For a little fun, go over and see Kos on the verge of a conniption.

Visit some of the other lefty blogs too for more laughs. John McCain got quite a reaction from the crowd tonight when he referred to Michael Moore is a “disingenuous filmmaker.” Some are saying, “Oooh…They must be afraid of Moore to have a reaction like that!!”

No people. It’s just that for once, the fat bastard was finally given his comeuppance on a national stage after having the mainstream media fawn over him for the last 2-3 months with the only serious criticism of his bullshit coming from talk radio and weblogs.

If you’re going to have the press around, taking shots of you when you’re taking part in activities outside of the campaign, you or your campaign people should make sure you don’t look like such a dork:

Dude. The shorts. Why not have a pair with pink bunnies on them while you’re at it? That way they’d look like they’re frolicking amongst those pretty flowers. As for those legs? Two words Senator: Tanning booth.

RNC Bloggers have some good stuff over there. It seems they got their Internet connections up and running. Matt Margolis even snagged an interview with former NYC Mayor Ed Koch.

SayUncle’s blog is two years old today! Congrats!

Greece deserves the praise they have received for how well they handled the Olympics.

Adam Sandler still isn’t funny, even though he’s a Republican.

Tom Daschle is using President Bush in one of his ads, hoping to win his election in SD.

Florida could be hit with another hurricane later this week.

The Bush/McCain rumors are still swirling for whatever reason.

I like clever protestor poster slogans. The ‘Bush=Hitler’ ones are the creation of those with no imagination. However, there is one that can be seen here that is pretty good. It says:

‘The New 2004 No Carb Diet”

No Cheney
No Ashcroft
No Rumsfeld
No Bush

And absolutely no Rice!

I still think the Swift Boat Vets should have made Kerry’s slandering of his fellow troops their main focus. If you’ve been paying attention, Kerry’s defenders have done all they can to keep the focus on the medals. They stay away from the Cambodia lie and Kerry’s accusations of routine, day to day war crimes in Vietnam.

Excerpt:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called advertisements run against John Kerry by pro-Republican Vietnam War veterans “dishonest and dishonorable” but said Monday it’s legitimate to question the Democratic presidential candidate’s anti-war efforts following his service.
A group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, made up of men who served on the same vessels as Kerry in Vietnam, has been running harshly critical ads questioning the Massachusetts senator’s leadership qualities and claiming he embellished his record to receive military awards.

“I think these ads are dishonest and dishonorable,” McCain said.

However, he said Kerry’s prominent role in the anti-war movement after he returned from Vietnam should be questioned. Kerry led a veterans’ group opposed to the war and, during Capitol Hill testimony, said U.S. soldiers committed atrocities with heir commanders’ approval.

“What John Kerry did after the war is very legitimate political discussion,” McCain said.

One can be sure the Kerry camp won’t be quoting McCain now.

On a side note, unless the author, Tom Raum, has spoken to every Swift Boat Veteran and verified who they’re supporting as well as their political affiliations, he should refrain from editorializing and calling them “pro-Republican.”

Kerry’s record (of which there isn’t one really) in the Senate truly must be Bush’s line of attack over the next two months. It’s easy pickings really because Kerry’s statements are constantly contradicted by his actual record. Another example has surfaced with regard to Cuba:

As the presumptive Democratic nominee, Kerry was ready with the bravado appropriate for a challenger who knows that every answer carries magnified importance in the state that put President Bush into office by just 537 votes.

‘’I'm pretty tough on Castro, because I think he’s running one of the last vestiges of a Stalinist secret police government in the world,'’ Kerry told WPLG-ABC 10 reporter Michael Putney in an interview to be aired at 11:30 this morning.

Then, reaching back eight years to one of the more significant efforts to toughen sanctions on the communist island, Kerry volunteered: “And I voted for the Helms-Burton legislation to be tough on companies that deal with him.'’

It seemed the correct answer in a year in which Democratic strategists think they can make a play for at least a portion of the important Cuban-American vote – as they did in 1996 when more than three in 10 backed President Clinton’s reelection after he signed the sanctions measure written by Sen. Jesse Helms and Rep. Dan Burton.

There is only one problem: Kerry voted against it.

When asked about it, his aides offered the following:

Asked Friday to explain the discrepancy, Kerry aides said the senator cast one of the 22 nays that day in 1996 because he disagreed with some of the final technical aspects. But, said spokesman David Wade, Kerry supported the legislation in its purer form – and voted for it months earlier.

So it’s another example of him “voting for it before he voted against it.”

The protestors are already gathering. Today some group called the “Mothers Against Bush” (I’ll leave it up to my readers to make the jokes) which is a creation of Planned Parenthood (It still amazes me that an organization that is directly subsidized by the taxpayers is allowed to do this crap) . As for the abortion issue, there was this:

“I demand and cherish that right,” said Sara Breman, 22, a student from Austin, Texas. “Under Bush that right is being threatened through their way of teaching sexual education — by teaching abstinence.”

I see. Her right to have an abortion is being threatened by teaching abstinence. I don’t even know what to say to that.

Of course, the real boneheads in NYC this week, will be the people who don’t give a shit of Kerry wins or Bush wins. They’re the protestors, most of whom are made up of young affluent spoiled punks ashamed to be affluent, that are there simply to have an outlet for their phony anger. The self-proclaimed ‘anarchists’ who cannot stand the system and hate the corporate capitalist pig dog country we live in along with the fascist government. Never mind the fact that these same punks will probably running for some kind of government office in 25 years after they’ve had enough of working for a successful corporation.

These are the fools who are going to cause all kinds of problems, and there’s a possibility it will be 1968 all over again. The cops will do what they have to do, and the public will not see cops beating up protestors, but rather protestors rioting - breaking windows, looting, setting fires, overturning cars, etc. It may not get that bad, but if it does, it will not reflect well on the Democrats or John Kerry. It doesn’t matter that they are not associated with it. But that will be the perception. They’ve already started:

On Friday night, 264 people were arrested for disorderly conduct in a protest bicycle ride that snaked through the city and passed by Madison Square Garden, where the convention opens Monday.

The bike ride represented the first major clash between police and demonstrators converging on the city for the convention.

It’s going to be some week.

Kevin at Wizbang! has put together a really nice weblog for the RNC bloggers. Take a look.

Look, if you think your candidate can win, you don’t continually harp on what you claim is nothing more than a ’smear.’ The Kerry campaign must really be concerned about the Swift Boat Veterans, because they’re trying desperately to prove that the Bush campaign is behind the Swift Boat Veterans ads. Since I receive John Kerry’s email alerts, I shook my head when I read this absurd letter that Mary Beth Cahill sent to Ken Mehlman, Bush’s campaign manager:

Dear Mr. Mehlman:

For three weeks now, your campaign has been saying there are no ties between the Bush campaign and “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.” But the web of connections grows wider and wider every day. Yesterday we saw confirmation of another connection when your general counsel, Benjamin Ginsberg, was forced to resign for providing legal advice for this group.

Enclosed you will find a chart that makes clear the web of connections between President Bush and the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.” Now that you have this chart and the accompanying fact sheet to back it up, I wanted to ask you several specific questions that deserve your prompt response.

1. Ken Cordier served on the Bush Veterans Steering Committee and also stars in the latest “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” smear ad. As a member of the steering committee presumably he was involved in policy development. What information about the Bush campaign’s veterans policy did he share with the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?” Did he ever discuss his activities with this smear group with anyone in the Bush campaign? How many times did “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” activities come up at Bush Veterans Steering Committee meetings?

2. Yesterday on Fox News, Karl Rove confirmed that he and Bob Perry are longtime friends. Bob Perry is the largest contributor to the Texas Republican Party and a longtime supporter of President Bush. When was the last time Karl Rove and Bob Perry spoke, and did they discuss the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?”

3. Based on newspaper accounts, we know Merrie Spaeth was involved in the underhanded shadow campaign against John McCain in 2000. She also helped organize the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” and did the debate prep for President H. W. Bush. She has also admitted that she advised Bush administration officials in the White House as recently as last year. Was Merrie Spaeth ever contacted by anyone from the Bush campaign, including you, about “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?”

4. John O’Neill’s law firm, Clements, O’Neill, Pierce, Wilson & Fulkerson, has many connections to President Bush. In fact, Margaret Wilson, Mr. O’Neill’s law partner, served as General Counsel to Governor Bush and followed him to Washington, where she worked as Deputy Counsel for the Department of Commerce. Did she ever discuss “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” with President Bush, members of his administration or any Bush-Cheney campaign officials?

5. If you say there’s no connection, why did the Bush-Cheney campaign office in Florida pass out “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” flyers to promote a joint anti-John Kerry rally in Gainsville, Florida last weekend?

6. According to news reports, you have worked with “Progress for America,” a newly formed 527 group that has announced it’s going to spend $35 million to attack John Kerry and whose executive director is a top advisor to the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.” Have you had any additional contact with this group? Have Karl Rove or other Bush officials – either in the White House or on the Bush-Cheney campaign – had contacts with this group?

7. How many times did Karl Rove and Benjamin Ginsberg meet? Did they ever discuss the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?”

These questions go to the heart of why so many people now believe that “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” is nothing more than a front group for the Bush-Cheney campaign. The longer President Bush waits to specifically condemn this smear, the more it looks like he’s behind it.

It’s time for the president to stand up and specifically condemn “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.” Not only is this a smear on John Kerry’s distinguished military service; it’s an insult to all veterans who’ve served their country.

The American people want to hear an honest discussion of the issues. They’re concerned about the economy and the troubling situation in Iraq. Today, as we enter week four of this smear campaign, I’m asking you to talk to the president and ask him to heed Senator McCain’s call and condemn this smear. The American people deserve better.

Sincerely,

Mary Beth Cahill

This is without a doubt one of the dumbest things I have ever seen. What do they expect to get out of this? I mean, if I were Ken Mehlman, I wouldn’t insult my snot, by blowing my nose with this crap. I’m not even going to go into each and every bogus question she asks as well as her lies. There’s too many to count.

However, this just underscores their nervousness on this issue. With the press finally doing some work on this issue, new questions are arising every day, and it won’t be too long before the the mainstream press starts demanding Kerry release all of his records, not just the ones that help him. In addition, Democrats are prepared to go after the Swift Boat Vets personal lives to undermine their credibility. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody who has seen what these people do to those who dare to cross them.

If Kerry has nothing to hide and all of these accusations are smears and lies, then why wont he lift the exclusive rights Douglas Brinkley has to his journals and release his all of his records?

Today:

President George W. Bush signed orders giving more power to the head of the Central Intelligence Agency as an interim step until Congress can complete legislation creating a national intelligence director.

The increased authority will go initially to John McLaughlin, who is acting CIA director following the July 11 departure of George Tenet, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. Bush’s nominee for the post, Representative Porter Goss, a Florida Republican, needs Senate confirmation.

The Kerry campaign response was predictable enough:

Kerry’s vice presidential pick, John Edwards, said Bush’s actions today “fall short'’ of what’s needed to enact “meaningful intelligence reform.'’

“The proposal announced today does not get the job done,'’ Edwards, 51, a North Carolina senator, said in a statement. “Expanding the powers of the existing director of central intelligence is a far cry from creating a true national intelligence director with real control over personnel and budgets.'’

Apparently, Mr. Edwards is unfamiliar with the definition of ‘interim.’

When asked what specific proposals the Kerry/Edwards team has proposed, Edwards replied:

“Uhh…welll….I….uhhhh……John Kerry has three purple hearts!!”

Knowing that their candidate is an empty suit with zero leadership qualities, the ABB’s are starting to raise old meme’s again. The first? Bush is stupid.

How has it worked for them? Well, they tried it in 1994 against Ann Richards. Results? He won. Easily. They tried again during his re-election bid in 1998. Results? He won again with close to 70% of the vote.

They tried it in 2000 with Al Gore. Results? They lost again.

It’s maddening to them because they thought great things would happen following the convention. They got giddy at the site of several polls showing Kerry moving ahead. But that lead has now disappeared. In fact, the majority of polls show Bush is ahead going into the Republican convention. Bush is also leading in several swing states, two of which, Kerry must win, in order to win the election. As for marging of error, if one is to believe Kevin Drum (like so many good little liberals do), the ’statistical tie’ is nothing but a myth.

Of course, for whatever reason, whenever I post something like or mention that Kerry’s not doing well, people chime in with the snark, “Oh right Jay. Bush is going to cruise to victory with a double digit win.” Nobody is saying Bush is going to have an easy time of it. However, Kerry has had close to two months in the spotlight and he’s no better off now than when people “didn’t know” him. You can whine all you want about “negative ads", but you know that’s not the issue. Like I said earlier, you chose to go with an empty suit with no record to speak of. That’s why he has tried to ride his Vietnam service into the White House, because he never accomplished anything worthwhile in his 19 years as a Senator. His ideas he’s running on now contain nothing new: He wants to raise taxes, spend tons of money, and he’s promising universal healthcare coverage which people know will not happen. He’s promising to ‘restore alliances’ without telling anybody how he’ll do it.

Like I said: An empty suit.

That’s why they have to resort to, “Bush is stupid!!”

Here is a transcript of questions asked of John O’Neill regarding the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The questions are pretty tough, but fair and O’Neill answers all of them fully.

First off, anybody who has been reading this blog since its birth in 2001 knows that I was opposed to that stupid McCain/Feingold CFR bill.

I was (and still am) pissed off the President signed it. He and others hoped he could get the political benefit from it and await the Supreme Court to strike it down. It didn’t happen, and therefore, it’s pretty much his fault and John McCain’s fault that we have this current mess.

However, politically, what has happened over the last 24 hours, despite what Kerry people are crowing about, has not been good for the Senator.

First there was that blatant stunt with Max Cleland, which most people will see as nothing more than a stunt. Secondly, Bush refused to condemn the SBV ad specifically, and instead said that all 527’s should be in compliance with the same campaign finance restrictions as hard money groups. He how has the full support of John McCain on that issue. Third, The Kerry campaign had to pull an ad that used McCain in it.

The Democrats should have kept their yaps shut about all of this, but they can’t. Instead, they thought they would get mileage out of it, constantly hammering the President on it, and accusing him of breaking the law. Now it may come back to bite them in the ass.

If Bush and McCain are successful in getting these 527’s to have to rely on hard money contributions, the one who will get hurt most by it is John Kerry. He’s the one who has benefitted from the $65 million those groups have spent attacking President Bush. Despite all the crowing about “rich Republicans” giving to the swifties, the total amount they have spent, is pocket change. Bush doesn’t get hurt if they are forced to accept hard money limits.

In using a poker analogy, Kerry thought his aces over kings full house would win. Bush just revealed his four of a kind.

I’ve been reading and listening to people bemoan the fact that Bob Dole has decided to get involved with this campaign. “Oh it’s so sad to see Bob Dole attacking a fellow veteran and taking up for President Bush.”

It’s hard not to gag on the condescension. They apparently forgot, or just ignore the fact that Bob Dole didn’t involve himself until Kerry’s parrot paper, the Boston Globe, decided to take a real cheap shot Dole in one of their editorials. They awoke a sleeping giant. They shouldn’t bitch about it now.

—–

John Kerry circa 1971:

“I called the media. . . . I said, ‘If I take some crippled veterans down to the White House and we chain ourselves to the gates, will we get coverage? ‘ ‘Oh, yes, we will cover that.’ ” - Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April 22, 1971

John Kerry, circa 2004:

“Kerry is sending to Crawford former Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia, a frequent companion of Kerry’s on the campaign trail and a fellow Vietnam War veteran who lost three limbs during the war. Cleland . . . will try to deliver a letter protesting the [Swift Boat Veterans for Truth] ads to [President] Bush at his heavily guarded ranch, Kerry aides said."–Reuters, Aug. 25, 2004

No comments necessary.

—–

The WSJ has a guide to the bloggers who will be attending the Republican National Convention. There are pictures of some of them. It’s funny because some of them are older than I thought they were and some are younger than I had thought.

—–

It seems to me every time the Yankees are on television (I am in Florida so I only get to see them on ESPN or FOX), they lose. Last night they lost on a 2 out drag bunt by a guy named Coco Crisp.

—–

There’s this band called Alter Bridge. It has three members of Creed and a different lead singer. No more Scott Stapp. So what does it sound like? Creed without Scott Stapp but with a singer who has the same style as Scott Stapp.

—–

Note to alternative rock stations: It’s cool that you’re mixing in some hip-hop that’s fused with hard rock, but enough already with The Beastie Boys and ‘Brass Monkey.’ How about some Cypress Hill and ‘Rock Superstar"?

—–

The Jacksonville Jaguars haven’t sold out a regular season home game this year, yet they are still charging ridiculous prices for tickets. The cheapest seats are $20 which would have my nose bleeding for a week. One would think they’d drop the prices and save themselves the embarassment of having an audience see thousands of empty seats.

Instead of answering any charges against him, John Kerry has chosen to sulk, threaten lawsuits, whine to the FEC and exploit disabled vets by getting them to attempt a ‘Roger and Me’ moment at Bush’s ranch in Texas.

He’s also called several veterans who have spoken out against him. One of them was Bob Dole who has been silent all this time, until the Boston Globe decided it was fair to bring his name into it while defending Kerry. Former Senator Dole had a conversation with Kerry about all of this:

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

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

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

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

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

Dole said Kerry responded, “I haven’t spent one dime attacking President Bush.”

And the Dole throws the knockout punch:

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

“Don’t tell me you don’t know what some of these people are doing,” he told Kerry.

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

And now, in the face of Kerry’d disgraceful exploitation of Max Cleland and Jim Rassman, several decorated veterans who support President Bush have fired off a letter to the Senator:

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t build your convention and much of your campaign around your service in Vietnam, and then try to say that only those veterans who agree with you have a right to speak up. There is no double standard for our right to free speech. We all earned it.

You said in 1992 “we do not need to divide America over who served and how.” Yet you and your surrogates continue to criticize President Bush for his service as a fighter pilot in the National Guard.

Good. It’s obvious the mainstream media is taking up for John Kerry. The latest is they’re headlining that Ben Ginsburg is working for the Bush campaign and advising the Swift Boat Vets, but bury that there are three lawyers working for either the Kerry campaign or the DNC while at the same time representing anti-Bush groups.

Whatever happened to “Bring. It. On."?

First he sics the lawyers on Bush. Then the FEC. Then, after accusing Bush of breaking the law, he urges him to really break the law by illegally coordinating with a 527 group to tell them to stop doing something they have every right to do.

Now he’s got two people going to Bush’s ranch like the parents of child that’s being picked on in school. Instead this time, it’s the tough talking ‘fighter’ who’s running to Mommy and Daddy.

Of course, the Reuters report repeats the bogus ‘fact’ that Cleland lost his Senate bid because he had his patriotism questioned, a falsehood that has now become an urban legend that everybody believes.

So I watched it. I have only one observation:

Jon Stewart will not be able to do the show tonight because of his failure to be able to talk. His lips are still firmly planted against John Kerry’s ass.

It was, without a doubt, the biggest suck-up job I have ever seen. I didn’t expect any tough questions, but I also didn’t expect Stewart to behave like one of those girls you see in footage from Beatles concerts.

Josh Marshall is appalled:

The Bush campaign and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have so little in common that they share an election lawyer – Florida recount veteran, Benjamin Ginsberg.

Cripes what a stupid thing to say. Notice the emphasis. Uh…Hello McFly! Anybody home? Of course the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the Bush campaign have something in common. Both of them don’t want John Kerry to be President!

What they have in common is not relevant. The fact that John O’Neill was smart enough to choose a good attorney to make sure they were in compliance with the complicated election laws and FEC regs shows he has good judgement. It does not prove coordination. All Josh had to do was read a little further down in the AP article and would have seen this:

Joe Sandler, a lawyer for the DNC and a group running anti-Bush ads, MoveOn.org, said there is nothing wrong with serving in both roles at once.

I think Michael is right. Marshall is imploding.

Via Powerline comes this story which has Democrats telling younger voters they had better register to vote (to help elect John Kerry of course) or face being drafted:

The first page of the mailing shows a draft notice with orders to report to a military induction center. The next shows a helicopter with troops in the foreground beneath a headline that says “Officials in Washington are calling for more troops in Iraq.” Below, the mailing asks “Which form would you rather fill out?”

I guess Springsteen and REM aren’t playing any shows in Columbia, so they figured they’d have to resort to their ace in the deck, which is attempting to scare voters.

I wonder if the usual suspects will condemn Howard Dean for making accusations he cannot prove:

Dean said it was illegal for the president’s campaign to coordinate advertising with an independent group and that “the president of the United States broke the law.” He said Bush should “show the spine that John Kerry showed in Vietnam 30 years ago.”

Later, Dean told reporters that “the president needs to apologize to the nation for misleading the nation with false advertising and for breaking the law,” by someone from his campaign being involved with the independent group’s ad. Dean said he’d like to see Bush apologize on a national television broadcast.

So Howard Dean, who supposedly had a bad back that didn’t stop him from spending the entire year skiing in Colorado, is now calling a man who spent six years in a POW camp, a criminal.

The only good thing I can take from this is that Democrats came to their senses and didn’t let this fruitcake anywhere near the White House.

The next time a Kerry supporter says his campaign has never questioned President Bush’s service make sure you tell them that their pants are on fire.

Read it quick before they yank it.