NoPajamas.com

Blue Fingers, Brave People, Blessings of Liberty!

2005-01-30T23:44:00.000-08:00

Folks,
It's been an amazing day for the world, for America, for Iraq, and for freedom.
To show YOUR solidarity with the brave people of Iraq, may I suggest you do what I've done and what a young girl in the South came up with---before you go out tomorrow (Monday) ink YOUR INDEX FINGER in deep blue, too--show your solidarity with the voters of Iraq....and give the proverbial "finger" to the terrorists and haters.

If you read some of the amazing Iraqi blogs, you'll here tales of old people, sick people, people taking their children with them, people dressing in their finest as if for a very special party--all to VOTE. A woman says "I've never had a choice in anything, not who to marry, nothing, until now." Another "We not only never had this in Iraq, we never even read about it in neighboring countries." THOUSANDS in Abu Graib WALKED 13 MILES in the sun EACH WAY to the nearest polling place when theirs was shut due to security concerns. One blogger tells the tale of a group of Iraqi National Guard troops CHEERING THE VOTERS and saying THEY were the country's heroes--then ONE soldier got a bit enthusiastic and yelled "Vote for Alawi!"--and his officer stopped the convoy, and publicly dressed him down, saying "Listen--you are NOT Alawi's soldier--you are IRAQ'S Soldier--It is NOT our place to tell people how to vote!" and the crowd CHEERED the officer!

The point is, my friends, THESE PEOPLE "GET" IT! And the only ones who said they wouldn't/couldn't are the RACIST IMPERIALISTS of the OLD EUROPEAN nations and the AMERICAN LEFT! Sweep Teddy & the gang into the dustbin of history!

Wear YOUR ink-blue finger tomorrow, and wear it with PRIDE>

And BY THE WAY......while millions vote, thousands fight, a bit over one thousand Americans have died, and countless others have sacrificed, there is absolutely NO DOUBT ON EARTH by ANY honest person that today's miracle in Iraq is due to ONE MAN because he has the WILL to make it happen.

In tribute to our President, the following lines from "man of La Mancha" come to mind to me and have been singing in my head all day:

"And the world will be better for this,
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach the unreachable stars!"

God Bless You, Mr. President.
This blue finger is for you, too.

The Ever-Insightful, Ever-Entertaining Lileks Strikes Again!

2005-01-12T08:13:00.000-08:00

This guy is both hilarious and, in a good way, relentlessly viscious. Read his take on the Rathergate Report and see HERE or below. Don't deny yourself the pleasure, regardless of your political pov, of some great writing with a very sharp point. James Lileks gets my nomination for punditry's highest honors (and his blog is in our blogroll for that reason and it is a work of art visually, too.)

---------------

Posted on Wed, Jan. 12, 2005

Hush, Dan, and be grateful
By JAMES LILEKS

Some CBS critics would be satisfied with nothing less than this:

From: Mapes
To: Bigdan:
OK, here's the deal. I got a guy who cooked up fake memos, another guy who will lie about their credibility, and a retired general who will back up the story. He's dead, but we have the seance on tape. (Morley did the voice. What a ham!) The Kerry campaign is ready to go with the "Fortunate Son" ad campaign to piggyback on the AWOL theme. You end the segment by saying, "And the story is, as they say in a one-hour Texas Photomat, developing." That'll be the cue for everyone to wipe the hard drives. Oh, and I had the guy who faked the memos "disappear" in a scuba accident. Don't worry, I outsourced it and billed it as "catering." Love, Mary

From: Bigdan
To: Mapes
You are as hard-working as an Oklahoma toad in a button-polishing contest, and I'm happy as a horse who inherited a peanut butter factory. After 17 attempts to smear Bush with a fabricated charge, it looks as if we may finally have something that sticks like Juicy Fruit on the Alamo wall. Keep in touch. Dan

Anything short of that? Whitewash! Such critics will never be satisfied.

But maybe that's good. Maybe skepticism should be the final reaction to CBS' internal report on Memogate.
There's also room for a little gratitude: It wasn't quietly sneaked out on a Friday night. It named names and collected scalps. Four CBS employees were heaved out the window. Some sort of commission will be set up to safeguard the precious remaining ounces of the network's credibility, which are now in a vial in a safe. And consider what we've learned.

What caused CBS to run with this story? A raging, untrammeled desire to see George W. Bush driven from office in a hail of jeers and dead cats? Oh, heavens no.

"Myopic zeal," as one CBS executive put it. A desire to get the story out quickly, because there might be another nut out there with another set of forged documents, talking to ABC. No bias here! If we're guilty of anything, it's good ol' fashioned enthusiasm!

This is hard to swallow.

The report would have been satisfying if it had squarely faced the issue of bias, and ferreted out every last contact between producer Mary Mapes and the Kerry campaign. But its authors didn't dare, either from unease with the truth or disbelief that journalists might have agendas. Those Fox guys, sure. And Armstrong Williams, it now seems. But Dan Rather? The man's so fair he rotates his metaphors among all 50 states!
The report did note that some who helped unmask the forgeries had agendas of their own. Which is relevant how, exactly? If an atheist proves that the face of the Virgin Mary on a Krispy Kreme was actually drawn with a Sharpie, this doesn't mean the doughnut's holy.

True, pro-Bush bloggers may have been more suspicious than those who think Bush spends his days leashed and curled at Karl Rove's feet, but they were right, and that's what counted in the end.

The CBS report can't bring itself, even now, to say the documents were unquestionably bogus. Rather himself told the panel that "no one had provided persuasive evidence that the documents were not authentic." This is like floating in the North Atlantic, clinging to a White Star Line life preserver, asking for proof that the Titanic ever existed in the first place.

Dan, please. Be grateful the report went as far as it did, because it ended the story for all practical purposes. Be grateful it didn't go further, lest CBS News be seen as the entertainment wing of the Democratic National Committee.

Remember the heading on those damning memos? SUBJECT: CYA.

"A" stands for "anchor."

James Lileks is a columnist for the Star Tribune, 425 Portland Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55488. E-mail: james.lileks@newhouse.com

YouDon'tHaveToBeBiased...To Spin

2005-01-10T16:34:00.000-08:00

It helps, of course. That's why the silly notion spun in the CBS report that political bias had nothing to do with Rathergate is, well, silly. Of course it did. But you know, there is a built-in spin machine in all journalism, especially high-profile media journalism, and it doesn't have as much to do with politics as it does with economics---journalists--whether individuals or institions like networks and newspapers--are about getting attention, and that skews the whole process in a way that's not only overlooked, but also actually measurable. I didn't know how measurable until I read THIS COLUMN by Paul Jacob. Read the whole thing, but here's the measurement portion fyi:

---

There's less crime than "the well-informed" think there is, for instance. Reporters report the exceptional, but news viewers see these exceptions as the rule, with crime endemic. Thankfully, this is something that John Stossel repeatedly reminds his viewers. Few other journalists do.

Similarly, a recent study has shown that journalists, by concentrating on the biggest spending electoral races, encourage widespread misperception. In a survey conducted by social scientists at MIT and Stanford, it was found that "people with less education (and thus lower tendency to read newspapers) had, on average, the most accurate estimates of the average amount of money spent in politics and the relative importance of interest groups."

Informed readers' opinions on the subject, on the other hand, closely tracked the lopsided reporting they'd been exposed to. They over-estimated the impact of corporate and PAC money; their estimates of amounts spent on campaigns was over seven times that actually spent.

So, on average, the people in the nation with the most accurate view of politics are the least informed. At least on this issue.

Rathergate Chickens Roost...sort of.....

2005-01-10T11:46:00.000-08:00

Okay. The famous report is out. You can read the whole thing (I have...get some no-doz) HERE (I suggest you rightclick/download the PDF file for future study or in case the power goes out during its endless self-justification.

But the best summary reaction--better and more in synch with my views than anything I'd write myself--comes from the Weekly Standard's Jonathan Last, and I present it here as the "coda" on this episode that began the true age of the Blog Revolution (which will not end now, btw--and which, I predict, will have its next major war and VICTORY up in Washington re. the shameless vote-non-count/count for Governor) the LINK is HERE, but here' s the whole text, too:

--------------

CBS and the Philosopher's Stone
What the CBS Report has to say about Dan Rather, Mary Mapes, and their political agenda.

by Jonathan V. Last 01/10/2005 12:20:00 PM

IN A DOCUMENT shot through with agnosticism, perhaps the most agnostic section of the CBS Report is a six-page segment toward the end titled, "Whether There Was a Political Agenda Driving the September 8 Segment."

The Panel acknowledges that some sectors of the media had imputed political bias to Rathergate. So diligence required that the panel ask both Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, directly, whether or not they had been politically motivated: "Both strongly denied that they brought any political bias to the Segment."

Surprising? Not really. It seems unlikely that either Rather or Mapes would even perceive their own political bias--and even more unlikely that they would cop to it if they did perceive it. Yet for Thornburgh and Boccardi, their denial is enough, since "The Panel will not level allegations for which it cannot offer adequate proof." And here the CBS Report continues its modus operandi: It enumerates, in damning detail, CBS's mistakes, and then throws its hands in the air.

To wit: The report tells us that Mapes and Rather had pursued the story for five years; that they used a number of anti-Bush sources as key components of the story; that they tried to use a "gratuitous" and "inflammatory" interview with Colonel Hackworth; and that Mapes attempted to put Bill Burkett in contact with the Kerry campaign.

Thornburgh and Boccardi view all of these facts and then turn away saying that there is no "persuasive evidence of a political agenda;" and that they do "not believe that evidence
exists to demonstrate" that political leanings of the anti-Bush sources influenced the story; and that they "cannot conclude that this proposed use of Colonel Hackworth was part of any political agenda."

The only counter-evidence the report offers on this score are Mapes's and Rather's denials. "Absolutely, unequivocally untrue," Rather thunders. It was "proximity, not politics," Mapes demurs.

The CBS report can find evidence of political bias--they admit and document as much; they just can't reach any metaphysical conclusions about why that evidence exists. The esteemed panel has a journalist and an attorney general. Perhaps they should have included a philosopher, too.

Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.

The Unpopular Truth: SOMEbody Has To Say This---

2004-12-29T02:50:00.000-08:00

On another note regarding the tragedy in the far east, there is something that must be said that NO major media has mentioned in my hearing so far. I'm not going to be popular for doing it. I didn't start this blog to be popular, so here goes, but if you'd rather not be disturbed--by the facts being avoided or by my mentioning them, skip this one, okay?

You might have noticed coming through the reports that there have been a LARGE number of dead tourists from Germany, Scandinavia and other Western European countries among the victims of this disaster, especially in Thailand and its beach resorts. The fact you are NOT being presented with is that these are predominantly MALE victims, and that this area is, or rather has been, the hotbed of child-sex-tourism and child-sex-slave prostitution in the world, mostly going on because "civilized" males from "civilized" ( not to mention UN"stingy" nations) have the cash and the desire and finance it with their criminal and immoral lusts.

No child's death is a blessing--all children and all human beings have a right to dignity and life and opportunity and a future, but if there is a sad, bitter, hard-to-talk-or-write-about lining of silver to this dark, terrible tragedy of nature and nature's God, it is that for the poor children who have lived their short lives as the prey of sick, rich, immoral and amoral Western sex tourists from Old Europe, their torment is over and their tormentors have paid a terrible price for their obsessional evil.

I told you it wasn't pretty or easy. I hope you appreciate the need to note it as I did. I'm not calling this "God's wrath" or anything like it. I don't think the Lord is that kind of cut-with-a-wide-swath deity. But surely if there is any justice in the Universe, at least a small part of it was done amongst the horror and carnage of this huge tragedy....AND the world has been given a shot at making sure this sickness does NOT rebuild, regroup, and resume as the cleanup begins.

As The New Year Turns...The WaPo Stays Disgustingly Predictably Silly

2004-12-29T02:34:00.000-08:00

Welcome back--hope your holidays are going happily. Clearly the world has suffered a huge tragedy in the tsunami disaster in the Indian Ocean, and clearly all the preliminary death toll numbers will rise, double, and double again because, as one spokesperson I heard on the radio today put it, "A dead body is a disease machine" and the cleanup is going slowly--too slowly to stop the plague that will surely follow. The fact that the Pacific, home to larger and more frequent undersea quakes and the killer waves they create, has a warning system in place, that the UN has been "talking" about doing one in the Indian Ocean for DECADES with no progress, and that the quake happened TWO FULL EVACUATION-POSSIBLE HOURS before the beaches were hit and the lives of hundreds of thousands were changed or obliterated forever is just another testament to the fact that when the world does it THEIR way instead of OUR way, people suffer.

But hey, this blog is about the MSM, right? And what's more MSM than the Washington Post, which took time today to tell us how very, very unhappy they were with Dubya. Wow. Big news. But read this tripe HERE (or as much as you can stand) and then come back to me, ok?

So people are dead and in danger, the USA is, once again, among the FIRST on the scene, we take ACTION while UN bureaucrats from Scandinavia tut-tut about how "stingy" we are and suggest we raise our taxes to their confiscatory (and economy-killing) levels to pay for other nations' problems, and what does the paper of record of the capital of our nation do? It findsdyed-in-the-wool Dems like Leslie Gelb, Mort Abramowitz, and the astoundingly inept and corrupt Wesley Clark to say something it then claims "many" are saying--that somehow the fact that Dubya didn't leave Crawford, fly to DC, weep in front of TV cameras and be....Clintonesque....instead of just taking charge, trusting the people he's hired to do their jobs, and getting on with life as the leader of the free world, whether it likes that fact or not....THAT is what they say, folks---they use the death of thousands in a natural disaster as what? A lever to suggest that international bodies stop TALKING and start DOING something about warning systems? That aid mechanisms get better? That nations who back Osama and Co. should start helping their own people? That the only aid possible is coming from CAPTIALISTS who can AFFORD to help others?

Nope. Not in WaPoLand, a subcontinent of MSMiana, a place where the only waves that kill are of spin, hype, and downright lies.

Oh by the way, the article DOES happen to mention, among the many other aid efforts the US is immediately putting in place, the dispatch of the USS Abraham Lincoln, a wonderful behemoth aircraft carrier I've had the pleasure of being aboard and knowing the amazing young men and women of as part of my showbiz career. So tell me, when you're counting up our gifts and benevolence, WaPo---just how much does it COST to send a whole AIRCRAFT CARRIER with over FIVE THOUSAND sailors and marines on board ANYwhere? And why didn't those "less stingy" Norwegians send THEIRS? Oh...haven't GOT one? Can't afford EVEN one? I see. I see.

But meanwhile, does any of this sink in over at WaPo Land? No, they use it to criticize Bush, and to pretend there is some groundswell of criticism for him, even while the only vox populi reaction I've heard all day on talk radio has been for everyday average red-and-bluestate Americans to call the UN jerk who said we were stingy, "A jerk."

But that's the Washington Post, and that's why the Dems and the Left will continue to lose, continue to retreat into more and more dogmatic enclaves in NYC and Hollywood and Boston, and why the purple states are turning redder and redder every day. These guys don't get it--and whether they amuse us or disgust us, all they do is REMIND us of their idiocy and venality with every stroke of their poisonous MSM pen.

Krauthammer--A National Treasure Indeed!

2004-12-03T03:18:00.000-08:00

Wow. Charlie's done it again. Read THIS please. Here or there. And then spread it around. Like he usually does, Dr. K. takes things to the "next level" of analysis, insight, and reason--in this case daring to ask the question: WHY should the Europeans agree with us about democracy's value in Ukraine but NOT in Iraq? Answers? Read on:
----------------

Why Only in Ukraine?
By Charles KrauthammerFriday, December 3, 2004; Page A27 WashingtonPost

There has been general back-patting in the West about renewed European-American comity during the Ukrainian crisis. Both the United States and Europe have been doing exactly the right thing: rejecting a fraudulent election run by a corrupt oligarchy and insisting on a new vote. This gives us an opportunity to ostentatiously come together with Europe. Considering our recent disagreements, that is a good thing. But before we get carried away with this era of good feeling, let us note the reason for this sudden unity.

This is about Russia first, democracy only second. This Ukrainian episode is a brief, almost nostalgic throwback to the Cold War. Russia is trying to hang on to the last remnants of its empire. The West wants to finish the job begun with the fall of the Berlin Wall and continue Europe's march to the east.

You almost have to feel sorry for the Russians. (I stress almost.) In the course of one generation, they have lost one of the greatest empires in history: first their Third World dependencies, stretching at one point from Nicaragua to Angola to Indochina; then their East European outer empire, now swallowed by NATO and the European Union; and then their inner empire of Soviet republics.

The Muslim "-stans" are slowly drifting out of reach. The Baltic republics are already in NATO. The Transcaucasian region is unstable and bloody. All Russia has left are the Slavic republics. Belarus is effectively a Russian colony. But the great prize is Ukraine, for reasons of strategy (Crimea), history (Kiev is considered by Russians to be the cradle of Slavic civilization) and identity (the eastern part is Russian Orthodox and Russian-speaking).

Vladimir Putin, who would not know a free election if he saw one, was not about to let an election get in the way of retaining sway over Ukraine. The problem is that his bluff was called, and he does not have the power to do to Ukraine what his Soviet predecessors did to Hungary and Czechoslovakia during the Cold War.
Hence the clash of civilizations over Ukraine and, to some extent, within Ukraine: the authoritarian East vs. the democratic West.

But this struggle is less about democracy than about geopolitics. Europe makes clear once again that it is a full-throated supporter of democracy -- in its neighborhood. Just as it is a forthright opponent of ethnic cleansing in its neighborhood (Yugoslavia) even as it lifts not a finger elsewhere (Rwanda, southern Sudan, now Darfur).

That is why this comity between the United States and Europe is only temporary. The Europeans essentially believe, to paraphrase Stalin, in democracy on one continent. As for democracy elsewhere, they really could not care less.

They pretend, however, that this opposition to America's odd belief in spreading democracy universally is based not on indifference but on superior wisdom -- the world-weary sagacity of a more ancient and experienced civilization that knows that one cannot bring liberty to barbarians. Meaning, Arabs. And Muslims. And Iraqis.

Hence the Bush-Blair doctrine of bringing some modicum of democracy to the Middle East by establishing one country as a beachhead is ridiculed as naive and messianic. And not just by Europeans but by their "realist" allies here in the United States.

Thus Zbigniew Brzezinski, a fierce opponent of the Bush administration's democracy project in Iraq, writes passionately about the importance of democracy in Ukraine and how, by example, it might have a domino effect, spreading democracy to neighboring Russia. Yet when George Bush and Tony Blair make a similar argument about the salutary effect of establishing a democracy in the Middle East -- and we might indeed have the first truly free election in the Middle East within two months if we persevere -- "realist" critics dismiss it as terminally naive.

If you had said 20 years ago that Ukraine would today be on the threshold of joining a democratic Europe, you, too, would have been called a hopeless utopian. Yes, Iraq has no democratic tradition and deep ethnic divisions. But Ukrainian democracy is all of 13 years old, much of it dominated by a corrupt, authoritarian regime with close ties to an even more corrupt and authoritarian Russia. And with a civilizational split right down the middle, Ukraine has profound, and potentially catastrophic, divisions.

So let us all join hands in praise of the young people braving the cold in the streets of Kiev. But then tell me why there is such silence about the Iraqis, young and old, braving bullets and bombs, organizing electorate lists and negotiating coalitions even as we speak. Where is it written: Only in Ukraine?

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

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ONE MORE POINT that comes to my mind re. the issues Krauthammer raises--he notes that Putin, who we all PRETEND is the "democratically elected" boss of Russia, wouldn't know a free election if he saw one. Well, we all continue in this fantasy/acceptance that Russia isnt the bad-old USSR and go with the idea that he's a "president" and not a "boss" for diplomacy's sake, right? So howcome "realist" pols in the US do that, but still say that if 100% of Iraq doesn't or can't vote in January's elections due to insurgencies or political squabbles between Shias and Sunnis that the election there won't be "legitimate" and that the democracy there won't be real or significant? Once again, a double standard that betrays an underlying racism towards the region AND a hypocritical self-interest on domestic policy grounds.

The Sage of South Central Gets It JUST Right Again!

2004-12-02T20:34:00.000-08:00

My pal Larry Elder has written another glowing piece of brilliance, so just in case you missed it HERE, read along, ponder, and enjoy:

Don't look now -- but Bush is uniting the country
Larry Elder December 2, 2004

"I hope that in this term," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., "President Bush will fulfill his renewed promise to be a uniter, not a divider."

Don't look now, but Bush is doing some uniting.

Notice, for example, the absence of hysteria when the so-called ban against assault weapons expired. Sure, candidate Kerry, on the campaign trail, warned that the expiration of the ban makes "the job of terrorists easier and made the job of America's law-enforcement officers harder." But, for the most part, Kerry did not make this into a campaign issue. Why? Democrats know that, in 2000, presidential candidate Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee, in part, because of Tennesseans' opposition to further gun control.

What about the divisive issue of abortion? "I am prepared to filibuster, if necessary," said former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, "any Supreme Court nominee who would turn back the clock on a woman's right to choose or the constitutional right to privacy, on civil rights and individual liberties. . . . The test is basic -- any person who thinks it's his or her job to push an extreme political agenda rather than to interpret the law should not be a Supreme Court justice." Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, stated, "I am and always have been pro-choice, and that is not a right any of us should take for granted. There are a number of forces at work in our society that would try to turn back the clock and undermine a woman's right to choose, and [we] must remain vigilant." And the 2004 Democratic Party platform says, "Because we believe in the privacy and equality of women, we stand proudly for a woman's right to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless of her ability to pay."

But with whom do the Democrats intend to replace the defeated liberal outgoing Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota? Harry Reid, D-Nevada. Who is Harry Reid? He calls himself pro-life. NARAL, formerly the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, gives Reid a mere 29 percent favorability rating. Contrast that with Daschle's 50 percent. Reid even supports mining interests against environmentalists.

Whether soon-to-be outgoing Democratic Chairman Terry McAuliffe realizes it, the Democratic Party seems to be shifting toward the center -- Bush's center.

Even more telling, a recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll gives President Bush a personal favorability rating of 60 percent, and 55 percent now approve of his job. And what about "divisive," "extremist," "lightning rods" like National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and especially outgoing Attorney General John Ashcroft? The poll gives Rice a 63 percent favorable rating, versus 26 percent unfavorable; Rumsfeld a 51 percent favorable rating, versus 39 percent unfavorable, and Ashcroft received a 50 percent favorable rating, versus 37 percent unfavorable. Indeed, White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales recently praised his outgoing boss, "I will work hard to build upon [Ashcroft's] record."
Some called "hateful" Bush's proposal for an amendment to ban gay marriage. But most Americans -- 62 percent, according to recent polls -- oppose same-sex marriage. Forty-three states passed laws that restrict marriage to opposite sex couples, while an increasing number allow civil unions or domestic partnerships (something the president says he supports).

Even on the War in Iraq, most Americans believe that, having started down this path, a failed Iraq poses more risks than it solves. Current polls show 48 percent of Americans support the War in Iraq, and 46 percent oppose it. Our commitment in Iraq figures to be long-term, but Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the terrorist who authorities believe plays a major role in the Iraqi "insurgency," recently posted a message on an Islamic Web site. Zarqawi blamed what he called the Fallujah "slaughter" on the failure of Muslims to rally against the "occupying infidels": "Hundreds of thousands of the nation's sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels because of your silence. You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy. You have stopped supporting the holy warriors."

Americans intend to stay the course. For we recognize, as Rice put it, the War on Terror promises to be a generational one.

What about the rest of the world? Yes, polls show that many French and Germans loathe Bush, dislike America's dominance and foreign policy, and even boycott American products and services. But the Bush administration just successfully pressured the 19 member nations of the Paris Club -- including Germany and France -- to forgive 80 percent of the $39 billion owed them by Iraq. The Bush administration also got Jordan to assist in the training of Iraqi military personnel.

Not bad for a divider.

Of All The Thanksgiving Articles I've Read...

2004-11-25T13:35:00.000-08:00

....this one from the Houston Chronicle is the most moving to me, and one I'd like to share with you all. Read it, count your blessings, and be thankful indeed. Happy Holidays!
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An adopted daughter gives thanks to America

A child of refugees counts her many blessings

By ANH V. SAWYER

I wish you could have been with me this morning. It was snowing, not heavily, but enough flurries to prevent many of my international friends from coming to our monthly International Wives Club. Most of them came from the other side of the world where the coldest temperature hovers above 60 degrees.

There were only 14 of us, half of the normal gathering. Six were Americans and the rest from different parts of the world. Together, we decorated our tables and spread out the food that everyone had brought. Our theme was American Thanksgiving, so I brought a turkey, my first attempt at cooking the giant chicken. The American wives brought pies, and others brought fruit and salads.

Our group leader told us of the history of American Thanksgiving, of the 102 persons who first arrived in Plymouth, Mass., on the Mayflower, of the local Indians' kindness and of the many deaths that followed from the hardship of life in this new place.

When she finished, I asked everyone in the group to share their Thanksgiving thought if they were comfortable doing so. Many of us don't speak English well, and besides, where we came from, we do not always share our hearts so readily like our American friends.

The American wives were thankful for God, families and friends. The foreigners, one after another, with their limited English, wanted to give thanks for this country, for the freedom and peace they have experienced here, for the friendship and unconditional love and help they have received from American friends and strangers. Several had tears roll down their cheeks as they spoke.

Tan, a lovely Mainland Chinese visiting scholar, said: "I wake up so happy every morning. I cannot believe I am here in this country. I feel so free. Sometimes, I have to pinch myself."

Chin, a Taiwanese graduate student, young and gentle, shared with us: "Before I came here, I didn't even know how to open a can. I had a very sheltered life. So when I arrived here, I was very fearful for my life. But the Americans take care of me and teach me many things.

Sandi, a Korean nurse, thoughtful and wise, said, with tears in her eyes: "I want to give thanks to my parents who came here with absolutely nothing. They had to work very hard and sacrificed much for my sister and me. And this country made it possible for them to give us what we have now."

And more I wish you could hear with your own ears.

Many of the International Wives were intrigued to hear that their own beginnings in this country were similar to the Pilgrims. They, too, had a very difficult time with learning English, getting a job and finding a niche for themselves, but after all is said and done they would not trade what they are having to go through here for anything else.

As a former refugee, I, too, want to thank you, dear America, for your love for humanity, for the profound understanding that liberty is indeed the core of genuine humanness, and for sharing your resources, your opportunities and your wonderful heritage with the refugees and immigrants of the world.

You also impart to us a willingness to love and to forgive. These are very vulnerable concepts for many of us foreigners who were bound by traditions of getting even. You know, my Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese friends told me that they don't really get along well with each other, but it was Tan who reached out to Chin and invited her to our gatherings. In our international fellowship, I've often seen Croats break bread with Serbs and people from all over the Middle East — people who would be each others' enemies if they were still in their countries — befriend one another.

I meant to send this article for publication on Veterans Day; but I was worried that I would be misunderstood and categorized as a war-lover. I do not like war or any kind of bloodshed because I myself had to go through that hellish experience for the first 20 years of my life. However, I often ask myself, without the men and women who went to war and laid down their lives, even for the peoples they didn't know, would I be able to taste this precious freedom and liberty?

Sometimes I think of America as the children, and myself as the dog, in one of Jesus' parables: "First, let the children eat all they want," Jesus told her, "for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs.
"Yes, Lord," she replied, "but even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."

Even with the crumbs, I am grateful and satisfied. However, I long to be one of the children, not because America wouldn't let me, but because after 30 years of living and breathing free in this country, I am still going through a healing process. It continues to be a long journey for me to unlearn the fear I grew up in and to learn to truly enjoy the bread.

It was a struggle to put these words on paper, because deep down I am afraid of retaliation. I think the most wonderful gift America offers is freedom from fear. So, I thank you, America. I am the daughter you have adopted and raised to become someone who has faith in life and lives with real purpose. I now dare to dream and to believe that my dreams can come true. Where I came from, the most important wish a child can have is to bring honor to his or her parents. I hope I will bring honor to America.
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Sawyer is a writer and speaker. With her friend Pam Proctor, she wrote "Song of Saigon," published by Warner Books in 2003.

DING DONG, THE ANCHOR'S DEAD!

2004-11-23T11:27:00.000-08:00

While the idea for this blog had been percolating for quite a while (and while the travesties of the MSM and the popular culture such as movies and TV are hardly recent phenomena only) this blog clearly began in reaction to a specific incident--what the blogosphere dubbed "Rathergate" and the obscenely biased reporting of one Dan Rather and the CBS NEWS team. There's been controversy, investigation, denial, and a whole lot more since then, but today comes welcome news for any who cherish free and fair press: Dan Rather is GONE from the anchor role at CBS, announcing his retirement today effective in early March (although he'll continue to do "60 Minutes" duties for an indeterminate while after that.) The announcement was made by Rather to the CBS staff and then to the public as follows, according to Drudge:

"ADDRESSES CBS NEWSROOM AT APPROXIMATELY 1:39PM EST [Partial transcript -- joined in progress]: No matter what you hear elsewhere, this was a mutual decision. The timing has to do with (wanting to separate) this decision to leave the anchor chair... from the (investigation) of the 60 MINUTES report. The decision got made the way I described. There is nothing more important (to me) than how honored I am to work with the greatest news organization in the world. Thank you for coming. We're not going to spend much time (on questions) because we have news to cover. (Offered to answer questions, but staff simply gave his signature 'hip hip' three cheers.) Let's get back to work. Thanks everyone. "

Now clearly this means that the CBS investigation in-house into the Rathergate issue is finally and toturously drawing to a close and they allowed Dan to fall on his sword FIRST to pretend there's no connection when everyone above age 5 and a half can see the connection clearly.

OUR reaction? Well, if we spoke Latin we'd say "Sic Semper Moronis!" Or maybe "Mentiris" or "FarLeftis" but what the heck, you get the idea. Liars pretending to be newsmen, especially those who lie from a political agenda they deny, shouldn't clutter the public airwaves. Adios Dan--its been a nice ride from your one lucky break of being in the right place and right time when JFK was shot until now--surely a record in the parlaying of a lucky break and average talent into a career. Here' s the official story. Read it....and chuckle. We did.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=276466&page=1

Can It Be ONLY Three Weeks....???

2004-11-23T07:24:00.000-08:00

....since the wonderful election? Yes, it can. Three short weeks in which we've seen a VERY activist Dubya take charge, change cabinet officers, begin without waiting or pausing or resting on his new agenda for the 2nd administration, have the military win a decisive victory in Fallujah and elsewhere, AND TODAY, we find that in USA Today's polls, he's seen as a GOOD president people WANT to lead America by 55% of those polled! What does that mean? It means that a SIZEABLE chunk of the people who voted against him on election day are quite willing to be convinced that he's doing a good job--and that is NOT music to the ears of the hate-Bush/Anybody-but-Bush crowd in charge at the DNC who are clamoring for a Howard Dean makeover of their party as even more about hate and further to the left. If they go that way, it will permanently doom a party that has been in rapid decline since Jimmy Carter's day, that consistantly loses senate, house, and statehouse posts all acrosss both the red and blue states, and that is seriously considering offering as a candidate for the American people in 4 years one Hillary Rodham Whatsis, whose most recent public utterances have been about the evil of Red state religious fanatics and about the wonderfulness of her hubby's hideous and falsifying-history Presidential Library in Little Rock. Does the fact that she lived there make here the "Southerner" the Dems think can win them back the Red States? If so.....they're even more deluded and confused than it appears.

Shameless (and Delicious) Plug Time: www.LovePBJ.com

2004-11-18T09:04:00.000-08:00

Some friends have come up with the most wonderful Holiday Gift idea I've seen...or tasted. Would you believe this?

"The Peanut-Butter-And-Jelly-Of-The-Month Club" !!!

Yep, monthly deliveries to your door of unique, gourmet, artisan-created peanut butters and jellies--from traditional to unique variations (hot-and-spicy pb, cinnamon-honey pb, special pb in tubes for joggers, jellies made from everything from traditional fruits to herbs and flowers to, would you believe it, KUDZU?) plus they've got a "PB&J Boutique" with a superb cookbook, great gifts like teeshirts featuring famous PB&J lovers in history (I love the one featuring General Patton, and the Golda Meier one will floor you, too!) plus hats, mugs, even g-strings and boxers!

The best part? NO wrapping, NO mailing, NO doing anything but hitting the website, choosing your favorite club, and giving it via credit card and now you are gifting once a month for a full YEAR of tasty enjoyment--and should probably give one to yourSELF, too. They even do bulk discounts for corporate gift-giving, and how many of YOU have businesses where reminding customers or suppliers that you like them every month for a full YEAR is a GOOD idea?

The website is fun, too, with a huge collection of peanut butter and jelly trivia, facts, recipes, and games, and you can access all of it at http://www.LovePBJ.com And yes, it IS run by friends of mine...and yes, this IS my blog and I'll plug if I want to. And wow...it is GOOD peanut butter! Spread some soon, and spread it around YOUR holiday gift list!

Madame Librarian? Marian? Or is it Hillary? Ahem....

2004-11-18T08:43:00.000-08:00

....so today, in a rainy mess so symbolic of his reign, President Bill Clinton opens the most personally-supervised, "tweaked by himself" Presidential Library in the history of such institutions in Little Rock, Ak. Putting politics aside (something the library's exhibits NEVER do) let's talk about the building first. Have you seen it? Have you really SEEN it? It looks, being charitable, like an airport in a Soviet republic. Ugly, boxy, pseudo-modern and about to fall down. Horrible!

But that's nothing compared to the propaganda within. According to published reports, while the museum has a "whitewater alcove" regarding the impeachment scandals of the Clintons, it plays fast and loose with the truth, for example saying that the whole thing was a powergrab by evil Republicans, that NOBODY was convicted (ignoring the 14 people who were, of course, and the President's plea bargain deal to agree to disbarrment to avoid indictment) and painting Newt Gingrich as the evil one and Ken Starr as his loyal servant. OF course, the ex-Clintonistas like Begala & co say it is "Fair and Balanced" and say that it is in keeping with all other Presidential Libraries, scoffingly quipping "I don' t think there's a Contragate niche at the Reagan Library! Hahaahhah!"

Except, of course, that there IS just that. The Reagan Library, housed in a BEAUTIFUL and tasteful building, btw, features the entire Iran-Contra scandal INCLUDING the video of the President admitting wrongdoing. Furthermore, the exhibits having to do with Watergate are the BIGGEST section of the Nixon Library, and pull no punches and present the facts. The attitudes of the librarians and designers of these and other libraries, which serve the nation not merely as museums or memorials, after all, but as research locations for scholars and repositories of presidential papers and history, is that presidents are human, they make mistakes, and the facts should be presented, not shaded and played with for political purposes. NO doubt, all the libraries are tributes to the Presidents they memorialize, but still, the new Clinton place is a showplace not for history but for politics--and there's no doubt where the responsibility lies (pun very much intended) since everyone agrees that Bill Clinton either personally wrote or "tweaked" the text throughout the ugly chunk of steel in Little Rock.

The good news? At least the delusions haven't extended to anticipations of crowds after this weeks' ceremonial post-election Democrat pity-party is over. Take a look on the Clinton library site at the overhead photos of the site plan and you'll see that even by Little Rock standards, let alone those of Southern California and the Nixon and Reagan libraries, they haven't really planned for much on-site parking. Maybe they know something about the crowd count--or lack of it--this place will attract once it settles into the riverside mud and all the dubious dignitaries go home.

The ultimate irony is, of course, that nobody's learned a thing. Just as the exhibits about Clinton ignore the truth---that his presidency and leadership of the Democrat party led to a loss of the House, the Senate, Statehouses, and, finally, of the Presidency itself and the seemingly-inescapable decline to permanent minority status of the Party--so the many Dems congregating in Little Rock today refuse to see that their addiction to outmoded, rejected, dangerously naieve, and generally abhorrent ultra-liberal ultra-leftist policies on economics, social, and foreign policy are the tickets to continual electoral failure as most recently demonstrated by John Kerry...even while they seriously contemplate making Howard Dean their chair and drool over the next installment in the oevre of Michael Moore.

Let me reiterate something: I sincerely and honestly wish the Democrats were vibrant, strong, and offering real alternatives to the policies of my side---it would make us tougher, better, and make us think about our own positions more effectively and create even better policies. Mediocrity in one's opposition leads to mediocrity and flabbyness in one's self. A strong America should have two strong, forward-looking, thinking, creativity-applying parties full of patriots working at odds to each other perhaps but in concert for the nation. But as long as the Dems misunderstand or refuse to see the truth about their past, their present, and their future as they clearly continue to do at the Clinton Library, that time of maximum benefit for America with two strong, open-eyed, warts-and-all-seeing parties will continue to be a dream, not a reality.

Meanwhile? They'll celebrate in a dump in Little Rock, continue to hate, keep threatening to decamp to France or Canada, nominate Hillary, and lose even bigger next time.....and someday add another wing--a Left Wing?--for Hillary's memorabilia and self-delusional statements of blame and shame, too.

More On The Dead Criminal Murderer

2004-11-11T15:24:00.000-08:00

From PowerLine...:

--------------
Omitted from Arafat's AP obituary
Some date the beginning of the terrorist war against the United States to the seizure of 67 American hostages at the American Embassy in Tehran by the followers of Ayatollah Khomeni in November 1979 or to the bombing of the barracks in Beirut by Hezbollah that killed 241 Marines in October 1983.
Yasser Arafat, however, is the true father of this war. First Arafat created Black September as an offshoot of his Fatah organization. He presided over the operation resulting in the massacre of the Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich by Black September in 1972. The following year Arafat became the first Arab terrorist to target Americans.
He personally ordered the assassination of American Ambassador to Sudan Cleo Noel, Jr. and charge d'affaires Curtis Moore in Khartoum on March 2, 1973. (See my "Who murdered Cleo Noel?") Arafat himself presided over the Khartoum operation and ordered the assassination of Noel and Moore by short wave radio from PLO headquarters in Beirut. Moore and Noel were only the first of many Americans murdered by Arafat's terrorist thugs.
In a bizarre footnote to his assassination of American officials, Arafat became the foreign leader most frequently hosted by President Bill Clinton during his two terms in office. The many cold-blooded murders for which Arafat was responsible in the course of his life were politely passed over in silence as they remained entirely unavenged.
As the founder of Fatah and leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Arafat waged a lifelong war on the state of Israel and its Jewish citizens. Although Arafat occasionally interrupted the war against Israel with short term periods of truce or "hudna," he never relented from his orgy of murder or ceased to pursue his lifelong goal of destroying Israel.
In November 1974, while in the middle of his murder spree, Arafat was invited to address the United Nations. He came accompanied to New York by three henchmen who had assisted or participated in the operation to assassinate Noel and Moore. He gave his speech at the General Assembly podium with a pistol and holster strapped to his hip. His many diplomatic victories were not the fruit of subtlety or grace.
Over the final four years of his life he presided over the renewed terrorist war against Israel in which he funded and personally approved the suicide bomb operations that are his true contribution to civilization -- a contribution that made him a hero in European capitals from London to Berlin. In his usual style, he had set up entities to carry out the suicide bomb operations that allowed him to deny responsibility for them. Only the willfully credulous were fooled.
In the notorious tradition of the "175ers" among the Nazi leadership, Arafat led an incredibly dissolute life. It was his dissolution that ultimately resulted in his contraction of AIDS, the disease that led to his death outside Paris yesterday. As with so many basic facts about this utterly vile human being, the truth (although baldly reported by Oriana Fallaci in the fall of 1981) remains shrouded in myth, deception and outright lies.
Late in his life Arafat took a wife for the purpose of keeping up appearances in a culture that loathes homsexuality. While his wife and political epigones fought over the billions he had stolen from his supposed beneficiaries, the scene of his death at a French military hospital outside Paris came to resemble a protracted farce befitting a second-rate Hollywood comedy. On the other hand, in an episode worthy of Kafka or Orwell, Arafat won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1994.
UPDATE: See also the unofficial obituary featured on Pajama Hadin and CAMERA's "Yasir Arafat and Terrorism" linked on Little Green Footballs.

A Mafioso Dies. So What?

2004-11-10T20:32:00.000-08:00

Let's be clear--Yasser Arafat was nothing more than an arab version of a Mafia don, and one with very little "honor" or "respect." He began in the gun-running business, grew his gang, took over gangs via murder and internecene warfare, and then skimmed off billions in aid money while continuing to inspire murder, terror, and hate. The fact that his sub-dons, having waited a few days in order to line up their own succession conflicts and settle who gets the turf AND hope to track down his hidden zillions, have finally thrown the switch on the machines that kept the old bloodsucker alive is hardly news. It is to be hoped that his removal from the scene will allow for peace progress...but that can only come from realism about who he was--not a hero to anyone, even his own people, but a crook, a scavenger, a thief, a murderer, and a liar. Statesman? Hardly. As the Israeli interior minister explained when telling reporters why he would not be allowed to be buried in Jerusalem, bluntly, : "Jerusalem is where we bury Jewish kings, not Arab terrorists." Good riddance.....and by the way, there are VERY strong reasons to believe that his cause of death was, in fact, AIDS due to his well-documented sexual habits. Sic semper tyranis indeed.

Happy Birthday, USMC! OOOHRAHHHHHHHH!!!

2004-11-10T11:26:00.000-08:00

As some of you know, I had the honor to serve as an "honorary" member of the Marine Corps. with "unit designation" STG-41. Most Marines have never heard of that unit, and were mystified when they saw our red caps with the designation under the traditional ball-and-anchor Marine Corps. symbol. The STG stood for "Stage" and 41 was the soundstage number where, once a week for three years, we created the stories of a Marine family named McGillis, aka "Major Dad" at Universal Studios for CBS. During that time, we had the distinct pleasure and high honor to get to know many brave Marines, including those who served in Desert Storm, which took place during our production schedule and for which we did the equivalent of "USO Shows" to entertain and thank the families of troops stationed overseas down at the now-defunct El Toro USMCAS...and we also played some golf there and had a few drinks at the OC on occasion, toured the amazing USS Abraham Lincoln carrier with the Marines, and even "borrowed" the occasional copter, humvee, and audience members from the Corps., plus their amazing "Silent Drill Team" for one memorable episode.

The Marines have a tradition--they actually have a "birthday party" every year on the official date that the Corps. was created. Today, November 10, is that day, and it is tradition that the Commandant issues an official "Birthday Message" to all Marines, current and retired, wherever they may be, who stop, pause to think of lost comrades and victories won and of everyone serving America and protecting our freedom today in embassies, bases, and the war front in Fallujah, raise a glass, and cheer a big "ooh-RAH!" They also stand and sing the Marine Hymn, but this is not an audio-enabled blog, so you'll have to raise your voice to the halls of Montezuma on your own. Here, however, is the Commandant's official Birthday Message. Read, contemplate what all our armed forces do for us every day, give thanks, and tell a Marine you may see "Happy Birthday"--because today, it is truly EVERY Marine's birthday, and God Bless the United States Marine Corps. OOOH-RAHHH! And a big, proud, respectful, prayerful Semper FI!

----
Two hundred and twenty-nine years ago, the Second Continental Congress established a Corps of Marines to fight for a democratic people's independence. Since then countless Marines have raised their hand and sworn to defend our Nation's freedoms and preserve its liberties. This year's anniversary again finds Marines engaged throughout the globe for the same noble purposes. The bravery, heroism and selflessness of all Marines—wherever they are serving—have added significantly to our rich legacy and measured up to the high standards that have come to epitomize all who wear the eagle, globe and anchor.

The current battlefields of the global war on terror are linked to the storied campaigns of our past by an unbroken tradition of proud and loyal service. At New Providence, Chapultepec, Belleau Wood, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, the Chosin Reservoir, Con Thien, Kuwait and now in places like Fallujah, Marines have consistently demonstrated a dedication to duty, a commitment to warfighting excellence, and a devotion to each other that has instilled a fierce determination to overcome seemingly impossible challenges. Our warrior ethos is and will continue to be the Corps' hallmark.

The fortitude and sacrifices of Marines and their families have been vital in protecting our Nation from those who would do us harm. Whether preparing and sustaining our agile force or engaged in battle, the esprit de corps, tireless energy, calm courage and inspired leadership of Marines continue to make a monumental difference in this world. Your unselfish dedication and significant accomplishments—demonstrated repeatedly over this past year in numerous places such as the Anbar province of Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, Haiti and in the crucial job here at home supporting our deployed forces—are deeply respected and valued by your fellow Americans.

Marines, as we celebrate with friends and families the founding of our beloved Corps, you should take pride in our long history of distinguished service to this great Nation and its citizens. I ask you to remember especially the sacrifices of our fallen and wounded comrades. Finally, rededicate yourselves to taking care of one another and ensuring we remain the finest warfighting organization in the world.

Happy Birthday, Marines. Semper Fidelis, and Keep Attacking!

General M.W. Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps.

David Brooks--the Conscience Of The NY Times--'Splains It To Them...And You:

2004-11-06T14:20:00.000-08:00

The Values-Vote Myth

By DAVID BROOKS

Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result, and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them.

In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males, or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top.

This theory certainly flatters liberals, and it is certainly wrong.

Here are the facts. As Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center points out, there was no disproportionate surge in the evangelical vote this year. Evangelicals made up the same share of the electorate this year as they did in 2000. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who are pro-life. Sixteen percent of voters said abortions should be illegal in all circumstances. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who say they pray daily.

It's true that Bush did get a few more evangelicals to vote Republican, but Kohut, whose final poll nailed the election result dead-on, reminds us that public opinion on gay issues over all has been moving leftward over the years. Majorities oppose gay marriage, but in the exit polls Tuesday, 25 percent of the voters supported gay marriage and 35 percent of voters supported civil unions. There is a big middle on gay rights issues, as there is on most social issues.

Much of the misinterpretation of this election derives from a poorly worded question in the exit polls. When asked about the issue that most influenced their vote, voters were given the option of saying "moral values." But that phrase can mean anything - or nothing. Who doesn't vote on moral values? If you ask an inept question, you get a misleading result.

The reality is that this was a broad victory for the president. Bush did better this year than he did in 2000 in 45 out of the 50 states. He did better in New York, Connecticut and, amazingly, Massachusetts. That's hardly the Bible Belt. Bush, on the other hand, did not gain significantly in the 11 states with gay marriage referendums.

He won because 53 percent of voters approved of his performance as president. Fifty-eight percent of them trust Bush to fight terrorism. They had roughly equal confidence in Bush and Kerry to handle the economy. Most approved of the decision to go to war in Iraq. Most see it as part of the war on terror.

The fact is that if you think we are safer now, you probably voted for Bush. If you think we are less safe, you probably voted for Kerry. That's policy, not fundamentalism. The upsurge in voters was an upsurge of people with conservative policy views, whether they are religious or not.

The red and blue maps that have been popping up in the papers again this week are certainly striking, but they conceal as much as they reveal. I've spent the past four years traveling to 36 states and writing millions of words trying to understand this values divide, and I can tell you there is no one explanation. It's ridiculous to say, as some liberals have this week, that we are perpetually refighting the Scopes trial, with the metro forces of enlightenment and reason arrayed against the retro forces of dogma and reaction.

In the first place, there is an immense diversity of opinion within regions, towns and families. Second, the values divide is a complex layering of conflicting views about faith, leadership, individualism, American exceptionalism, suburbia, Wal-Mart, decorum, economic opportunity, natural law, manliness, bourgeois virtues and a zillion other issues.

But the same insularity that caused many liberals to lose touch with the rest of the country now causes them to simplify, misunderstand and condescend to the people who voted for Bush. If you want to understand why Democrats keep losing elections, just listen to some coastal and university town liberals talk about how conformist and intolerant people in Red America are. It makes you wonder: why is it that people who are completely closed-minded talk endlessly about how open-minded they are?

What we are seeing is a diverse but stable Republican coalition gradually eclipsing a diverse and stable Democratic coalition. Social issues are important, but they don't come close to telling the whole story. Some of the liberal reaction reminds me of a phrase I came across recently: The rage of the drowning man.

NY Post Editorial NAILS Newsweek's MSM Mentality & Disservice To Public:

2004-11-06T14:17:00.000-08:00

NEWSWEEK'S DERELICTION OF DUTY

November 6, 2004 -- What did Newsweek know — and when did the magazine know it?
Barely 24 hours after the polls closed Tuesday, the newsweekly came out with its special election edition, chock-full of fascinating behind-the-scenes tidbits culled by a team of reporters during the lengthy campaign.
Included with all the little anecdotes (Teresa Heinz Kerry is a royal pain — duh!) was at least one major political bombshell.
After clinching the Democratic nomination, Newsweek reports, John Kerry was so desperate to enlist GOP Sen. John McCain as his running mate that he made an "outlandish" offer: He'd expand the role of vice president to include the duties of secretary of Defense.
Moreover, Kerry — seeking the presidency in a time of grave international danger — promised to put McCain in charge of all U.S. foreign policy should they win.
"You're out of your mind," McCain reportedly told Kerry. "I don't even know if it's constitutional."
John Kerry clearly is not out of his mind — and nobody will ever confuse him with a constitutional scholar.
No, one lesson here is that he is so utterly devoid of moral fiber that he'd trade away the heart and soul of the presidency in order to win the office in the first place.
Faustian doesn't begin to describe the rank ambition behind this proposed bargain: Kerry simply had no soul to sell in the first place.
Truly, America dodged a bullet this past Tuesday.
But how close would that election have been had the voters known that such an offer had been contemplated — much less made?
Not very, we guess.
So why did Newsweek sit on the news for all those months?
Because the magazine promised the campaigns that anything obtained by this team of journalists during the course of the campaign would go unreported until the election was over.
Promises are promises, but whatever happened to what, under different circumstances, Newsweek and similar publications would herald as "the public's right to know"?
It's not as if rules like this haven't been bent or even broken before — when journalists believed there was an important story that could have a dramatic impact on a national campaign.
Back in 1984, for example, a Washington Post reporter who'd enjoyed private — and, presumably, off-the-record — conversations with Jesse Jackson reported that the candidate repeatedly had made disparaging comments about Jews and referred to New York as "Hymietown."
That story had a sensational impact on the campaign — as well it should have. Though Jackson had no shot at the nomination, the idea that a newspaper could sit on a story about a major presidential candidate privately making ethnic insults was unthinkable.
The same holds true here.
True, Newsweek might argue that without having promised to keep it under wraps, its reporters probably never would have learned of the McCain story in the first place.
But journalists — whose performance in this campaign set new lows in its partiality and blatant unfairness — should think long and hard whether such agreements are in the national interest.
Time was when journalists were taught that as soon as they had a story down solid, they went with it.
Holding off on this story may have been a good deal for Newsweek — but it was a disservice to the U.S. electorate.
Voters had a right to know about the depths to which John Kerry was willing to sink in order to win the Oval Office.
And they had a right to know it before they voted, not after.
Keeping the public informed is what journalism used to be about.
Not anymore; not at Newsweek.

Don't Look Now, but the LAND is still SLIDING !!!

2004-11-05T13:29:00.000-08:00

As the overseas military, absentee, and provisionals get counted around the country in their leisurely way, guess what's up, folks? THE POPULAR VOTE GAP IS WIDENING and Bush is now at 52% to 47%, not 51 as on election night. The gap is now not 3 million, but nearly 4.5 MILLION votes! And widening! And widening!

WHY did the Dems lose? Why, as a friend told me the night after--a Dem friend, btw-- are "The Democrats are well on the way to becoming the modern Whig party."???

Here's an email that Instapundit got from a reader that sums it all up perfectly:

"On Tuesday, a majority of the American electorate took a look at their party and asked, "Who are these people?" Who are George Soros, Michael Moore, Tim Robbins, Susan Sontag, Teresa Heinz Kerry and all these other self-anointed spokespersons for everything good and true? And what does a party that is dominated by a loose coalition of the coastal intelligentsia, billionaires with too much spare time, the trial lawyers' association, the Hollywood Actors' Guild, rock stars and unionized labor have in common with what's quaintly known as Middle America? The majority's answers were (a) not us; and (b) not a whole lot.Growing up in Topeka, Kansas (where my dad still lives), and now living in Denver, this is pretty much what my friends and associates are thinking, too. What I'm hearing from the Democrats is that middle America voted on moral values, which I take to be code for "they are a bunch of ignorant, bible thumping sheep". There seems to be a lot of hand wringing over how they could have better conveyed their message to the Midwest, and an arrogance that if they had, Kerry would have won in a landslide. What the Democrats don't understand is that yes, we do understand your message, and we reject it. "

The REAL Red & Blue Truth

2004-11-04T16:16:00.000-08:00

Everybody's looking at the big map--you know the one--that shows the "red" or majority-Republican counties, regions, and states vs. the "blue" or Democrat entities. And all the pundits are saying this means the cultural gap of America is that the coastal elites are "vs" the rest of the heartland. So far so good, but that's a myopic view. I even saw today that the black music star "Nelly" suggested that the country be divided into NorthEast-estan, Redland, and Pacifistan. Ho HO.

BUT....let's get beyond the overall picture and look INTo the individual states, shall we? Remember this-- a blue state doesn't ONLY have Dems in it. It just has MORE Dems than Reps. Why is this important? Because if, as I and most pundits on either side have come to realize this election, the Democrat party is, as a friend of mine who's in it said, "On its way to becoming the Whig Party" in that it is marginalized from "red" voters by its anti-defense, anti-morality, anti-traditional values....well, guess what? EVEN IN THE BLUE STATES there are a chunk--not a majority chunk but a chunk nonetheless--of people who are "red" in those areas. And all it takes therefore in a local election is an issue that inflames enough "red" voters that it sways just a TINY SLIVER of blue voters to tip over the scale!

Look at California. A guaranteed 55-ev-for-Dems state no matter who's the candidate. A guaranteed win for Barbara Boxer this time so conclusively that the Rep candidate didn't even spend a dime on TV. No point in running as a Rep in this state, right?

Tell Arnold. HE made HIMSELF the issue and got enough Dems to like HIM more than they liked pulling the Rep lever less. Now if that starts happening a lot--and it will, especially with titular Dems running to the right more and more to survive (or try to--look at how Daschle, Frost, and others ran with pix of them and Dubya?) well...sooner or later, the Blue goes RED in FACT as well as in values---whichmeans it goes that way strong, semi-permanently, and conclusively.

The blue is getting redder, and they can' t stop it and stay leftists. Period.

Sometimes, the MSM Just Doesn't Get It...

2004-11-04T13:21:00.000-08:00

...or maybe its ALL the time?

This one's too typical. I'm not gonna paraphrase. Read it. And see what mindset will keep dragging the Dems, the Libs, and the MSM into the muck of obscurity. As a very thoughtful Democrat friend of mine said to me at a meeting of a Hollywood union last night, "Well, the Democrats just took another step on the way to becoming the modern version of the Whig party." And here's another example from CNN.
------------------

MEDIA MATTERS

CNN-Netscape picture labels Bush an a--holeNews coverage of Republican win includes graphic slam on president

Do CNN and Netscape have issues with President Bush and the first lady, or is it a case of political bias?
Photo of the Bushes slugged as 'a--hole'

A photograph of the couple featured in online election coverage by the AOL Time Warner companies uses a graphic slur in the coding of the picture.

The photo originally was slugged a--hole.jpg as identified when viewers clicked on the "properties" of the picture. Though the original Web address of the photo with the slur has been disabled, readers last night could actually see the photo isolated with the slur by going to the online address.

The name of the photo has now been changed, with georgelaura135.jpg replacing a--hole.jpg. [Note: The two dashes were not present in the original; rather, the slur was spelled out. WND's editorial standards include the use of dashes to veil profanity and obscenity.]

The photo is accompanied by a headline and caption reading:
"How Bush Won the Election"

"President Bush convincingly won the popular vote thanks to strong backing from his party's conservative base, as well as increased support from minority voters, according to exit polls."

Readers can click on the photo, which then takes them to more extensive election coverage provided by CNN.
The photo is a cropped image of a much larger picture taken by Associated Press photographer Pablo Monsivais on Election Day.

The caption on Yahoo's website states: "President Bush with first lady Laura wave before entering The Crawford Fire Department to vote in Crawford, Texas, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2004. Daughters Barbara and Jenna are in the background."

If readers click on properties for that photo, there is no indication of any obscene language.
As WorldNetDaily checked other photos on the CNN/Netscape coverage, the properties used standard slug names, such as (John) Kerry concedes, or Barack20, referring to Sen.-elect Barack Obama of Illinois.

A spokesman for CNN, Matt Furman, said the network had nothing to do with the slur.

"It was an image produced by an employee of another company," he told WND. "We didn't know anything about it and had nothing to do with it.

"Most importantly, it was never on CNN.com. … It's our picture, but it never appeared on our site."
The image did appear, however, on cnn.netscape.cnn.com, which is labeled as "Netscape network news with CNN."

When asked what company was responsible, Furman would not say, though he suggested WND contact Netscape.

A call to Netscape was not returned by press time.
------------------------

Where have we heard this "Its not OUR fault its THEIR fault!" whine? Does Rathergate come to mind? How about ANY time the MSM is EVER caught at its games?

You know, I have to tell you all how sad all this makes me. I mean it. I like winning--don't mistake that. But if the Dems and the MSM did their work more honorably and better---if they were indeed a vibrant, honest, and fair-minded "loyal opposition" they' d make US better. I hope our side never becomes as flabby-thinking and flabby-fighting a mess as the Dems have become as the "out" party now that they don't know how to deal with a world where they're not in control of the press/news cycle thanks to talkradio and the 'net.

But meanwhile, they just don't get it. And meanwhile, as the election results show, America DOES get it, and that's why they vote for US.

A Sobering, Happy Thought I Just Had

2004-11-03T09:42:00.000-08:00

If the US is the most successful Democracy in World History...and it is....And Dubya got more popular votes than ANY US president--EVER--even beating Ronaldus Maximus's totals...That makes it a FACT of WORLD HISTORY that George W. Bush, the "cowboy" from Texas, has been chosen to lead them by more human beings than any leader in the HISTORY OF THE WORLD!So much for the idiots who still say "the world hates us and its Bush's fault."The MOST CHOSEN LEADER IN HISTORY!That's pretty fantastic, isn't it?

Dick Morris On Exit Poll Outrage:

2004-11-03T07:20:00.000-08:00

This one IS the point for the post-mortems on this election, folks. Read it all HERE:

---------------------

EXIT-POLL OUTRAGE
By DICK MORRIS
In the end, George W. Bush won the elec tion. But the net works were afraid to report that fact to us because their exit polls showed Kerry winning. Conditioned to believe that exit polls could never be wrong, the news anchors were left stuttering and stammering.
Before the polls closed, a friend called me with the results of the ABC-TV tracking polls reflecting a Kerry win in all but one of the swing states. Like the network anchors on election night, I concluded that Kerry would win in a walk.
But then the returns came in. In state after state, it became clear that Bush was running ahead of his performance in 2000: first, Kentucky, three points better, then Indiana, Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia, all for Bush by more than he had in 2000.
Was Bush just piling up votes in his base states? Then Massachusetts came in. Bush lost Massachusetts with 37 percent of the vote — a wipeout — but he had lost the Bay State in 2000 getting only 32 percent of the vote.
That Bush ran better in Kerry's home state than he did in 2000 when he opposed a Tennessean gave me a clear sense that Bush was going to win.
Why did the exit polls show such a Democratic win when the Republicans were ahead all along? Why did they bias the coverage in the favor of the Democrats when Bush was winning from the beginning?
Exit polls are almost impossible to get wrong this way. They are based on interviews with voters as they leave the polling places having just cast their ballots. They don't reflect absentee, mail-in or early-voting ballots, of course — but these voters generally tend Republican. When you combine military votes with those of voters who are likely to travel and need absentee ballots, the bias is all pro-Republican.

So why were the exit polls wrong?
That an exit poll is always right is an axiom of politics. It is easier to assume that a compass is not pointing north than to assume that an exit poll is incorrect. It takes a deliberate act of fraud and bias to get an exit poll wrong. Since the variables of whether or not a person will actually vote are eliminated in exit polling, it is like peeking at the answer before taking the test.
But these exit polls were wrong. And the fact that they were so totally, disastrously wrong is a national scandal. There should be a national investigation to unearth the story behind the bias.
In this election, we have seen CBS go with a story on Bush's National Guard service based on forged documents. We have seen the New York Times and CBS report 377 missing tons of explosives that were not missing, not that many tons and confiscated by American troops. And now we have seen exit polls that were wrong, quite possibly deliberately biased.

And another wonderful reflection by my pal John Derbyshire:

2004-11-03T07:06:00.000-08:00

Here's Darb's take:

-----
Targeted GloatingYEEEEEEEE-HAAAAAAAAA!

At the time of writing — 1:45 A.M. Wednesday morning — George W. Bush needs just one Electoral College vote to get him over the top. I'm going to take this as a done deal, and start gloating.
Now, gloating is of course bad — coarse, heartless, insensitive, and ill-mannered. Magnanimity in victory, that's the thing. Humility, grace, gentlemanly forbearance, there but for the grace of God...
YEEEEEEEE-HAAAAAAAAA!
Sorry, sorry. I was saying... Yes, gloating. Definitely uncouth, undoubtedly bad manners. Still, the fact that the good Lord gave us the capacity for bad manners suggest to me that He meant us to use that capacity — in a properly measured and carefully targeted way, of course. So let's talk about targeted gloating, precision gloating. There are, I mean to say, people who deserve to be gloated at, and people who don't.
John Kerry is in the latter category. He wasn't my guy, and I think he would have been a lousy president. What he did back in '71 was disgraceful and inexcusable. He's a pompous, stuck up, do-you-know-who-I-am? walking entitlement catalog. Still, he campaigned with energy and determination, and mainly with good manners. Nice try, John. No gloating at you.
No gloating at John Edwards, either. He trod lightly on the electoral earth, not even delivering his won state for Kerry. I feel his name and face slipping from my mental inventory already. John who? Not worth a gloat.
I'm not even much inclined to gloat at the media shills who, under the cloak of high-minded, objective journalistic professionalism, did all they could to help Kerry get elected. Sure, they are dishonest. It's the kind of dishonesty that mostly consists of deceiving yourself, though. These aren't fundamentally bad people. I'll even allow that they are patriotic, by their own lights. And, they are pitiful in a way — the way the dinosaurs were pitiful when the sharp-witted little mammals who would eventually inherit the earth were scampering around between their feet, no doubt annoying the heck out of them. Watching the bloggers bring down Dan Rather was of course royal fun, but it was also a spectacle tinged with melancholy.
In fact, I can't even summon up much of a gloat for the Hollywood lefties. They are too stupid, their opinions too vaporous. Who really cares about them? "Vagabonds and strumpets," was the old English view of the acting profession, and I think this is one we got right back then.
That still leaves us plenty of gloat-worthy targets, though. I am going to have no compunction about gloating at Michael Moore, who has done more to boost anti-Americanism world-wide than Farrah Fawcett did for big hair. I was talking to some young English people the other day. They didn't know much about U.S. politics, and half of what they knew came from watching Fahrenheit 911. They knew there was something fishy about that movie, and giggled in a slightly embarrassed way as they played back the opinions they had picked up from it; but those were in fact their opinions faute de mieux, and some of them will stick. In cultures yet further removed from our own — in China, in Latin America, in India, in the Muslim Middle East — Moore's poisonous brew is swallowed without a hiccup, and has become the stuff that "everybody knows..."
Nor do I have any reservations about gloating at George Soros, who has squandered stupendous sums of money in a lost cause.
Then there's the foreigners: the Guardian and Independent newspapers and the BBC in England, the French and the Greeks, Kofi Annan and Mohammed El Baradei...and of course that Friendly Giant to the North. How incredible it must seem to them, to these self-styled sophisticates, that a crude, swaggering boor like George W. Bush should retain the affections of his countrymen after all his crimes and blunders! Well, deal. You're stuck with an honest to God (literally) American conservative — and a conservative America — for another four years. Get used to it.
The big gloat, though, must be directed at our enemies. How they wanted Kerry to win! How they must be sunk in gloom in their caves and hideouts and seedy rented rooms! They knew that, for all his podium salutes and tough talk, Kerry would be another Jimmy Carter, another groveller, another guilt-addled cringing apologizer for America's sins, past and present. Now, instead of a boneless wonder, they are faced with a resolute and determined opponent, a commander-in-chief who actually inspires his troops, and who knows that, as Winston Churchill usefully noted, you can't win wars without fighting.
O.K., Iowa looks good. We're home and dry. There might be some lawyering in our future, but I don't believe the country will stand for much of it — and look at the popular vote. We've won; we're over the top. Let the gloating begin!

What Others Say---Words Of Wisdom

2004-11-03T06:56:00.000-08:00

Here's George Neumayr in the American Spectator---wise as always indeed:

----

Campaign CrawlersNo Dividing the Red Sea

By George Neumayr
Published 11/3/2004 2:29:35 AM

Elite journalists promised not to invest any faith in exit polling in this election. But they did. In the tank for Kerry all along, they took great heart from ill-informed pro-Kerry buzz early in the day based on exit polling. But results in Florida exposed the early reports as flaky conjecture, and as they did, the press corps looked quite hurt that exit pollsters had dashed their hopes again. Republicans will hold the House, Senate, and White House. Yet reporters said ad nauseam that the country is "divided." Apparently not. What does all this talk of division really add up to? Aren't reporters really just saying that they feel divided from the country they cover? If the country is as divided as they eagerly assert, why don't the Democrats control half the branches of government? Why did they lose, not gain, votes in Florida? Why did Bush improve on his popular vote numbers so significantly? The country-is-divided chatter is not a journalistic report, but a wish -- the media's attempt to create the appearance of division so as to create division which might obstruct the progress of conservatism in the country. The Democrats at this point are a bi-coastal party, claiming elite, populous pockets on the two coasts, but the rest of the country isn't interested in their effete agenda. Try as they might, the Democrats and the media can't divide the red sea that runs through much of the country. What will the media conclude from this election? We know what they won't conclude: it certainly won't be that the Democrats are too liberal for America. No, no, that's never the problem. Perhaps elite journalists will even conclude, as they did after the Democrats' disappointing results in the last election cycle, that the Democrats aren't liberal enough. How long before the silent Hillary Clinton becomes quite vocal about the need for a party that "provides a real contrast to the Republicans"? The Kerry decals on the campaign buses will be peeled off as the Al Frankens begin work on the Hillary in 'O8 stickers. When Republicans lose, the media say, "Republicans need to become more liberal, more accommodating," and so on. But when Democrats lose, they say that the country is "bitterly divided" and that the Republican president has a solemn duty to adjust his agenda to the wishes of Democrats. The media will of course demand that Bush bring more Democrats into his cabinet and make this or that compromise. Why should he listen to them? They don't represent the mainstream of the country. The elite were so out to lunch that it came as great revelation to them last night that many Americans named as their most important issue not Iraq, not the economy, but "moral issues." This was an election about "God, guns and gays," to use Howard Dean's phrase, and Kerry with his newly-bought Red Sox cap batted 0 for 3. The American people did not want to entrust one nation under God to a Massachusetts liberal who campaigned with Bruce Springsteen and Peter, Paul, and Mary, a Senator who voted with NARAL 100% of the time, and a renegade Catholic who wouldn't recognize a moral teaching of his own church if it hit him coming around the corner. It was quite a dismaying revelation to the media that so many traditional marriage propositions passed across the country. Reporters treated the numbers like a curious anthropological finding. Kerry was of course tone-deaf on this too. His clumsy appropriation of Lisa Cheney for polemical purposes didn't help him one bit, and his contrived goose-hunting just confirmed to middle America that he was a patrician phony, posing for the peasants while the help collected the fowl he pretended to shoot. It chafes on reporters that the American people voted for George Bush not in spite of his faith but because of it. They work hard to conjure up a "divided" nation on moral and religious matters, but again this is more a reflection of their feelings than the country's. The American people don't have a problem with Bush's faith; the media do. The aging heads of CBS -- Dan Rather, Ed Bradley sporting an earring, Lesley Stahl, and Bob Schieffer -- looked at the results with puzzlement. They had never seen the country so divided -- from their agenda.

Wednesday Morning Bottom Line:

2004-11-03T06:44:00.000-08:00

Okay, let's sum up, shall we, polsportsfans?:

1. Bush has won--no doubt about it. There is NO way that Kerry can win Ohio because the "provisional" and overseas military votes TOTAL are about the same as the Bush lead, and there is NO way that Kerry wins ALL of them, and in many cases the Provisionals are not even valid or counted once they inspect them. It is fine to wait a day to say this, and you'll notice that NOBODy in the Kerry establishment is doing the kind of angry, nasty, defiant stuff that the Gore folks did 4 years ago. An electoral victory of 280-something (how it will come out in the end) isn't quite a 300-vote or more "landslide" as I'd hoped for, but still, it is decisive and it is WELL outside the "margin of error" stats or anything like what happened 4 years ago---the proof being that even CARVILLE was conceding on CNN last night, and the Kerry folks were quite subdued and respectful of the President's apparant victory.

2. Republican party increased majority in the Senate, in the House, and beat the Dem leader Daschle. That is a decisive and serious win for the President too.

3. All of this happened DESPITE a lot of nasty shit from the move.on types---Republicans had 30 vehicles they'd rented to get voters to the polls have their tires slashed, people sabotaged voting machines, etc. etc. And a LOT of this happened in particular in both Ohio and Pennsylvania, so it is POSSIBLE that without the Fraud the President would have won even BIGGER and taken Penn. too.

4. The President won a DECISIVE 3% victory in the POPULAR vote--and in fact, the total vote number is on record now as the BIGGEST POPULAR VOTE for ANY president in history--even bigger than Reagan's 2nd term landslide. And THAT is before a lot of the overseas military votes in all states have been counted, and you can guess which way those will run. And THAT my friend IS VERY MUCH a Landslide. The only reason why it isn't a larger pct. victory (and 3% in this day and age is huge considering that BOTH Bush in his first term AND Clinton in BOTH terms didn't even win 50%) is only because there was such a high turnout on both sides.

5. Last but not least, the early "exit polls" were clearly fiddled with and/or ineptly done. In mid-morning, Drudge and others were releasing rumors of huge Kerry victory via exit polls--silly numbers like 8% leads and more. Why did this happen? Either the exit poll people just screwed up (if you believe in the tooth fairy and that this can happen nationwide, go for it) OR it was INTENTIONAL and/or sabotage of those polls by somebody. Who's got something to win by that? NOT Republicans---If their people think Kerry's sweeping the nation early, they're liable to give up--especially in states like NY and CA where the overall state count isn' t in doubt--and that would have DEPRESSED the popular vote LANDSLIDE that the president won nationwide--- AND REMEMBER, the BASIS of the Gore challenge was "He didn't even win the popular vote!" and that was the beginning of all the silly self-serving attacks on the Electoral College etc. etc.

No, the only reason to have those fake polls happen is to (a) kill Rep. popular vote and (b) rally the Kerry troops in the HOPE that somehow you can overcome what your internal polls already told you--that you're going to lose in Ohio and thus lose the election. All day long yesterday, from Kerry himself to Lockhart to the increasingly bizarre Susan Estrich, the Kerry-folks were clearly and visibly shaken and in shock and awe that they'd ALREADY LOST from the start of the day on, and THEY knew the exit polls were BS. They tried to put a good face on it, (and the crooks tried to win by de-legitimizing Bush with an exit-poll-rigged popular-vote squeaker,) but hey, that's politics. Meanwhile, the good guys still won.

6. Look for Kerry to concede more or less today, say it is good to count (which it is) to get the final tallys, but meanwhile, the election is over, Bush won--he was ELECTED not "selected" in a POPULAR vote landslide and an ELECTORAL vote victory, the people had their say, and the nation is, in my opinion, MUCH better off and safer for it. Business will rally. Stocks will rise. Taxes will stay low or get lower. Republicans will have a larger majority in both houses of Congress, and I, at least, will be one happy fellow for at least a few days, ok?

NOW THEN...let's get back to kicking terrorist butt, lowering taxes, reforming tort law, making healthcare competetive and market-driven and thus more affordable, improving education so the 21st century jobs stay her while we outsource the dummy jobs overseas--again with competition, not by throwing dollars at unionized slacker teachers. OH, and lowering the deficit would be nice, but it will happen as the economy--and federal tax revenues even at the lower rates--continue(s) to rise and grow and thrive.

Damn, its a good day to be the winners, and 58 MILLION votes say so--conclusively.

This is not 2000. This is 2004. And it is yet another Morning In America---Dubya-style!

I'm NoPajamas, and I approved this message.

Okay, So It Squeaked A Little More Than I Expected, But...

2004-11-02T22:12:00.000-08:00

...y'know what?

I still feel like a nice, old-fashioned yell.

Join me?

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKKKAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which is NoPajamese for:

Four More Years!

Every voter today sent his country a Valentine. We all love it in our own way, and we all sent it a lovenote called a ballot.

I'm glad there were more of OUR lovers than THEIRS, but either way, let's all love it MORE and fight over it less.

God Bless President George W. Bush,
And God Bless The United States Of America!

Good Luck Charms? GOOD LUCK!

2004-11-02T15:34:00.000-08:00

Brit Hume on Fox Report just offered an interesting "Grapevine" bit about the many good luck charms John Kerry is carrying with him, either in his pockets or in a briefcase, all day today. They range from his mom's St. Christopher medal to a bible from Max Cleland to a "magic corn stalk" from an indian supporter to a "lucky guitar pick" from Bruce Springsteen. Fine.

BUT....

Without giving credence to either persuasion, the thought came to my mind: If Kerry was a Republican, wouldn't ALL the news media be all over this with derision, even hinting it showed strains of madness or irrationality of some kind?

Answer--yes, and we KNOW it. How?

Remember Nancy Reagan's astrology fixation?

Thanks MSM. You really are "unfair and imbalanced" ---even, at times perhaps, on Fox.

A Glorious Day To Be Alive, American, & Sensible!

2004-11-02T07:09:00.000-08:00

Friends,
This morning, about 6:15 am Pacific time, my phone woke me up. It was my stepdaughter calling from Georgia to ask why I wasn't up getting ready to vote! All three of our kids there in school or, as with the eldest who called, with families and a year-old Grandkid Numero Uno, had already either voted in advance or been to the polls today in their FIRST Presidential Election--all were too young to vote 4 years ago. They are so EXCITED to vote for President Bush today! And I am, too.

I am PROUD to vote for the man who's brought freedom to MILLIONS around the world.
I am PROUD to vote for the man who's brought tax relief and opportunity to MILLIONS here at home.
I am PROUD to vote for the man who's brought the concept of morality, principle, and ethics back to the White House after 8 long years when the ethical dress code was "character optional" in OUR house--the PEOPLE'S house--on Pennsylvania Avenue.
I am PROUD to be a part of what I sincerely believe will be a relative LANDSLIDE and MANDATE for good government, freedom, security, and justice, and to join my MILLIONS of friends, neighbors, and fellow Americans in that great enterprise.
I am PROUD beyond my ability to express to be voting FOR somebody instead of against somebody, to be voting FOR a REAL plan instead of for a repeated empty mantra of "I have a plan..." I am proud to vote FOR the President having NEVER voted AGAINST him first, and I am PROUD to be predictably, boringly, dogmatically, emphatically conservative and Republican, since the party that was good enough for Lincoln, the Great Emancipator of America, is now the party of Bush, the Great Emancipator of Arabia.
AND I AM PROUD to vote for a "cowboy" too--as some of you know, I once had a website called "BigBoots.US" about the fact that America's enemies and former friends in Europe and at home all use the term "cowboy" as an insult and epithet against our President, but they just don't understand: The COWBOY is the GOOD GUY. The COWBOY is the guy who rides in, sees the bad guys, stops them, gets the cattle back, saves the ranch, saves the town, saves the girl, gets a kiss--and maybe gives his horse one--and then rides off without a dollar for himself or a thought for his own personal gain to find more bad guys to stop. The COWBOY is the GOOD GUY, folks. And I'm PROUD to vote for the GOOD GUYS anytime.

So, I'm going to wait for the rush-hour crowd to diminish down at the clubhouse at our community where our polling place is, then stroll on down there with my wonderful wife (oh--wait--maybe I'll DRIVE so I can legally and PROUDLY park my little car with its bumper sticker featuring a portrait of Governator Aaahnold and the message "Don't Be A Girlie Man--Vote For Bush!" on it, right by the entrance,) and PROUDLY vote, jump in the hot tub for half an hour, chat with my neighbors, and then come home to spend a day of excitement watching the LANDSLIDE of PROUD VOTERS win over the whineslide of negative, smarmy, smartass, glum, no-sense-of-humor, no-sense-of-duty, no-sense-of-integrity, and just plain no-sense Dems.

I'm PROUD today, friends.
And today, AMERICA will do ITSELF PROUD....and re-elect in numbers that will astound most of you, befuddle the MSM, and not even slightly shock or awe the good guys and gals of the blogosphere but will indeed shock and awe the world and my friends in Hollywood and Manhattan....the one, the only COWBOY in this race.

God Bless President George W. Bush, And God Bless These United States Of America, the Land Of the PROUDLY Free!

Justice: Capitalism-Style!

2004-11-02T07:05:00.000-08:00

Here's a nice little "silver lining" tidbit of news you might miss in the election clutter. Guess what MSM lie-mongering TV show is facing ratings decline cancellation possibilities??? Nahhhhh it COULDN'T be Rathergate-Land, could it? Yes. It could, as the NY Post relates:

---------------

'60 MINS WEDNESDAY' THREATENED

November 2, 2004 -- CBS is mulling the possi bile cancellation of the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes," according to reports.
The show that brought so much negative attention to the network in the wake of Dan Rather's questionable report on President Bush's National Guard years has been suffering declining ratings since it debut three years ago, according to Broadcasting & Cable, an industry trade magazine.
Buzz from inside the network is that the mid-week edition of the venerable news show got a reprieve last spring only because of its exclusive report on the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison, the magazine reports.
At least one CBS insider called the report "a hyper inflated rumor" and said it would be unlikely that the network would cancel the show in reaction to fallout from the Rather story.
But the staff of the original, Sunday-night version of "60 Minutes" has never been happy with the spin-off — worried that it watered down the franchise.
Ironically, the Bush piece — which was based on documents Rather later said could not be authenticated — was produced by Mary Mapes, the same producer who was credited with breaking the Iraqi prison-abuse story.
CBS officials yesterday declined to comment on the report, saying the company "doesn't comment on rumor and speculation."
An independent investiagtion by former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and ex-Associated Press chief Louis Boccardi has been looking into Rather's report on "60 Minutes Wednesday" since last September and is expected to release its findings sometime after today's election.

AND THE ANSWER IS....

2004-11-01T13:00:00.000-08:00

...............
...........
..........
.......
.....
....
...
..
.

(wait for it)

.
....
.......
...........
.............
..................

SHAKANAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

(aka "Shock & Awe!")

You heard it here first.

Again.

Now back to work.

So Riddle Me This:

2004-11-01T11:57:00.000-08:00

WHEN we win most of the swing states, a decisive victory in the popular vote, and 10,000 Democrat lawyers are left stunned along with the pundits and pollsters (who really know better today, but are hyping the allegedly close race because it means ratings and readers for another 48 hours) and everybody who's believing the desperation-dripping Kerryhype...............what will the effect be called?

ANSWER next Post...stay tuned!

Happy SUNDAY!

2004-10-31T13:36:00.000-08:00

It is a BEAUTIFUL day, and there's MUCH to report on.

FIRST, you MUST go read Hugh Hewitt's blog today HERE. He's got a great bit of anecdotage about the Kerry folks and how they're giving away the fact that they expect to LOSE tomorrow in radio interviews. Read it--I won't do it an injustice by short-cutting an excerpt here.

SECOND, the Osama tape is LONGER than what was shown briefly on TV to us. And guess what's in the rest of it? The NY POST reports HERE that it includes:

1. Osama crying and moaning about how well the Afghan elecions went and how LITTLE his forces were able to disrupt them violently.
2. Osama bemoaning how EFFECTIVE the US (read BUSH AMINISTRATION--the same folks Kerry says are incompetent) has been in arresting, killing, and shutting down his minions. He's also feeling the pressure in the Pakistani hills and dales. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..... don't look now, Osama, but that's not some kid in a Dubya mask breathing down your neck with the trick-or-treat bag full of whupass behind you.

THIRD: Be sure to read Mark Steyn's latest HERE about the silly self-denial that most endorsements of Kerry contain--basically saying, as he puts it in closing, the following:

====
It's only a day or so now till the chad-dangling round of Campaign 2004 begins but, when the lawsuits are over and the bloodletting begins, serious Democrats need to confront the intellectual emptiness of their party, which Kerry's campaign embodies all too well. The Dems got a full tank from FDR, a top-up in the Civil Rights era, and they've been running on fumes for 30 years. Their last star, Bill Clinton, has no legacy because, deft as he was, his Democratic Party had no purpose other than as a vehicle for promoting his own indispensability. When he left, the Democrats became a party running on personality with no personalities to run. Hence, the Kerry candidacy. Despite the best efforts of American editorialists, there's no there there.
====
Kinda sums things up, doesn't it?

FINALLY...don't forget to visit the INCOMPARABLE "Horserace Blog" where the amazing Jay Cost holds forth with the polls BEHIND the polls and the REAL story of the coming Bush LANDSLIDE--that's MY word for it, not his, but the truth is the truth---

Be resolute, keep working, but be of VERY good cheer, folks! Its going to be an even MORE beautiful day Wednesday morning when we awaken and find that we're STILL happily and safely in George W. Bush' s America.

Frustrate the French! VOTE FOR BUSH!

Uncle Wolder has gone totally around the bend....

2004-10-30T15:55:00.000-07:00

...and it is a sad, sad thing to watch the formerly "most trusted man in America" as his lights go out.

This should be a spoof, but you can't make this stuff up, kids:

-------------------
CRONKITE: KARL ROVE BEHIND BIN LADEN TAPE?Sat Oct 30 2004 16:31:19 ETFormer CBSNEWS anchorman Walter Cronkite believes Bush adviser Karl Rove is possibly behind the new Bin Laden tape.Cronkite made the startling comments late Friday during an interview on CNN.Somewhat smiling, Cronkite said he is "inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing."Interviewer Larry King did not ask Cronkite to elaborate on the provocative election eve observation.
------------------

If I were finishing the story based on this much, I'd add the following:

"The former CBS icon also suggested that a "5th Terrorist" team riding a "Grassy 747" were actually tasked to blow up Disneyland on Sept 11, and of course noticed that "You never see Tommy Franks and Genghis Khan together at the same time, do you?" After completing his CNN interview, the jovial Cronkite put back on the tinfoil helmet he'd worn to the studio and skipped out the door softly humming "Follow The Yellow Brick Road!" as staffers applauded with respect for the famous anchor."

The Osama Tape--America Connects The Dots

2004-10-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

Let's be frank, folks--there have been a LOT of Bush supporters for the past year or so saying, quietly and with regret to themselves, "Gosh, I pray to God nothing happens, but IF there actually IS another terror attack before the election a la Spain, it sure would be a good thing for the re-election of the President." and they were right. It would have been the silver lining of a terrible cloud nobody wants or wanted.

But thank God AND thank BUSH and his administration, we didn't get hit -not that it isn't a daily possible reality in the age of terror. Because, as noted earlier, the expert security efforts of the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, Military and other branches of our President's government--the executive branch, remember--have done such a GREAT JOB of protecting us that clearly Osama could NOT launch an attack here as his people did in Spain, no matter how much they clearly wanted to.

So what did we get instead? A tape. A tape that says a great deal about Osama and about America, too. Why us, not just him? Because a good half of the speech's text referred to the world vision expressed in particular by Michael Moore in his infamous lie-filled mockumentary. It is VERY clear that Osama has not only seen the video, he's worn out his DVD of it. He's bought into it, or vice versa--well, maybe not Moore's famous silly statement that "there is no terrorist threat!" but...

So not only do we get NO bloodshed, thank God, we STILL get the EFFECT of that--that people's minds have been "concentrated" just before voting on the very real threat that still exists out there. That's got to be good for the President's campaign hopes, and many pundits this weekend are now revising their estimations from "squeaker" or "close" to "broad victory" or even, believe it or not, "landslide." I, for the record, stick to my predictions made before this tape--Bush 55% popular and about 300 electoral votes--see other postings for details.

But why? Not just because of the terror reminder that this "halloween" video has given us. It is because of that Michael Moore-ish detail found in the tape. Clearly if you draw a dotted line from Osama to Moore, and then consider Moore's seat of honor next to Jimmy Carter at John Kerry's convention, you have to be honest, no matter which side you're on, and realize who Osama'd be voting for if he were hiding in the hills of Kentucky instead of Pakistan or wherever. And no American, no matter their party or world view, really wants to be on the same side as Bin Laden, except for misguided thugs like that kid who was Osama's warm-up act with his "blood will run" tape who, it turns out, was a local bully at an islamic center here in Southern California whose prior claim to fame was beating up the teachers and head of that mosque.

George W. Bush said, "Either you're with America, or you're with the Terrorists."
Now America--individual voters--have to answer the question: "Are you with Michael Moore and Osama, or are you with America?" and the answer will, indeed, decide many voters on the edge.....and many more who didn't perhaps call themselves "undecided" but who, looking at that gaunt, bearded butcher's face on the TV all weekend, stop and look at their kids and families and futures and just plain put party and the rest of the noise aside and admit what the larger polls show--by a 60-40 margin or more, everybody in America KNOWS that of these two candidates, there's one who will be much tougher and better on the war on terror--the war that will decide our futures--and his name is NOT Kerry.

The Osama tape is a VICTORY for AMERICA--and frankly, his adherents and admirers in the Middle East and elsewhere who are smart will see that, too. They'll say, "Well, we were wondering what he was going to do about the US Election, and this is IT??? A bully boy's boasting threats, then the maestro's speech stealing all its lines from an INFIDEL slob in America???" And meanwhle, troops are poising to solve the Fallujah problem once and for all, elections were a success in Afghanistan and will be in Iraq, and the other 25% of Al Quaeda's leadership will be in the bag or in the grave soon, too---including the man on the TV who, like the fool on the hill, sits alone and defeated...and on his way to meet Allah.

Knee-Jerk Liberals Can Kick--But Can't Exert Self-Control....LITERALLY!

2004-10-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

This one is so full of irony and unconscious self-revelation that you'd almost expect it to be a parody from The Onion, but alas, 'tis true. Here's the story:
----------------------
Colo. teacher kicks student for wearing GOP shirt off campus - Saturday, October 30, 2004
(10-30) 12:58 PDT DURANGO, Colo. (AP) --
A part-time college instructor has apologized for kicking a student because he was wearing a Republican shirt.
Fort Lewis College student Mark O'Donnell said he was showing people his College Republicans sweat shirt, which said "Work for us now ... or work for us later," when Maria Spero kicked him in the leg at an off-campus restaurant.
Spero then said "she should have kicked me harder and higher," said O'Donnell. "To physically take that out on someone because you disagree with them, that is completely wrong."
Spero, a visiting instructor of modern languages, apologized to O'Donnell in a letter dated Oct. 29.
"I acted entirely inappropriately by kicking you, giving vent to a thoughtless knee-jerk political reaction that should never have happened," she wrote. "Before the incident, I did not know you and that you are a Fort Lewis student."
The college also formally apologized, said David Eppich, assistant to the school's president.
O'Donnell said the apology wasn't enough and he plans to file a complaint with the college.
The only phone number listed in Durango for the surname Spero was constantly busy Saturday.
Durango police did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
--------------------------------

One might ask a lot of things of this little kicker, such as "What does the fact that the target of her ASSAULT was a student where she teaches have to do with ANYthing?" or "Why is this a 'complaint' with 'the college' and not a "Put her in jail for criminal assault & battery?" "

The issue of course is one I personally have been talking about for years: Believe it or not, this story explains why so-called "Hate-Crimes Legislation" is so ultimately wrong. Crimes, by and large, are about BEHAVIOR. It is not within the rights of the government or society to legislate what we BELIEVE, whether it is about God or abortion or peace or war or left or right politics or little green men on mars. Those beliefs, in fact, are granted as RIGHTS to us by our Constitution, and a very noble, wonderful, and unique-in-the-world-at-the-time thing it was, too, when they were so-granted. But CRIMES are about BEHAVIOR. If I BELIEVE you're an asshole, that's my right. If I PUNCH you because of it, I'm guilty of a crime--not because of my"motivation" but because of my BEHAVIOR.

Burn a cross on somebody's lawn? It is arson, trespassing, assault, and you're going to jail, buddy.
But when misguided do-gooder legislatures then say, "Aha, but because it wasn't a fire in your trash can but, instead, a fire with a SYMBOL and a HISTORY, we're going to call it a "hate crime" and make it WORSE!" they are unwittingly giving the defendent a loophole the size of Jupiter. If I have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you were there, you lit the fire, you trespassed to do it, and the damages the fire caused to get a conviction for trespass, arson, and assault, etc. etc., well, that's one burden of proof. But IF I ALSO have to somehow go into your mindset and figure out WHY you did it and what wierd belief system drove you to it, and FAIL TO CONVICT if I FAIL TO ESTABLISH that you held a certain BELIEF or OPINION??? Wow. Loser case, in most cases, because there is, you'll pardon the expression, no black or white to find--only shades of very murky grey.

Punish behavior. Tolerate and argue with beliefs. That's what America is about.

So when this idiot leftist jerk teacher person THINKS what she thinks, I can certainly laugh at her foolishness, argue with her points if she has any, and debate her in the public square. I can even wear my shirt with a slogan she abhors even though I don't even know her. But when SHE decides to KICK ME and tell me she was aiming "higher" just because she disagrees with that shirt--I reallydon't care WHY she did what she did, I just want her butt in the pokey for it. It is a CRIME to assault people--not a "complaint with the school" issue, but a CRIMINAL offense.

Throw her lefty butt in jail. THAT's the American Way, no matter who she is, why she did it, or what foolish twaddle she "believes."

Oh That Osama!

2004-10-29T14:57:00.000-07:00

Here's the bottomline folks:
Osama sent a video because he CAN'T send a bomb.
Osama does NOT want to help Bush by sending this tape, AND Osama is SMART enough to know that anything that reminds American voters of the terror threat reminds them why, by 20% points or more, they think Bush will do a better job of fighting him and his ilk than Kerry ever could or would.
So why the tape anyhow?
Because, just like Bush and Kerry this weekend, Osama has to encourage his "base."
He's got umpteen raghead morons out there around the world--not to mention most of them in Iraq being decimated by the good guys--who are ALSO very aware that this is Election Eve Weekend in America-the-great-Satan.And allllllll of them are thinking, "Okay, where's Bubbah? What will our glorious leader do to the evil infidels?Is he still alive? Is he still worth fighting for? Have the evil Americans actually stoppedhim?"

Osama probably HATES that he's helping to re-elect the only President who stood up to him and whose efforts, no matter what the French&Co. say, have captured or killed most of his leadership and key people. He probably KICKS himself for that. But that's about what he WANTS. Putting the tape out is what he NEEDS to do to keep the faithful faithful.

Osama wasn't about anyone's agenda but Osama's with this tape. He HAD to make an appearance. That's all it means.....except, of course, it means he's pretty damned impotent right now--just the way we like him.

John Kerry SPEAKS!

2004-10-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

And what blather. You know, there is NOTHING that President Bush, Veep Cheney, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, or the Man in the Moon can say about this jerk that he hasn't said even WORSE about himself every time he opens his mouth. Just read this from last night's interview with Tom Brokaw on NBC, and see if this is the kind of MIND, Man, or Pol you want as YOUR "nuanced" president:

TOM BROKAW: The fact is, Senator, we still don't know what happened to those explosives. How many for sure that were there. Who might have gotten away with them. Is it unfair to the president, just as you believe he's been unfair to you, to blame him for that?
JOHN KERRY: No. It's not unfair. Because what we do know, from the commanders on the ground, is that they went there, as they marched to Baghdad. We even read stories today that they broke locks off of the doors, took photographs of materials in there. There were materials. And they left.
TOM BROKAW: The flip side of that is that if you had been President, Saddam Hussein would still be in power. Because you--
JOHN KERRY: Not necessarily at all.
TOM BROKAW: But you have said you wouldn't go to war against him?
JOHN KERRY: That's not true. Because under the inspection process, Saddam Hussein was required to destroy those kinds of materials and weapons.
TOM BROKAW: But he wasn't destroying them.
JOHN KERRY: And we would--but that's what you--have inspectors for. And that's why I voted for the threat of force. Because he only does things when you have a legitimate threat of force. It's absolutely impossible and irresponsible to suggest that if I were President, he wouldn't necessarily be gone. He might be gone. Because if he hadn't complied, we might have had to go to war. And we might have gone to war. But if we did, I'll tell you this, Tom. We'd have gone to war with allies in a way that the American people weren't carrying the burden and the entire world understood why we were doing it.

Jeez....such a putz. Thank goodness he's not shy about exposing it, and that the common sense of the American people is at work in the election and will vote on Tuesday.

Those that LIVE by the MSM will DIE by the MSM!

2004-10-29T11:31:00.000-07:00

The irony today is neck-deep in Kerryland. Here's the latest re. QaQaa-Gate:

1. Every pro pol on both sides of the aisle who isn't in direct pay of the Kerry folks has stated that Kerry's rushing into the QaQaa has been a MAJOR blunder--not only because it once again exposes Kerry as a knee-jerk anything-to-get-elected jerk who will boldly LIE even when the facts are either unknown (as his own Foreign Policy Advisors admitted) or AGAINST him, as the facts now reveal...but ALSO because it is idiotic in the last week of a campaign to fight your opponent on the issues you clearly have LOST to him--NOBODY really thinks Kerry is stronger on defense and terror--NOBODY. The PLAN should have been and was to emphasize domestic issues where, putatively, the dems are stronger, but instead, with ads, speeches, and surrogates, the Kerryites dove into dat tar baby with all dere might, and wound up in serious QaQaa.

2. The QaQaa-Gate story was intended by the MSM to be an "October Surprise" dumped by 60 Minutes and the Dan Ratherfoolish folks on the eve of the vote. Instead, the NYTimes broke it early, the Kerry folks went into auto-pilot (probably had the commercials ready in advance in collaboration with 60minutes and only had to substitute NYT for CBS as the source.)

3. NOW, as the QaQaa hits the fan and the bottomline--that by using this LIE-filled story, Kerry is dissing the TROOPS who were tasked with the weapons securing AND exposing that any explosives that got away to Syria got there because of the UN delays of Kerry's pals in France, Germany, and more directly Russia, all of whom were cashing those oil-for-blood chits in the biggest financial scandal in the history of the WORLD--there's a new wrinkle,which is this:

4. TODAY (Friday before election day) Kerry spokesman Joe Lockhart, who was among the most vitriolic in saying the President was "beneath contempt!" in this issue only yesterday, has come out and said, and I paraphrase, "Well, we thought we WON this issue over the past couple of days and we were ready to move on to other issues such as the domestic agenda, but the continuing news stories are keeping it alive, not us."

IN OTHER WORDS, the fact that the MSM is actually FOLLOWING UP on the story it THOUGHT it would use to kill Bush's re-election is FORCING the Kerry folks to stay ON this issue they never should have touched and is continuing to REMIND voters of Kerry's perfidy on it, and Joe is upset about that.

ROTFL!

Let's parse and paraphrase Joey a bit further, shall we? What he really said was this:

"How DARE our PARTNERS IN CRIME in the MSM keep us ON this topic we SHOULD have NEVER gotten on when we want to DROP it now that we realized our mistake!"

Gosh, what will Kerry do now? Condemn the NYTimes and CBS as tools of "this President"??? Will he pretend Karl Rove created all this, even planted the explosives in Iraq in the first place?

And MEANWHILE...the world realizes that the UN, Kerry's treasured home of diplomacy and order, not only is up to its Kofi in Oil-For-Food QaQaa, but is also now exposed as having its top weapons guy, El-Baradei, trying to MEDDLE in a US ELECTION by just HAPPENING to release his little letter that started this whole ball rolling at the time he did.

The UN tries to RIG a US election, Kerry says he LOVES the UN, the MSM plays its part in the crooked game and then does it TOO well and TOO long for the Kerry folks' happiness, and nobody stops to wonder.....hmmm, doesn't THAT make a certain kind of sense?

Yes, we do.

Bush 55% plus. Only a few days now, and then we can watch the Dems rip each other apart in recriminations and accusations. You think "Who lost China?" was big? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

New Electoral Computations....MORE Reasons To Believe.

2004-10-29T11:03:00.000-07:00

Minnesota is going Bush. The internals are in, and there is a STRONG probability it will be in the Red State column on Election Day....or night.

So where does that leave us? Let's try another hypothetical, shall we?

Give Kerry California, Oregon, & Washington....then fly a LONG way east....and add Illinois...then fly onwards.... and you get to the Maine, Vermont, New York, Mass., RI, Del, Ct., MD, DC....

NOW PRESUME that the following "battlegrounds" are STILL UP FOR GRABS (which I doubt, but...):

New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michegan.

That leaves Bush with the following: AK, HI (that's right--its a Hula, folks, with Dick Cheney en route to the Islands just to ice the cake this weekend) Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico (Kerrys' pulled ad money and given this one up, ) Colorado (ditto,) Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota (adios Puff Daschle) Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, & West Virginia.

Know what that electoral total winds up being?

Kerry 171,
Bush TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY.

Now think for a moment what that means---it means that EVEN IF KERRY TOOK NH, NJ, Penn, OH, AND MI,
he still LOSES!

Since you only need 271 to win, winnign with 290 is certainly decisive--much more so than in 2000, and if Bush picks up Ohio for another 20, or even Michegan or NJ--which are NOT out of the question but less likely, then even giving Kerry NH and Penn, its not much work for those 10,000 lonely lawyers.

When it isn't close, the Dems can't steal it. That's the answer, and that's why I stick to my earlier prediction:
Bush popular vote 55% ....or more.

And Speaking Of Euro-Weenies.....

2004-10-28T14:49:00.000-07:00

...the French seem to have figured out the election just as I have--which is about all I'll ever have in common with those folks---remember, I'm the creator of that now-infamous website "FranceStinks.com"---but here's a fascinating exchange from THE AMERICAN THINKER between one of its writers and a French diplomat:

------------------

The French write off Kerry

The French have announced they are seeking renewed good relations with the U.S., calling it a "a new alliance" with the U.S., no matter who wins Tuesday's election, according to The Telegraph of London. For fun, I called up my favorite French diplomat at a distant embassy and asked him what he made of that particular statement.

"Don't call it a 'new alliance' just yet," mon ami told me on the phone. "We don't want people to think it's some political-party alliance with the Democrats."

I asked him why anyone would think that.

"You know every one of us here is for Kerry."

Well, obvious enough. Yes? So?

"We have to be very cautious now. Just call it friendlier relations."

Suddenly the point of the new policy is clear:

The French have written off Kerry.

A.M. Mora y Leon

Great Quote Of The Day:

2004-10-28T14:46:00.000-07:00

An interesting "you readers send in the questions and he answers" interview with one of my all-time faves, P.J. O'Rourke (believe it or not, I actually wooed my wife long-distance by reading her PJ's columns on the phone late at night---and HE believed it after we convinced him it was true when we met him at the Reagan Library one fine day after many happy years of marital bliss.) You can read it HERE in full, but the best line among many bon mots?

Question: If elected, can John Kerry live up to the expectations of left-wing Europeans?

PJ's Answer: If Stalin couldn't, I don't think Kerry's going to be able to.

The Way Politics Works---and what it tells us about KERRY now...

2004-10-27T23:27:00.000-07:00

Here's the straight poop---you may be wondering why you're seeing Kerry and Edwards in their "home" areas--the bluest areas of blue states--as the campaign winds down. One reason--they (and their handlers who are crunching internal polls over and over with sadder and sadder expressions) know that they've ALREADY lost the election...unless desperate (and failing) moves like the fizzled QaQaa-Gate October No-Prize work for them (not a chance.) But they also know that if they are SEEN TO BE LOSERS even up to election day, MASSES of voters will RUN.

Here's why: The majority of Kedwards voters are not voting FOR the candidates--in fact, they consider the brand of leftist lipservice served up by Kerry & Breckgirl to be "wet" and weak. They're only in this because their darling, Howard Dean, did his scream thing and became a joke and because they think if they help Kerry win they'll be able to take control of the party the way Clinton did via McAuliffe when HE saved it from defeat by tacking to the middle/right. BUT that only works as long as there's a CHANCE of winning. The moment the defeat of Kerry becomes inevitable, these people either (a) rush to Nader to protest, or maybe a Green candidate or anyone else but the failed didn't-go-left-enough-to-win Kerry (what they'll say when he loses to offer themselves as an alternative next time--and btw, that's BAD news for Hillary, even with her Stalinist healthcare dreams) or (b) stay home and pout.

Please note, as brilliant Horserace Blog has exposed, that the Kerry camp's entire "get out the vote" effort this year is SUBCONTRACTED to groups like ACT and MOVE ON.org and the labor unions (aka public employees and teachers--not many others left with union cards in entrepreneurial no-manufacturing-drudgery America circa 2005) and these folks are the FIRST ones who'll get all pissy and give up the moment they see past the sham and show and take a good look at the loser behind the curtain that is Kerry.

So...the only thing the Kerry folks can do is spout all these lousy, tired, boring slogans on all the TV shows (does it amaze anyone else out there the way it does me that these clearly bright folks can manage to be such bad actors with such bad scripts over and over again? Isn't that why people like Bob Beckel who don't read the talking points by rote are such FUN even if on the wrong side, because they're so RARE?) because they HOPE that reciting the mantras over and over will get the drones in line for another 6 days. After that? Who cares--we lost. Regroup and find another job.

This thing is OVER folks--and the stunning part for those who don't realize the dynamics above will be that the President will win 80% of the swing states, blow away the battlegrounds, and take my already predicted 55% plus of the popular vote because the whiners, lefty losers, and socialists will simply either (a) vote Nader/whoever as a protest or (b) STAY HOME...and so will their Soros-backed get-out-the-vote efforts, too.
Soros, that alleged financial genius, missed the point---it isn't that you can't buy people with enough money, because clearly you can--it is that the KIND of people you CAN buy aren't WORTH all that money. The classic case of a man who knows the PRICE of everything but the VALUE of nothing. Couldn't happen to a nicer socialist billionaire, I say.

What say you?

Qa Qaa-Gate Part Deux: The QaQaa Gets DEEPER!

2004-10-27T22:57:00.000-07:00

The latest details:
1. The RUSSIAN SPECIAL FORCES helped Sadaam move the explosives to SYRIA in the weeks leading up to the US assault on Iraq----so what will Kerry say now, that it was Bush's PAL PUTIN and thus Bush is at fault?
2. The IRAQI docs don't jibe with the UN inspector docs that say that (a) it may not have been anywhere near as much of this high-explosive stuff as we've been told that was IN the Al QaQaa bunkers in the first place, and (b) that the "seals" the UN types put on the DOORS did not also seal the VENTILATION SLATS (aka HUGE WINDOWS) that could be removed for access to remove the goodies without breaking the seals! What will Kerry say about THAT--will he blame BUSH for his pals in Blixland's complicity?
3. Dick Morris on H&C tonight on Fox points out that Kerry's completely blown the election by going after this total fabrication so hot and heavy because every time the campaign is based on security, defense, and terror, Bush wins and Kerry LOSES. Right on, Dick. As he put it "You know, those kids, McCurry and Lockhart, I tried to teach 'em but....."
4 All of which doesn't even begin to get into the HUGE scandal beneath this tempest-in-teapot, as brilliantly illuminated by Cliff May on O'Reilly tonight--that we now have a UN Official--Al Baradei, who knows the US opposes his reappointment to the Atomic Energy inspection team the UN--directly trying to influence a US election by giving the docs that started this up to NYT/CBS, and the THREE of them in bed with Kerry to try to make an "October Surprise" out of complete and utter QAQAA!!!

The plot thickens, children, and the QaQaa gets chin-deep--even on Lurch' s tall-drink-of-Perrier frame.

Prediction Time--Out On A Limb....

2004-10-27T02:16:00.000-07:00

...but what the heck,here goes:

I believe that President Bush will carry the following (more or less west to east--hey, I'm in L.A.):

Red States Or Expectedly Red: Alaska, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia

(Total Electoral Votes: 223)

Kerry will take the following blue-or-expectedly-blue states: California (but by nowhere NEAR the expected plurality--we're going to surprise people at how close it gets--not razor close, but closer than expected by a sizeable number) Oregon, Washington, Ilinois, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey (again close, but...) DC, Maryland, Delaware, Ct, Mass., RI, VT, Maine.

(Total Electoral Votes: 211)

The President will then take the following blue/battleground states with decisive enough totals to make the formerly sore losermen of the Democratic 10,000 lawyers brigade look worse than ever if/when they contest them:

Hawaii, New Mexico, Colorado Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, and Florida. That's another 81 for a total of 304.

Still uncertain? Michegan, but I think Dubya's got a real chance at its 17, Minnesota, which may revert to its Hubert roots with its 10, and New Hampshire which is all about who's got the best turnout machine and weather, frankly, and has another 4 votes. That's a total of 31, which even if Kerry gets 'em all gives him a losing 242.

Now what if I'm wrong? Well, how do you get from 242 to 270 if you're Kedwards? Florida? Forget it--Bush is going to win it HUGE, partly because the panhandle won't stay home no matter what the MSM says early this time, partly because Blacks and Jews know better who's ethical, moral, and for Israel, and partly because of military votes....and even a certain amount of in-the-closet-gay backlash over the Mary Cheney thing. Ohio? Nope---the on-the-ground organization is all Bush's in the precincts that count--which explains why Kerry's only visits there of late have been to his "safe" counties rather than disputed territory. Iowa is so strongly for Bush that if the stayed-too-long-at-the-party Harkin was up for a vote he'd be gone this time, too. Wisconsin is Bush country--good econ. NewMexico? How can Kerry lose with Bill Richardson? He will--which shows how desperately screwed he is, and Colorado has been officially conceded re. media buys etc. etc. by the Kerry folks, and that is good news re. the Dem-ploy anti-Constitutional split-the-electorals proposition, too, I hope. And Hawaii is coming home, not the least because it is largely Japanese-American and Japan is one of our truly stalwart allies in the war on terror, too. Even if Kedwards got Mi and Minn, that's 27 and that just won't quite do it.

Okay, shoot me now--going out on these long limbs a week out, but what the heck--SOMEbody's got to.
OH...and the popular vote? Hold on to your hats, because this is what will finally shut down the legal-army of the left:

Bush 55%. Or more.

You heard it here first.

May I Coin A Phrase, Folks?

2004-10-26T23:11:00.000-07:00

The story about the NON-story that the Kedwards/NYTimes/CBS folks are trying to turn into an October No-Prize regarding missing high explosives has a location, and it seems to me that the location implies a name for this latest MSM-In-Bed-With-Dems scandal, and darnit, I want credit for it unless you found it elsewhere first.

The weapons dump was located at a place called Al Qaqaa, which is loosely pronounced "Ahl KaaKaahhhh"

Therefore, considering the bullshit the MSMDems have once again tried to foist off on the American public as The Truth, may I suggest the following shorhand?

"QaQaa-Gate"

Yeah. You got it. And I'll bet even those Doody-heads at CBS will get it, too.

Dan Rather SAVED By NYTimes & NBC????

2004-10-26T15:19:00.000-07:00

Eyup. The BOGUS "Bush Lost Bombs" story that Kerry is pushing today but which has already been debunked by NBC since its premiere in the NY Times....was being HELD as a SPECIAL "October Suprize" anti-Bush bash by the CBS "60 Minutes" crew and Dan Rather!

THAT's the story, folks, and that is why the Kerry folks were already prepared with ads and speeches to unleash on Sunday night (but now filling the airwaves and grandstands today) because, of course, they knew all about it.

What EVERYBody who CHECKED (thanks NBC) knew was that US Troops visited the weapons dump en route to Bagdad and the evil super-bombs that Kerry says Bush lost were, in fact, already GONE when we first got there.....and why is THAT? Because, of course, French and German delays and dickering in the UN, perpetrated by these FOK-ers (Friends Of Kerry) to enrich their Oil-For-Crooks bank accounts, gave Sadaam TIME to get his goodies out and sell or give them to his pals in Syria or elsewhere. Wonder if the WMD went the same direction? That's what many military experts think.

Meanwhile, the Kerry folks are of course in full attack mode....with NO clothes on their emperor.

Thanks MSM, and I'm sure Dan Rather and the "60 Minutes" types are saying a silent prayer for being scooped by NY Times and then debunked prior to embarassing themselves by NBC. Of course, the fact that they were "holding the story" for the last possible moment in order to attempt to catch the President's folks flat-footed and unable to defend themselves shows no bias, does it?

Les Moonves, call your office. Its AMERICA on the line saying "Shut the Eye!"

Meanwhile, in the Fictional Land of the Undecided....

2004-10-26T08:23:00.000-07:00

....my friend John Podhoretz wonders if there really, truly ARE that many so-called "Undecideds" left to get...and whether all those newly-christened voters both parties have been signing up like crazy (in reality or in fiction) will actually go and VOTE. Brilliant stuff, so read it all HERE and below:

---------------

MYTHS OF THE UNDECIDED
by John Podhoretz--New York Post Online
October 26, 2004 --

WHAT if there are no undecided voters left?

What if the polls we're seeing now are a precise mirror of where we're going to be on Election Day?
In polls seven days before the vote, the Bush and Kerry numbers add up to 95 percent to 98 percent. If that holds, up, the president is probably going to win narrowly.

And it may hold.

Right now, in two major polls, President Bush leads Sen. John Kerry outside the "margin of error" among likely voters. In one of them, the Gallup released yesterday afternoon, the Bush and Kerry vote totals 97 percent.
This is a very significant fact, because the presidential vote between the two major candidates almost never adds up to 100 percent. Even in a year without a serious third-party challenger, 1 percent goes to minor candidates like the Libertarian Party's Michael Badnarik. And this year Ralph Nader who will probably get 1 percent or so himself.

That leaves — get this — only 1 percent of the vote remaining undecided.

Under these conditions, using Gallup as the barometer, Bush will probably win. Why? Because his lead is outside the margin of error and more than a million Bush voters would have to switch over to Kerry to give the Massachusetts senator the victory.

But say the undecided number is really 2 percent, or even 4 percent. What happens then?
There's a great deal of controversy about how undecided voters make up their minds in the final week. For years, political professionals have told us that undecided voters "break for the challenger."

This bit of wisdom is based on a long-term trend in the Gallup poll. Since 1936, undecided voters in the last poll taken before a presidential election do seem to opt for the challenger in greater numbers.

But, as dalythoughts.com's Gerry Daly points out, the result changes significantly if you use the second-to-last Gallup as your reference point.

Only twice since 1936 have undecideds in the second-to-last Gallup poll broken for the challenger. And it was only significant once, in 1980, when the undecided swing to Ronald Reagan helped him win a landslide against incumbent Jimmy Carter.

In the other 10 presidential elections featuring incumbents in the past 68 years, the voters from the second-to-last Gallup either broke for the incumbent or broke evenly.

And let's be clear what "break" means. It's not that 100 percent of undecideds go one way — it means that 60 to 65 percent do. Using yesterday's Gallup poll as a benchmark, Kerry would need an even greater break than that to catch up to Bush — 70 to 75 percent of the undecided voters at least.

That huge margin for Kerry just doesn't seem likely right now.

Ah, but what about all the excitement over the newly registered?

Look at the numbers here. Some people are talking about a staggering increase of 10 million voters this year. Both parties have spent vast sums looking for these new voters and registering them, and there's reason to believe their efforts will basically cancel each other out.

But let's assign 55 percent of them to Kerry. That's 5.5 million voters. With those 5.5 million voters, surely then Kerry will win.

Um, no, he won't. Because Bush will get 4.5 million new votes. This would make Kerry's margin among new voters only 1 million votes — in an electorate of 115 million. That's not even a single percentage point increase. Kerry can't win that way.

Now here's why the tiny number of undecided voters may matter even less than these numbers indicate.
You're an undecided voter. Don't really feel hot either way. You get up next Tuesday, and you hear on the radio or see on TV that there's a record turnout — long lines at the polls. You may get discouraged right there, and decide not to show up the way you haven't shown up before.

Or you do go. And there are long, long, long lines. You might have to wait half an hour.
Do you? Or do you go home?

They won't all go home. But some will.

The perverse result of exceptionally high turnout is that the resulting problems will also keep hundreds of thousands of people from showing up.

Of course, elections are won at the state level, so maybe Kerry can use undecideds to take both Florida and Ohio, making it almost impossible for Bush to win.

But there won't be a million new voters in Ohio. There will be a few hundred thousand at most. And again, they'll go both to Republicans and Democrats.

Democrats who are assuming that undecided and new voters are going to carry the day for them are doing what craps players call "betting on the come." They are hoping for a result that the odds don't favor at this moment.

E-mail: podhoretz@nypost.com

The Non-Story Of Disappearing Bombs....MSM Strikes Again!

2004-10-26T08:14:00.000-07:00

Ah, you know? October Surprises just ain' t what they used to be!

The MSM announces over the weekend--and John Kerry eagerly and instantly parrots on the stump--that they're shocked, SHOCKED to discover that some 300 tons of things-that-go-boom are "missing" in Iraq! Oh, the incompetence! I mean, didn't Dubya have those bombs in his pants pocket just yesterday, along with all the hummer car keys? How CAN we allow this incompetent boob to stay in charge! If Kerry is elected, he'll "seek out and kill" the bomb thingies, right? I mean, he can hunt GOOSE, so....

Except, of course, it is now revealed that any disapearing explosives from the armory in question disappeared BEFORE WE GOT THERE--that's right, they were among the goodies the Sadaamites snuck off with in the weeks LEADING UP TO our invasion, and are now either secreted in Syria or being sold to finance the bad guys--probably to our Kerry-ite "allies" who speak French, German, or Russian since there's no more oil-for-graft deal going on.

I mean really, folks. Can't the Kerry-ite MSM do better than this? Wanna bet there'll be NO corrections, NO apologies, and NO retrenchment from Kedwards in any speeches this week? Nothing like "I speechified FOR the missing weapons BEFORE I speechified AGAINST their existance!" OH, and speaking of that.....

The President just asked the Congress for another 70-something billion for the war effort. Wanna bet which two Senators will be AWOL for any votes this week on that request? Hint--it WON'T be Tom "I really DO Like Bush, Honest--see me hugging him in my campaign ads?" Daschle, nor any other sensible Dem senator seeking re-election in a time of war.

I keep telling you folks--this isn't gonna be close. And every time the MSM tries to help Kedwards and falls on its face, it gets more and more certain that grownup sensible Americans of either party--the ones who actually do go out and vote, are getting pretty fed up with the Dems and the Press and their silly, incompetent, childish, and unsafe alliance.

Interesting Facts Inside John Podhoretz's Column

2004-10-22T11:07:00.000-07:00

Read the column in full HERE, but take note of the blog-sourced facts revealed below. WOW, it pays to have ethics, values, and be a REAL "christian" (I mean ethically, btw--not denominationally) rather than a fake nuancer like JFKerry is. AMAZING stat analysis. Read on!:

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This week, for example, they gave some eye-opening comments on the much-ballyhooed increase in voter turnout this year.
Gerry Daly of dalythoughts.com crunched some Harris Poll numbers to see what it would take for John Kerry to overtake President Bush due entirely to increased turnout. He found that Kerry will need 9.6 million new voters. And he doesn't mean new voters between the ages of 18-21 who've never been able to vote for president before. He means "nearly 10 million people, aged 22 and over, who did not vote in 2000 but are going to this year."
"Maybe," Daly writes, "there is such antipathy towards George W. Bush that will bring voters out even more than the candidacy of Ross Perot did [in 1992]. We'll know in less than two weeks. If there are, then the Harris poll suggests that Kerry is in the ballpark. If these votes do not materialize, the Harris poll suggests that it will be a short night a week from Tuesday."
The Horserace Blog, meanwhile, uses a poll by the Center for Policy and Economic studies to look at the black vote: "According to this poll, Kerry is underperforming among blacks by roughly 14 percent of the vote, a statistically significant difference. What would that mean if these numbers hold for the next month?"
The answer: "If there were a perfect replay of Florida, Kerry's total would shrink by 122,312 votes. If there were a perfect replay of Ohio, Kerry's total would shrink by 62,207 votes (making Nader's absence on the ballot this year wholly irrelevant). If there were a perfect replay of Michigan, Kerry's total would shrink by 56,542 votes. If there were a perfect replay of the national vote, Kerry's total would shrink by 1,459,966. In other words, Bush would win the popular vote by about 1 million votes! John Kerry simply cannot win this election if he performs among blacks 14 percent worse than Gore did."

This one's too funny not to read in full....

2004-10-21T17:05:00.000-07:00

....so here it is, the official pool reporter's notebook (honestly!) from the now-famous Bwana John Kerry hunting trip trying to "goose" his chances among gun owners and NRA members (ho ho ho--who do his campaign people think they're kidding?): Thanks to Matt Drudge for getting this--his link HERE, but just in case it disappears....

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Pool ReportKerry huntingOctober 21, 2004Eight minutes from the heart of downtown Boardman, OhioPool gathered and was swept at downtown Boardman Holiday Inn at 5:45. After waiting better part of 45 minutes, we moved out at 6:25. We bivouacked at Molnar Farm eight minutes later at 6:37. Four minutes later, the sun officially rose at 6:41, according to the Astronomical Applications Department of the U.S. Naval Observatory. It was misting so we were left to figure it was overcast, giving birds a few more minutes of shut-eye past sunrise - no hard feelings.As we waited in the vans and on the short ride out into the wilderness, the realization settled over us that the heart of this would be nothing more than a grand photo op of Mr. Kerry walking out of the woods with a duck, or possibly without a duck, or possibly one that one of his staffers shot but he then swam out and retrieved and resuscitated. Anyway, we realized we weren't going to see any bloodshed. Patsy flipped open her phone, dialed up Loftus and valiantly expressed the communal outrage. Rapid response went into full swing. He said we weren't included in actual hunt because the AP would object to it for some reason. Not true, said Nedra, who sat beside her. Precedent, he said. Patsy reeled off the stats from every presidential campaign hunt since Reagan. "I mean, he's going out into the woods with men who have guns. We should have someone there," she reasoned. He split hairs. Patsy explained to Loftus that your pooler very much wanted to go hunting with the next leader of the free world. But for some reason, the thought of a reporter from The Washington Times observing Mr. Kerry revealing who he really is did not sway the campaign. So, as Mr. Kerry trundled out into the wilds under a rising sun to hunt ducks eight minutes outside Boardman, we were left with nothing to do but hunt canards.In lieu of actual information, we put our heads together and came up with some details for this pool report. The primary area of wager was whether Mr. Kerry would return with game at all.HE WOULD NOT: Fearing a backlash from soccer moms and PETA freaks, he decides to return empty-handed with that age-old phrase employed by failed hunters: I don't do it to kill things; I just like being outdoors. But, that could undermine the manliness that he has so carefully cultivated since launching his campaign. HE WOULD, DEAD: Be bold. Kill something. Come back holding limp ducks by their wrung necks in your bloody fingers. Win back those security moms. This would have been the strategy advised by Bill Clinton, whom Mr. Kerry talks to by phone very often.HE WOULD, DEAD, CLEANED, DRESSED FROM FOOD LION: Return with several fattened (thought not for their livers as that would come perilously close to something French), beautifully yellowed birds that were purchased from the local supermarket last night. This would allow him to appear bold, willing to hunt down and kill the enemy, but wouldn't be too scarily unfamiliar to people who don't hunt. "You should always come dressed for dinner," he would explain.HE WOULD, BUT IT ISN'T A DUCK: This theory developed into the most desirous. He returns victorious, but with Osama bin Laden, who had been hiding out in the backside of the farm. Turns out that immediately after President Bush outsourced the capturing of him in Tora Bora to the Afghan warlords, Mr. Bin Laden climbed into a container of poppy gum and arrived through a port in Newark. The container, of course, went uninspected. With so few police officers on the street, Mr. Bin Laden had no problem wandering America unmolested.Ultimately, we'll just have to wait to find out. But one thing is clear: we'll never know for certain if Mr. Kerry can shoot a bird in flight.Walking from the vans into the cozy little farmhouse where a mini-file has been set up, we asked Wade and Loftus for any details. They, inexplicably, were whispering. Kerry apparently marched out with Rep. Ted Strickland and a security detail to hunt from a blind set up on the edge of a marshy area beside a harvested cornfield. It is set up some 500 yards from here. Locals say the geese and ducks swarm the fields after harvest. He is wearing a camo jacket that was purchased in Boardman. They are hunting with a yellow lab named Woody.But, again, all of this is second-hand information. There has been some speculation - based on similarly-unconfirmed reports - that this is actually a golf course and that Mr. Kerry is currently crouched in the sand pit behind the third hole. The geese are much easier to hit that way and no one would be offended if you killed them.Will report back if details emerge.Pool report #2Kerry duck huntAt 8:33, someone - hard to make out who it was for the camo coat - was frolicking with a yellow dog about 100 yards into a cut field. Pooler wandered over to edge of field and alerted photogs of the possible photo op. Pooler was quickly reigned in and herded back to the other side of house, which obstructed view. Was told that he wanted to hunt for another 15 minutes. For some reason, we were all still whispering.Kerry hunt news flashGeese flew overhead, a dozen shots fired. Kerry just returned. Four geese killed. Kerry carried his own gun but had someone carrying his goose. We're loaded up to move back to hotel. Will file full report shortly. Pool Report #4Kerry duck huntAt 8:49, still no shots heard from around the house. Nor did pooler ever hear any goose or duck calls. Molnar Farms is owned by Rick and Jill Molnar who have a roadside fruit and vegetable stand. A sign out front advertises apples, sweet corn, pumpkins, cider and other things. Under fruit stand shed, various police and motorcade drivers gathered for coffee and hot cider. Three empty camo soft gun cases sat on a counter. Also, a still-boxed, broken down 12 gauge camo shotgun was in a cardboard box. Make unknown. Pooler did not reach to open box as most of the people under shed were armed and pooler feared them. Also: a box of 12 ga., three-inch steel shot cartridges was on the counter, legal ammo for shooting over water. But for all we know, Mr. Kerry may have been using lead shot, which would be illegal for waterfowl.At 8:53, distant wails of geese could be heard from beyond tree-line to east of house, where as hunting party was to north of house. Roughly 60 large Canada geese emerged over tree line and - as if trained to do so if at the last minute no birds had been slaughtered in this great authentic moment of modern American politics - made a beeline for Mr. Kerry and his camo-clad comrades. Suddenly, an explosion of gunfire. It was enough to evoke flashbacks in your pooler, who really was in diapers when Mr. Kerry fought in Cambodia or Vietnam or wherever. There were so many shots in the course of 15 seconds that it was impossible to count the number. Certainly, everybody unloaded their guns and possibly even reloaded (Assuming they were not using some sort of large-capacity assault weapons, which would be thoroughly illegal. But we'll never know.). The honking of the geese changed from calm and plaintive to upset and confused as the flock hurried back to cruising altitude and separated into two still-large groups. A smaller - apparently smarter - group left the farm altogether. A larger group came back toward the house, where some 35 reporters and cameramen with fuzzy booms and long-lense cameras were snapping and whirring away. This appeared to further disturb the geese who flared in various directions, not to be heard from again - or so we thought.Much relieved and even chirpy, staffers began herding us around the building to a hay trailer set up beside the cornfield from which we could view the moment of his emergence from the field. Not that it was staged or anything, Loftus explained: "He's going to walk down that line of corn. He'll turn down there and walk up this way. Then we will move with great dispatch up there." No questions were to be asked, we were informed. The four hunting men and yellow dog (a Democrat, pooler assumes) seemed to - from such a distance - crystalize out of thin air with all their camo on. They walked along the line of corn that was still standing. Each man carried a gun. Three men carried dead Canada geese. Mr. Kerry was empty-handed, but for his gun. A man walked far up ahead - outside a normal picture frame - carrying a fourth limp goose. Mr. Kerry's gun was an double-barrel, over/under 12 ga. shotgun. It was breached and he carried it in the crook of his arm, like a true gentleman. The other men, carried pump or semi-auto long guns that appeared to be 12 ga. shotguns as well. As they approached with the rust-colored trees as a backdrop, photogs snapped crazily and marveled at the perfect frame. Indeed, they looked like catalogue models on the cover of a Cabella's magazine. Their voices could be heard but not what they were saying. They were clearly animated and exuberant over their success. Woody, the yellow dog, was the only one who seemed to stray from stage notes. He kept running up to the man ahead carrying the fourth bird, then racing back to the four hunters, only to tag them and race back ahead. "The dog is out of position," sighed one shooter. Dog owner blew whistle and dog returned to a flurry of picture snaps.Once in earshot:Q: Did you shoot any geese, senator?A: thumbs up.Q: You get any?A: Everybody got one. Everybody got one.Q: Why aren't you carrying yours?A: (laughter) Too lazy.Q: Heavy?A: No, still giddy over the Red Sox. It was hard to focus.(Thanks to Jim Malone of VOA Radio for exact quotes.)In addition to Mr. Strickland, the hunting party included Bob Bellino, board member of local Ducks Unlimited, and Neal Brady, a state park manager. More information on these guys in included in morning briefing sent by campaign. There is no information who Mr. Kerry's bird boy was.Immediately after Mr. Kerry completed his "walk-by," we were rounded up and herded back around house to waiting vans. After a few minutes, the motorcade moved us back to hotel file center. We arrived at 9:15. As we got out of the vans, the lonesome calls of geese could be heard again overhead. It was decided that they had followed the motorcade, weeping over the casualties.Report #5It's 10:53. We're loaded up for airport but haven't left yet. A note from photogs. Lots of blood on Kerry's left hand. Pooler suggested it was from fetching downed bird and possibly wringing its neck if it were still kicking, flipping and flopping, perhaps flip-flopping. Photog saw Mr. Kerry shaking his entire hand way up field as if he'd injured hand. When he walked by, he'd tucked his hand up into his sleeve so it couldn't be seen. Suppose we'll have to wait for after-action report, but as we all know, Purple Heart citations can be vague.Report # 6At 11:32, the candidate arrived for flight to Youngstown. He'd shed his camo for his barn coat. No injury was visible to his left hand from pooler's perspective on tarmac. He greeted several supporters. Jogging up steps, he was asked where his bird was. "Being cleaned," he said, waving his hands in the motion of bird cleaning.Note: Your pooler was seated on press plane, unable to cover any gaggle that might occur on main plane. Will transcribe any recordings someone kindly supplies upon landing. Pooler told he'll be back on main plane for flight to Milwaukee.Clarification: Staffers advise that Mr. Kerry broke no laws this morning with the type of shells he used to kill his goose. He was not "breaking the law by using lead bullets," S. Cutter emailed. "They were steel shots." END

Michael Barone Deduces A REALITY....And It Is One WE Are All About.

2004-10-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

Michael Barone, poll-watcher emeritus and par excellence, has come up with a doozy of a deduction in a fascinating new analysis of the polls and the trends in this election. I'll let you read the entire thing HERE, but the core deduction is so powerfully ON topic for us that I'll just let it speak for itself....with, perhaps, a slight whisper of an "I told you so!" Here it is:

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My tentative explanation is this. Bush's most effective opposition this year has come not from Kerry and the Democrats but from Old Media, the New York Times and the news pages of the Washington Post, along with the broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC. Old Media gave very heavy coverage to stories that tended to hurt Bush—violence in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, the false charges of Richard Clarke and Joseph Wilson, etc. And during the first eight months of the year Bush did a poor job of making his case.
Then, suddenly, that case was made with maximum effectiveness at the Republican National Convention in New York—by John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani, by Zell Miller and Arnold Schwarzenegger, by Laura Bush and Dick Cheney and George W. Bush himself. Bush was able to get his message out unmediated by Old Media. (Fox News Channel had more viewers during the Republican National Convention than any of the old-line broadcast networks.) The message was simple: We need this president to protect the nation. Bush muffed the chance to deliver that message effectively in the first debate. But he made up for it in the second and third debates.
Kerry helped confirm the Bush message in the debates—by saying American action had to pass a global test, by saying that Saddam Hussein's Iraq both was and was not a threat, by arguing that Saddam would "not necessarily" have remained in power if Kerry's course had been taken. He remains the man who volunteered the words "I did actually vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." So in all the polls Bush continues to score better than Kerry on handling the war on terrorism and on handling Iraq.

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In other words, when you've got the MSM on your side, you're going to win...and for decades that was why we lost. Now with the blogosphere, talk radio, Fox, and other alternative sources becoming not only more powerful and well-known but, in the case of Fox's share of audiences on major events, positively --dare we say it?-- MAINstream, well, there's a new sheriff in town, podner! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

Oh Those ACLU Guys & Gals! Look What They Did NOW!

2004-10-19T13:10:00.000-07:00

This is too rich. This is too funny. This is too, too much.

If you saw this on"Mad TV" or "Saturday Night Live" you'd think it was a weak sketch. If Leno did it you'd presume it was another yock-seeking joke. But it isn't a joke...at least not intentionally--it is the absolute truth.

The ACLU has turned down MILLIONS in donations from two of the most famous foundations in the world, the Ford and Rockefeller folks, because they DARE to put CONDITIONS on the gifts that keep them in synch with the post-911 universe. What are these onorous conditions?

The Ford Foundation now bars recipients of its funds from engaging in any activity that "promotes violence, terrorism, bigotry, or the destruction of any state."

The Rockefeller Foundation's provisions state that recipients of its funds may not "directly or indirectly engage in, promote, or support other organizations or individuals who engage in or promote terrorist activity."

And what's wrong with those simple, straightforward, dare-I-say NOBLE goals and intentions??? Let the ACLU explain it as only they can:

""(The ACLU Spokesperson) said such vague grant language "could have a chilling effect" on civil liberties. "The ACLU cannot effectively defend the rights of all Americans if we do not stand up for those same rights ourselves," he said. ""

Oy! Are they kidding? No, they are not. They'd rather avoid "chilling" the Al Quaeda types in the world than make common sense. Thank goodness, however, that the folks at the foundations have more sense:

""...The president of the Ford Foundation, Susan Berresford, sought to minimize the dispute. "We accept and respect that we have a different mission from the ACLU, even while we share the same basic values," she wrote. "We are proud to support the ACLU's defense of free speech. We do not, however, believe that a private donor like Ford should support all speech itself (such as speech that promotes bigotry or violence)." ""

Of course, the ACLU doesn't believe in free speech for conservatives, Republicans, or anyone who finds their defense of people like Nazis and NAMBLA and the rest of their favorite folks offensive, either.

I tell you, folks--you can't make this stuff up! At least the ACLU is willing to put Ford and Rockefeller's money where THEIR big, liberal mouth is.

This is the point, folks: Read, please? Thanks.

2004-10-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

Apologize, George W. Bush!
By Douglas Kern

Apologize for fighting an unwinable war. Apologize for failing to win that unwinable war before the All-Star break. Apologize for fighting the insurgents too aggressively, and apologize for showing them too much mercy. Apologize for forcing democracy and freedom upon the mere 85% of Iraqis who desire them. Apologize for ignoring the thoughtful and nuanced objections of some civilian-bombing terrorists in the Sunni Triangle. Apologize for not sending enough troops and apologize for taking too many troops away from their homes and families. Apologize for…oh, apologize for something. It really doesn't matter what. Just admit that you were wrong about something important. It's ever so much easier to defeat your arguments when you concede them to us first.
Apologize, George W. Bush, because there's something delicious about watching righteous men eat their words. You won't be so quick to dismiss nuances and overtones and penumbras when you have a shame-faced apology sticking in your craw. And when we've neutralized your moralizing tone, it will be vastly easier to neutralize the popular, we're-the-good-guys morality that you propound. Oh, we could take the high road, of course, and praise an apology as a dignified gesture that will help to heal the bitter divisions in our society. But we won't. Your apology will be reduced to a lurid sound-bite on some vicious DNC advertisement that mocks your confident faith and uncompromising principles. And let's not even think about how America's enemies will use your apology to undermine your credibility. Get used to the smell of your apology, George W. Bush. It will be rubbed in your nose until the day you die.

Apologize, George W. Bush, even though official apologies are invariably useless. When a government official "apologizes" and "takes full responsibility," you can be certain that the official isn't sorry, and plans on doing nothing. Bill Clinton apologized for slavery -- not that it made a difference to anyone, anywhere. Janet Reno took full responsibility for the Waco debacle -- not that she or anyone else lost their job over it. Apologies don't bring the dead back to life, and they don't fix failed policies. In wartime particularly, it's better to actually change flawed policies than to engage in the ritualized Kabuki theater of apologies and lamentations and public self-flagellation. It would be enlightening to examine whether the Bush administration has, in fact, changed its policies when they have proven unsuccessful. But such an examination isn't as much fun as demanding public repentance.

Apologize, George W. Bush, although wartime presidents never do. Roosevelt didn't apologize. Truman didn't apologize. Neither did Eisenhower, Johnson, Kennedy, or Nixon. Every wartime president has made mistakes -- sometimes ghastly mistakes that cost the lives of soldiers and civilians. But no one ever demanded apologies from those presidents, perhaps because Americans used to understand that war is an inherently chaotic and unpredictable thing in which awful mistakes will always be made.

Apologize, George W. Bush, although your apologies will dishonor the dead. As your opponent once pointed out: who wants to be the last man to die for a mistake? No one, of course, so you will discredit a great many dead heroes by apologizing for their cause. Admittedly, your opponent has a head start in this event. He's spent his entire adult life devising reasons American exercises of military power are never legitimate. But if you try real hard, George W. Bush, you can catch up. Perhaps one day, you, too, can earn the contempt of veterans who will not draw specious distinctions between their own honor and the honor of the cause for which they fought.

Apologize, George W. Bush, because we need to see in you a reflection of our own uncertainties and discomfort towards the war. Some of us are conservatives who genuinely believed that the whole Iraqi conflict would be a joyous, carefree romp, with bonfires and backslapping and Ewoks singing, just like at the end of "Return of the Jedi." Others of us are hardcore leftists who spent the eighties and nineties denouncing America's indifference towards murderous tyrants and genocidal regimes. Your war, George W. Bush, exposed the naïve right and the moralizing left as poseurs, unwilling to stomach the harsher consequences of their professed beliefs. That exposure upsets us. And we want you to be as upset as we are.

Apologize, George W. Bush, because in every election certain issues matter not for what they are, but for what they show us about our candidates. Consider flag-burning. It affects no one. But we want to believe that our elected officials are the kind of people who hate flag-burning enough to prohibit it -- or, depending on your politics, that our elected officials love freedom of expression enough to protect flag-burning. The issue is meant not to be resolved, but to reveal. It's politics as Rorschach test. When it comes to Iraq, you look at the blob of ink and you see an eagle. When we look at it, we see -- well, we want to see "a dove," but we can't. So we see only the blob of ink; only confusion and error. We want you to see that, too, and an apology will show us that you see the world as we do. Forget strong leadership, George W. Bush; leadership creates a responsibility to be good followers, and we're tired of that responsibility. Don't lead us. Be us.

Apologize, George W. Bush, although demands for apologies amount to nothing more than a petulant demand for respect -- a respect that, in this case, we have not earned. For all of our whining and nitpicking and breast-beating, we have no better idea of how to resolve the Iraqi situation. John Kerry has no better idea. The French and Germans have no better idea. We dislike your style and we question your motives but -- despite all your shortcomings -- we can do no better. We accuse you of arrogance because you will not listen to us, but we have nothing to say. We accuse you of failing to obtain legitimacy for the war from other countries, but they have none to give. We accuse you of many things, because your vision for Iraq is indirectly a terrible accusation against our own fecklessness and folly.

Apologize, George W. Bush, even though the mistakes are ours.

There's Something About Mary....And John Wants SOME Of Us To Know

2004-10-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

The furor over the two Johns "outing" of Mary Cheney, Veep Dick Cheney's daughter, as a gay woman in the two debates past, heightened by campaign mgr. Mary-Beth Cahill's declaration that Ms. Cheney is "fair game" and Mrs. Edwards' smear that her parents, who are rightly upset, are "ashamed" of their daughter, is not going away. There are many brilliant and outraged posts and columns all over the net and the print/msm spheres about it, and I'd like to examine only one aspect and let my outrage stand as a "given."

Here's my "angle" and why this is so important: Since this was clearly an INTENTIONAL mention by both candidates and since their manager already had declared open season on the subject, the big question we should be asking is this:

WHAT did they HOPE TO GAIN?

Now some have said that they hoped to separate "evangelical" conservatives from the Bush-Cheney team, hoped that these allegedly-super-bigot Republicans would sit the election out just because there's a gay person in the family of the Veep. THAT pov just goes to show how astoundingly bigoted, stereotype-trapped, and stupid the Dems are....but you knew that, right?

SOME have suggested a variation on the theme--that this was an attempt to separate the conservative DEMocracts who would be voting for Bush otherwise because they disagree with Kedwards on things like abortion, the war, and tax relief--all those rust-belt Catholic manufacturing workers the Kedwards have been trying (and mostly failing) to get with their Herbert Hoover analogies over lost jobs. Now THAT would once AGAIN show the cynical bigotry and stereotype-thinking of the Dems and....once again, we know THAT, too.

STILL OTHERS have suggested that they did it for the above reasons ONLY after calculating that the people who might also be offended--namely their legions of gay voter Democrats--would be "stuck" with them and have nowhere else to go on election day and thus that they could afford it---AND that the gay activists who should be jumping into this with both feet would just shut up and sulk because they don't want to rock the left-wing boat....and again, we see the calculating bigotry and stereotypical-thinking of the campaign pro's in Shrumland....and again, we KNEW that too.

So, putting aside the craven, cowardly, disgusting nature of this smearing attack--and that it does, indeed, show what Lynn Cheney said is true--"He's just a bad man" and somebody who'll say and do anything to get elected (which again, we KNOW by now, don't we?) what this ultimately boils down to is this:

When it comes to core beliefs--even left-wing socilialist WRONG core beliefs---John Kerry and Co. have NONE.

Zero.

Nada.

They live in a world of stereotypes, demographic groups, and political ploys. They live in a world where issues like decency only come up as suggested dialog for stump speeches, not as real issues of heart, soul, and philosophy. These guys, had they chosen the NON-dark side of the political "force"--were they on OUR side--they'd just be spouting OUR catch-phrases and playing the same games for the opposing team. The fact that we've go values and we try to keep these kinds OUT of the game to the degree that we can (let alone expelling the Birchers and the Metzgers and neo-whacko-militia types) we are cleaner indeed, but the point is not to get distracted by ideology when it comes to judging THEM.

There is NO POINT anymore in arguing with THEM over their policies--they only consider the policy statements as tools, as means to an end---POWER.

That's all they're about---Power. Not left/right, lib/conser, dem/rep, freemarket/socialism, gay/straight, or any other of the real issues before us. That's why they don't care about defending us against Al Quaeda or about UN perfidy or even about Kerry's Vietnam record. They just really, truly do not CARE about anything but the GAME and the POWER.

And Kerry is among the worst.

But we knew THAT too, didn't we? Let's not forget it as the campaign concludes....or let up our efforts to deny them the POWER they want so much and will abuse so completly with no moral rudder to guide them at all.

James Lileks Is Right On...Again:

2004-10-13T13:48:00.000-07:00

Here you go. Read up. Or go read it HERE. But read it THROUGH....'cause the punchline is the point.

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Once again, John Kerry has been accurately misquoted. The Republican Attack Machine -- that strange, clanking leviathan bristling with loudspeakers and cannons -- has circulated devious contortions of Kerry's true positions, using the recent New York Times Sunday mag feature for ammo. Yes, he said that this war wasn't like Iwo Jima -- well, tell it to the Marines, as they used to say. Yes, he said he wasn't really changed by Sept. 11 -- true, inasmuch as he wasn't laid off when the economy tanked, and didn't have to post a picture of a loved one on a NYC storefront. But here's the key passage penned by Times contributing writer Matt Bai:"When I asked Kerry what it would take for Americans to feel safe again, he displayed a much less apocalyptic worldview. `We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance,' Kerry said. `As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life."'Tony Soprano doesn't take over schools and shoot kids in the back. The doxies of the Bunny Ranch don't train at flight schools to ram flying brothels into skyscrapers. What's more, people who hire a hooker or sidle into a back room to wager on a cockfight are willing participants; these crimes are sins of volition. Terrorism is not a victimless crime. And even if you do have hookers on your street corner or a dice game in the alley, the end result isn't a high heap of dead bystanders.You don't want the definition of success in fighting terrorism to be "it isn't on the rise." You want the definition of success to be "free democratic states in the Middle East and the cessation of support of those governments and fascist states we haven't yet kicked to the curb, cough cough IRAN cough SYRIA. You want the definition of success to mean a free Lebanon and free Persian people, and a Saudi Arabia that realizes there's no point in funding the fundies and considers letting women vote sometime in this century. An Egypt that stops pouring out Jew-hatred as a form of political novocaine to keep citizens from turning their ire on their own government. You want the definition of success to mean that Europe takes a stand against the Islamist radicals in their midst before the poison dominates the continent and cows decent folk into frightened submission. You know. The little things.One word sticks out. A "nuisance"? Mosquito bites are a nuisance. Cable outages are a nuisance. Someone shooting up a school in Montana or California or Maine on behalf of the brave martyrs of Samarrah isn't a nuisance, particularly if it happens to you. It's war. It's the war we're already in.But that's not the key phrase. This matters: "We have to get back to the place we were."Why? When we were there, we were blind. When we were there, we were losing. When we were there, Americans died without consequence. "We have to get back to the place we were." We have to get back to Sept. 10? Back to diffident, calibrated responses, firewalls 'twixt the FBI and CIA, the occasional embassy turned to dust, indictments and speeches and the comfy slumber of those who don't know that their worst nightmares are their enemies' sweetest dreams? "We have to get back to the place we were."No. We have to go to the place where they are.As a young and ambitious man, John Kerry famously asked: How do you ask someone to be the last man to die for a mistake? Good question. Perhaps President Kerry will explain how you ask someone to be the first person to die for a nuisance.

Rudy Giuliani Understands What John Kerry Does Not:

2004-10-12T07:58:00.000-07:00

Read this all HERE or below. Then send it to a friend in Ohio who's "undecided".

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October 12, 2004We Have an Obligation to Eliminate Terrorism, Not Tolerate ItBy Rudy Giuliani (Note: The following remarks delivered at BCO4 conference call yesterday)

For some time, and including when I spoke at the Republican Convention, I’ve wondered exactly what John Kerry’s approach would be to terrorism and I’ve wondered whether he had the conviction, the determination, and the focus, and the correct worldview to conduct a successful war against terrorism. And his quotations in the New York Times yesterday make it clear that he lacks that kind of committed view of the world. In fact, his comments are kind of extraordinary, particularly since he thinks we used to before September 11 live in a relatively safe world. He says we have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.

I’m wondering exactly when Senator Kerry thought they were just a nuisance. Maybe when they attacked the USS Cole? Or when they attacked the World Trade Center in 1993? Or when they slaughtered the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972? Or killed Leon Klinghoffer by throwing him overboard? Or the innumerable number of terrorist acts that they committed in the 70s, the 80s and the 90s, leading up to September 11?

This is so different from the President’s view and my own, which is in those days, when we were fooling ourselves about the danger of terrorism, we were actually in the greatest danger. When you don’t confront correctly and view realistically the danger that you face, that’s when you’re at the greatest risk. When you at least realize the danger and you begin to confront it, then you begin to become safer. And for him to say that in the good old days – I’m assuming he means the 90s and the 80s and the 70s -- they were just a nuisance, this really begins to explain a lot of his inconsistent positions on how to deal with it because he’s not defining it correctly.

As a former law enforcement person, he says ‘I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it.’ This is not illegal gambling; this isn’t prostitution. Having been a former law enforcement person for a lot longer than John Kerry ever was, I don’t understand his confusion. Even when he says ‘organized crime to a level where it isn’t not on the rise,’ it was not the goal of the Justice Department to just reduce organized crime. It was the goal of the Justice Department to eliminate organized crime. Was there some acceptable level of organized crime: two families, instead of five, or they can control one union but not the other?

The idea that you can have an acceptable level of terrorism is frightening. How do you explain that to the people who are beheaded or the innocent people that are killed, that we’re going to tolerate a certain acceptable [level] of terrorism, and that acceptable level will exist and then we’ll stop thinking about it? This is an extraordinary statement. I think it is not a statement that in any way is ancillary. I think this is the core of John Kerry’s thinking. This does create some consistency in his thinking.

It is consistent with his views on Vietnam: that we should have left and abandoned Vietnam. It is consistent with his view of Nicaragua and the Sandinistas. It is consistent with his view of opposing Ronald Reagan at every step of the way in the arms buildup that was necessary to destroy communism. It is consistent with his view of not supporting the Persian Gulf War, which was another extraordinary step. Whatever John Kerry’s global test is, the Persian Gulf War certainly would pass anyone’s global test. If it were up to John Kerry, Saddam Hussein would not only still be in power, but he’d still be controlling Kuwait.

Finally, what he did after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, where I guess at that point terrorism was still just a nuisance. He must have thought that because that’s why he proposed seriously reducing our intelligence budget, when you would think someone who was really sensitive to the problem of terrorism would have done just the opposite. I think that rather than being some aberrational comment, it is the core of the John Kerry philosophy: that terrorism is no different than domestic law enforcement problems, and that the best we’re ever going to be able to do is reduce it, so why not follow the more European approach of compromising with it the way Europeans did in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s?

This is so totally different than what I think was the major advance that President Bush made – significant advance that he made in the Bush Doctrine on September 20, 2001, when he said we’re going to face up to terrorism and we’re going to do everything we can to defeat it, completely. There’s no reason why we have to tolerate global terrorism, just like there’s no reason to tolerate organized crime.

So I think this is a seminal issue, this is one that explains or ties together a lot of things that we’ve talked about. Even this notion that the Kerry campaign was so upset that the Vice President and others were saying that he doesn’t understand the threat of terrorism; that he thinks it’s just a law enforcement action. It turns out the Vice President was right. He does and maybe this is a difference, maybe this is an honest difference that we really should debate straight out. He thinks that the threat is not as great as at least the President does, and I do, and the Vice President does.

Rudy Giuliani is the former Mayor of New York City.

And While You're Reading About England....

2004-10-12T07:49:00.000-07:00

....go read THIS. Mark Steyn, one of the great treasures among columnists with both a sense of humor and a clarity of vision that we can all envy, has been "spiked" by the Telegraph in England for a column he wrote about the recent death of a brit captive of the terrorists. He thinks you should read what he wrote anyhow, and so do I, so the link above is to his personal website where he's reprinted it with comments on the spiking. As long as editors take a head-in-the-sand approach to this kind of hard-truth writing, the Internet will be there, along with the blogosphere, to pick up the slack and expose the truth. Read this, understand it, and we'll all be better off. You might want to bookmark Mark's site, too. It is always worth visiting.

This Is Sad, But Necessary Reading. Please Do.

2004-10-12T07:29:00.000-07:00

Americans in Britain used to feel welcome. I know that as a young student at Oxford in my teens (I was on a special program for allegedly gifted high school kids) I always did. It seems that's over now. Jews used to feel welcome in Britain, too, even with some of the usual Euro-antisemitism. After all, the Balfour of the "Balfour Declaration" that created Israel after WWII was a Brit. It seems that's over now, too.

This piece is long. It is painful. It needs reading in its entirety. Please do me the favor of clicking on the link HERE reading it because to publish something this long in the blog would be cumbersome to some.

Thanks. Read and learn, and consider what we should do about this sad new reality. I have.

WHY Halperin Did It: The Best Guess I've Seen

2004-10-11T13:06:00.000-07:00

The big question about the ABC Memo was "Why?" Why would a well-known, savvy guy like ABC News Political Editor Mark Halperin go "on the record" with a memo he had to KNOW would leak out that shows a CLEAR attempt to give ABC staffers "direction" on which side to hold to the fire more intently in the coming election? I mean, isn't ABC pretending, like the rest of the MSM, that it is "fair and balanced" and doesn't take the liberal side anymore?

Well, maybe not. Read this BRILLIANT analysis by Jim Pinkerton and see if you agree with him that, as he puts it, Halperin has had his "Howard Beale Moment" and just plain decided that he's mad as hell at the new media of the right and is going to take ABC into open rebellion to it, throwing off the excuse-filled fraud of "impartiality" that the nets pretend to.

It is thought-provoking, a bit long in historically setting the scene, but well worth your reading time HERE.

The Swift Vets Are STILL Sharing Truth. God Bless Them:

2004-10-11T11:45:00.000-07:00

Here's the story. Read it, consider, and share it with somebody who dares to be "undecided" yet still says that character counts in an American leader.

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Injured, angry, determined, Swiftees unite to fight KerryBy Stephanie MansfieldTHE WASHINGTON TIMES
Midnight in South Vietnam, and the river is black. Past the rice paddies and shacks, small fires are burning by the shoreline as Lt. John H. Davis' 50-foot aluminum swift boat — PCF 19 — makes its routine patrol through the reeds.

In a split second, rocket fire shatters the silence, and through a plume of oily smoke, the boat sinks to the river's bottom.

"My whole crew lost their lives that night. I was the only one who survived," Lt. Davis says.

Lt. Davis, now 62, lost his left eye. The bones in both legs were shattered. But the scars of war are nothing compared to the demons that wake him from his sleep, leaving him drenched in sweat and trembling with fear.

"My latest nightmare was that I was pulling my crew out of the water. When it came to the last body, it was me." Lt. Davis has come to Washington at his own expense, along with 89 other Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, to tape the eighth 60-second TV spot questioning Sen. John Kerry's fitness to be commander in chief.

They come from Oshkosh, Wis., and Orlando, Fla., San Francisco and Virginia Beach. One is on crutches. Others, former prisoners of war, walk stiffly, a result of being bound and tortured. Some wear their medals. Two are in cowboy boots. Snow-haired Bud Day, a 79-year-old former POW, stands at attention. He is wearing a brown leather flight jacket befitting an Air Force major, complemented by the Medal of Honor around his neck. Others have donned "Swift Boat" baseball caps.

The silver-haired men — in natty ties, navy blazers and spit-shined shoes, their faces bronzed with Ben Nye matte foundation ("tan suede") — line up under the hot lights in the cavernous soundstage at Atlantic Video on Massachusetts Avenue.

One by one, they share their stories with the cameras and defend their honor.

These Swiftees, at times jocular (breaking into "Row, row, row your boat") and at other times on the verge of tears, are angry and frustrated. Not only because they say Mr. Kerry has lied about his service and refuses to sign the form that releases his military records to the public, but because 30 years ago, the candidate threw away his medals and called his fellow servicemen murderers, rapists, baby killers and cowards.

The weekend began with a dinner at the Key Bridge Marriott on Friday night, attended by a wealthy backer from Texas, T. Boone Pickens. So far, they have raised more than $13 million — more than $4 million of which was contributed through their Internet site — and plan to step up their assault on the Democratic presidential candidate in the final weeks of the campaign. They raised an additional $2.5 million over the weekend and plan to spend $5 million more by Election Day.

The weekend shoot produced enough footage for two or three more ads, which the Swiftees plan to run starting Thursday in Pennsylvania and Ohio and in a few heavily military areas of Florida. Campaign analysts say the Swiftees have been highly effective in planting doubts about Mr. Kerry's fitness for office.

Vernon Smith, a 74-year-old Swiftee from Virginia Beach, didn't see any reason to come forward before, but when he read "Tour of Duty," Mr. Kerry's account of his Vietnam service as written by historian Douglas Brinkley, he got angry.

"I don't like the fabrications. Why does a man have to lie like that? He is totally unfit for command," he said.

Their beef with Mr. Kerry has driven them to action, the Swiftees say, as they search their collective memories for the truth. Many say they felt shame before, but now they are a band of brothers. "Unfit for Command," which was co-authored by a leader of the group, is a best seller. And on Saturday, they received a wire for $500,000.

"In more than one firefight, Kerry actually pulled our boat out of it and ran out of the canal. I don't think John Kerry was a coward," says 57-year-old Steve Gardner, from Clover, S.C., who spent more than two months with Mr. Kerry on PCF 44 as a gunner's mate 3rd class.

"I think John Kerry was an opportunist. And he was very ineffectual. He did everything in his own best interest. He was always carrying a little notebook with him. I assume it was his diaries. He was very aloof and disdainful of people under him," he said.

Sgt. Chris LaCivita stands behind the monitor, as the men rehearse their lines. He is producing the spot, with help from Republican media consultant Rick Reed.

Sgt. LaCivita, a tall energetic former Marine who received a Purple Heart after he was shot in the face in the first Persian Gulf war, defends the TV spots against critics who say what happened 30 years ago shouldn't matter.

"Character has always been and will always be a major focus on every candidate running," he said. "So many of the men who were there have legitimate questions about whether he deserved his citations. These men have earned the right to be heard."

But the group has become a lightning rod in recent weeks. In late August, Benjamin Ginsberg resigned his post as legal counsel for the Bush campaign when it became known that he was advising the Swiftees as well. Under scrutiny, several statements made by former "crewmates" of Mr. Kerry have been recanted.

One serious misstatement on Mr. Kerry's part, they say, was his claim that he was ordered to go to Cambodia in December 1968, an illegal act. Not true, says Mr. Gardner, who was on the boat with Mr. Kerry at the time.

"We were never in Cambodia," he says. "Not even close."

Some question Mr. Kerry's discharge from the Navy, information about which is still under wraps.

"If he's a war hero, why not release the missing information?" their thinking goes.

"Good question," Navy Lt. Paul Galanti says. "Everybody in this group wants to find out the truth about his service record. I think there's a lot more there."

Shot down over North Vietnam in 1967, Maj. Day suffered numerous injuries, managed to escape from his prison, walked for two weeks through the jungle eating live frogs before he was recaptured.

He then spent the next six years as a prison cellmate of John McCain, who would become a Republican senator, at the prison the Americans called, with bitter irony, the "Hanoi Hilton." Maj. Day's presence in the room is palpable. Even in a group of decorated war veterans, he stands out as a living legend.

The others sheepishly introduce themselves and are honored just to shake his still-firm hand.

"Kerry betrayed us by telling the people we were committing atrocities," Maj. Day says. "A man who does that is not fit to lead. It's impossible to let this man masquerade as a war hero and someone who has leadership. To imagine this guy who betrayed us becoming president and him being the leader of our armed forces is just unthinkable."

Standing next to the major, 57-year-old Jim Hoffman from Oshkosh, Wis., said Mr. Kerry was never a leader.

"He was an arrogant snob," said Mr. Hoffman, an engineman 2nd class on the swift boats, adding that he felt afraid and alone for many years, but now feels buoyed by his Swiftee peers and their mission.

Mr. Gardner says Mr. Kerry used to boast to his fellow servicemen that he would be the next JFK.

Says Sgt. LaCivita: "JFK must be rolling in his grave."

John Edwards Has CHUTZPAH Alright...

2004-10-10T14:31:00.000-07:00

...and if you don't believe me, go to FoxNews.com later today and read the transcript of today's "Fox News Sunday" show with Chris Wallace interviewing the boy-who-would-be-veep.

Wallace asks him, near the very end of the interview, about his dismal attendance record on Senate Intel committees and if it isn't a problem for someone running for Veep in a time of national crisis.

His reply? He yammers through some things he says he did in the Senate (Patient's Bill of Rights--written by a trial lawyer? NO wonder it didn't pass.) yada yada and then, he says, he realized that the only way to fix the country was to get Bush out of office so he started running for President and, of course, not attending his duties in the senate.

In other words, according to John Edwards, it is GEORGE BUSH's fault that he, Edwards, didn't attend the Senate!

Wow...and he seemed serious, too.

A Cogent Look FROM THE LEFT At The Dems Post-Kerry

2004-10-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

....and wow, is it interesting. This is from the San Francisco Chronicle, the home of left-wing radicalism, and look at the insight it gives US, even with the blindess of some of the conclusions. Read it all HERE (its a bit wordy, but read it all for the gems) and a few tidbits are below:

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"We're going to celebrate with John Kerry the night of Nov. 2. But the morning of Nov. 3, we're going to start organizing to take the party away from him, because we have serious disagreements about what the party should stand for and where this country needs to go," said one activist at the "What We Stand For" conference, Bertha Lewis, co-chair of the Working Families Party in New York state and a leader in the grassroots antipoverty group, ACORN.

"In 2004, we have to elect anyone but Bush," said a veteran labor strategist working to link unions with other progressive groups. "But if we keep working and build on the lessons learned and the partnerships we're forging during this fight against Bush, we can elect somebody we really like four or eight years from now."

All this signals a historic shift in the American left's approach to national politics. In the past, left-wing groups and individuals would moan about a Democratic nominee's perceived deficiencies and defect to a protest candidate, such as Ralph Nader or Jesse Jackson.

By contrast, the Beat Bush Brigades are showing a new patience and maturity. They are working in the short term to elect a Democrat they see as imperfect in order to build their movement's strength over the long term.

The Best Summation Of The REAL Domestic Policy Debate...EVER: By George Will

2004-10-10T09:17:00.000-07:00

Why Democrats fear Bush's domestic agenda
George Will
October 7, 2004
If Sept. 11 had never happened -- if debate about domestic policy had not been drowned out by the roar of war -- the potential domestic ramifications of this election would give it unusual nation-shaping power. To understand why is to understand some of the Democratic rage about the specter of a second term for George W. Bush.
He has a multifaceted agenda for weakening crucial components of the Democratic Party, factions that depend on cosseting by the federal government. Consider trial lawyers and organized labor.
John Kerry's selection of John Edwards as running mate was a blunder, and not just because Kerry probably will lose Edwards's North Carolina. The Edwards selection ratifies a provocative fact: trial lawyers have become the Democrats' most important faction. This has energized small-business owners, the self-employed, doctors and others who worry that they live one lawsuit away from ruin. Such people, now aroused, may propel tort reform that will curtail the windfalls that make trial lawyers the Democrats' largest source of contributions.
Another Democratic faction, organized labor, profits from coercive laws that make mandatory some of the $8 billion it collects in members' dues. Substantial sums flow into Democratic coffers. Furthermore, organized labor is, increasingly, government organized as an interest group -- public employees unions. The growth of organized labor is in those unions, whose members tend to vote Democratic, for government growth.
Bush is pressing to put hundreds of thousands of federal jobs up for competition with the private sector. Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform says: "The people who cut the Pentagon lawn are government employees. Why?" People listed in the phone book will do it cheaper. How many of the 15 million state and local government jobs could be privatized, with how many billions of dollars in savings?
The public education lobby -- one in 10 delegates to the Democratic convention was a member of a teachers union -- wants government to keep impediments in the way of competition. That means not empowering parents with school choice, including the choice of private schools, which have significantly lower per-pupil costs.
Welfare reform, the largest legislative achievement of the 1990s, diminished the Democratic Party's dependency-bureaucracy complex. That complex consists of wards of government and their government supervisors. And Bush's "ownership society" is another step in the plan to reduce the supply of government by reducing the demand for it.
That felicitous formulation, from Jonathan Rauch's masterful analysis of Bush's domestic ambitions (National Journal, July 26, 2003), follows from two axioms of which conservatives are fond: Give a person a fish and you give the person a meal; teach the person to fish and you give a livelihood. And: No one washes a rental car. Meaning people behave most responsibly about what they own. Hence Bush's menu of incentives for private retirement, health, education and savings accounts.
Conservatives hope such measures will encourage aptitudes that will make the welfare state compatible with traditional American individualism and self-reliance. And conservatives hope such aptitudes will result in Republican attitudes, especially among the elderly and other people with portfolios of equities.
Forty years ago, when President Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater, the elderly were the most conservative age cohort. Today the elderly are the most liberal.
About 2.4 million Americans die each year. Most are elderly, and a majority of that majority are Democrats, for two reasons: Most of them formed their political sensibilities in the Roosevelt-Truman-Kennedy-Johnson era of Democratic presidential ascendancy. And the elderly are devoted to big government: Social Security and Medicare by themselves are 33 percent of federal outlays.
About 7 million members of the elderly cohort from that Democratic presidential era have died since the 2000 election. And a Republican-leaning cohort that the Bush agenda aims to enlarge -- owners of stock -- continues to expand. In 1980, 20 percent of adults owned stock. Today 60 percent do, as do more than 70 percent of those who will vote on Nov. 2.
In addition to their economic rationale, the Bush tax cuts have the political purpose of crimping Democrats' abilities to satisfy their factions' desires for spending. And Bush's private retirement, health and education savings accounts would implement the theory that, as Rauch says, Republicans will empower the people, who in turn will empower Republicans.
Furthermore, Social Security private investment accounts would simultaneously multiply investors and diminish both dependence on government and resistance to reduction of it. Among some prescient Democrats this pincer strategy provokes anxiety, and some of today's fury.
©2004 Washington Post Writers Group

Hold Onto Your Hats----You HAVE To See This!

2004-10-09T21:49:00.000-07:00

Okay, folks--a prelude/disclaimer/whatever: IF YOU ARE TRULY bothered by "adult" language and activities, don't like more than a smidgen of obscenity or violence or disgusting stuff in your entertainment, then you probably should avoid "Team America"....but if you can handle it--and I mean a lot of it--you will find a rare, wonderful time at the movies hiding behind all that "chatter" indeed.

In fact, "Team America" is quite literally the most SUBVERSIVE movie ever made...and its on OUR SIDE! It is the perfect innoculation for our teens and young people against the celebrity left, their lefty professors and teachers, and the media mainstream culture that tells them how to think and, most importantly, how to vote.

What is "Team America"? Where have you been? It is the new film by the creators of "South Park" which features a super-goodguy organization of the title out to stop Kim Jung Il and the various terrorist groups of the middle east as they attempt to destroy the world--with the help of Alec Baldwin and Michael Moore and the entire "Famous Actors Guild"---yeah, the "F.A.G." of course--and it is entirely played by PUPPETS! Remember "Thunderbirds" and "Fireball XL-5" and "Stingray" and the rest of the great Brit "supermarionation" TV series for kids created by Gerry Anderson in the 60's and 70's? Well, they live again in this amazing spoof of those shows, of action movies in general, of ham acting overall, but MOSTLY a BRILLIANT satire of left-wing global politics!

Believe me, our kids are going to go see this movie even if you try to stop them, and they'll go because it is "forbidden" --- I mean, how wierd and revolt-against-parents-and-authority can a movie be ? How about one that shows 2 foot tall puppets talking dirty, having all kinds of sex, vomiting, and tearing each others guts out? Yeah, its a GROSS-out movie par excellence, except, of course, that it is INNOCENT because it is a PUPPET show. The moral of the story though is that while Team America may blow up everybody while trying to get the bad guys and while there may be both physical and diplomatic collateral damage in the war on terror, it is better to be a bust-up-the-joint American COWBOY than to be a F.A.G. wimp (they use another word for it beginning with P and ending in Y) or an evil empire A--hole, and those are the only three choices you get.

Folks--this is going to actually mean VOTES. It is going to send all those rock-the-vote MTV'ers to Dubya. I am not kidding. They're going to LAUGH at the lefties they see and hear from now on because the ones in the movie are so TRUE to their real-life counterparts and so patently ridiculously deluded and simple-minded.

Oh, did I mention that this is also a MUSICAL??? Yep, just like "South Park--Bigger, Longer, and Uncut"--the feature version of the TV series that gave us an Oscar-nominated "Blame Canada!" song, "Team America" is full of great musical numbers, but virtually ALL of them have words in their titles and/or subject matter that will make nominations this time next to impossible. After all, the themesong for the "Team America" fighter planes and copters and super-jeeps as they blast badguys (while blowing up the Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower and other landmarks in the process) and return to their super-secret base inside Mount Rushmore is the exciting anthem.....wait for it..... "America! F**k YEAH!" The music ranges from laments to rock anthems to spoofs of Broadway and Country hits to virtually every style imaginable, and they're so funny you'll go out humming the tunes!

I'm not exaggerating, people--either in my praises and prognostications OR in my caveat to the truly intolerant of excess. If you can handle it, go see it, and if you can't? At least turn the other cheek when your kids sneak out and see it anyhow---its GOOD for them, and "Team America" is on OUR side. F**k Yeah!

More Oz Similarities:

2004-10-09T10:26:00.000-07:00

Here are a few excerpts from coverage of the Australian election. See if you spot a few similarities to things you know:

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - Prime Minister John Howard scored a convincing victory in Australia's federal election Saturday, winning a historic fourth term in a vote ensuring the staunch U.S. ally keeps its troops in Iraq.
With more than 70 percent of votes tallied, Howard appeared likely to increase his government's majority in parliament - exceeding most analysts' predictions that the result would be very tight.
"My fellow Australians ... I am truly humbled by this extraordinary expression of confidence in the leadership of this great nation by the coalition," Howard told cheering supporters of his conservative alliance in Sydney.
"In accepting their charge to lead the nation I rededicate myself and all of my colleagues to the service of the Australian people." ....

Labor Party leader Mark Latham earlier conceded defeat before supporters in western Sydney, saying he called Howard to congratulate him.
"Tonight was not our night," Latham told the crowd.
The election was widely seen abroad as the first referendum for the three leaders who launched the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, with President Bush facing a ballot next month and British Prime Minister Tony Blair probably facing voters next year.
The Labor Party had vowed to bring the roughly 900 Australian troops deployed in and around Iraq home by Christmas, while Howard insisted they will stay until Iraqis ask them to leave. Australian troops have not suffered any casualties and none have combat roles.

Latham argued that the Iraq invasion was a distraction from the international fight against terrorism, and he wanted to focus Australia's security policy closer to home in Southeast Asia.
That was a clear nod to his country's fears of attacks after the Oct. 12, 2002, bombings on Bali Island that killed 202 people, many of them Australians, and the Sept. 9 bombing of the Australian Embassy that killed nine people.
With about 77 percent of votes counted, official figures showed Howard's coalition had 52.4 percent to Labor's 47.6 percent, giving the conservatives a clear lead in the race for a majority in parliament's 150-seat lower house, where government is formed.
"I think at this stage of the evening it's going to be almost impossible for Labor to win this election," Labor Sen. Robert Ray told Channel Nine television. "We are too far behind in too many seats at this stage for victory."
The campaign also hinged on personalities, with three-term incumbent Howard, 65, seen as a colorless but reliable steward of the economy, and Latham, 43, perceived as young and energetic but also inexperienced and sometimes undisciplined

At the polls, a man in line said to the prime minister: "Mr. Howard, if you win, I'm moving to Europe."

Another woman asked him when he was going to stop lying to the Australian public. Howard ignored the man and said "thank you" to the woman.

John Atkins, 59, voting in Sydney, said he did not approve of Latham's plan to withdraw from Iraq, even though he initially opposed the Iraq deployment.
"I was very concerned when the Labor Party said it would pull out the troops by Christmas," he said. "We should never have gone in, but once we had we need to stay."
Latham shook hands with well-wishers as he entered his Sydney polling site.

Down Under Indicator....And A GOOD One!

2004-10-09T10:16:00.000-07:00

Have you been wondering why President Bush and Vice President Cheney in the debates, when listing members of the victorious coalition in Iraq, have mentioned the UK and Poland and Italy but NOT Australia?
The reason is diplomatic--the burdens of being IN office sometimes outweigh the obligations of running for it (just as President Bush said he would not mention the appointments he'd made that he considered mistakes because he didn't want to embarass the individuals on TV, and just as he did not mention by name French oil-for-foodie Jacques Chirac because, love or hate the froggie fraudster, you still have to WORK with him the next day when you're re-elected. Again, policy and duty take precedence over political needs--it is just one of the burdens of holding office when in a tight campaign.)

SO ANYHOW...here's why John Howard, Australia's leader in the coalition and a staunch anti-terror ally, hasn't been mentioned lately---he's been in his OWN re-election race, his opponent has pledged to pull Australia's troops and support OUT of Iraq, and his race, like the Bush-Kerry one, has been predicted as being "too close to call" and "neck and neck" right"down to the wire."

Well guess what? The Oz election is over today, and John Howard, patriot, anti-terrorist, and friend of America and Dubya, has not only WON, he's been re-elected by a HUGE majority with a MAJOR increase in his party's majority in the Oz parliament! CONGRATS MR. HOWARD!!!! NOW LET'S THROW ANOTHER AL-QUAEDA ON THE BARBIE!!!

And note.....they (the MSM down under and here) all said how CLOSE it would be and how UNLIKELY it would b e that Howard would win or that if he won it would be conclusive. A nation divided is how they described Oz.

Sound familiar?

Look for similar results here in a few weeks---REAL PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THE STAKES IN THIS ELECTION, and understand who and how to keep their families safe.

Go Dubya! And NOW watch how Australia takes its place on the list of allies in all future election talk here. A great nation, in many ways our CLOSEST ally in the world, and a partner for peace and freedom.

Brilliant, Important Fact-Check On Stem Cell Debate:

2004-10-09T10:06:00.000-07:00

Here it is from NRO. Please read, and please share with friends who care. Truth is important, no matter what the Kerry liars prefer to spin:

----

The Big LieAn inhumane platform.By Robert P. George
Every reporter covering the election should, after the second presidential debate in St. Louis, be demanding of Kerry an answer to the following question: Who are the scientists who told you that "we have the option" of curing Parkinson's, diabetes, spinal-cord injuries, or any other disease using embryonic stem cells? If they won't ask him, the Bush campaign should defy him to name the names. He won't be able to do it. No scientists — even those most pro-Kerry and aggressively in favor of the federal funding of embryo-destructive research — ever told Kerry any such thing.
What Kerry has done here is told the big lie about embryonic stem cells. The claim that "we have the option" of curing Parkinson's disease, diabetes, etc. with embryonic stem cells is outrageous. No one knows when — or even whether or not — human embryonic stem cells will be therapeutically useful in treating any major disease or injury. There are profound — perhaps insuperable — problems with the therapeutic use of these cells. So, despite the fact that there is no federal ban on embryonic-stem-cell research, and that such research can be funded with state money and is being publicly funded in various places abroad, no embryonic-stem-cell-based therapy is even in clinical trials.
For months now, the Kerry campaign and its surrogates, such as Ron Reagan Jr., have cruelly led suffering people to believe that cures for their diseases are just around the corner. All we have to do is replace Bush with Kerry, open the federal funding spigot, and presto! The blind see and the lame walk! The Kerry campaign's hyping of embryo-destructive research for political gain is the cruelest and most shameful episode in the story of the 2004 election.
What Elizabeth Long (the woman who asked Kerry the stem-cell question) said is true: "Thousands of people have already been cured or treated by the use of adult stem cells or umbilical-cord stem cells. However, no one has been cured by using embryonic stem cells. Wouldn't it be wise to use stem cells obtained without the destruction of an embryo?
Kerry answered with a lie. A lie that will falsely inflate the hopes of countless people who would dearly love to believe that "we have the option" of curing them.
— Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University.

Now then...The Debate:

2004-10-08T20:02:00.000-07:00

WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!

Was Dubya GREAT or what?

There is a very curious phenomenon going on---ALL of OUR side's commentators, whether on the NRO Corner or FoxNews or almost ANYwhere but HughHewitt---are going VERY "slightly a win, more or less a draw, better than last time, but..." on this thing, when it was CLEARLY a TRIUMPH for the President. I mean a knock-down, drag-out TRIUMPH!

Go figure. Are we that gunshy of the program-callers and the push-poll idiots? I hope not.

Want an indicator, just watch the reruns and then especially the period at the END of the show when the crowd gets to get up close with the candidates. Here's how I described it on LDot.:

Everyone, left or right, can imagine George and Laura as neighbors, as parents whose kids go to the same school as ours, as friends from another state, as people we meet and like at our table on a cruise to Alaska or the Caribbean, as business colleagues, as brother/sister of a friend, as our coaches or teachers, AS REAL PEOPLE--even though they have so much more authority and responsibility in reality. NOBODY could EVER mistake the Kerry's as ANY of those things, other than a few upperclass Manhattanites or Boston Brahmins or the like. In a nation where "any little boy can grow up to be President someday" is a matter of our national faith and mythology and credo, there's a simple reason why Dubya will win and Kerry will not. He's one of us. He's the BEST of us, even though he's got some of our flaws, too. He's a hard-working, decent, God-fearing American on the spot doing the very best he can every moment. And THAT is who I'm voting for. You too? Thought so.

And now for something COMPLETELY different...

2004-10-08T19:56:00.000-07:00

There is a new movie opening in a week (I've already got tix for the "sneak preview" tomorrow night) by the creators of "South Park" Matt Stone and Trey Parker called "Team America" that is, if the trailers (viewable at www.TeamAmerica.com are any indication, is going to be the most wonderfully obscenely hilarious spoof of all things political and MSM/Hollywood ever done. It is a movie, done with PUPPETS in the style of "Thunderbirds" and "SuperCar" and "Fireball XL-5" and all the rest of the great Gerry Anderson Supermarionation TV shows from the 60's, and features great RIPS of the Hollywood left, Kim-Il-Sung and just about everyone else. They even list a lot of famous folks like Alec Baldwin, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, who they GUARANTEE will be offended. Its a JOKE, right? WRONGO!!!!

Get THIS from DRUDGE tonight!!!:

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XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX FRI OCT 8, 2004 19:11:11 ET XXXXX SEAN PENN RIPS 'TEAM AMERICA' CREATORS IN ANGRY MEMO **Exclusive** October 6, 2004 To Trey Parker and Matt Stone, I remember a cordial hello when you guys were beginning to be famous guys around Hollywood at some party. I remember several times getting a few giggles out of your humor. I remember not being bothered as you traded on my name among others to appear witty, above it all, and likeable to your crowd. I never mind being of service, in satire and silliness. I do mind when anybody who doesn't have a child, doesn't have a child at war, or isn't or won't be in harm's way themselves, is encouraging that there's "no shame in not voting" "if you don't know what you're talking about" (Mr. Stone) without mentioning the shame of not knowing what your talking about, and encouraging people to know. You guys are talented young guys but alas, primarily young guys. It's all well to joke about me or whomever you choose. Not so well, to encourage irresponsibility that will ultimately lead to the disembowelment, mutilation, exploitation, and death of innocent people throughout the world. The vote matters to them. No one's ignorance, indcluding a couple of hip cross-dressers, is an excuse. All best, and a sincere fuck you, Sean Penn P.S. Take this as a personal invitation from me to you (you can ask Dennis Miller along for the ride as well) to escort you on a trip, which I took last Christmas. We'll fly to Amman, Jordan and I'll ride with you in a (?) 12 hours through the Sunni Triangle into Fallujah and Baghdad and I'll show you around. When we return, make all the fun you want. Developing...

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Repeat after me: LIBERALS HAVE NO SENSE OF HUMOR!!!!! And that's just ANOTHER reason why we will WIN!

JUST BEFORE WE DEBATE AGAIN.....ABC Shows ITS True Colors!

2004-10-08T17:02:00.000-07:00

And remember as you read this that tonight's moderator--charged with SOLE responsibility to choose WHICH questions get asked, is a very transparently liberal ABC "reporter." Here's the BIG news:

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XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX FRI OCT 08, 2004 18:42:03 ET XXXXX

ABCNEWS POLITICAL DIRECTOR MEMO SPARKS CONTROVERSY**Exclusive**An internal memo written by ABCNEWS Political Director Mark Halperin admonishes ABC staff: During coverage of Democrat Kerry and Republican Bush not to "reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable."The controversial internal memo, obtained by DRUDGE, captures Halperin stating how "Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win."Halperin claims that Bush is using "distortions" to capture victory."The current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done," Halperin writes.Halperin's claim that ABCNEWS will not "reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable" set off a sparks in St. Louis where media players gathered to cover the second presidential debate.

DON HEWITT GETS IT:

2004-10-07T17:17:00.000-07:00

Don Hewitt just now on "The O'Reilly Factor" was asked by Bill O'Reilly, after Don explained that the producer developed the story and that mistakes were made, this question:

"Did Dan Rather KNOW it?" (the "it" being that the story had serious flaws)

HEWITT'S ANSWER: (after a VERY pregnant pause and sigh) "When you get to be You or Me or Dan Rather, you damn well BETTER know it."

And that, as they say, is that.

Ooops....There Goes Kerry's Reason To Live (as a candidate):

2004-10-07T14:39:00.000-07:00

The first debate, putting aside style points, set out two distince paths: The one we've taken with President Bush in preemption, agression, and destruction of the terrorists around the world....or Kerry's prescription: "Wait for the sanctions and the UN to work and enlist the international community of our allies--France, Germany, Russia--to stop Saddam's evil."

Ooops.

Daily, new revelations about the Oil For Food debacle are coming out, and TODAY, it has been exposed in full--the French, the Russians, and the Germans were not only involved in corruption--their GOVERNMENTS were ACTIVELY delaying and opposing the USA and stalling our preemption BECAUSE THEY WERE SELLING WEAPONS TO SADDAM IN RETURN FOR OIL VOUCHERS! Remember that Roland missile that killed an Abrahams Tank in the war? Yep. Oil For"food"! The specifics are coming out. Following Kerry's "plan" would have definitely given us a STRONGER Saddam and a STRONGER terror network as he paid suicide bombers, hosted terror training camps, and coddled killers from around the globe---it seems as a way of COMPETING with his hated Iranian enemies for the role as Mr. Terror! So much for Kerry on Foreign Policy---he not only voted the RIGHT way to GO to war but DISSED his own vote, he then took the path of STUPIDITY in trusting his friends in France and the rest rather than defending the USA.

Foreign Policy, if it matters, is now clearly Bush's win and Kerry's loss--if that were the only factor in the election, it would all be over.

But wait, you say--"Its the economy, stupid!"???? Ooooh yeah. Kerry is the guy who says this is a TERRIBLE economy and a job-LOSING economy and oooh.....the "worst president for job loss since Herbert Hoover."

(Putting aside the fact that most of the people Kerry's talking to who have been under-educated by unionized Dem-backing teachers in public schools don't even know WHO Herbert Hoover was for a moment...)

What do the stats say? And what are they ABOUT to say? Let's let Jim Glassman at Tech Central Station tell us in a few excerpts (read the whole wonderful summary HERE):

-------------
Kerry says Bush is "the first president to lose jobs in our country in 72 years." This statement is both false and disingenuous. Franklin Roosevelt lost lots of jobs; so did Ronald Reagan. Both inherited bad economies from their predecessors -- as did Bush.

The president was faced in his first year with a tech bubble that had burst, a terrorist attack that had killed 3,000 Americans and the worst corporate accounting scandals in history. None of these was Bush's fault; Clinton deserves at least some of the blame for all three.

The real question is how Bush handled the cards he was dealt. He did what any economist -- Keynesian or supply-sider -- would prescribe: cut taxes, increase spending and loosen monetary policy (really, the job of the Fed). All steps were taken quickly, and the economy has turned around.

The big job losses occurred at the start of the administration. The big gains have occurred in the past year.'

-----------------

Well, gosh Kerry m'boy? What are you gonna say NOW? And what will you say when, on Friday, just before the debate, the HUGE JOB NUMBERS both on the most recent months and the revisions on the first half of the year's tally show EVEN BIGGER GAINS than expected? Oh. I see. "OUTsourcing" right? Wrong:
Glassman again rides to the rescue of truth:

--------------------

The second theme that Kerry will push is outsourcing or offshoring -- the hiring of foreigners by American companies. This accusation makes Kerry the first major-party presidential candidate in decades to spout a protectionist line on trade.

Outsourcing is a non-problem. The latest statistics show that of the 1.5 million jobs lost last year in mass layoffs, less than 1 percent were sent abroad. Daniel Drezner of the University of Chicago also points out that while 4,633 workers were laid off from offshoring in the first quarter, Kodak laid off 15,000 because of the growth of digital photography.

It is technology and competition that are costing -- and gaining -- jobs for Americans. When we have an edge over the rest of the world -- as we do in many sectors, from entertainment to financial services -- we gain from trade. When other countries have an edge over us--as they do in textiles, for instance -- then we gain as well, as nearly 300 million Americans pay lower prices. That's the way trade works. It benefits both parties. Obstructing it would be a disaster.

-------------

Ooops.....not only an arguement against Kerry, but an arguement against the incumbent trade-protectionist anti-free-trading Dems in the House and Senate! So where do we REALLY stand? Funny enough, it comes back to comparisons with Kerry's euro-trashed-economics-and-policy pals. Let Glassman conclude:

-------------------

My guess is that the emotional and cynical appeals that Kerry is making won't work -- for the simple reason that the real economy is alive and well and getting better. "The U.S. will probably grow more in the second half than in the first," says David Malpass, chief economist for Bear Stearns. I agree.

The unemployment rate today is lower than the average of the past three decades. Household wealth has soared to a new record, and 69 percent of Americans own their own homes, the highest proportion ever.

Last week, the final figures for Gross Domestic Product in the second quarter were announced. GDP, the nation's total economic output, grew nearly 5 percent for the year. That's greater than in any 12-month period during the Clinton administration. Personal income is up 5 percent in the past year, and business spending is strong. Inflation is tame, and interest rates are low. Compare the United States with Kerry's paragons abroad. Unemployment in France is 9.9 percent; in Germany, 10.6 percent.

On Friday, statistics on employment will be released. August showed a gain of 144,000 jobs, but, because of the hurricanes, the increase could be smaller for September. But there should be a dramatic upward revision for past months as the Bureau of Labor Statistics reconciles the payroll survey, which shows a net loss of about 800,000 jobs during Bush's term, with the household survey, which shows a gain of 2 million jobs.

Kerry, through distortions and obfuscations, will try mightily to convince Americans that Bush has messed up the economy. If reality counts, he won't get away with it.

Oh, I Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda...

2004-10-06T13:20:00.000-07:00

....you know those things you think AFTER a confrontation you SHOULDA said? WOULDA said if you'd thought of 'em? COULDA said if only....???

Well, the debates certainly make us all think of a few, but nobody has ever come up with one as piercing as an anonymous reader of TheCorner on NRO did after last night's Veep debate. Get a load of THIS! It is SMOKIN!!!:
=============

THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN ANOTHER WAY TO GO... [Jonah Goldberg]
From a reader:
Did you watch the debate?
Did you see when Edwards said something like, "Gwenn, Our country has never been so divided in our history."
Cheney should have said, "Actually, it was more divided during the Civil War, when Democrats from North Carolina were waging war on the United States in an attempt to keep people like Gwen Ifill enslaved."
That would have showed him.
Note: This was by no means an invitation to open up a Corner debate on the war between the states.

Isn't It NICE To Have A STATESMAN As Veep?

2004-10-05T21:56:00.000-07:00

Dick Cheney kicked butt. There's no amound of DNC spin OR Rep overstatement that can change the truth. The BreckGirl Lawyer didn't look so swift---it didn't help that the lighting was very, very white and flat--made his allegedly-handsome face into a snarling seething snake-nest of cracks and crevices and pasty-white uglyness to my eye, but then, I'm the official Last Heterosexual In Hollywood so maybe I'm not the right person to ask.

Anyhow it was pretty clear that the Veep kicked tuchas, and Edwards wasn't up to the challenge. A one-termer in the extreme. And another thing---this is why, I suggest, he was chosen. He has NO real constituency within the party.....and thus, he's the perfect SCAPEGOAT FOR A LOSS! After all, the Clitnonistas and the rest who've come in late enough to be SEEN but too late to actually help Kerry win--which they do not want for Hillary's sake. They're clear. Kerry himself? Hey, he's been around so long and he's Teddy's protege, so he's a perfect noble lib. But who to BLAME? Why, the golden boy lawyer, of course! Watch for this to develop as Bush builds his lead. They'll say "Gosh, John, Kerry set 'em up for you but you let that old man clean your clock!"

ANYHOW......in other news, here's an inside-the-MSM report from Jim Geraghty at the KerrySpot on NRO re the progress of the CBS internal investigation--the one that they don't want to end before the election to avoid being seen as political, right? Right. Here we go:
______________________-

THAT CBS INTERNAL INVESTIGATION? NOT MUCH SO FAR

Just heard from one of my folks in CBS News.
I hadn't heard from this person in a while - because apparently, CBS is putting its resources into its top priority in this mess: making sure none of its employees are talking to any other media. (Yeah, that's the problem.)
Employees who are disgruntled about the Rather situation - not necessarily conservative, just frustrated at how the actions of Rather, Mapes, and Heyward ruined the network's image - fear anything being traced back to them. (Attention CBS Snoops: My source's name is Ran Dather. You can find him in the big office.)
My source says many employees are still grumbling about Rather and wish he would leave. No one can understand why Mapes is still employed — and still working on political stories, apparently. But the message from CBS suits is clear - anybody who complains will get tougher consequences than Rather, Mapes, or Heyward has, and so most employees now just want the story to go away.
Several employees have been interviewed as part of the review by former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and retired Associated Press chief Louis Boccardi. They described it as very mild questioning. No one is being pressed too hard.
Whitewash, the Kerry Spot suspects.

CBS Really Has NO Shame, Y'know?

2004-10-05T14:55:00.000-07:00

Remember the big investigation of CBS that CBS is doing on CBS with CBS folks?
You know, that "tribunal" with Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi? The one Les Moonves put into place to solve the issue of whether RaTHerGate was about bias or not?

Well were you expecting results soon? Don't hold your breath. The CBS folks now announce that they will delay the release of their findings until after the election IN ORDER TO PREVENT THE IMPRESSION THAT THERE IS A POLITICAL MOTIVATION TO THE RELEASE OF THE INFO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No, kids. I'm not making this up. Read it for yourself. HERE.

Ugh.

Subliminal MSM Sillyness. WOW.

2004-10-05T11:54:00.000-07:00

Remember 4 years ago when NBC did TWO reports on how the Bush people had allegedly put a subliminal into an ad against Algore? How a zooming in moment on the word Democrats had featured a full-frame ONE FRAME OF A VIDEO AD with the word "RATS" in it? And how terrible and Pavolovian and mind-controlling that EVIL Republican ad was? Remember?

Silly, wasn't it?

Okay...flash forward to now, and guess what NBC did. Not for one frame, but for SIXTEEN SECONDS! They put up a split-screen with Tom Brokow scowling on one side and President Bush on the other and BEHIND THE PRESIDENT is framed four letters of a larger word....four letters that spell NBC's message and Kerry's about the President of the United States: "ILIE"

That's right. NBC is non-subliminally having Bush say " I LIE " but suddenly this is silly and a "blogosphere" over-reaction, even though THEY did TWO NIGHTLY NEWS STORIES about ONE FRAME four years ago?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... Go look and see for yourself. We report, you decide.
And NBC and the MSM continue to be the only ones who really, regularly and shamelessly continue to LIE!

HERE IT IS!!! THE GLOBAL TEST ITSELF!!!

2004-10-04T20:52:00.000-07:00

Wow....I thought about doing something like this, but another blogger's outdone whatever I'd have devised. Now, thanks to TransTerrestrial Musings, YOU TOO can actually TAKE THE "GLOBAL TEST" That Sen. John Friggin' Kerry described in the debate! READY?

Click HERE!

The Big Poll Was Gimmicked---Read On!

2004-10-04T02:09:00.000-07:00

Remember the big poll saying Bush's sub-par debate perf had turned the election around that you were reading with dread earlier this weekend? Whoopsie. The Blogosphere scores another victory as this posting from "POLITICAL VICE SQUAD" blog shows. Chalk up another win for our side...and another MSM bias event (as if you needed more.):

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Saturday, October 02, 2004

Liberal Media Cognitive Dissonance: The NewsWeak "Poll"
Back on September 11th (good time for a political poll, huh?), NewsWeak belched out a set of data that was based on the following partisan breakdown:R = 39 percentD = 30 percentI = 27 percentNot stated = 4 percentEarlier today, however, NewsWeak predictably began the last-ditch media push to try and take down President Bush and to replace him with John Kerry. Part of that process, of course, is and will be a psy-ops campaign to encourage liberal college students actually to vote and to suppress turnout amongst nervous, fickle conservatives. "Polling data" allegedly showing Kerry "closing the gap" or "catching Bush" will be part and parcel of that campaign.Here's the partisan breakdown for today's "poll" by NewsWeak:R = 34 percentD = 36 percentI = 27 percentNot stated = 3 percentIn other words, they decreased Republican sampling by 5 percentage points and increased Democratic sampling by 6 full percentage points. Furthermore, this "poll" strictly was limited to the "Pacific and Mountain time zones." In other words, registered voters from the following states completely were excluded: Texas, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana, and the entire old south."Stupid is as stupid does"-- Forrest GumpP.S. - Please click on "comments" for a more detailed analysis by Oak Leaf, who is one of this blog's and Polipundit.com's most esteemed commentators. He tears this "poll" apart the way a demo crew might tear down a condemned building . . .UPDATE: A correction is needed for one of my comments. Hat tip to: Al, who's in the thread. Oak Leaf's comments, however, within the thread, are right on the money.The polling Thursday night was limited to the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones. To be blunt, I didn't even notice that they claimed to have polled on Friday and Saturday. And why not?I've literally never seen a poll -- which was not stated to be a straw poll or a focus group test -- that was released the same day its sample was completed. Yeah, this "poll" never claimed to have been of likely voters, so adjustments for turnout models would not have been necessary. But still. Come on. The same day???
posted by Jayson Javitz @ 4:34 PM

Getting Fed UP? Me too....Here's Why:

2004-10-03T13:05:00.000-07:00

I'm watching all the "Sunday Shows" with all the "talking heads" and "pundits and pols" and I'm thinking there are an awful lot of F'ing IDIOTS on the air today, aren't you?

About the most fatuous, and he's always in the top contender running for that dubious honor, is former ambassador (and probable sec-state if Kerry wins) Richard Holdbrooke, who, when asked on Fox News about the "global test" Kerry clearly stated would be applied to any preemptive move by US military if President Kerry (ouch) was in charge, explained that it wouldn't be a problem because the need to make the move would be "self evident" if Kerry was presuming to make it. In other words, according to this smug ass Holbrooke, the global test--putting America's security under the veto power of the Kofi Anans and Jacques Chiracs of the worls, is not important because Kerry would never take any actions they wouldn't like in the first place or even contemplate such actions.

Wow. Isn't THAT reassuring?

You have to give these libs their due---they are remarkably HONEST about their perfidy IF you listen carefully to what they're saying. That's why they act so smug and pompous and oblivious to their own flipflops and switchbacks and parsing and ploys.....they don't SEE them as such, just as their NATURAL means of expression and governance!

And then there are the "consultants" who spew their little slogan lines and phrases, using terms like "THIS president" (said dripping with contempt) and the rest---they REALLY think that's CLEVER and PROFESSIONAL and EFFECTIVE, while me? I think it gives the average joe or josephine out here in the real America a look on our faces like Bush wore all night during the debate---disgust at these smartypants elitists who think they're so damn smart and clever and better than US.

So whaddya say we kick their butts? Whadya say we send 'em back to Harvard with a bewildered stare on their faces? Whaddya say we win this in a LANDSLIDE for HONESTY and REALITY and REAL self-defense? Whaddya say we FLUNK the Kerry-ites on their "global test" on election day? I think it is more than possible--it is likely--if we just do this--but we all have to do it with PERSISTANCE and CONSISTENCY!

1. Whenever you are out or among others and ANY kerryite says ANYthing silly like these jerks do...LAUGH. Show your CONTEMPT with a SMILE. Say things like "Oh really!" or "What a crock!" or a hearty, loud, ringing declaration of "Bullshit!" with a LAUGH of derision. I mean EVERY time. Eavesdropping at the local Starbucks? Do it. Sitting in your office? Do it. Hear this crap on a TV in a Sears while walking thru the electronics section? SNORT it with PRIDE!

Why? Because regular folks who aren't as brave as you are need to know they're not ALONE in finding this crap so obscenely wrong. We need to be an EXAMPLE of the hearty, healthy, righteous indignation and anger and frustration and apalled-ness that our leader, our President, "THIS President" expressed openly and honestly during the "debate" while Kerry sold our future to the frogs!

2. Go to work. Go volunteer. Is your car covered in stickers yet? It SHOULD BE! If you won't give up your paint job and your freedom-from-arguements and your spare time for Amerca, what good are you? GET OFF YOUR BUTT AND GO TO WORK FOR THIS THING! Make calls, hand out flyers, debate people--MAKE A MIGHTY NOISE FOR DUBYA, DAMMIT!

Okay....you know what to do. I want a result and a turnout for our side that are so huge the Dems don't DARE launch another lawyer avalanche re. chads etc. etc. The only way to beat these people into the dust of history where they deserve to be with their antidiluvian elitist ideas is to CRUSH them at the polls and CRUSH them in the coffeeshops and CRUSH them at EVERY opportunity and then get up and CRUSH them AGAIN!

To quote a man who'd surely have been a Dubya supporter, General George S. Patton:

"The object of war is NOT to die for your country. The object of war is to make the OTHER poor, dumb sonofabitch die for HIS country."

Let's do it. Now.

If You're American, THINK About The Debate THIS Way...IF You Want To Be RIGHT.

2004-10-01T13:29:00.000-07:00

Ronald Weick in The American Thinker HERE has a LOT of wisdom to share about the debate. Read this before you get glum folks. Truth really does MATTER.

--------------------

A decisive result

A funny thing happened last night: the man who won the debate lost the election. President Bush was off his game and Senator Kerry delivered a polished performance (please, no manicure jokes). The assembled media-types—a dazzling array of pundits, flacks, spinners, and other desperadoes—awarded the nod to Kerry, unsurprisingly. To the mainstream media, the Democrat is always the winner of these bouts, but on occasion he actually is, and this time several instant polls backed the verdict.
Bush looked tired and he completely failed to hide his irritation at his opponent’s line of attack. Terry McAuliffe, the relentlessly puerile chairman of the DNC, announced that for his next stunt, he was releasing a video of the President’s facial expressions, surely prompting some Democrats to wonder just how much the Bush people were paying this guy. Kerry, for his part, disdained throwing red meat to his hard-left constituency, those of the fevered brow and foaming mouth, adopting a measured, statesmanlike pose that remained unshaken throughout. Many of the exchanges were repetitive and utterly predictable. Still, there were moments of genuine passion.
Some of those exchanges had Republicans pounding the arms of their chairs in frustration and shouting rejoinders at the screen. Kerry talked about firmness and resolve, and somehow Bush couldn’t bring himself to observe that his opponent had not managed to find the resolve to support removing Saddam Hussein’s troops from Kuwait. Astonishingly, Kerry invoked the name of Ronald Reagan, and Bush failed to remind the audience that the Massachusetts liberal (where was that phrase?) had dismissed the rollback of communism in Grenada as the tactics of a bully. Deliciously fat pitches split the plate and the President’s bat remained on his shoulder. Nothing about Daniel Ortega or the nuclear freeze; no mention of the Senate votes to gut intelligence services (somewhat relevant to the discussion, one might think).
On the topic of North Korea, an opportunity for Bush arose that he did not maximize, but didn’t entirely squander. Kerry saddled himself with the objectively worse position, arguing for bilateral talks with that lunatic regime. Bush lined a solid single by pointing out that China’s leverage was indispensable to a satisfactory settlement. Fine, but couldn’t he have said something about North Korea’s snookering of the ever-meddlesome Jimmy Carter? In a debate on the economy, would any Democrat miss conjuring up Herbert Hoover? This one should have been slammed into the upper deck.
But in spite of everything that went wrong for the President, his opponent had a Kitty Dukakis moment, one that was barely noticed by the glib, sophisticated analysts.
Mr. Lehrer: “New question, two minutes, Senator Kerry. What is your position on the whole concept of preemptive war?”
Mr. Kerry: “The president always has the right and always has had the right for preemptive strike…No president through all of American history has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. [Here it comes] But if and when you do it, Jim, you’ve got to do it in a way that passes the test. That passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you’re doing what you’re doing. And you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons…”
Mr. Bush: “Let me—I’m not exactly sure what you mean: passes the global test. You take preemptive action if you pass a global test? My attitude is you take preemptive action in order to protect the American people…”
Call it the mother of all sound bites.
When Darryl Strawberry joined the Mets, his godlike gifts left fans breathless-- grace and power and that long, lovely, sweet swing that called to mind Teddy Ballgame himself. There was that annoying business with lefthanded pitchers: they’d get two strikes on him and throw a curve, wide, almost into the dirt. Always, always, he’d wave helplessly at it. Years later, now a veteran looking back on a career ruined by drugs, but impressive nonetheless, he’d face one of those lefthanders. Two strikes and he knew what was coming. He had been coached, had studied the tapes; he remembered the past humiliations; he swore that that this time he would wait. That low curve would come, and he would launch that big sweep, born of despair, and miss by a foot.
Something about that pitch defined Darryl Strawberry. The Ineradicable Flaw, it revealed the essential humanity of this abundantly talented man; it mocked all pretensions to perfection.
So, here was John Kerry. An intelligent man, a professional politician in all respects, he had prepared carefully. He would say the word “strong” many times. He clenched his fists and talked about firmness and resolve. He would not appear weak. Then that moment, that terrible moment—“that passes the global test.”
George Bush’s delivery was hesitant at times; he sounded gratingly Texan; he looked short. John Kerry’s voice was sonorous and his bearing, patrician. And at the end of the night, Bush remained the man who would always defend America; Kerry, the man who would have to clear it with Jacques Chirac.
Ronald Wieck 10 01 04

The Debate--Winner/Loser? Ask The MSM And Guess What They'll Say?

2004-10-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

Tim Graham on NRO today has a superb analysis of the MSM's judging of the debate (which is about on a par with the Bulgarian judge in any pre-Reagan Olympics) You can read it here, or HERE :

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Changing the StoryLiberal-media types were “surprised” by Kerry.

By Tim Graham

Rush Limbaugh and many others predicted that the media elite would find "surprising" strength for John Kerry in the debates. Kerry would have had to start babbling gibberish (think Steve Carell's Jim Carrey-cursed anchorman in Bruce Almighty) to not receive liberal raves Thursday night and Friday morning.
For example, Tom Shales began his Washington Post analysis saying, "John Kerry came off as more presidential than the president" Thursday night. Shales predicted, "It could be that flip-flopping has played itself out, thanks in part to relentless lampooning of the phrase by topical TV comics."
Inside the liberal-media cocoon, as Mickey Kaus puts it, they'd like to believe that looking presidential and winning the election are the same thing. In other words, if Coke makes a better commercial than Pepsi, then Coke should sell more bottles. But liberals are missing the point that voters may have heard the candidates' messages loud and clear and thought: I'll stick with the guy who wants to play offense in the war on terrorism, not the guy aiming for World Approval. I'll take the man who won't bend to international peer pressure over the man who sounds like he's running for king of the U.N. prom.
Perhaps the most comical moment in the liberal-media after-party Thursday night came on PBS's Charlie Rose, when Newsweek's chief Democratic spinner, Jonathan Alter, mourned that Republicans have a "huge advantage" after the debates because conservatives "control all of talk radio" (sorry, Al Franken) and because there won't be many on Fox News Channel speaking well of Kerry. By contrast, CNN and MSNBC and PBS all have the disadvantage of attempting to be balanced.
But it seemed from flipping past Fox after the debate that they had several Kerry fans on — from aspiring secretary of state Richard Holbrooke to Sen. Bob Graham. And what made Alter's statement so comical was that he was sitting on a PBS roundtable with Charlie Rose, Walter Isaacson, Karen Tumulty, Mark Halperin, and Michael Kinsley — all credentialed members of the liberal media elite who liked Kerry's performance. (ABC's Halperin proclaimed that it was "new" that both candidates looked "strong and principled.") Rose began with Bush friend and Commerce Secretary Don Evans, but followed with the liberal media panel, Holbrooke, and then two French guests who can't wait for President Kerry to come, beret in hand, to court Old Europe. Fox was more balanced than Charlie Rose on Thursday night. But then, liberal unanimity — or at least a 5-to-1 or 10-to-1 liberal-to-conservative ratio — isn't considered bias inside the liberal-media cocoon. It's considered tilting the scales a bit in favor of Justice and Reason.
Another contender in the comical category was Dan Rather, who needed a ladder to get off his high horse as he insisted on calling the debates "joint appearances." Perhaps Rather can save his superiority dance for someone who thinks he hasn't just been exposed as an unprofessional, forgery-pushing Bush-hater.
Liberal-media types were also likely to praise debate moderator Jim Lehrer's performance. Lehrer's style — deferential, brief, earnestly attempting not to be the center of attention — is a winning style in debates. Lehrer works hard to help voters discern the differences between the candidates on the issues under discussion, but he suffered from the usual liberal-media syndrome, seeing nothing in Senator Kerry's 20 years in the Senate worth bringing up. It's bad enough that Kerry never talks about his Senate record. It's worse that the media seem never to ask him.
For starters, it would have been nice for Lehrer to ask, as the subject of missile defense came up, why Sen. Kerry routinely voted against it. Of course, it would have helped for Bush to be more critical and specific on Kerry's Senate record. But when people, both Bush fans and Kerry fans, note that Bush "seemed on the defensive," they ought to acknowledge that it was, at least in part, prompted by Lehrer's failure to ask Kerry questions that would put him on the defensive.
Shortly before the debate began, Newsweek national editor Jon Meacham suggested on MSNBC that journalists are tired of Bush being in the lead, and so will try to narrow the race. Meacham foresaw "the possibility that President Bush has peaked about a month too early. Because we all need a narrative to change." Chris Matthews asked: "Is that your prediction?" Meacham replied: "I think it's possible that we're gonna be sitting around saying, 'Well you know Kerry really surprised us.' Because in a way the imperative is to change the story."
But remember, journalists aren't in favor of changing the story because it makes good copy. They're in favor of changing it because it gives their candidate a better chance of winning.
— Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and an NRO contributor.

Oh And By The Way, Mr. Kerry???

2004-10-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

You said something last night about Bush invading Iraq after 9/11 being as if FDR, after Pearl Harbor, had invaded Mexico. Cute. But.....do you (the man who doesn't know Treblinka, a Hitler concentration camp in Poland, from Lubyanka, a KGB prison in Mowcow, doesnt' know that the subways in NYC ran all through the RNC, doesn't know that Poland is in our Iraq coalition, and thinks the Koran armistice took place in 1952 when, in fact, it was in 1953, etc. etc. etc. etc.) actually know where FDR first DID invade after Pearl Harbor??

Tunisia.

That's right.

Tunisia.

If we were to follow Kerry's bizarre and astoundingly misinformed analogies, what FDR SHOULD have done was call in J. Edgar Hoover on Dec. 8, 1941, and sent the G-men to hunt down and arrest as criminals the Japanese PILOTS who bombed Pearl.

Such nonsense fails to pass an intelligence test, Mr. Kerr, let alone a "global test" of any kind.

If Those Post-Debate Insta-Polls Seemed Fishy.....Well, They ARE!

2004-10-01T02:35:00.000-07:00

the Boston Herald 'splains it nicely HERE thanks. Read on....

-----

Busy buzz: Dems make no secret about spinning strategy

By David R. Guarino, Friday, October 1, 2004

Convinced a 2000 debate victory was stolen from them by better-organized debate spin, Democrats flooded the airwaves last night trying to ``win'' post-debate instant tracking polls, the buzz on blogs and spin on talk radio.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe took the unusual path of revealing their strategy to steal the spin in a bold e-mail hours before the debate.
``We all know what happened in 2000,'' McAuliffe wrote in the e-mail. ``Al Gore won the first debate on the issues, but Republicans stole the post-debate spin. We are not going to let that happen again.''
The Democrats urged their backers to vote in instant online media polls being conducted by each of the major news networks and some newspapers - even providing Web addresses.
The e-mails also listed phone numbers for nationally syndicated radio stations and gave Democrats a form letter to send to newspapers praising John F. Kerry's performance.
All this before a single question was asked.
Douglas E. Schoen, a former Clinton adviser and debate analyst, said it's no surprise the Democrats would try to hijack the post-debate polling and analysis.
``The real question is what happens in the moments, hours and days after the debate is over,'' Schoen said.
He noted that instant polls after the first Bush-Gore debate in Boston showed a ``narrow'' Gore advantage. Within a week, Bush had gained eight points after aides succeeded in spinning that Gore was overbearing.
Republicans were being no less shy, offering up an entire Web site, DebateFacts.com, which they said will be dedicated to arming the press and public with ``real-time text and video responses to John Kerry's vacillation, defeatism and personal attacks.''
The networks tried to prevent the surveys from being hijacked by partisans. CBS promised a poll of 200 ``undecided voters from across the nation.''
Given that a quarter of voters said they'll be watching - and up to a third of those said they could be swayed by the results of the debate - it's not hard to realize just what's on the line for both sides.

Hugh Hewitt Scores The Debate Brilliantly

2004-10-01T01:34:00.000-07:00

....and accurately, but his later commentary is worthy of excerpting to tease you into going to read his great question-by-question blow-by-blow chart of the whole affair HERE. Here's the tease/taste:

-----

With close to 30,000 visitors in the last hour, I am overwhelmed by e-mail of three types. First, from the lefties:" You stupid, %$#@* fool,etc. Kerry killed Bush. The forces of the left are on the march. We must leave Iraq! We must buy off Kim Jong Il! We need the approval of the French!"
From spooked Bush-supporters: "Most of the MSM talking heads are saying Kerry won on points!" True, and some of them are even Bush supporters. Which is why I watch the debates alone, which leads to a very different conclusion than my days of debate watching in television studios with their pressure of the collective voice pushes you towards "don't be wrong." So you overanalyze and over-react. MSM talking points thought that Kerry might pull a Gore, which would have finished him off. He didn't. He executed an excellent retreat to the left side of his party, and secured 45% in the general election. Ho-hum. The same folks that declared his Boston salute a brilliant bit of theater are now saying he's back in the race. Wrong in July, and wrong in September. Why?
Because as group three notes: "America will never elect a man who believes in (1)"global tests," or (2)that we can't be trusted with 'bunker-busters.'" Kerry trotted out vintage nuclear freeze thinking tonight, arguing that the United States' development of a new generation of nukes is a bad thing. No, it is not, because we are a good and responsible country. End of debate, because Kerry's distrust of our weaponry is really a distrust of our national purpose. As the president kept saying, it is about the core of the candidates, and at Bush's core is a certainty about America's purpose in the world and its essential goodness. At Kerry's core, despite many protestations to the contrary, is a deep suspicion of America with its nukes, its weapons, its preemption and its resolve to go it alone if necessary.
There's lots of other parts of Kerry's presentation that will melt tomorrow like a chalk sketch in a thunderstorm. Selling nuke fuel to Iran? "Outsourcing" Tora Bora? Here's my favorite e-mail of the night:
"Hugh,
Kerry’s comment stating that President Bush “outsourced” the fighting in Tora Bora was a direct slap in the face of all Special Operations soldiers. The whole Afghan campaign is a classic “Unconventional Warfare” scenario. A UW mission is one where teams of Green Berets enter a denied area (Afghanistan) and train a rebel force to overthrow a rogue government. Our Special Forces soldiers in Afghanistan accomplished in weeks, what Alexander the Great and the Soviet Union could not accomplish in years. John Kerry is an idiot.

Former SOTA Team Leader
10th Special Forces Group (Airborne)."
Kerry didn't pull a pratfall, which is a very good thing for the GOP. Bush will be re-elected and Kerry soundly defeated on the basis of their ideas about American power and the conduct of the war. No excuses about the left's candidate's inability to get the message down. Kerry got it down, and he delivered it, and it will be rejected. Bush's message, by contrast, will be accepted, confirmed, embraced. The strongest nation in the world is also the best nation in the world, and its voters will not trade in a president certain of that fact for one interested in passing the tests laid down for us by Chirac or Shroeder, or distrustful of our stewardship of nuclear weapons.
So don't turn off the talking heads. Study them and make notes on the necessity of ignoring the herd. You came to the right place. Would I like the president to deliver a better comeback? Four years ago I would have said yes. Now I am not so sure. I like him to get the big stuff right. And he has for nearly four years, and he did again tonight.

The FACTS Re. Kerry's False Debate Claims

2004-09-30T21:27:00.000-07:00

....have been neatly and comprehensively chronicled by the Dubya campaign.

Read the DETAILS HERE and have the ANSWERS for your kool-ade-drinking friends.

The Debate--My View

2004-09-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

George Bush is not a polished, slick speaker. John Kerry isn't a LOT better, but he's got a major problem--he is the ultimate embodiment of the term "knee-jerk"--and before you think I'm just namecalling, let me tell you exactly what I mean:

Kerry had some good moments. He was articulate. He made his case--however much I and most readers of this blog disagree with it and find it based on fatuousities and lies. BUT....he couldn't just say he was for defending America without once AGAIN (and many more times than once) mentioning his Viet-Nam service! And what does EVERYbody in America, left or right, think of when they hear Kerry talk about Viet-Nam AGAIN? The Swifties. The controversy. The anti-war crap. And the JOKES about how he ALWAYS mentions it.

Ditto many other question-answers---he'd get into one topic (the one Lehrer asked about) but then throw in global warming, stem cells, and any other catch-phrase talking points. Kerry can't stop spinning his well-rehearsed spin. And that is what makes up--more than makes up--for his eruditionary advantage:

Kerry talks like a POLITICIAN---- Dubya talks like a LEADER
Kerry talks like a WONK --- Dubya talks like a FATHER.
Kerry talks like a Dukakis/Carter "competency, not core values" member of the Dem Intelligentzia ---
Dubya talks like a BUSINESSman, an Entrepreneur, a MANAGER, and a person in the REAL WORLD making decisions every day--not all right, not all neat and perfectly explained, but all coming from a BASE and a CORE and a POINT OF VIEW.
Kerry has talking POINTS, not core VALUES.
Dubya has a heart, Kerry has a PROGRAM.

So put aside the verbal flusters, even the silly "treblinka square" one from Kerry (imagine if that was Gerry Ford...oh, wait, it was once upon a time...what the MSM would do to skewer it!) Put aside the content--clearly a Dubya victory. Put aside that Kerry's famous and often-cited "plan" was NEVER explained, NEVER detailed, and NEVER accounted for. Put all that aside.

Who seems to GIVE A DAMN about YOU and your kids and your safety?
Who seems to GIVE A DAMN about the world, freedom, and America's role in it?
Who seems to GIVE A DAMN about doing the RIGHT thing, not just the allegedly "smarter" thing?

That's why, despite the faint praise from the Right's policy types on TV right now and the gleeful spinning from the left's mouthpieces, there is no doubt in my mind that where hearts and minds are, Dubya won BIG tonight.

So will say history. So say I. What say you? COMMENT!

John Leo Understands PJ's More Than CBS Does/Did

2004-09-30T09:32:00.000-07:00

John Leo is a longtime writer, editor, and commentator on the media. He's got a great RaTHerGate piece today under the headline "Making CBS Play Fair" in US News & World Report, and you can read all of it HERE. Below, however, complete with the subhead, is the grand finale of it that makes his point (and ours) nicely. Enjoy:

---------------

Pajama game.

When the mistakes-were-made semiapology finally came, Rather emitted the phrase "if I knew then what I know now." But all he had to do to know it then was to turn on his computer or pick up a copy of the Washington Post. The network hostility to Internet commentary was obvious. One CBS news executive referred to bloggers as people writing in their pajamas (i.e., not members of our esteemed guild). Rather associated them with rumor and propaganda. This seems to mean that many in the mainstream press still don't understand bloggers and tend to associate them with the Drudge Report on its worst day. Bloggers make their case with hyperlinks to primary sources and other data. Arguments without authority count for nothing, and soft-headed analyses and hoaxes are quickly exposed. As RealClear Politics said, it's a fast-moving, "very transparent, self-correcting environment ultimately based on facts."

Often contrasted with the entrenched big-time media, the bloggers are becoming part of the mainstream. Think of them as the outsourced post-publication checking department of the big-time news media. Dan Rather, or somebody at CBS, should surely take a look.

One Clarification Re. Will vs. Me

2004-09-30T09:03:00.000-07:00

...while I admire the boldness of Will's hypothetical question for Dubya to ask Kerry tonight (forbidden by the rules of engagement, alas, but we can dream, can't we?) I most powerfully DISAGREE with the underlying premise Will offers that the President is a hopeless idealist for believing that democracy can and will naturally flourish in Iraq, and it is a position that needs some discussion.

My Premise (and, I believe, the President's) is this: People are basically the same, regardless of race, creed, color, etc. etc. or at least they are when free of indoctrination of the kind that is done nowadays in the Wahabbi Madrases or in bygone eras in Stalin's or Hitler's young pioneer or hitlerjugen horrors. By that I mean we all want the same basic things: Peace, prosperity, a better life for our kids, some free time for friends and recreation, love, family, and a stable economy and body politic. There are Dems and Reps, there are Christians, Moslems, and Jews, and there are competing points of view in everything from politics and religion to hobbies and favorite brands of beer....but we're all human beings who are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights...or is it "unalienable"--I always get that part messed up.

BUT THE POINT IS THIS: To presume that a certain people, culture, or geographic location just plain "can't" do representative Democracy is, at the core, a racist point of view. I mean that explicitly. I don't think George Will and the others who express doubt about the possibilities for Democracy in the Middle East think they are being racist, but that doesn't absolve them of the fact. Remember--even in Israel, non-Jewish peoplep of Arab descent take part in the political process, as Muslims do in, among other places, Turkey. There is no basis for presuming that because it is DIFFICULT for representational democracy to thrive in places that have little or no experience of it that there is some basic genetic or cultural impossibility at work.

And that brings us to why the mission of bringing the opportunity for democracy to the rest of the world that hasn't had it is so vitally important for all of us blessed by it. It isn't JUST that democracies tend not to make war on other democracies, although that is true. It isn't JUST that democracies tend to foster racial, religious, and social tolerance, although that has been Mankind's experience on Earth, too. There is a more profound reason--and it is the same reason beyond security and beyond tolerance and general amiability that we had to and did liberate the 100's of millions of slaves of Soviet communism and are indoctrinating the remaining socialists of the world in capitalist representational democracy, too. It is about our own survival and progress and the speed at which that progress happens.

Look--I believe not only that people of all cultures are capable of democracy and peace, but also that they are just as capable of creative, intellectual, and spiritual/social progress as we are, too. That means that a huge chunk of the intellectual capital of Humanity is currently cut off--just as it was in the USSR and its satellites and, before that, Hitler's empire and all such totalitarian empires.

So consider: What if the cure for cancer is in the mind of an Arab scientist who will be denied the ability to research it based on the hate-filled edict of a mullah or caliph? What if the next great inspirational work of art or music or written word is being born as we sit here in the heart of a Muslim girl who won't even be allowed to go to school to learn to write or read if things remain the same as now in her town? What if a HUGE piece of the human search for knowledge, insight, and enlightenment--or maybe just the next fashion trend, musical hit song, or culinary creative trend--will NEVER HAPPEN if we don't free that enormous piece of humanity from the shackles on their minds and souls that totalitarian extremism imposes?

We owe it to them...we owe it to our security....but mostly we owe it to OURSELVES to liberate those minds and hearts. Is that optimism as Will suggests? Is that delusional as he and others proclaim based on a year's worth of radical insurgency in Iraq? Is Mankind's search for truth and beauty and knowledge and improvement so weak-kneed that the difficulties involved in making that search put us off from its pursuit?

Are we that lazy, that racist, and that cowardly?

I don't think so. And neither does my president, George W. Bush. That's why he won before and will win again, and why the pessimistic, "realistic" cowardice of the Kerry party will never, ever do so.

OH, How I WISH This Could Happen!

2004-09-30T08:55:00.000-07:00

George Will has a superb piece this morning re. the debates HERE. But the core of it is the ONE question he wishes (and I now do and you will too) that Dubya could ask Kerry at the start of tonight's debate. Can you imagine what would happen if he did? Here's the question:

-------

"Everyone in the solar system knows my thinking on Iraq. But no one, probably not even anyone on my opponent's campaign plane, knows his thinking, as of now, 9:17 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. So, I invite him to take my time — all of it — and tell a bewildered nation what he thinks, at least tonight, at least between 9 and 10:30 p.m. Specifically, he says we must 'succeed' in Iraq. What would he call success? What is more important, success or meeting his deadline of removing U.S. forces in four years? What, aside from the allure of his personality, makes him think 'the world' will help?"

Hugh Hewitt's Pre-Debate MSM Wisdom

2004-09-30T08:49:00.000-07:00

Hugh is a fave of all of us--for those of us here in Southern California for a LONG time prior to his national prominence, but this piece, which is found HERE and which I'll post in full, really sets the terms and makes the point about how vulnerable the MSM has become to grassroots viewer/blogosphere ire in the wake of the RaTHerGate fiascos. Read & Consider as we approach the debate between Dubya & The Tall Oompa-Loompa....

---------------

On Notice Jim Lehrer and the rest of the old media should know that they have to play it straight tonight. by Hugh Hewitt 09/30/2004 12:00:00 AM
IT STARTED on the Late, Late Show Monday night. Drudge posted a link to a picture of John Kerry's suddenly orange face on Tuesday, and Blogs for Bush, Blogs of War, and Best of the Web started an Oompa Loompa meme Tuesday afternoon. I played the Oompa Loompa song a few times during the afternoon drive in scores of cities across the United States. Then Jay Leno opened his monologue with a combo botox/tan-in-a-can joke. Tens of millions of Americans kicked it around, and went to bed.
And the morning papers--except the New York Post-- said not a word. The Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times, and other old media found space to cover the decision of the Crawford, Texas' Lone Star Iconoclast--circulation 425--to endorse John Kerry, but refused to acknowledge a genuine, though bizarre, story that is actually having an impact on the race--because they collectively don't think it should be having an impact on the race.
This is doubly indefensible because candidate appearance stories have mattered in presidential debates from Nixon's sweat in 1960 to Gore's pancake in 2000. If Kerry's sudden play for the Great Pumpkin vote isn't gone or made over by tonight, millions of viewers won't get past his appearance to hear what he has to say about his many positions on Iraq because they won't be able to stop laughing.
Old media's refusal to note what ordinary Americans are talking about is the latest in a series of stubborn refusals that began with elitist indifference and ideological bent and which are ending in irrelevance. There have been others (Rathergate and Christmas-not-in-Cambodia) and there will be more.
We may have another moment tonight. Jim Lehrer takes his seat as debate moderator with the PBS brand as firmly affixed to his back as CBS is to Dan Rather's. Moderating a presidential debate never carried much of a risk for the mother ship in the past, but in this era of new media, any detectable bias on Lehrer's part will result in a cyber-tsunami headed towards PBS affiliates across the country.
The key is "detectable," and the arbitrators of that won't be the folks who ignored the Agent of Orange story on Wednesday morning. It will be the viewers themselves, working through the blogosphere, posting on FreeRepublic.com, calling into talk radio, and canceling their pledges to local PBS affiliates if their verdict on Lehrer's performance is negative. If Lehrer goes in the tank for Kerry, expect an enormous blowback--as predictable as the one which followed CBS's foisting of forgeries on the public. Only PBS is much more vulnerable to viewer dismay than the Boss Tweeds at Black Rock.
The powers at old media may think of themselves as Rome and the bloggers as the Cimbri, but they are much more like the Red Hats of the Vatican in 1517 when Luther started hammering. At first indifferent, then angry, then threatening, and then bested and thrown into crisis. The counter-reformation within the old media cannot arrive too soon.

Hugh Hewitt is the host of a nationally syndicated radio show, and author most recently of If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends Upon It. His daily blog can be found at HughHewitt.com.
© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

If You're In L.A. This Coming Week...DO NOT MISS THIS!

2004-09-30T02:19:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, there's a conservative side to Hollywood beyond yours truly and a few famous folks. The LIBERTY FILM FESTIVAL (Click the link for details and to get tix) is a showcase of the top conservative movies of our time---everything from superb documentaries on Ronald Reagan, Ann Coulter, and counter-Moore truth-telling to satire and suspense ranging from stories of terrorists to a grand finale showing of the original "Ten Commandments"--Yep, what would a Hollywood film fest on conservative issues be without Chuck Heston and GOD!

The event happens (how delicious!) in the HEART of liberal/gay West Hollywood at the theater within the "blue whale" of the Pacific Design Center and features a host of superb guest speakers such as Michael Medved, Larry Elder, and Lionel Chetwynd, and except (alas) for Larry Elder's new flick on Michael Moore, there are NO SELLOUTS YET....so what are you waiting for? CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE OR HERE and get your tickets and get over to the Liberty Film Festival! I'll be there, and you should be, too!

Bob Novak Gets The Goods On The Kerry Draft LIE!

2004-09-30T01:26:00.000-07:00

KERRY'S MYTH-MAKING
by Robert Novak

WASHINGTON -- John Kerry in a press conference last week repeated his accusation that Gen. Eric Shinseki was "forced out" as U.S. Army chief of staff because he wanted more troops for Iraq. The trouble is that the Democratic presidential nominee was spreading an urban myth. The bigger trouble is that it was no isolated incident.
Sen. Kerry last week also said the Bush administration may push reinstatement of the military draft, when in fact that idea comes only from anti-war Democrats. At the same time, he said retired Gen. Tommy Franks complained that Iraq was draining troops from Afghanistan, when the truth is he never did. Over a week earlier, Kerry blamed Bush for higher Medicare premiums when in fact they are mandated by law (one that Kerry voted for). Exaggeration is a familiar political staple, but presidential candidates usually are held to a higher standard. Kerry's recent descent into myth making may reflect the campaign's anxiety in the final weeks. The immediate questions are whether he will engage in misstatements during Thursday's first presidential debate, and whether he will be challenged if he does.
Kerry is voicing inaccurate statements that have been repeated so often on the Internet, on radio talk shows and by campaign surrogates that they have come to be regarded as the truth -- for example, the explanation for how Eric Shinseki's long and distinguished military career ended.
Kerry picked up the story April 13 during a campaign event in Providence, R.I., declaring: "Gen. Shinseki said very clearly: We need 200,000 troops. And what happened to him? He was forced into early retirement." Kerry reiterated this last week at a Columbus, Ohio, press conference: "Gen. Shinseki told this country how many troops we'd need. The president retired him early for telling the truth."
That is not true, and even Bush critics in the Pentagon know it. The truth is that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, demanding control of the Army, collided with Shinseki on issues unrelated to Iraq. In March 2002, Rumsfeld announced that Shinseki's term as chief of staff would end as scheduled in June 2003 without extension -- an unprecedented action that made the general a lame duck. It was after that, not before it, on Feb. 25, 2003, that Shinseki told a Senate committee the U.S. would need "several hundred thousand" soldiers (not precisely 200,000) for Iraq occupation duty.
In his Philadelphia speech Sept. 24, Kerry declared: "All you have to do is ask Gen. Tommy Franks how surprised he was that those troops moved out of there (Afghanistan) when he was trying to do the job he was doing." As a former trial lawyer, Kerry should have known the answer to the question he was asking. He could have known by reading Franks' best-selling memoir ("American Solider"), in which the general denies that Bush starved Afghanistan for the sake of Iraq.
"President Bush had stressed his concern that we maintain momentum in Afghanistan," wrote Franks (who supports the president's re-election). Indeed, when Kerry in a Sept. 21 press conference in Jacksonville, Fla., suggested that Bush had taken needed troops out of Afghanistan, Franks that very day said in an ABC radio interview with Sean Hannity: "That's absolutely incorrect."
One day after Kerry misrepresented the former Central Command commander in chief, the Associated Press reported that the candidate at West Palm Beach, Fla., "raised the possibility" of a reinstated draft. That is an old saw on the Internet even though there are no such plans at the Pentagon. The only advocates of renewed conscription are liberal Democrats, led by Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York, who believe it would discourage U.S. military intervention around the world.
Earlier, on Sept. 8 in Cincinnati, Kerry put the blame on Bush for higher Medicare premiums. In fact, health care experts told me, the premiums were mandated by a 1997 codification of the law on which Sen. Kerry cast a favorable vote.
On Jan. 8, 1976, I wrote a column detailing six major untruthful statements by Jimmy Carter -- about himself, not his opponents -- during two public appearances. He went on to the presidency without ever refuting what I wrote. It will be interesting to see whether John Kerry follows the Carter model during the four weeks left for this campaign.

More On The Bogus Kerry/Rather Draft LIE!

2004-09-30T01:21:00.000-07:00

This time the New York Post both sums up and expands on the issue of Dan Rather and CBS News willfully and flagrantly helping spread the LIE by the Kerry campaign that there's a secret plan to draft young Americans into the military if Dubya is re-elected.....you don't suppose those numbers showing young people voting overwhelmingly for Bush are making 'em shake over in Kerryland dooya? Here's the FULL STORY:

------------------------------
THE NY POST ONLINE:

DAN DOES IT AGAIN

September 30, 2004 --

There he goes again

Dan Rather (and CBS News) got snookered by political malcontents with an ax to grind.

Again.

Consider: Both President Bush and Sen. John Kerry say they adamantly oppose reinstitution of the military draft, which was ended in 1973. The Pentagon also says it is vehemently opposed to giving up the all-volunteer army.

But that didn't stop "The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather" and reporter Richard Schlesinger from airing a story Tuesday about a Pennsylvania woman's fears that her sons will be drafted.

"I think there's a good possibility," said Beverly Cocco, ID'd only as an average voter, and a Bush supporter to boot — yet with only one issue on her mind.

But there was more to her than that.

What Rather & Co. did not tell their viewers is that she is an activist — the head of the Pennsylvania chapter of People Against the Draft, an allegedly bipartisan group that opposes not only the draft but also the war in Iraq, arguing for a "peaceful, rational foreign policy."

CBS also didn't tell us that Cocco's self-styled crusade was prompted, as she has publicly admitted, by a widely discredited e-mail campaign.

Talk about resuming a draft was begun in January, 2003, by Rep. Charles Rangel — in a move disingenuous even by the Harlem Democrat's low rhetorical standards.

He didn't want to help win a war; he wanted to undermine the nation's confidence in the integrity of its armed forces.

Rangel essentially made two claims:
* That members of Congress would not have approved using force against Saddam Hussein if they knew their children would be required to serve.
* That the "children" who do serve are disproportionately black and Hispanic.
In the event, the Rangel draft-reinstatement bill attracted only 14 co-sponsors. And, like its Senate counterpart, it's dead.

More to the point, Rangel's arguments don't hold water. The combat arms are not disproportionately minority. If anything, the opposite is true.

And, in any event, America's high-tech military trains its recruits for many months — sometimes for years — before assigning them to combat units.

There's simply no time to train draftees for the traditional two years of service (assuming that they met minimum intelligence and education standards to begin with).

None of this is a secret — except perhaps to Dan Rather's producers.

So why the hyper-emotional report on Dan Rather's show when the draft is in no danger of returning?
Could it be because charges of a secret plan to reinstate the draft just happen to be a key talking point of the Kerry-Edwards campaign?

Former presidential candidate Howard Dean charged that "George Bush is certainly going to have a draft if he goes into a second term."

And ex-Sen. Max Cleland, who has campaigned by John Kerry's side, also said flatly that "America will reinstate the draft" if President Bush is re-elected.

Meanwhile, Kerry himself suggested it is "possible" that Bush will back a draft.

But, again, there isn't the faintest hint of evidence to support such claims.

So, if there is any legitimate story here, it is that Kerry & Co. are blowing smoke.

Instead, Dan Rather runs with what amounts to an unpaid ad for the Kerry-Edwards ticket.

Is he a moron, incapable of learning anything from the forged-memo fiasco?

Or just a Democratic shill?

On reflection, what difference does it make?

Here's Why We're Winning....And Why We'll Win BIG.

2004-09-29T22:07:00.000-07:00

Okay...just another day on the campaign trail, right? Right. Just another whistle-stop phot0-op q&a thing with the Veep and his wife. And just a little giggle of an offhand joke. Didn't catch it? Here's the beginning of the news story....but stay tuned for more after the excerpt, okay? :

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DULUTH, Minn.--(AP) - Something about Sen. John Kerry's darker appearance has caught Lynne Cheney's eye.

During a campaign stop with her husband, a group of volunteers moved into the crowd with microphones for the question-and-answer period. Vice President Dick Cheney told supporters to look for the people with dark orange shirts.

When Cheney paused as if searching for the words to describe the shade of orange, Lynne Cheney said, "How about John Kerry's suntan?"

The remark drew a big laugh from the crowd and the vice president.
---------

BUT WAIT.....there's ONE MORE PARAGRAPH! And it explains everything you need to know about the smartypants-idiots over at Kerry4Prez. Because, of course, they can't let this go by without an official REACTION, right? Because they have to show us how "on the ball" they are and how "witty" they are and how committed to the talking points they are, right? I mean, nobody over there has the sense to just LEAVE IT ALONE...and they make themselves look so amazingly STUPID because of it. How? Here's the final paragraph of AP's coverage. No wonder the polls show a PLUMMET for Kerry &Co.:
-----------

Responding to her comments, Kerry campaign spokesman Bill Burton said, "Is Mrs. Cheney jealous considering how hard it is to get sun in the undisclosed location with her husband Dick? Or is she distracted over how red-in-the-face George Bush should be considering his failed presidency?"

----

I MEAN REALLY! They just have ZERO sense of humor, and the average American sensible grownup looks at this tripe and says, "Bye-bye, Mr. Smartypants. I don't want 4 years of THIS kind of silly sloganeering non-wit in the White House. Adios!"

Of course, if they had any shame, THEY'd have the red faces....but since they are shameless....well, must be a tube or twelve of that "QT" tanning goo instead.

KerrySpot on NRO Shows CBS Is STILL Doing Its Partisan Thing

2004-09-29T09:30:00.000-07:00

THE DRAFT, DEMOCRATS, AND CBS
Dan Rather and CBS have learned nothing - nothing from the whole fake memo story.
Last night, they reported on the bogus "Bush will restore the draft" rumor...
In a story that was a textbook example of slipshod reporting, CBS reporter Richard Schlesinger used debunked internet hoax emails and an unlabeled interest group member to scare elderly "Evening" viewers into believing that the U.S. government is poised to resume the draft.
At the center of Schlesinger's piece was a woman named Beverly Cocco, a Philadelphia woman who is "sick to my stomach" that her two sons might be drafted. In his report, Schlesinger claimed that Cocco was a Republican and portrayed her as an apolitical (even Republican) mom worried about the future.
Schlesinger did not disclose that Cocco is a chapter president of an advocacy group called People Against the Draft (PAD) which, in addition to opposing any federal proscription, seeks to establish a "peaceful, rational foreign policy" by bringing all U.S. troops out of Iraq. Like Schlesinger's Cocco, the group portrays itself as "nonpartisan"although its leadership seems to be entirely bereft of any Republicans.
The group's domain is registered to a man named Jacob Levich, a left-wing activist who in a 2001 essay compared the Bush Administration to the totalitarian government portrayed in George Orwell's 1984.
As RatherBiased.com points out, no mention that the two bills in Congress that are seeking to reestablish the draft (S89 and HR163) are sponsored almost exclusively by Democrats and have been pronounced DOA by the Republican leadership.
Is there any point in objecting anymore? Dan Rather and the entire CBS News operation are apparently out to make Michael Moore look fair-minded.

Mapes, CBS, Abu Ghraib....

2004-09-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

...all are in "The Real Chain Of Connection" as you can read in this VERY thoughtful, detailed piece in The American thinker. Do so....then come back here and give your views, please?

The Spectator's Neumayr Is A Wise, Wise Man

2004-09-29T09:14:00.000-07:00

Willfully Blind
By George Neumayr
Published 9/29/2004 12:08:39 AM
John Kerry's estimate of Saddam Hussein's character is that he was not the sort of person to associate with anti-American terrorists. "Iraq is now what it was not before the war, a haven for terrorists," says Kerry. Kerry's position, while baffling to ordinary Americans, has a certain perverse logic to it. That is, in order for Kerry to argue that the war in Iraq "diverted" attention from the war on terrorism, he has no choice but to say that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was terrorist-free and that Saddam Hussein wasn't a terrorist himself. Under the guidance of new advisers demanding clarity from him, Kerry has reconciled himself to a Michael Moore-style whitewash of pre-war Iraq so as to free up his reasoning that America would have won the war on terrorism while ignoring one of its chieftains.In Thursday's debate, George Bush should ask John Kerry to answer a few questions about his confidence in Saddam Hussein's character and his belief in the dictator's steadfast abstinence from terrorist ties. Such as: If Saddam Hussein's Iraq was not a haven for terrorists before the war, why is it that American soldiers keep capturing terrorists who resided in Iraq before the war? Does Kerry, who praised inspector David Kay, disagree with Kay's conclusion that "We know that terrorists were passing through Iraq. And now we know that there was little control over Iraq's weapons capabilities. I think it shows that Iraq was a very dangerous place. The country had the technology, the ability to produce, and there were terrorist groups passing through the country -- and no central control"? Does Kerry deny that Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the beheader of Nick Berg and two Americans last week, was in Iraq before the war and harbored by Saddam Hussein? Or does Kerry think that Zarqawi just happened to be vacationing there? Kerry will no doubt try to nail Bush for taking America to war on "false intelligence." But what about the true pre-war intelligence about Zarqawi's presence in Baghdad? Bush ought to remind Kerry that the very terrorist the Bush administration held up before the war as exhibit A of Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorism is the terrorist who is now beheading Americans. Kerry says that he would have focused his "energies" on capturing the Zarqawis and bin Ladens instead of dissipating them in the "wrong place." But since Zarqawi was in Iraq before the war and Kerry says he wouldn't have entered Iraq, we know that he doesn't mean it. John Kerry can't imagine Saddam Hussein as a godfather to terrorists before the war. But Zarqawi had no problem envisioning Saddam Hussein in that role. Colin Powell's pre-war presentation before the United Nations established that Zarqawi received safe haven in Iraq, traveling "to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day.…During this stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These al Qaeda affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they've now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months."In other words, the insurgents after the war are terrorists Saddam Hussein harbored before it.Powell said that an "al Qaeda associate bragged that the situation in Iraq was, quote, 'good,' that Baghdad could be transited quickly," and that "We know these affiliates are connected to Zarqawi because they remain even today in regular contact with his direct subordinates, including the poison cell plotters, and they are involved in moving more than money and materials."Kerry says that Americans are getting their heads cut off because George Bush invaded Iraq. But Bush should inform him in the debate that Zarqawi was killing Americans long before the war began. Powell, again in his 2003 address to the U.N., noted that Zarqawi had American diplomat Lawrence Foley gunned down in Jordan: "We, in the United States, all of us at the State Department, and the Agency for International Development -- we all lost a dear friend with the cold-blooded murder of Mr. Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan last October, a despicable act was committed that day. The assassination of an individual whose sole mission was to assist the people of Jordan. The captured assassin says his cell received money and weapons from Zarqawi for that murder."Before the war, American officials called on Saddam Hussein to extradite Zarqawi for the killing of Foley. Instead, Hussein let Zarqawi set up terrorist operations in Baghdad. Before the war, Iraq was a haven for terrorists. Now it is more like a hell for them as American soldiers systematically pick them off. George Neumayr is executive editor of The American Spectator.

David Asman Gets It

2004-09-29T09:07:00.000-07:00

The Fox financial and news anchor just interviewed flacks for both campaigns (Tuesday a.m. 9-Pacific or so) and brought up something that got the lady from Kerryland very, very uncomfy. A simple question from Asman? Yeppers, but wow, what a convoluted and uncomfortably-delivered non-answer of lies:

(paraphrasing here) Q: "Why does the DNC Website still have references to Jerry Killian and the memos that have now been proven to be false or at least highly questionable? Why after WEEKS of that being so are you guys still promoting those lies?"

The KerryLady: "Uh, well, the FACTS are still unknown and the White House still refuses to tell us where George Bush was during that time." (a lie)

Asman Persists: "But why when these memos have been PROVEN to be frauds are you still posting them on the web and promoting them?"

The KerryLady: "Well, this isn't really important--what's important are the issues facing us today."

Asman: "So, you're going to guarantee us that Viet-Nam won't come up at the debate?"

The KerryLady: (REALLY Uncomfy) "Well, the issues are those facing us today."
The BushGuy: (just SMILES on the edge of laughter, knowing as all of US do that Kerry's never made an appearance in his LIFE that hasn't brought up Viet-Nam.)

And the beat goes on....

CBS Affils Getting The Message From Viewers/Listeners: Say Goodnight, Dan!

2004-09-26T09:37:00.000-07:00

The Chicago Sun Times does the research, you do the chuckling.
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CBS affiliates Rather worried by angry viewers
September 26, 2004
BY DAVID BAUDER

NEW YORK -- In Kansas City, Mo., it's Kirk Black's job to answer for Dan Rather.

The station manager of KCTV, like his colleagues at many other CBS affiliates, is facing a flood of calls and e-mails from viewers angry at Rather for relying on apparently fake documents to suggest President Bush's National Guard service record was less than stellar.

Whether Rather rides out this storm depends on many factors, including ratings, his role in the shaky Guard story and even, perhaps, the results of a presidential election.

The opinions of people such as Black, whose stations give Rather his platform, may be most crucial.

''He's part of the face of my television station,'' Black said, ''and people who aren't in the business, they don't separate my local anchors from him. They just see it as CBS. It's very difficult as you talk to viewers and try to explain what your position is and that you had nothing to do with what happened.''