Thursday, August 19, 2004
AFTER-WORD
I have heard that Kerry did not obtain his Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Navy until March 12, 2001. Bill Clinton was ending the second month of his presidency.
There is so much we do not know about Kerry's military service. He's released a few official documents, but other records do exist.
Let's see it all.
Kerry has not been elected.
As I've averred in the past, the Democrats made a huge mistake by rushing their nominating process as they did. They selected a dud candidate, a human waffle lacking the syrup. There was nothing to recommend him.
This, if it turns out to be what it looks to be, is insane.
A Kerry spokesperson said that the campaign had "no further comment at this time."
Already in the presidential campaign, the Iowa lawmaker has found himself accused of misleading reporters about the troubles of his deaf brother. In addition, the budgetary mathematics he weaves into his basic stump speech have been challenged on network television. And allegations about Mr. Harkin's truthfulness extend back well before the current campaign, back to his claims that he was a combat pilot in Vietnam.Harkin was a Navy pilot, the article says, but "he concedes now he never flew combat air patrols in Vietnam."
Mom would have loved this.
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Did Hugo Chavez Win?
Last Sunday, Venezuela's Marxist leader Hugo Chavez won all 23 of his country's states and 51% of the popular vote. Britain's Independent said the victory "must be welcomed as a victory for democracy." The Cuban web site Grandma.cu said that if the final count matched the early, "the Venezuelan leader will be re-legitimated by six-plus million electors in an unobjectionable demonstration of popular support."
The U.S. polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland Associate in exit polling found, however, that Chavez was rejected.
Fortunately for Chavez, his ally and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter observed the election with the boyz from the Carter Center, and he said that it went fine.
Where were Michael Moore and his cameras for this balloting. (He has promised to take them to Florida this November.) For that matter, where were his cameras when Saddam Hussein was re-elected in 1993?
Did Chavez win? This is really a matter of if he says so, don't argue.
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Douglas Brinkley: Historian?
Official Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley has evidently been contracted by NBC..
With a tip of the hat to Betsy Newmark, radio talker Hugh Hewitt thinks Brinkley "owes the public an accounting of John Kerry's accounts. Perhaps he will salvage the senator's Cambodian tale. And perhaps he will sink it."
Kerry's already conceded on the Cambodian tale, though not personally. We could use Brinkley's input on the rest of the charges. The ball is in NBC's court, I suppose.
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But what of the charges…
JF Kerry will not answer the specific charges. Instead, as Matt Margolis writes at Blogs for Bush:
Kerry has yet to answer the charges made against him specifically. Instead he goes up on stage and tries to make this about Bush, and not about him.Click on Matt's name to read his post.
But John Kerry could settle this all right now. All he has to do is fill out this form and get the wheels in motion to release his military record in full.
Kerry's becoming unhinged. He has been challenged, and he has heard something which frightens him.
Now what are the press going to do about this? To the point, only FNC has discussed the Swift Boat Vets' charges. Now that Kerry has mentioned it, they'll have to find something.
This is about Kerry's credibility, and I am convinced that he will say and invent anything to be President.
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The Al-Jazeera Signs
The Democrats wouldn't let Al-Jazeera, public access for terrorists, hang their sign at the Beantown convention, replacing it with an advert for their campaign web site. Republicans, however, will allow the sign to mark the network's box.
[Al-Jazeera spokeswoman Stephanie] Thomas said Al-Jazeera plans to cover the GOP convention the same way it covered the Democrats. It will be on the air from New York for 13 to 15 hours during the convention's four days, mixing coverage of the speeches and reports from around the Garden.It is not clear if they will interrupt coverage for terrorist demands or beheadings.
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California licenses for illegals
The California State legislature is set send a bill (SB 116) providing for driver's licenses for illegal immigrants to the governor's desk in the next few days, as their legislative session winds and grinds to a close, but Schwarzenegger says that he will veto it unless it provides for a different look indicating that the licensee is here illegally.
"The mark on the license isn't just a blow to (Democratic) leadership, it's also disrespectful to those of us who are immigrants and represent people of color in this state," [Assembly Speaker Fabian[ Núñez said.And there is a concomitant argument about whether or not the governor promised to sign such a bill.
The simple question for Nuñez would be: "What about illegal don't you understand?" It's certainly more nuanced than that, we are told, but there is no purpose to a law which is not enforced.
Issuing the licenses is prima facie ridiculous, but a marker, which Schwarzenegger denies it is, is necessary during this particular wartime in this particular war.
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RNC Keynote Speaker
We have our Wednesday night keynoter: Senator Zell Miller (D-Georgia).
No surprises.
Miller keynoted the last pre-Clinton Democrat National Convention, also in New York City. We've come full circle.
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Kerry Fights Back
Speaking to the International Association of Firefighters this morning (Thursday), Democratic Presidential candidate JF Kerry insisted that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were really a front for the Bush campaign:
They're a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the president won't denounce what they're up to tells you everything you need to know: he wants them to do his dirty work," Kerry told a convention of the International Association of Fire Fighters, a politically active union which backs Kerry.Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt responded that Kerry "knows his statements are false," meaning his statements about the Swift Boat Vets being a front for BC04. It's the Swifties who say that Kerry's statements regarding his four months in Vietnam are false.
"Of course, the president keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that," Kerry said.Perhaps it is because America Coming Together, Media Fund, and MoveOn.org are fronts for Kerry's campaign that he believes the President's campaign is using the same tactics.
"Well, if he wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: 'Bring it on,"' the Massachusetts senator said, to cheers from the firefighters.
The President does not want to have a debate about their service in Vietnam. The President did not serve there, and Kerry put in four months on a boat. As Schmidt said: "John Kerry knows the president said his service in Vietnam was noble."
The Swift Boat Vets have challenged Kerry to a debate about their service in Vietnam. To them, this is what it is about.
To the rest of us, this is about his credibility.
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Pudgy Punk Cleric says, "NYET!"
Yesterday, after Moqtada al Sadr had seemingly accepted a truce, I recalled: "He has been for peace plans and truces in the past, before he was against them."
Once again showing tremendous nuance and depth, Sadr has changed his mind. No truce in Najaf.
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Former Premature Baby is Thriving
Doctors report that little girl, born prematurely in Chicago, is doing well.
Madeline was born at 27 weeks, weighing the equivalent of three bars of soap. She was about a third of the weight of babies of a similar age and only a fraction of the three kilograms that newborns normally weigh after a full 40-week pregnancy.Doctors had said that she had a 60% chance of survival, and it would have been legal to kill her before birth, but she is now a seven-year-old.
Some researchers point out that Madeline is the exception rather than the rule. She is also a human being.
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The New Iron Curtain
I've put the latest column by Michael Mina, The New Iron Curtain, on the RSN web site. This curtain is a restrictive culture.
Read about it HERE.
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PRE-FACE
Good morning.It was the longest-standing record in swimming, sobering proof that the sport had not quite escaped the specter of performance-enhancing drugs.It is still a matter of applying the finishing touches to Reagan's work.
Big headline in the post. Thurlow's response is that there was no enemy fire, that the records were hyped:
"It's like a Hollywood presentation here, which wasn't the case," Thurlow said last night after being read the full text of his Bronze Star citation. "My personal feeling was always that I got the award for coming to the rescue of the boat that was mined. This casts doubt on anybody's awards. It is sickening and disgusting."Veterans have testified that records were exaggerated and hyped during wartime. This in no way takes from the valor of Mr. Thurlow or Mr. Kerry; rather, it means that perhaps Mr. Kerry's wont for puffing his record might have been born when such things were a regular occurrence, on the rivers in Vietnam. Not Cambodia at that time.
Thurlow said he would consider his award "fraudulent" if coming under enemy fire was the basis for it. "I am here to state that we weren't under fire," he said. He speculated that Kerry could have been the source of at least some of the language used in the citation.
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Wednesday, August 18, 2004
AFTER-WORD
From another report:
When Arafat referred to officials who had abused power, he was interrupted by Abdel Jawad Saleh, an independent lawmaker and outspoken critic of the Palestinian leader.It seems as if he wants to sound good to the American President and maybe give himself a new life and a role in the process.
"I told him, `You are protecting them,'" Saleh said later. An angry Arafat responded: "I'm protecting them?"
Saleh said that Arafat's speech was "slogans that really had nothing to do with the realities."
"If it was a real gesture, he would have done something substantive, but he didn't, so it doesn't mean anything to me," he said.
The Democratic nominee for president - the heterosexual Democratic nominee for president, I guess we should start saying now - wants no misunderstandings about his personal life: He has at least two things in common with millions of married American men.At least Henican has found something to dislike about the man.
1. He loves his wife very much.
2. He isn't blind.
"I think Charlize Theron is pretty extraordinary," Kerry announces in that "A Beer With ..." interview for the September GQ.
He also admires Catherine Zeta-Jones and Marilyn Monroe. "I thought she was funny," he says of Marilyn. "Complicated. And obviously very attractive, very beautiful."
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Has Sadr Backed Down?
Not in so many words, but pudgy punk cleric Moqtada al Sadr has agreed to a truce with the Iraqi government. He has promised to disarm his Mehdi Army and leave the leave the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf in exchange for not being shot dead. He'll then, he assumes, join the political process. This was contingent on an agreement on how to implement this plan, which has evidently been negotiated at this point.
Sadr is unstable, frequently changing his positions and going back on his word. He has been for peace plans and truces in the past, before he was against them. He might one day decide to announce that he is laying down his arms to become a part of the process, then two weeks later he'll change his mind and say that this is a bad idea.
Here's a report from the Swiss which has the Sadr side being reasonable:
"Sayyed Moqtada and his fighters are ready to throw down their weapons and leave for the sake of Iraq. But they should stop attacking him first and pull away from the shrine," Ali al-Yassiri, Sadr's political liaison officer, told Reuters on Wednesday.But Britain's lefty broadsheet The Guardian paints a different picture:
"We are not afraid to show our commitment to the national interest. We do not understand the position of the government, which insists on dealing with the people with force," he said.
Mr Sadr has made contradictory statements in the past and a previous ceasefire collapsed earlier this month.Al Sadr's raft is adrift on the sunlit sea of nuance.
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"The Truth about Guns"
Columnists Peter and Helen Evans, who live in Washington, DC, where those who obey the law are forbidden from owning a handgun, recently took the course required to receive a concealed carry permit in a neighboring State. To see what happened.
They write about their experience in the latest column, "The Truth about Guns," which I've posted, as editor, on the RSN web site.
Read it: HERE.
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Kerry's Conundrum…
Dem candidate JF Kerry has to oppose the President's plans as they are unveiled, no matter what he might have said previously.
Kerry's today attacked the President's plan to remove troops from Europe and South Korea/Japan:
"Nobody wants to bring troops home more than those of us who have fought in foreign wars," Kerry said in speech prepared for delivery to the Veterans of Foreign War. "But it needs to be done at the right time and in a sensible way. This is not that time or that way."On ABC's This Week two weeks ago, Kerry told host George Stephanopoulos:
"If the diplomacy that I believe can be put in place can work, I think we can significantly change the deployment of troops, not just there but elsewhere in the world in the Korean peninsula perhaps, in Europe perhaps."That's Kerry's problem.
But there is a way out: nuance. A campaign spokesperson can say: "John Kerry said that if the proper diplomacy were in place, he would consider moving troops from Europe and Korea. It would take time for him to put that diplomacy in place after what the Bush Administration had done to America's diplomacy.
"John Kerry would not rush out such a pledge to score points in a speech."
It would be garbage, of course, but a campaign can do funky things with nuance.
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Kerry's Backward Thinking
JF Kerry is trying to present himself as a likable alternative to President Bush, so he naturally has to object. Just object. Like to the President's plan to modernize are armed forces and take some of them out of Old Europe... and Asia.
"For example, why are we withdrawing unilaterally 12,000 troops from the Korean peninsula at the very time that we are negotiating with North Korea, a country that really has nuclear weapons?" [Kerry] the Vietnam veteran asked at the VFW's 105th annual meeting.The President did not say that he is pulling them out tomorrow, or this year, or next year. And he did not specify under what circumstance he would do so.
I think Asia was included in the President's speech to take some of the focus off of the proposed removal of troops frome Europe. If he'd have said he was yanking troops out of Europe, Kerry would have pretended to read a "nanner-nanner-nanner" into it and the Dem might have said that our troop allocation policy was being determined by this President's inability to get along with the leaders of France and Germany.
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Kerry to Campaign During RNC
It is tradition for a Presidential candidate not to campaign during another's primary. It is considered civil, and President Bush spent the week of the Democratic National Convention at his ranch in Crawford.
Kerry has no choice, though, but to continue his campaign while the Republicans convene in NYC. In fact, he has to address the American Legion's national convention in Nashville.
Is Kerry desperate for the Vet vote even after portraying himself as the ultra-vet, or, as I've said, are the rules and the old truisms often meaningless in this election?
"That's why all the rules get chucked out the window," Mr. [Charlie] Cook said. "Nobody wants to be sitting in the chair the rest of his life thinking about the 500 things they could have done differently."Which reminds me. Ronald Reagan wished he would have campaigned in Minnesota in the last days of the campaign. It probably would have given him a 50-State sweep.
Kerry, on the other hand, has to try to keep it close.
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JF Kerry on the Intelligence Committee
JF kerry, not a signature piece of legislation to his name after nearly two decades in the U.S. Senate, boasts of his service on the Senate Intelligence Committee. BC04 has advertised that he missed 76% of the public meetings. Kerry called this ad, "Misleading."
Kevin Patrick on Blogs for Bush reports that FactCheck.org checked the facts and determined that Kerry missed at least 76%, possibly more.
In a rebuttal to the ad, the Kerry camp accused Bush of "fuzzy math and bad stats," saying "They rely only on whether Sen... Kerry made statements in one of a small number of open hearings." That's not true. Records list senators and staff members as being present whether or not they spoke, and -- to repeat -- the 76 percent figure actually gives Kerry credit for attending one hearing for which there's no evidence of his participation.We don't know Kerry's attendance record for the closed-door hearings, but committee Chairman Pat Robers (R-Kansas) said that the records could be made public if Kerry asked him and Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller to release them. Roberts wants them to be released. (He's a Bush supporter who knows what they say.) Kerry has refused.
Why did the Democrats nominate him? Oh, yeah -- quick primary season.
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"Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire:
Why Scott Peterson Deserves to Frey"
I've posted Karen H. Pittman's latest column, Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire: Why Scott Peterson Deserves to Frey, on the RSN site. In it, Karen gets into the mind of Peterson. You wee, he was a player, living for the thrill of the hunt. Married with a kid? His mind rejected that scenario.
Read her column: HERE.
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Digging up John Heinz
When Senator John Heinz (R-Pennsylvania) died in a plane crash in 1991, his financial records were sealed. It is not clear why this was.
Last month, the Allentown Morning Call and the Los Angeles Times asked a judge last month to unseal the late Senator's docs, as most probate records in Pennsylvania are available to the public.
The papers argue that the information could have some bearing on the Kerry's attempt to become President. I haven't heard the particulars. Is it the Beacon Hill house? Did the Senator invest heavily in Halliburton?
Let's see the stuff.
Teresa's boyz call it "an unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the family and an affront to the memory of the late senator." This isn't about Senator Heinz. And it's not a "privacy" which isn't invaded for millions of other deceased Pennsylvanians.
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OHMYGAWSH…it's… Wictory Wednesday
As the Bush campaign is in the final two weeks before the convention, they need your help. Let's help with the push.
Click RIGHT HERE to be directed to the page where you can become a Bush Team Leader, an official part of the campaign. You can also join by donating at the campaign's SECURE SERVER.
This effort is undersigned by WW founder PoliPundit and the entire cast of Wictory Wednesday bloggers (page down to #3).
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The Youth "Vote"
The Myers/Neopets.com Political Poll conducted online survey beginning July 26 of kids 8-17 on their Presidential preference.
This probably has a broader meaning of which we're not yet aware, but we'll let it go.
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PRE-FACE
Good morning.In a statement, O'Grady said Springsteen "has a right to say what he thinks, but we have an equal right to speak. Now that he's moved onto the political stage to bash my president, it is entirely fair to respond."For my part, I was taken aback when I learned that Springsteen was still alive, but I guess Born to Run wasn't that long ago.
In New York, besides the GOP and the Dems, they had influential Conservative and Liberal Parties. The New York Liberal Party, however, ceased to be in February of 2003. The Conservatives are still around, having yet to merge entirely with the GOP. This suggests that the Democrats have become totally liberal while the Republicans still have that sometimes annoying (to conservatives, anyway) "Big Tent," of Lee Atwater fame.
"She is just a delightful young lady," said [Arkansas' Republican Governor Mike] Huckabee. "She could be a future governor of our state."And I'm sure former Governor Bill Clinton would then be pleased to give her "governorin' tips."
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Tuesday, August 17, 2004
AFTER-WORD
Bush said those who oppose the system "really don't understand the threats of the 21st century. They're living in the past." A theme of the Bush campaign is that Kerry is weak on defense.Which is wrote this morning about the New York Times editorialists who want to keep our troops in Germany, basically for old times' sake.
[American archaeologist Egon Lass said the archeologists have not been in touch with the Vatican over their findings, but they were told by an Italian television reporter that thousands of people would now want to visit the site.
"I hope people come and visit...it's a special site," said Kibbutz member Kalifon. "We're talking about a wonderful, wonderful site which is interesting for the Jewish public, and you can see the roots of Christianity."
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New Stuff on the Side
This morning, Tom Carroll from MuD & PHuD, to whom I linked last night, invited me to join a bloggers' alliance called Homespun Blogger. I had always operated outside that kind of thing and figured I ought to start. The Homespun Blogger blogroll is on the right, above the archives.
They are all more-or-less family friendly and informative/entertaining blogs from people who do not blog for their major source of income.
Also, right below the A-1 Blogroll, I've finally added the mini-Blogroll for Bush. Those blogs are part of the web's hottest political movement right now. And I know a fine thing when I see it.
So that's that.
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Kerry Does not Condemn Moveon.org
The Associated Press, in the person of Ron Fournier, asserted that JF Kerry "condemned a television ad that criticizes President Bush's Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard." Kerry did not condemn the ad:
''I agree with Senator McCain that the ad is inappropriate,'' Kerry said in a statement released by his campaign. ''This should be a campaign of issues, not insults.''By no definition is that a condemnation of the ad. It does not assert that the ad is fraudulent; rather, he changes the subject.
But at a Kerry campaign news conference earlier Tuesday:
Kerry served and fought, said retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who ran for the Democratic nomination against the senator but now is in his camp. ''The other man scrambled and used his family's influence to get out of hearing a shot fired in anger,'' Clark said.The Kerry camp did not criticize Rassmann, either. If fact, a Kerry spokesperson said: ''Those are veterans who earned the right to their opinion."
Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner, who was CIA director in the Carter administration, said Bush ''used his father's influence to get into the Air National Guard and avoid going to war.''
At the same news conference, Jim Rassmann, who credits Kerry with saving his life while under fire in Vietnam, noted that Kerry has said Bush served honorably. However, Kerry also said in
February of Bush's Guard service, which included time in Alabama: ''The issue here, as I have heard it raised, is was he present and active on duty in Alabama at the times he was supposed to be? I don't have the answer to that question.''
The Kerry campaign did not criticize Clark and Turner.
As are the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
We're not still fighting Vietnam, here. All of those men, including Kerry, deserve our thanks for their service to our country.
The question is Kerry's credibility.
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Perhaps a Peace Protest not for Peace
A protest group said to consist of minorities, Artists and Activists United for Peace, don't have a protest permit but hope to get one in time to march uptown from their Harlem office on September 2, during the Republican National Convention.
Despite their name, the group says it will be protesting for "jobs, really bring opportunities, really bring change that is necessary for us to go into this next century."
They say their upset with both Democrats and Republicans.
The group Artists and Activists United for Peace said Tuesday the needs of people of color have gotten lost in the constant rhetoric over Iraq and the economy, so it is holding a march and a rally that it hopes will bring their needs to the attention of the major parties.It's a ruse.
Here's a description of the group from their web site:
UFPJ began as a national campaign to bring together a broad range of organizations throughout the United States to help coordinate work against a U.S. war on Iraq. At an initial meeting in Washington, DC on October 25, 2002, more than 70 peace and justice organizations agreed to form United for Peace and Justice and coordinate efforts to oppose the war on Iraq.They are not telling the truth, and I don't see why their permit will not be denied.
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NJ Governor McGreevey. Corruption.
McGrevvey donor Charles Kushner is is set to plead guilty to conspiracy, obstruction of a federal investigation, and promoting interstate prostitution.
Kushner, a real estate developer, was accused July 13 of hiring a prostitute to have sex with his own brother-in-law, who was a cooperating witness in an investigation into whether Kushner violated campaign contribution laws and committed tax fraud.It's past time for McGreevey to resign.
Prosecutors said Kushner ordered the sex act videotaped and a copy of the tape sent to his own sister, the witness' wife.
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"Too Focused On" Distractions
We've heard the allegations form the Kennedy/Dean/Pelosi/Kerry crowd, that President Bush too focused on Iraq to fight the war on terror properly. Election year stuff.
Here's a new one, purely political. From the editorial in Florida's Naples Daily News:
President Bush's surprise inspection of Charley's path of destruction and death tempt casting the recovery in a larger, political light: Has U.S. emergency planning become too focused on terrorism, at the expense of natural perils?It's not a zero-sum game, obviously.
Absurd.
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Earth to McGreevey: "Resign now."
The Associated Press reports that New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey is still on the job. He is said to have met with his "homeland security advisers," but it is not know if he made sexual advances toward them, as a previous homeland security adviser alleges was done in his case.
Former Governor Christine Todd Whitman joined the masses calling for McGreevey to resign forthwith:
[F]ormer Gov. Christie Whitman demanded that McGreevey leave now, saying he simply can't do the job under mounting public pressure and scrutiny.The reason he gave for resigning on November 15 was that the scandal would interfere with his ability to perform his job. It's happening now.
"He should step aside right now," Whitman said in an interview with The Associated Press. "The minute you announce that you're going to resign you're a lame duck and it becomes increasingly impossible to get anything done."
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George Bush Lied, Tommy Franks Lied
To follow the tired reasoning of the left, General Tommy Franks is a damnable liar. And National Review editor Rich Lowry has the goods.
UPDATE: The left have modified their line slightly. Bush is no longer a liar, per se; rather, he was an idiot who was duped by Ahmed Chalabi. According to Lowry, Franks was "duped" by such world leader's as Egypt's Hosni Mubarak: "Gen. Franks, you must be very, very careful. We have spoken with Saddam Hussein. He is a madman. He has WMD — biologicals, actually — and he will use them on your troops."
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Kerry: Sawyer or Finn?
In his recent interview with GQ magazine, JF Kerry was asked with which fictional character he most identifies.
Responded Kerry thoughtfully, "There's a little Huck Finn in me; there's a little Tom Sawyer in me ...”
Eric Lindholm (Viking Pundit) says he can't stop chuckling, and for good reason. Check out his post and find out why.
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Close election? Charlie Cook's States in Play
According to Cook, though he does not say it, this election might not be close.
In his weekly "Off to the Races" e-mail column, analyst Charlie Cook looks at the aggregation of polls an selects States which are currently "toss-ups":
At this point, there remains 10 states that are too close to call: Florida with 27 electoral votes, Iowa (7), Minnesota (10), Missouri (11), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), New Mexico (5), Ohio (20), Pennsylvania (21) and Wisconsin (10). While too close to call, these states are not necessarily dead even. In Pennsylvania, President Bush, after holding a consistent lead over Kerry, finally slipped behind last month, but not far enough to warrant moving it into the "Lean Kerry" column. The same case exists in Florida, where a recent poll by a Republican firm for a private client put Kerry up by four points, but no one believes that the state is anything but a toss up. In Minnesota, New Hampshire and New Mexico, Kerry seems to be up by a bit, but again not quite enough to move those into the Kerry column. Bush is ahead in Missouri, but it's a close call as to whether the lead is big enough to justify moving it into the "Lean Bush" column.He then discusses the huge sums of money which are being spent, both by the campaigns and by the 527's -- in these States," aimed at the elusive swing voters, who have yet to pay much attention to the 2004 race and, if history is correct, won't until sometime in October."
In adding up all the electoral votes that are in the safe and lean columns for each candidate, President Bush has a tight 211 to 207 lead in the Electoral College. Bush also has 120 votes in the toss up column. However, if you pushed each of the 10 toss up states to Kerry -- who seems to be ahead by a slight margin -- he would come out on top.
I see something here. If we give Bush the safe and lean electoral votes and tack on the toss ups, the electoral tally would be: Bush - 331, Kerry - 207. Kerry will have been vanquished decisively, the hordes will be turned back, and our Republic will be safe. And we've a war to win.
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NY Times: "Keep Troops in Germany!"
There's nothing new about the New York Times running roughshod over the limits of human credulity and the known laws of the physical universe to score points against those whose deeds they wish to defame and deface, but now their editorial staff -- a group of aging reporters! -- speak with the authority of military experts. They says that the Pentagon and the President should keep our troops in Europe and Asia, specifically in Germany:
In Europe, the withdrawals are less immediately dangerous, but they will be expensive because Germany pays a hefty share of the costs for the American military bases located there.That is both juvenile and weak. They talk of the immediate costs and discount the long term expenses and strategic necessities and objectives.
While sending military personnel back to Kansas or Colorado may avert some base closings and make local politicians happy, it will cost the taxpayers money. Furthermore, the military will also lose the advantage that comes with giving large numbers of its men and women the experience of living in other cultures.
The administration seems to be planning to establish new installations in Eastern Europe, but they are more likely to be used for occasional exercises than as permanent bases. An increased presence in Eastern Europe is fine, but it need not come at the expense of our German bases. Although it is certainly true that American troops no longer have to sit in Germany to protect Western Europe from the Red Army, many of today's battlefields, like Iraq and Afghanistan, are in fact closer to Germany than they are to the United States.
What is "the advantage that comes with giving large numbers of its [MILITARY] men and women the experience of living in other cultures"? Is there one? Can it be specified?
The goal is a flexible and agile military equipped to deal with the military challenges of the 21st century, not teaching our soldiers about the customs and manners of Germany.
Germany is closer to today's battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq, yes, but will it be closer to tomorrow's battlefields? Will Afghanistan and Iraq be battlefields in ten years? In five years? In one year?
The past has passed. For the Times to get it, we may need break out some vid of old Clinton/Gore '92 rallies, with Fleetwood Mac blaring over bad sound systems: "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow… yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone."
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PRE-FACE
Good morning.If Schwarzenegger puts it out there for the President, this early estimate will shift back in the right direction.
Don't worry. Ms. Booth/Mrs. Blair is said to be a fervent anti-Bushie.
The article is rendered meaningless, though, when it reports:
New government data also shows that President Bush's tax cuts have shifted the overall tax burden to the middle class from the wealthiest Americans.Throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is quasi-socialist, anti-Bush propaganda which accidentally shows that Clinton "did nothing for the poor."
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Monday, August 16, 2004
AFTER-WORD
Probably because of the demands of his advertisers, based on his audience, Cavett was clearly biased toward O'Neal, who was given great leeway. The young JF Kerry did not seem to mind. He appeared to be happily smug.
O'Neal scored points when he quoted from Kerry's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in which the young radical claimed to be speaking for all Vietnam veterans. Kerry tried to spin away from that, and he had the clumsy use of nuance down pat even at a young age.
Kerry admitted to taking part in a few war crimes, burning houses and, I think, shooting old men, but said he did not see the rest. He kept pushing for President Nixon to proclaim a "date certain" for the total withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, O'Neal asked what that would accomplish. My wife said, "He wants a date. Sound familiar?"
I recommend that you watch it only if you are curious, because that is all it is: a curiousity. With Dick Cavett hawking dish soap. There is no intellectual or cultural merit to be found in it.
Zogby also found that voters holding passports preferred Kerry 58 percent to 35 percent for Bush. Voters without passports favored Bush 48-39 percent.Translated from the French, this means that sophisticated world travelers favor Kerry, while stay-at-home yahoos favor Bush.
Zogby might have been measuring the feelings of those for whom international opinion is a factor.
From the CNN.com piece regarding the President's troop realignment announcement:
Some Democrats questioned the timing of Bush's announcement, CNN.com offered us this precious bit o' insight:There's nothing new under the sun.
The Presidnet was talking about what he plans to do in his second term. It was, after all, a political speech to the V.F.W. convention.
Oh, but timing is everything.
Mozart's music lives on, while Salieri's is consigned to the B-pile. Extend the analogy.
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McGreevey is Fooling No One
From Newsday.com:
A poll of New Jersey voters found nearly half believe McGreevey resigned because of corruption, compared to just 8 percent who said McGreevey is leaving because he is gay, and 11 percent who said he was quitting because of an extramarital affair. State voters expressed no clear preference on whether to have a special election to replace McGreevey or allow an acting governor to hold office until after the general election in November 2005.Why can they not take the man at his word?
This is what we elect.
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Holiday in Cambodia
I heard Juan Williams on FNC this evening, after listening to a barrage from the chords of Fred Barnes, say that it does not matter if Kerry were in Cambodia in Christmas of 1968. He was merely a vet "embellishing" his war record.
The point is, he served.
This is what we've been hearing from the Kerry camp since the story broke.
In the meantime, Michael Barone of USNews and World Report fired off a column on the matter today. He looks at the obvious media bias evidenced by their quiet on this matter. Not a peep.
Kerry’s Christmas-in-Cambodia statements, made over many years, seem to be the kind of resume padding that routinely disqualifies political appointees and damages political candidates. His repeated tellings of this story seem more than a little weird, and usually we don’t want people who do weird things to be president. Perhaps by the time you’re reading this appears, the Times, the Post or the broadcast networks will have addressed this issue.As Baron quotes Newsweek's Evan Thomas from his Inside Washington: “Let’s talk about media bias here. The media, I think, want Kerry to win.”
If they don’t, it’s reasonable to ask why not.
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Harkin Defends Kerry
Vice President Cheney has been having fun at JF Kerry's expense over the Dem candidate's "sensitive war on terror" remark, and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa was Kerry's knight in shining armor this afternoon:
Harkin, D-Iowa and a former Navy fighter pilot, said Monday, "It just outrages me that someone who got five deferments during Vietnam and said he had 'other priorities' at that time would say that."Could this mark the new Kerry strategy? (We've seen hints of it in the past.)
Every time the candidate says or does something stupid, or something perceived as stupid, simply make reference to his service in Vietnam. Something: "He voted for it before he voted against it, but he served in Vietnam."
It works as well for me as anything else he's tried.
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New Manchurian Candidate not scary
From The Buzz from the web site of the Kansas City Star:
In a review of “The Manchurian Candidate,” the evangelical organization Focus on the Family noted that the new version of the movie replaces fear of communism [in the 1962 version] with fear of multinational corporations, reducing the overall fear factor.Wrote the reviewer: “I just can't get all worked up about Wal-Mart's expansion into Central America.”The people who make movies, it seems, are frightened by different stuff.
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Kerry's Blood Runs Blue
Betsy Newmark quotes Reuters letting us know of the blue blood coursing through JF Kerry's veins, primarily on his mother's side.
"Every maternal blood line of Kerry makes him more royal than any previous American president," Brooks-Baker said.Add that his little-known service in Vietnam, and Kerry has things going his way. Momentum
"Because of the fact that every presidential candidate with the most royal genes and chromosomes has always won the November presidential election, the coming election -- based on 42 previous presidents -- will go to John Kerry."
Right?
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"a more agile and flexible force”
The President told the V.F.W. this morning that he will pull as many as 70,000 troops out of Europe and Asia and bring most of them home.
"Our armed forces have changed a lot,'' Bush, 58, said in an address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Cincinnati. ``Over the coming decade we'll deploy a more agile and more flexible force.''We'll get the details later.
For all the media talk of Don Rumsfeld fading into the background and losing his influence with the Administration amidst the media fallout regarding Iraq, this one is his baby.
This is from March, 2003 piece on the DOD's DefenseLINK web site regarding Rumsfeld's transformation of our defenses:
DoD entered the 21st century configured "to fight big armies, big navies and big air forces," Rumsfeld said. It isn't arranged, he added, "to fight the shadowy terrorists and terrorist networks that operate with the support and assistance of terrorist states."This will be Rumsfeld legacy as Sec Def. He thinks this redeployment will take years, so I foresee him staying on for the President's second term.
To win the global war on terror, America's armed forces have to become more flexible and agile "so our forces can respond more quickly," Rumsfeld pointed out. "Today, we still do not yet have that agility."
The Defense Department "is still bogged down to too great an extent in the micromanagement and bureaucratic processes of an earlier era," he said. For example, he said, DoD wants to be like a private-sector corporation and be able to transfer money from department to department rapidly, as needed, rather than haltered by myriad outdated rules.
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An Interview with Van Odell
The latest column by Judson Cox, which I've put live on the RSN web site, is "[a]n interview with Van Odell, a Swift Boat Veteran for Truth."
You can read it HERE.
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The sign says: "Hagel '08"
The Omaha World-Herald has their Senator Chuck Hagel possibly gearing up for a Presidential run in 2008,
Of all Republicans save John McCain, he has been the most "maverick," by the media's definition. He is not one to toe the party line especially in matters involving the military. Like McCain, he is a decorated Vietnam vet (9th Infantry Division) who fought for longer than four months.
He's up for reelection to his Senate seat in 2008, and the paper said he is also considering a return to the private sector
"I don't know what America will be looking for in a president in 2008 . . . if I'm the kind of person they will be looking for."JF Kerry doesn't know now, and he's been running for umpteen years.
Hagel says he has two years to decide. I don't know that he could win the nomination, but he could serve the McCain's 2000 role, giving the media someone on whom to latch. And it would do the country good, I think, to have a unquestionably heroic veteran of Vietnam in the Presidential race.
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U.S. Troops in Poland
Stan left the following comment below which should be addressed:
Troops will be put into the new Europe...do you have any clue what that means? It means that they will be moved further east. Their [sic] is already talk in my town, Nidzica, Poland, of moving them into the old army barracks that were abandoned by the red army and polish communist forces. So your complaint about supporting the German economy may also apply to the Polish economy. But then again, what we do for friends is one thing and what we do for nations who act pragmaticly [sic] is another. This is the reward for my country buying into the lie. Now I will have to see Americans roaming around my countryside in humvees. My town may need it economically, but at what cost?
Okay, Stan, though I am not an expert on these matters, I do know that the United States will not station troops in Poland with the permission of the Polish government. There will be an agreement more detailed then just "put X troops in Y." The United States might have bigger guns, but Marek Belka's government runs the show.
Poland is not Iraq. The U.S. presence will not be one of occupation. You won't see U.S. troops standing on street corners holding automatic rifles and grenade launchers. The First Armored Division is not going to advance in two columns on Bydgoszcz, and the United States is most certainly not going to annex the Sudetenland.
The Germans, except the caustic, like the troops and the bases. Neighbors.
Poland bought into what lie? The war against terrorism? Democracy? Stan, Poland is a free and independent nation, free to come to an agreement on these matters with the United States. If the Polish people do not approve of that agreement, they can elect a new government which will eject the United States in due course.
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PRE-FACE
Good morning."We don't think there's going to be a race because we all feel that President Bush has the right agenda and the right message and he's going to win in November," said Timothy O'Brien, executive director of the state Republican Party.Still, it's wise to be prepared. If Kerry does win, it's more likely that the Senate will fall, and to hear some press accounts, the Presidential race is all but over. (Throw in Cook and Sabato, but I suspect some glam posturing with those two.)
Still, "in the case there is a race, we're going to recruit the best candidate," he said.
It was a decent political move, but it was also essentially as meaningless as his support of President Bush's actions following the storm. An action by Kerry to mobilize his campaign volunteers, a distribution of phone numbers and destinations, would have been a serious action. Kerry did nothing, which is fine. He was to do nothing, least of all interefere.
The Reuters piece linked refers to JF as "an avid athlete." He's not, but it's an expected response from Reuters after hearing President Bush called our most athletic of Presidents.
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Sunday, August 15, 2004
AFTER-WORD
The referendum comes after a two-year drive to oust Chavez, which included a short-lived 2002 coup, a devastating two-month strike and political riots last March that claimed a dozen lives.I wonder if Chavez will leave if voted out. He could always rule the elections invalid with the help of his good friend, election observer Jimmy Carter, who is in the country to see that all goes well.
On Sunday, several State Dems joined Jersey Republicans in calling of the governor to resign now rather than in mid-November. And there is further word that Senator John Corzine (D-New Jersey) is preparing to make a run in a special election should McGreevey quit and one be called.
Corzine would consider leaving the Senate to take the NJ governorship because it is one of the strongest governor's posts in the nation, a max-chief legacy of the New Deal, when Democrats reasoned that a strong executive was needed to push through the sweeping changes which then-President Roosevelt demanded. The problem with that scenario for Corzine is that there is talk that the position might be reformed in the wake of McGreevey's scandal and resignation.
They have Monday off, then they travel to Minnesota to take on the Twins.
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Politicizing the Storm
The UK's Independent tells us that "the handling of the aftermath of Charley, the worst hurricane to hit Florida in a dozen years since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, could be crucial to his hopes of winning the state in the presidential election in November."
They misquote Larry Sabato to conclude thatMr Bush faced a challenge trying to dispel any notion that he was trying to make political mileage out of the human tragedy left by the storm. If he achieves that, Charley may end up helping him recover support in a state which he snatched from Al Gore in 2000 by just 537 votes.Florida is not going to be that close this year, and I don't think the President's reaction to a storm will sway even a minimally substantial number of voters. The only people who are going to think this political are those prone to sneer in that direction, the A.B.B. crowd.
Now if another storm, God forbid, were to strike the State in the next several months, some reconsideration will be in order.
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Dan Senor on ABC's This Week
This bit was taken from today's Rightsided Newsletter:
And Steph suggested that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's heart ailment, for which he was traveled to London for treatment, was faked for political reasons.
Silliness.
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Alan Keyes and Barack Obama, On Carpetbaggers and Abortion
I put the latest column by Jan Ireland live on the Rightsided Newsletter web site, and you can read it: HERE.
If Dr. Keyes can pull this off, the Illinois race could be as interesting as the one in South Dakota; however, the Keyes vrs. Obama matchup offers the clearest choice to voters.
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Bush and Stem Cells in California
In words from the San Francisco Examiner, California's Propositon 71, on this November's ballot, "would authorize $3 billion in bonds to fund stem cell research. It would establish a California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which would regulate and fund stem cell research. The proposition would incur an estimated $6 billion in state costs, to be paid off over 30 years, with an average state payment of $200 million a year. The proposition would forbid funding for research into human reproductive cloning." The first Field Poll on the matter shows 45-percent of Californians surveyed supporting the measure, 42-percent opposing it, and 13-percent unsure. That's a three point gap.
In the poll, pro-John Kerry Democrats support the stem cell initiative by a more than 2-to-1 ratio, while pro-George W. Bush Republicans are 2-to-1 in opposition, [Field Poll analyst Mark] DiCamillo said.Most "pro-Kerry Democrats" are actually anti-Bush Democrats, and he makes no mention of pro-Bush Dems are pro-Kerry Republicans.
Since the field poll was so close, this indicates that the Presidential race itself is not as one-sided as has been portrayed; at the very least, Kerry's support in California is not as solid as analysts Charlie Cook and Larry Sabato believe it is nationally.
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Obama and Keyes on This Week
George Stephanopoulos interviewed Barack Obama and Alan Keyes separately, and he showed the vid on ABC's This Week this AM. He said that Keyes is "better at getting attention than votes," having been an unsuccessful candidate several times for several offices. Obama insisted that the Illinois GOP did not expect Keyes to win; rather: "They thought Keyes would bruise me up a little before I get to Washington."
Now, you can always tell when Steph considers a guest to be on an intellectual part with himself, as they act as if there is something they are communicating which cannot be understood by the masses who might be watching the show. This was present with the professorial Obama.
Steph started Keyes out with the carpetbagger question and the assertion he made in 2000 that Hillary Clinton was debasing federalism with her run in New York. Now Keyes was doing the same thing, right? Try some nuance from Dr. Keyes: "Actually, not in the least way. … With Hillary, it was about nothing but personal ambition." Steph tried to push the linkage anyway, but Keyes shot him down.
Keyes said that "because of my race, race is not on the table." (Obama later said that he had never put race on the table.) Keyes said that heritage, not race, was the issue: "Barack Obama and I don't have the same heritage." Although he did not mention it, Obama's father was a voluntary immigrant from Africa and his mother is white. Keyes did point out that his ancestors were slaves working on the plantations in Maryland. Because of this heritage, he insisted, he better understands the circumstances of African-Americans.
Keyes insisted that Obama fights against what his ancestors fought for, and he specifically mentioned life. Abortion.
Steph: "As always with Alan Keyes, there's a struggle between the statesman and the showman." He then got Keyes to sing a song.
Flip to Obama. The question is abortion: life begins at conception. "I, as a Christian," Obama offered, "might agree with that." But he separated it from public policy. (Note that he did not say that he did believe it; rather, that he might. This might mean that he knows that as a Christian, he should believe it, but he doesn't. It might also mean that he simply wasn't going to mention his personal view.)
Obama said: "My faith is on that admits some doubt." He explained this by saying that while he believes in God and Jesus Christ, he does not think God speaks directly to him.
"Mr. Keyes," he added, "feels the certainty of a prophet, that he has a direct line into what God thinks."
So, he's painting Keyes as possibly deluded and also insisting that opposition to abortion is not necessarily a Christian position. Obama's Christianity, the holds that if God does not tell someone something directly, it might not be so.
One wonders what his opinion is of the resurrection, something certainly central to Christian teaching, but religious consistency is not an issue when one isn't examining personal theology. It is, though, when one wants to make a point of Obama's basic inconsistencies. (I'm speaking here not of an inconsistency, per se, with his advocacy of abortion rights; rather, I'm looking at his line of thought regarding God talking to people.)
It should be a good race, and Keyes seems to be ready to stress the differences in personal heritage. (For his part, Obama said that though his ancestors were not slaves, he dad was a house servant for the British, which he considers to be only a different degree of victimhood.)
For a complete wrapup of the Sunday shows, see the Rightsided Newsletter online: HERE.
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The Sunday Rightsided Newsletter
The Sunday edition of the Rightsided Newsletter has been sent to the sundry, global Inboxes and it is available for your perusal online: HERE.
It's a look at the Sunday Talk Shows, of course, but I'll admit that the TV went off when CNN's Wolf Blitzer was teasing as segment with his next guest, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. SHe looked into the camera and attempted a sultrily pouty expression, so soon after I had eaten lunch.
Look for excerpts from the RSN in this space, and I'll have a look at Steph's interviews with Illinois Senate candidates Alan Keyes and Barack Obama.
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Dowd and Devine on Face the Nation
From a rough draft of the RSN:
Host Schieffer first covered Hurricane Charley then brought in Nina Easton of the Boston Globe to question Bush advisor Matthew Dowd and Ted Devine of Kerry's campaign. It was an exhibition of the typical back-and-forth of campaign banter, similar (but not as informed) as that of Mary Matalin and Donna Brazile on MTP earlier.
They agreed that Hurricane Charley would have no political impact.
Easton, who worked with Kerry partisan Mike Kranish on the Globe's Kerry biography, informed Dowd that the George Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, was fighting an unpopular war, and had the Democrats energized "like never before" to beat him. "Where are the votes [for Bush] going to come from?" She could have asked, "Who's gonna vote for that guy?" Dowd replied, scarily, that the Bush campaign is counting on the 7 or 8 million people who will be voting for the first time. This is not good.
Schieffer's question for Devine was a good one. The President's standing in national polls had increased by several points so far in August, and Schieffer wanted to know if the President got a "convention bounce" out of the Democratic National Convention. Devine: "I don't think the President was helped by our convention. I think John Kerry was." (The polls, though, show a Bush bounce if anything. But "polls is polls.")
Devine: "Of course the world is a safer place with Saddam Hussein in a jail cell. The question is, 'Is America safer?'" As your candidate should be able to explain, Tad, a safer world is necessary for a safer America.
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Kerry's DCI
On NBC's Meet the Press this morning, guest host Andrea Mitchell was talking to the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman of California.
I had a thought about whom Kerry might want as DCI if he is elected. From a rough draft of this morning's Rightsided Newsletter:
Harman thinks that the President was right to nominate someone before the election. "By nominating Porter Goss, he is putting a permanent person in place, [although] it may just be [for] a few months." Here, she was indicating that she is uncomfortable with the CIA being under temporary leadership, i.e. an acting-director (in this case, John McLaughlin). The "just for a few months" was a reference to a possible Kerry victory in November. Kerry will want to nominate his own DCI (Golan Cipel?).
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PRE-FACE
Good morning.Do we blame MTV, Michael Moore, the media, and the general gullibility of youth? I think so, but also, President Bush has done little special to appeal to the unconcerned in that age group.
Those of you who in that age bracket who support President Bush have made a conscious decision to do so based on policy and facts. Your contemporaries who support support Kerry are most likely a product of the youth culture telling them what all about which they should think and care.
It's nothing new. We all went through the same thing when we were of that age.
I wish he'd tour the devastated areas and promise that this never would have happened in a Kerry Administration. His advisors could then suggest that the timing of the hurricane was politically motivated.
Are we having fun yet?
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Saturday, August 14, 2004
AFTER-WORD
Many of them will be transplanted to bases in the United States, but some are going to New Europe.
I could recite some of the usual jingoistic material right now, but some it apply to an exent. We do not need the troops there, and frankly, we should not be supporting the German economy.
Let's fight terror. Soviet Communism is on the ash heap.
Your reaction, M. Kerry?
His younger brother Chris Heinz might or might not have dated Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow.
Also tomorrow is the one year anniversary of when I began blogging. I'll tell the (brief) story of how that happened then.
I will say that when we went to bed a year ago tonight, I had no inkling that I'd start a blog the next morning.
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Keeping America Dumb, Docile, and Democrat.
I have put the latest column by Justin Darr, Keeping America Dumb, Docile, and Democrat, on the RSN web site.
Check it out: HERE.
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The Sunday Morning Talk Shows
This past week has soared by….
We have:
Then Schieffer has a chat with Alex and Vanessa Kerry. One of them will surely inform Scheiffer that Ben Affleck "is to die for."
He'll also talk to Dan Senor, who used to be Paul Bremer's spokesman, no doubt for that panel discussion he does almost every week.
Steph will play interviews he has recently recorded with Illinois Senate candidates Alan Keyes and Barack Obama.
I will once again be summarizing and analyzing the shows for the Rightsided Newsletter, and I urge you to avail yourself of this free resource. To subscribe, just visit the RSN web site at http://rightsided.tripod.com/, or send a blank e-mail to rsn-subscribe [AT] topica.com.
In addition to that, I'll spend much of my time in here tomorrow discussing the shows.
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Nine Americans Honored by France
Geopolitics. (Or is it?)Ten weeks after D-Day, American and British soldiers took part in something called Operation Dragoon, part of the effort to liberate France. ("Over ninety-four thousand troops and eleven thousand vehicles were landed on the first day.")
Nine British and nine American veterans of that mission are being honored this weekend, sixty years later, with the Legion of Honor by the French government. (There are five ranks of the medal, and it was not disclosed which the Americans received.) The decrees awarding the medals were signed by French President Jacques Chirac.
"France knows what it owes to the heroes of America who liberated us 60 years ago," Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said as she pinned the chests of the American vets in a ceremony at the U.S. military cemetery in Draguignan and kissed each of the nine on both cheeks.It says here that British Prime Minister Tony Blair and American Vice President Dick Cheney were invited but declined but are sending envoys. Why did Chirac not invite the President? Certainly the President usually sends the VP, or someone else, to such events, but I'd think the head of government should have been invited.
[ . . . ]
"We have never forgotten. We will never forget," she said, expressing France's "eternal recognition."
Chirac is going to personally decorate 23 vets, one from each Allied country involved in the operation, on an aircraft carrier tomorrow.
I have to read more into this, because Jacques Chirac, by most accounts, loathes America and does not think highly of Britain. He cannot stand the projection of American power for any reason. So why is he honoring the veterans of an Anglo-American liberation operation? Operation Dragoon was an example of the United States and Great Britain, without the authorization of the League of Nations, taking it upon themselves to liberate a country, in this case France. One would think that historical fact would make Chirac's blood boil.
If he's playing a political game with these octogenarian men of valor, he's unforgivable. If he's seriously honoring these men, he's a thankful hypocrite.
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John Walker Lindh seeks Freedom
Now that it looks like the U.S. might release Yaser Esam Hamdi, Johnny Walker Lindh's lawyer wants his client to be sprung.
Hamdi is an American citizen who joined the Taliban; the Supreme Court ruled that the government may not continue to hold him with charge. Drawing on the similarieis between the two case, Lindh's attorney asked the Justice Department to review his case.
Lindh, however, was captured by the military and immediately charged in a civilian court.
It looks to me like Don Quixote, esq. (James Brosnahan) is tilting at the requisite windmills. "Requisite" because that's his job.
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The Taliban is Falling Apart
Steven Taylor (PoliBlog) posts from a Reuters report that up to a third of the Taliban have ceased to recognize Mullah Omar as its leader and has splintered into a sort of alternative Taliban.
"That's a significant development which demonstrates the Taliban are falling apart a little bit on the leadership side," Major Scott Nelson told a regular news briefing in Kabul.I do not mean this question in its Hiedeggerian sense, but why are there Taliban instead of no Taliban? I'm well aware that wars of liberation are different from wars of annihilation, but I don't buy the JF Kerreyian argument that a civilized society can be sensitive to and live peaceably with the Taliban. It is a matter/anti-matter dichotomy, unstable from the start.
Nelson said the military was still assessing what impact the split was having on the Islamist militants' strategy and operations against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
"That fissure is widening -- we see that. Specifically what that means we're still looking into it," he said.
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Debate Commission Might be Partisan
A federal district judge ruled late Thursday that the Federal Election Commission must open an investigation into whether the Commission on Presidential Debates broke federal election laws when it locked third party candidates out of the debate halls to watch the 2000 Presidential debates.
The Commission had kept Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan from the debates, it said, because they would be an annoyance, disrupting the telecasts. Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr says maybe so, but there was no valid reason for blocking out other third party candidates.
This is curious. It looks like Judge Kennedy would be willing to allow lockouts on a case-by-case basis, unique to each specific candidates. Ralph Nader, lout. Natural Law Party, okay. Constitution Party, okay. Libertarian Party, lout. Socialist Workers Party, lout. Green Party, okay.
The third party candidates' argument is that the Commission has rendered itself illegitimate as biased toward the R's and D's. They say they'll allow anyone over 15% in national polls to participate, but there are no clear guidelines for observers.
This will not effect the September 30 debate.
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Top Secret Regulations Overhaul
There is a disgusting piece in Today'sNew York Times which reports a lot without telling us anything.
It opens:
April 21 was an unusually violent day in Iraq; 68 people died in a car bombing in Basra, among them 23 children. As the news went from bad to worse, President Bush took a tough line, vowing to a group of journalists, "We're not going to cut and run while I'm in the Oval Office."The story avers that while the public is distracted by the war, the Bush Administration is sneakily pursuing its megalomaniacal agenda of raw power. That sort of thing.
On the same day, deep within the turgid pages of the Federal Register, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a regulation that would forbid the public release of some data relating to unsafe motor vehicles, saying that publicizing the information would cause "substantial competitive harm" to manufacturers.
Joel Brinkley, who wrote the piece, quotes liberal special interest after liberal special interest about the "concentration of power" and "adverse affects," "bypassing Congress," yet we glean little from the piece about what is actually being done.
A particularly crazed partisan could walk away from the story believing that President Bush planned the 9-11 attacks and started the war on terror so as to distract the public from what it really wants to do: act in secret to… cut regulations?
If the public doesn't know what is being done, the news industry is failing to tell them. The war does not change that.
The President was elected to make such regulatory decisions and he's making them. None of this is secret.
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Trending toward Bush
Again, polls is polls, but we could be seeing an inverse, "is that the best you can do?" post-convention bounce away from the Democratic candidate. Or maybe the philosophical miasma which is John Kerry is starting to shed the rhetorical clothes it calls "nuance" to stand naked before the American people.
A Pew Research poll shows the President leading JF Kerry 49-percen to 39-percent in the surveyed publics perception of their ability to handle terrorism. On character traits, Bush leads Kerry, 62%-29%, on willingness to take a stand; Bush is a "strong leader" to 57%, with Kerry yielding the appellation from only 34%; Good in a crisis, the President leads Kerry 50 to 38.
Then there's the curious trait about which Pew asked respondents: "Changes mind." There were 28% who felt it applied to President Bush, and 47% applying it to Kerry. Now, the ability to change one's mind when confronted with new evidence is a positive thing, but what Kerry does is altogether different. John Kerry does not make up his mind in the first place, giving him leeway to vacillate from pillar to post.
Like a I said last spring, Kerry's campaign has to do something. He should pledge to bring all of our troops home from Iraq by Easter, raise the top tax rate to 85%, distribute free fuel cells… anything. He cannot win by saying that he'll do what's being done in a more sensitive fashion.
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PRE-FACE
Good morning.Look, the pool from which they choose is a leftish one.
Moderating the debate between Edwards and Cheney will be Gwen Hill, also with PBS and Lehrer's NewsHour.
Depending on how strongly these moderators feel it is their civic duty to rid the world of President Bush -- and some folks do feel that way -- there should be only the minor things which are revealed only on close examination and analysis.
As was pointed out in the comments, the quasi-historian is named Douglas Brinkley. David, though the erstwhile newsman had written several books, is dead.
Correction noted and made.
A lot of people, I suspect, will first learn of Kerry's lie through his "correction."
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Friday, August 13, 2004
AFTER-WORD
I've frequently faulted the press for not understanding words and sentences…
I can say this. If you fight a war while worrying what the French want, you're handicapping yourself and you will either take more casualties or lose. The U.S. wouldn't lose, but a sensitive war would leave a lot of blood on the hands of its architects.
Kerry has turned to author Brinkley for a "modification" after it was exposed that Kerry was not in Cambodia during Christmas of 1968, as he once claimed from the Senate floor.Perhaps now more people will learn about Kerry's Cambodian fabrication. There will be people for whom the first they hear of Kerry's lie will be when he enlists a quasi-historian to admit the lie and attempt to squirm out of it. This is essentially what will be happening if Drudge has the story right.
The Brinkley piece for the NEW YORKER will now say that Kerry was not in Cambodia during Christmas, but rather in January, publishing sources tell DRUDGE.
Then again, this is baseball. I remember the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Florida Marlins.
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Gallup puts Bush at 51% approval
Polls is polls. Bush is trending up, while Kerry is trending down. Nothing huge, but that's Gallup.
4. Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?Approve - 51%, Disapprove - 46%, Don't Know/Don't Care - 3%.
July 30-August first, it was 48% approve, 49% disapprove.
It's all in the margin, but the trend is showing some of the fluidity I talked about.
There is that no incumbent has ever been defeated with an approval rating above 50% in August, but I do not think that, or just about any other truism, applies this time. We're building our own model.
I know it's far too early for hypothetical of this sort, but when this is over, it might be interesting to conjecture what this election would have been like had the Democrats nominated a decent candidate. (Edwards would have been a decent candidate, but not for this particular election. I'm thinking of someone like a Joe Biden or a Dick Gephardt.)
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The Election is a Bloody Affair
Kansas was asked by the American Red Cross to send 27 pints of blood to New York City for the Republican National Convention. The Democratic National Convention if Beantown last month got 54 pints from Kansans. The Dems have a 2-1 advantage, and that has nothing to do with their candidate's taxing proclivities and fangs.
But the Olympics are underway, the opening ceremonies. It's amazing how precise everything is, the how captivating the grand pageantry appears on screen. The moves are beautifully choreographed, and the timing is sublime. It has no bearing on the substance of the actual games, but it is fun to watch. A grand show.
That was the Democratic National Convention, but they are putting on a good show in Athens, too.
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Cipel: "I finally dared to reject McGreevey's advances"
New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey's former male friend Golan Cipel held a press conference earlier this evening [text]. He alleges that McGreevey wanted him and used his power and influence to try to get him, letting him know that he, McGreevey, held Cipel's future in his hands.
When Cipel finally blew him off, he said, "the retaliatory actions taken by him and members of his administration were nothing short of abuse and intimidation."
It's New Jersey. Mort Kondracke of Roll Call remarked about New Jersey and its Democrats, naming Bob Torricelli as another one.
So like Torricelli managed to sneak the addled Frank Lautenberg into his slot at the last moment, here is McGreevey sticking around, even though he admitted that his ability to govern is diminished, until after a special election could be called to replace him -- must be done by September -- and after the election. Senate President Richard Codey, by all accounts a Democrat insider, becomes governor upon McGreevey's flight. So McGreevey's final act as governor will be to deny the people of New Jersey their right to be governed by an individual of their choice.
This gives John Corzine a chance to get his affairs in order and run.
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Addition to the A-1 Blogroll
I've been meaning to do this for a while, but I've been reading nikita demosthenes for the past while, and it's a great blog. Pro-Reagan, Pro-Bush, and of late, taking aim at JF Kerry.
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The Post Campaigns Against Bush
Whether he intends to do so or not, Howard Kurtz is campaigning
Kurtz wrote in his piece:
As violence continues in postwar Iraq and U.S. forces have yet to discover any WMDs, some critics say the media, including The Washington Post, failed the country by not reporting more skeptically on President Bush's contentions during the run-up to war.The contentions of which he writes that the paper was not adequately critical had mainly to do with Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. Those WMD had not been found when we went to war, and I assume that the paper reported this fact.
Those WMD were not the invention of George W. Bush. They were why UN Resolution 1441 was passed. They were why Hans Blix and Mohammed El Baradei had inspection teams in Iraq. They were why Blix and Baradei wished to keep their inspectors in Iraq.
France did not balk at going to war because they believed Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction; they believed that diplomacy could be used to convince him to give them up.
By publishing this, the Washington Post joins the New York Times in inserting them into the election year political debate with false premises. By apologizing for believing what the President told them, they are asserting that the President is a liar. He did not lie.
A sub-dividend for Kerry is that by "apologizing," the papers focus attention on the fact that the Bush Administration has not apologized for believing the Saddam Hussein possessed WMD. In fact, in the crippled thinking of the papers, they are drawing attention to the fact that the President has not apologized for lying to the American people.
Howard Kurtz and the Washington Post have sold their soul and their intellectual integrity on the altar of Anybody But Bush.
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The Fair Share is Paid by the Wealthy
Dr. Jeff Cornwall (The Entrepreneurial Mind) discusses how the new report states that Bush tax cuts benefit the middle class, shifting the tax burden to the (figure-of-speech) "very wealthy."
He quotes the Congressional Joint Economic Committee:
A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report produced at the request of Congressional Democrats confirms that tax cuts since 2001 increased the share of federal income taxes paid by the highest earners while decreasing the tax share of lower- and middle-income groups. The CBO analysis, Effective Tax Rates Under Current Law, 2001 to 2014, shows that the income tax remains highly progressive, with the top 5 percent of earners paying more than half of all federal income taxes.[Hat Tip, Bill Hobbs at Blogs for Bush.]
Meanwhile, Kerry/Edwards has issued a press release alleging that the President's tax cuts have hurt the middle class to the benefit of the very wealthy.
Kerry gets an assist from Reuters, the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC.com, etc.
The Heritage Foundation says all of this is "proof reporters cannot read."
To SummarizeWe need a news media which reports only the facts and allows others, including their readers, to do the analysis and the op/ed.
From 2005 to 2010, the tax cuts that Reuters reports have "transferred the federal tax burden from the richest Americans to middle-class families" raise the comparative tax burden for the richest Americans and lower the burden, a bit, for middle-class families. Throughout the time period, the actual tax burden on both groups is reduced.
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Terrorist Surveillance updated this Spring
The information which prompted Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's terrorism alert of August 1st were updated as recently as this Spring, the White House revealed. The word on the new surveillance of five financial institutions in New York, New Jersey, and Washington comes from new analysis of computer records seized in Pakistan recently.
In reporting the story, the New York Times added: "… the authorities still had no direct evidence of an active terror plot." It sounds more than active enough to be of concern.
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McGreevey's guy, Golan
Not to belabour this tale, but it seems that young Israeli tour guide Golan Cipel caught then-Woodbridge Mayor Jim McGreevey's eye when the Roman Catholic mayor was touring Jerusalem with a group of New Jersey Jews.
Soon after, Cipel moved to the United States and quickly landed a job with billionaire and McGreevey-donor Charles Kushner and then later as a low-level spokesperson for the Israeli government here in the U.S.He was forced to resign from that post after he failed to meet security clearances, and he then become an advisor to the governor but was forced to resign from that post two years ago today.
It was from there in February 2002 that Cipel with little experience on his resume was appointed by Governor McGreevey as New Jersey's anti-terrorism czar. It is a job that paid the 33-year-old six figures.
A NJ Jewish News story contemporary with his firing as NJ anti-terror czar tells us:
Initially, Team McGreevey defended the appointment by releasing a resume that may have oversold Cipel’s credentials. But only by a matter of degree. Still, it left McGreevey vulnerable to Gannett’s [the newspaper chain] charge that his having “relied on exaggerated antiterrorism credentials to justify hiring…Cipel as a highly paid adviser…add[ed] to a series of questions” about Cipel: “Who is he? What does he do? Why has he been given special treatment? And why has he been kept from public scrutiny of his credentials?”Now we know.
The kick, it seems, is that Cipel has filed a sexual harrassment suit against Governor McGreevey.
CONSPIRACY MODE: Is all this -- the affair, the lawsuit -- a series of inventions designed to cover up something more serious?
You know, he really ought to resign effective A.S.A.P.
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Prez on Larry King Live
President Bush said something to Larry King on his CNN program last night which bears repeating until everyone has heard it a dozen times and it hopefully enters the ears of Shrum, Kerry, and Edwards ":
"Senator Kerry is justifiably proud of his record in Vietnam and he should be,'' Bush said in an interview yesterday on Cable News Network's ``Larry King Live'' program. "The question is: Who can best lead the country in a time of war? And I think it's me, because I understand the stakes.''I'll leave the argument concerning whether or not Kerry should be justifiably proud for those who served with him, and they're coming from both sides.
The simple idea of this line is that Kerry's four months in Vietnam have no bearing on his ability to lead a war of which he has demonstrated not even a rudimentary understanding.
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PRE-FACE
Good morning.As I said earlier, Goss was talking about the sophistication of today's agent, saying that they had many more skills than did the agents of yesterday, of which he was one. Nothing he listed as being unable to do is part of the job of running the agency; rather, they were special skills required of often specialized agents.
As we've noted, there is a segment of the political press which looks at life through the lens of a bigoted third grader and mistakes discursive, meaningless answers for intellect.
He committed adultery, cheated on his second wife -- and on his family. In the age of Clinton, adultery for a Democrat in politics is generally survivable, and I'd think that would include homosexual adultery. If it were a Republican, they would call him a hypocrite, and he would be. As a Democrat, he offended only the fellow Democrats who'd better get out of the party quickly before they're run over.
There's more to this McGreevey story, and we'll find out what it is; otherwise, it becomes an unmanageable internet rumor.
"I just want you to know, President Bush, I want you to know how hard I've been working for you here in California," Schwarzenegger said. "I've been organizing Republicans for Bush-Cheney. I've been organizing Austrian-born bodybuilders for Bush-Cheney. I have been even organizing girlie men for Bush-Cheney."In their face, says the gov.
The President thinks he'll win the State in November:
"You know what? I think I am [going to win California]. I'm looking forward to coming to this great state," Bush said. "Nobody should take this state for granted in 2004."Dunno. It might be tempting for JF Kerry's CA juggernaut. 12-points? Yikes!
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