records reveal that a propeller accident did take place on the Ticonderoga when Gruel was aboard — but that he wasn't around when it happened. During Gruel's tour, the ship had been converted to an antisubmarine warfare carrier which operated, not on "secret mission" along the Vietnam coast, but on training missions off the California coastline. Nevertheless, Burkett notes, Gruel receives $1,952 a month from the Veterans Administration for "psychological trauma" related to an event he only heard about.

Mikal Rice — the anguished vet who claimed to have cradled his dying buddy in his arms — actually spent his tour as a guard with an MP company at Cam Ranh Bay. He never saw combat. Neither did Terry Bradley, who was not the "fighting sergeant" he'd claimed to be. Instead, military records reveal he served as an ammo handler in the 25th Infantry Division and spent nearly a year in the stockade for being AWOL. That's good news for the hundreds of Vietnamese civilians Bradley claimed to have slaughtered. But it doesn't say much for Dan Rather's credibility.

As Burkett notes, the records of all of these vets were easily checkable through Freedom of Information Act requests of their military records — something Rather and his producers simply didn't bother to do. They accepted at face value the lurid tales of atrocities committed in Vietnam and the stories of criminal behavior, drug addiction, and despair at home.

Is it just me or does this have an eerie similarity to Kerry's Winter Soldier testimony?

Dan Rather must retract/correct this story on-air in prime time, and CBS must dismiss CBS producer Mary Mapes or CBS should not be allowed to moderate the presidential debate as they have broken the public trust.

Black Rock Weasels

CBS news VP to comment via e-mail on Rathergate at noon. Email? Yeah, that'll work. Not. Odds are that CBS will weasel with legalise. Not good enough, even the imperious NY Times ran a front page mea culpa and reorganized when caught cooking stories.

Suzy Rice posts an exclusive interview "Things To Do On CBS When You're Dead" and reminds us that years ago, Dan's big break was hurricane reportage.

I love irony.

Alas

The Tragedy of Omlet, Prince of Massachusetts

Wherein reality popped in between th' election and Omlet's hopes.

CBS Blinded By Bias

To paraphrase the good professor: yikes!

It gets worse as the blogosphere taps its collective memory.

Spinning The Spinners

Seems the Boston Globe can't catch a break on Rathergate...even their archived material is bogus.

From the Ace of Spades HQ:

Why Did the Forger Incorrectly Believe Lt. Col. Staudt Was Still Serving in 1973? Distributed Intelligence May Tell
Fresh Air comes up with a terrific catch. I will now post it and take all the credit and glory.

"Interesting article I located. It appears the Boston Globe mistakenly said Staudt retired in 1975 during a story about the 1988 presidential race, in which Lloyd Bentsen's son was accused of using his connections to get into the TANG."
--Fresh Air

BENTSEN'S SON GIVEN TIP ABOUT GUARD JOB

Copyright Boston Globe Newspaper Aug 20, 1988

NEW ORLEANS - The only son of Sen. Lloyd Bentsen Jr., the Democratic vice presidential candidate, was accepted into the Texas Air National Guard in 1968 as a financial officer after being told of a rare opening by the unit's top officer, the Dukakis campaign said yesterday.

Responding to a reporter's inquiry, Marilyn Yaeger, communications director for Bentsen's campaign, said Lloyd Bentsen 3d was told of the opening by Lt. Col. Walter Staudt, commander of the Texas Air National Guard at the time.

The two men met at a party in 1968 at about the time Bentsen was graduating from Stanford University with a master's degree in business administration.

Bentsen, who had been turned down previously for a pilot's position in the Guard because of colorblindness, told Staudt that he was still interested in joining the Guard in some other capacity, Yaeger said.

"Staudt told Bentsen that he just happened to have an opening in his accounting division and suggested he apply," Yaeger said.

...

Staudt retired from the Guard in 1975. Bentsen was campaigning for his father yesterday in Texas. Neither he nor Staudt could be reached for comment.

Of course I have my own theory why we're kicking MSM ass on this story: snazzy pajamas.

Um...he did.

"George W. Bush's campaign literature claimed that he 'served in the U.S. Air Force.' The only problem? He didn't," slams a new DNC press release.

"George Bush has a clear pattern of lying about his military service," DNC Communications Director Jano Cabrera blasts in the new release. "From 1978 to the present day, George Bush has refused to tell voters the truth about his service. It's time for the President to come clean."

"Flyers distributed to Texas voters during Bush's failed Congressional race say 'he served in the U.S. Air Force and the Texas Air National Guard.' But according to Air Force officials, Air National Guardsmen are not counted as members of the active-duty Air Force."

A form obtained by DRUDGE on Monday shows Bush was active duty Air Force, albeit for 120 days.

As the Drudgester sez: Developing... and not exactly in the direction the DNC planned.

The Truth?

The problem the Dems and their media cohorts have selling Kerry's "good ole boy, cow-milking, tractor-driving, shotgun-toting" image, is Kerry.

Ron Brownstein of the LA Times takes a deep draught of the DNC kool-aid and glosses over Kerry's blue-blood and Teresa's billion+ as he retreads the infamous scanner story that tarnished Bush 43rd's image.

Instead, the greatest threat to Bush may come if the cumulative picture of his Guard experience — from Barnes' claim of intervention to the questions about whether superiors winked at irregular attendance — portrays him as a son of privilege who has enjoyed advantages unavailable to most Americans. That's potentially dangerous because polls show many voters already question whether Bush understands the problems of average families.

Apparently Kerry isn't connecting on this issue quite as firmly as Brownstein would have his readers believe.

Jim Geraghty notes: Actually, the ABC/Washington Post poll shows Bush leads on this question over Kerry 44 to 43, after trailing 46 to 42 in July and 56 to 36 in June.

Kerry is very foolish to start down this path as the Bush lineage pales in comparison to John Forbes Kerry's background on his mother's side. Senator Kerry's father; Richard Kerry married Rosemary Forbes, a descendant of two wealthy and established Massachusetts families, the Forbes and the Winthrops. The senator, John Forbes Kerry had an upbringing commensurate with privilage and wealth–attending exclusive European boarding schools as well as private school in New Hampshire. He attended Yale at about the same time as President George W. Bush--both belonged to the elite secret Skull & Bones society.

The LA Times wouldn't recognize the truth if it were shoved under their door in triplicate.

(via The Kerry Spot)

Rope-a-dope

Since the Rathergate story broke, many of us wondered why CBS would accept a sheaf of documents, perform very little due diligence and run with the story. Once exposed CBS reacted very oddly, Rather was preternaturally spooked, it made no sense. Unless the source of the docs was indeed unimpeachable in a different sense, that the source was very high in the Kerry campaign and the manuvuer tightly coordinated with Rather or someone he trusts implicitly in order to leave no trace. The story repesented a win-win for CBS and Kerry's opportunity to respond in kind to the Swifties and dampen Bush's bounce.

Rather/CBS would break the guard story with the provided, damning documents, scooping and leading the MSM news cycle. A predictable MSM feeding frezny would ensue and the DNC would play out a week long burst of Bush ANG material, now touted as the campaign's "Operation Fortunate Son."

Like Liston before them, they didn't factor in the new kid in town, the blogosphere, floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee.

UPDATE: Kevin has a more current boxing metaphor.

WUXTRY, WUXTRY

MSM newspaper readship revealed:

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country, and who are very good at crosswords.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand the Washington Post. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn't have to leave LA to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country, and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country .... or that anyone is running it; but whoever it is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs, who also happen to be illegal aliens from ANY country or galaxy as long as they are Democrats.

10. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.

11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.
    

Heh.

Eppur si muove

Jay Tea penned an excellent piece on the events of the past few days. Go. Read.

Did you catch Bob woodward and Seymour Hersh on "Meet The Press" this morning? Hersh is pushing his latest anti-Bush book and in his eagerness to denouce the administration dropped a Fruedian slip "the Nixon White House...I mean Bush..." that clanged onto Russert's table and laid there for the rest of the interview.

Woodward quitely disagreed with most of Russert's Iraq suppositions and Hersch's pessimism. Woodward remarked that to Bush's credit he sat for three and half hours for in-depth questions about Iraq and noted that Kerry has not done so, nor answered any questions or laid out his Iraq plan in detail. Woodward seems to genuinely like Bush, the man, even though he obviously disagrees with Bush's politics.

The MSM is shifting ever so slowly away from Kerry, as it begins to murmer "Eppur si muove."

Kenneth, what is the frequency?

Whooeee! Quite a week to be missing in action! I am so far behind the curve at this point that for those of you who have been in a coma or fell down a well, I'll just link to Charles Johnson's excellent font sleuthing and Power Line.

AP is now on the story, that doesn't provide much comfort given their recent difficulties. ABC isn't helping much either, they report that CBS noticed the signatures didn't match yet went with the story?

As of a few minutes ago, CBS radio news is still sticking by their story.

One has to laugh when fellow newies attempts at bailing the old media ship are this obvious. One suspects the WaPo was planning to run the material as well. The most ironic part of this story is not CBS's ineptness in fact checking and analysis, but their lack of computer skills and/or familiarity with typewriters. I am sure there are two new terms seared on the CBS hive mind; superscript and kerning.

I always knew Dan Rather would finally lose it on-air, he came close in his anti-Republican rant at the 1996 GOP convention over a purported grand jury leak. Rather might take his own closing remark in the disputed piece to heart

"Too strong or not to say that you are ashamed of it now," asks Rather.

Lileks sums it up nicely

Blogs haven’t toppled old media. The foundations of Old Media were rotten already. The new media came along at the right time. Put it this way: you’ve see films of old buildings detonated by precision demolitionists. First you see the puffs of smoke – then the building just hangs there for a second, even though every column that held it up has been severed. We’ve been living in that second for years, waiting for the next frame. Well, here it is. Roll tape. Down she goes.

UPDATE: Via various radio/TV feeds: A CBS producer hints that the Kerry campaign set them up and Rather gave an interview on the street in NYC stating that he stands by the story and that no retractio or on-air apology will be forthcoming and demands Bush answer the charges. Wha?

BREAKING: Seems the Russkies have produced documented proof that clearly disputes the Swifties.

Wizbang offers yet another document that appears to dispute the authenticity of the disputed Killian memos.

THE MOTHER OF ALL UPDATES: Allah has some interesting links about the IBM SC, Shape of Days has a dialog open with a guy who has a working IBM SC...here's a shot of one. From the description:

The first IBM Composer was the IBM "Selectric" Composer announced in 1966. It was a hybrid "Selectric" typewriter that was modified to have proportional spaced fonts. It is 100% mechanical and has no digital electronics. Since it has no memory, the user was required to type everything twice. While typing the text the first time, the machine would measure the length of the line and count the number of spaces. When the user finished typing a line of text, they would record special measurements into the right margin of the paper. Once the entire column of text was typed and measured, it would then be retyped, however before typing each line, the operator would set the special justification dial (on the right side) to the proper settings, then type the line. The machine would automatically insert the appropriate amount of space between words so that all of the text would be justified.

Hugh Hewitt received a series of e-mails from a Professor of Computer Science at Rice University, including the Porfessor's response to Kos.

Jerry Furhman speculates on the origin of the disputed docs.

It occurs to me that we're probably enjoying CBS's implosion way too much...nah.

Back Up The Truck, Johnny

Something's been gnawing at me since Kerry started this draft deferment bullshit. Millions of the 60's generation knows it's bullshit, the media knows it's bullshit.

BTW-Who appointed John Kerry as arbiter of honorable service?

Student deferments were not a negative for those seeking them, they were a legitimate means to finish your education. It was the radical left who turned deferments into a protest tool that created the negative image that the left is cynically exploiting in this election cycle.

Channeling was an official publication of the Selective Service System issued in Jul of 1965 and was sent to all local draft boards. It sought to justify the deferment of college bound young men, undergraduates and post graduate students as being in the larger national interest.

"The Selective Service System has the responsibility to deliver manpower to the armed forces in such a manner as to reduce to a minimum any adverse effect upon the national health, safety, interest and progress."

[...]

A new DoD database computer tape released through the Nat'l Archives allows researchers for the 1st time to take a much closer look at our 58,152 Vietnam casualties.

2,100,000 served in Vietnam in the years from 1964-73. This was exactly 24% of the 8,444,000 who were in the active Armed Forces during those years, but only 8% of the 2,6000,000 Americans who were eligible for military service. The vast majority of Americans who were eligible by age but did not serve in the Armed Forces were exempted by reason of physical, mental, psychiatric, or moral failure; or they were given status deferments because they were college students, fathers, teachers, engineers, or conscientious objectors.

[note: the referenced page may be useful for those who came of age after the conclusion of the Vietnam War. What you've heard or have been told is not necessarily the full story, nor is this page, but it does put lie to many of the misconceptions and myths currently being flogged in this election.]

College students were eligible for II-S deferments until they fulfilled their degree requirements or reached their twenty-fourth birthday, whichever came first. Initially, it was up to local boards to decide annually whether a student was making satisfactory progress toward a degree. Generally, boards granted a deferment to anyone who could prove that he was enrolled full time in an accredited college or university, or was well connected in the community, aka Bill Clinton, which was patentedly unfair.

As remedy for favoritism, in early 1966, the Selective Service System initiated the Selective Service College Qualification Test (SSCQT). Any student ranking in the lower levels of their class was eligible for the draft. Despite the nationwide outburst of student protest, over 750,000 students took the test in 1966, in hopes of retaining their student deferments. It was the norm on campus, not the exception. Deferments were an incentive to maintain a high GPA and attend grad school. Hundreds of thousands of men now in prominent positions, including the media, politics, academia and medicine received deferments, are they scoundrels too?

In my immediate and extended family five men were eligible for the draft. One was career Army and served two tours, one enlisted in advance of his draft notice, and three deferred; two of whom served and the youngest wasn't called.

How is that dishonorable?

That's why Kerry pisses so many of his peer group off, he is the worst sort of opportunist. Now he tars those of his generation who took advantage of college deferments, just as he tarred his band of brothers in 1971, to further his ambition.

Who will he next betray? We know the answer, don't we?

UPDATE: Author says Cheney draft deferments weren't unusual

A few details that leap out from the article:

Cheney received four student deferments, a category called 2-S, according to Patrick Schuback, a spokesman for the Selective Service System. They were dated March 20, 1963; July 23, 1963; Oct. 14, 1964; and Nov. 1, 1965.

His last deferment, dated Jan. 19, 1966, was category 3-A, usually issued to men with a family hardship. That was given as the Cheneys, who had married in August 1964, were expecting their first baby.

Note that two of the dates were before the Vietnam war draft began.

Deferments were common in the 1960s. More than 3.5 million men received 3-A deferments the same year Cheney got his, Schuback said. And 1.7 million others got 2-S deferments that year. More than 343,000 were drafted from July 1, 1965, to June 30, 1966.

Cheney's record also shows he was twice given 1-A status, indicating he was able to serve. The first instance was Feb. 15, 1962, when he was first exposed to the draft because government policy then was to confer that status on men who had reached their 20s, specialists say. The second time was May 19, 1965. As a result, there were apparently several months -- especially in 1965 -- when he could have been drafted. In all, 1.8 million men were drafted from 1964 to 1973.

This graf adds an odd twist to the article.

''Cheney got legal deferments, as did thousands of others, including Bill Clinton," Flynn said. ''Nothing odd about this behavior. What is odd is that Kerry, a Yale graduate with terrific credentials and opportunities, decided to volunteer for the war."

Don't Be Cruel

Susan Estrich has finally flipped out.

"The trouble with Democrats, traditionally, is that we're not mean enough."

Is she kidding?

Here's an astute observation from Powerline why so many Dem panties are in a bunch today.

By my count, of the five non-candidate featured convention speakers, the Republicans produced four stars (McCain, Rudy, Arnold, and the First Lady) and one curiosity with star qualities (Zell). Plus they produced a president and vice president.

As I recall, the Democrats produced one rising star (Obama), two has-beens (Carter and Gore), one star/has been (Clinton), one fallen star/has-been/curiosity (Dean), and two curiosities (Kerry's wife and Reagan's son). Plus they produced two Senators.

However, I'll kick it up a notch.

No Susan, the reason your party is losing it's grip on the political process is that it has little more than victimhood, dependency, class warfare, anger and envy to bring to the table. Look at your party's elder statesmen, they are not exactly a shining example of trustworthiness and honor. An ex-Grand Kegeale, a sodden Senator responsible for a DUI death, a former First Lady who parlayed enabling into a senate seat, a DNC chairman who ripped off shareholders, an obsessed, self-pitying failed presidential candidate, a failed ex-president who never met a dictator he didn't admire, a self-absorbed ex-president who served his own interests before the people, and a calculating phony in spandex and an ambulance chaser.

Add that the Dems have been on the wrong side of geo-political history for the past thirty years and that's why you're losing....oh and the whining about fairness whenever your weaknesses are exposed doesn't help either.

This independent voter would sooner drink sewer water than vote for another loser in the Democrat Pathenon of Pusillanimous Pipsqueaks.

(Via Instapundit, who should consider buying stock in the acid indigestion remedy industry)

Lies and the Lying Liars on the Wires

The AP is once again caught by the blogosphere cooking up an anti-Bush story.

WEST ALLIS, Wis. - President Bush (news - web sites) on Friday wished Bill Clinton (news - web sites) "best wishes for a swift and speedy recovery."

"He's is in our thoughts and prayers," Bush said at a campaign rally.

Bush's audience of thousands in West Allis, Wis., booed. Bush did nothing to stop them. [emphasis added]

Bush offered his wishes while campaigning one day after accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in New York. Clinton was hospitalized in New York after complaining of mild chest pain and shortness of breath.

Bush recently praised Clinton when the former president went to the White House for the unveiling of his official portrait. He lauded Clinton for his knowledge, compassion and "the forward-looking spirit that Americans like in a president."

I read this story on the wire feed, and dismissed it, until I heard the soundbite. Here's an excellent page of sleuthing at Swimming Through The Spin.

This campaign would be a romp for Kerry, ala 1992, without the blogosphere to expose the Jason Blairs behind the media curtain.

UPDATE: Drudge has the retraction and soundbite up now.

UPDATING THE UPDATE: Powerline has damning updates on the story, Bush-haters in the media just won't give it up, even when they've been outted as liars.

The Closer?

Hanging over at Stephen's for the speech. Man, that dude can hold his likker.

Lots of nice touches, boring middle and a boffo close. Bush feels like a guy you could hang with, a real person.

Pataki had the best diss of the night

"This is a candidate who has to Google his own name to find out where he stands."

Now we cut to the chase.

Edwards is doing the warm up...whiny don't cut it John Boy. Nobody? Oh God not the shrapnel in the body again...what the hell is Edwards talking about? A fighter? This is awful...these guys are desperate and it shows.

Idears. Back to the mill...Kill me now...back to Vodkapundit's. Fox cut to an ad and Aaron Brown signed off, he couldn't take it either.

Think I'll watch the Niner's lose to the Chargers...couldn't suck worse than Kerry.

UPDATE: I was wrong. Now I will have to amuse myself by finding silly photos of Kerry. Bingo!

The Custer Factor

Hugh Hewitt comments on OODa loops, CKO and the Kerry campaign.

They are "inside the Kerry campaign's OODA loop," and the result is paralysis and recrimination within Kerry's staff.

The new media is network concentric, open-source; the old media territorial, compartmentalized. The growing frustration and anger of the left-oriented blogosphere reflects the Kerry campaign's inability to understand Coherent Knowledge-based Operations (CKO). Of course Kerry doesn't get the concept, he's spent his entire career in the public sector which is the antithesis of a KO. Kerry's rhetoric proves he is out of the international OODA loop. France is not, as the Bushies and Brits quickly realized after 9/11.

The Dems are circling the wagons just as they've always done, attacking Miller with the old media, polling, photo-oping, reacting, effectively shooting inside their own circle.

The next two months will be interesting.

Divine Carrion

The blogosphere is examining Kerry's senate record as the Dems try to spin Miller's condemnation. The problem with a twenty year career in any field is the paper trail, Kerry's senatorial campaign documents give lie to Edwards weak rebuttal.

However, the most interesting portion of this document, on Kerry letterhead, ennumerating the military weapon programs he considers unnecessary, is this graf:

"The Reagan Administration has no rational plan for our military. Instead, it acts on misinformed assumptions about the strength of the Soviet miliatry and a presumed"window of vulnerability", which we now know not to exist."

The Dems are so bereft of ideas that they can do little but regurgitate discredited memes of the past. An acrid odor is wafting from the Kerry camp and even party loyalists are beginning to notice.

UPDATE: Go here for a comprehensive list of blog pro & con opinion on Miller's keynote speech.

Mission Accomplished

While the Dem surrogates and media slices and dices Zell Miller, let us not forget what ocurred on this day in 1945, and why Zell Miller's Willkie metaphor is prescient.

Ask yourself if John Kerry had been President after Pearl Harbor, three years of defeats, disasterous naval battles and massive casualities in the Pacific, would MacArthur be accepting a surrender or signing one?

Get The Hook

Is Wonkette's 15 minutes up yet?

Catching Up

Mickey Kaus is running the Kerry campaign shuffle story to ground.

"Sources say major changes could come at the campaign's highest level." That's the juiciest sentence in CNN's Kerry Shake-Up story. Not much else there, though. Except this:

Several campaign officials and advisers say they recognize the need to have an "adult" traveling with the candidate -- as one put it, "someone who can tell him to shut up ..."

Update: At least WSJ's Al Hunt is on the Kerry Shake-Up case. He's short on names and dances around the 'Whither-Shrum' issue, but he does have Kerry "said to be 'bouncing off the walls' in frustration." The CW diagnosis of Kerry's problem, according to Hunt?

Leading Democrats describe a command structure often frozen -- or at least tempered -- by too many chefs, a too-heavy reliance on polls or focus groups and an aversion to risks. As a result, the message often is muddled and the reaction to hard-hitting attacks from Republicans often is slow and unconvincing. [Emphasis added.]

Two questions: 1) Message? What message? That's the problem! Vietnam was, for Kerry, the substitute for a message; 2) Why, exactly, would a quicker and harder-hitting reaction to the Swifty attacks have helped Kerry? Mightn't it have made the attacks an even bigger deal? [Update: Bill Carrick agrees!] Even today, Kerry's answers on a) Cambodia and b) the first Purple Heart are less than 100% satisfactory. Yes, a full-Ferraro press conference might put the Swifty issue to rest, but the Kerry camp is obviously unwilling to risk that.

Only two questions Mickey? How about why we would trust a man who cannot handle a campaign team to manage the free world?

Old Media Dyspepsia

Campbell Brown is an unhappy camper as she goes immediately to the negative ploy. Now Brokaw is spinning Zell Miller as too harsh? You have to laugh when NBC News praises Cheney's restraint.

Matthews blames the media for snookering the Dems? Huh? Jeebus. Whom are these people kidding?

Zell's giving Matthews hell now, Go Zell. "Get outta my face" he retorts as Matthews tries his usual tactics. LOL!! Miller called Matthews a coward. This as good as it gets.

I. love. this. man.

Glenn changed channels too soon.

Miller may be in error, there is another group that has been more wrong, more loudly, more often than the Dems: the media.

Say What?

Ryan Sager may be on irony overload, check out Tuesday's protest photo gallery.

Yes, that's the Anarchist Marching Band....we don't explain 'em folks, we just post 'em.

Against, Against, Against.

Zell Miller smoked Kerry and his party tonight.

Shortly before Wilkie died he told a friend, that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between "here lies a president" or "here lies one who contributed to saving freedom", he would prefer the latter.

Where are such statesmen today? Where is the bi-partisanship in this country when we need it most?

Now, while young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrat's manic obsession to bring down our Commander-in-Chief.

What has happened to the party I've spent my life working in? I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny.

What indeed, but Zell was just getting warmed up.

Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than twenty weeks of campaign rhetoric.

Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are. How you vote tells people who you really are deep inside.

Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.

Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide. John Kerry, who says he doesn't like outsourcing, wants to outsource our national security. That's the most dangerous outsourcing of all. This politician wants to be leader of the free world.

Free for how long?

We know what to expect tomorrow don't we? Kerry's surrogates and media mewlings will begin to trash and demonize Zell Miller. That will be a big mistake, for in doing so they will prove Miller's point.

"It is not their patriotism - it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking."

Amen Brother Miller.

Transcript here.

Wictory Wednesday

I've been way too busy to cook, let alone tap in a recipe, so I'm "borrowing" the entire post from Bear Flagger Miller's Time:

This is the last Wictory Wednesday before the deadline to donate to Bush/Cheney 04! Last night Arnold reached out to independents, letting them know what it means to be a Republican:

My fellow immigrants, my fellow Americans, how do you know if you are a Republican?

• If you believe that government should be accountable to the people, not the people to the government, then you are a Republican.
• If you believe a person should be treated as an individual, not as a member of an interest group, then you are a Republican.
• If you believe your family knows how to spend your money better than the government does, then you are a Republican.
• If you believe our educational system should be held accountable for the progress of our children, then you are a Republican.
• If you believe this country, not the United Nations, is the best hope for democracy, then you are a Republican.
• And, ladies and gentlemen, if you believe that we must be fierce and relentless and terminate terrorism, then you are a Republican.

Similarities to Jeff Foxworthy aside, all I can say is Amen!

Today is Wictory Wednesday. Every Wednesday, I ask my readers to volunteer and/or donate to the Bush 2004 campaign.

If you've already donated and volunteered for the Bush campaign, then talk to your family, friends and neighbors and get them involved.

If you have a blog and would like to join the Wictory Wednesday Blogroll send an e-mail to wictory@blogsforbush.com or follow the link below.

Yeah...what he said.