John Kerry's official campaign has taken a page right out of 'Blogs for Bush'. Be sure to click on the PDF link and look at all of the contortions the Kerry campaign must do to connect George W. Bush to the Swift Boat Vterans. Notice also, how many of their "connections" dead-end before reaching the SBVfT or start without being linked too closely with Bush.

The Kerry campaign has gotten more and more desperate by the day. Yesterday was the sophomoric stunt of sending Max Cleland (a brave man, but a bad Senator -- check his voting record, that's what the GOP ran against) down to Crawford, TX for the Bush-league (pun intended) stunt of calling for an end to the SBVfT's ads that are hammering the Kerry campaign.

Today Kerry called for weekly debates, clearly evidencing that he sees Bush pulling ahead and has to try and get as many bites at the apple as he can before the campaign is too far gone. The Bush campaign puts that request properly in perspective:

"There will be a time for debates after the convention, and during the next few weeks, John Kerry should take the time to finish the debates with himself," responded Bush-Cheney spokesman Steve Schmidt.

"This election presents a clear choice to the American people between a president who is moving America forward and a senator who has taken every side of almost every issue," he said.

It's been a while since we've had a contest...

...So lets have one shall we... This time you can win a free autographed copy of "Playing A Bad Lie" by John K. No, not John Kerry...

"Playing A Bad Lie" is the story of a young boy and his father playing golf. The boy tells he father he thinks he wants to be a Democrat, and the father decides to teach him the ways of the Democrat party by playing their golf game by the rules of the party.

• Where errant shots are never your fault
  
• Where different rules apply to different players
  
• Where the better you play, the more you pay
  
• Where if you don't like your score, you can recount it again and again
  
• Where the only hazards are the people who try to play by the rules

This round of golf teaches a lot about how the Democrat party works and is a fun read!

CAPTION THIS:

Caption the image aboveof John Kerry (from Reuters) and post a comment herewith your caption. In order for your entry to be valid you must be a registered commenter. All captions posted by unregistered commenters will be ineligible. Captions will be judged on humor and creativity. Entries will be accepted until Saturday at noon (eastern time) and the decision by the judges will be announced by Saturday night. Two winners will be selected and each will get their own AUTOGRAPHED COPY!

The anti-Bush bias in this story by Bloomberg political reporter Jay Newton-Small is nothing short of appalling. The story is headlined Bush to Urge Court to End Independent Political Ads, but the story's focus is solely on whether the Bush campaign has any illegal links to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an independent organization of thetype known as a "527" for its designation in the IRS code.

There is not one mention in the entire 1,068-word story of the ample evidence of coordination between the Kerry campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and a variety of anti-Bush/pro-Kerry 527 groups - although the overwhelming majority of 527 money is being raised and spent by 527s aligned with Kerry and the DNC, and there is a mountain of evidence of illegal coordination among them compared to a vanishingly small molehill of evidence of illegal coordination between Bush, the GOP and the Swift Boat Vets.

Apparently the reporter is unaware of the well-documented web of connections between Kerry, the DNC and such organizations - potentially illegal connections that have included sharing personnel, holding joint meetings, and working together on message, strategy and more. Perhaps Mr. Newton-Small or his editor, Glenn Hall, need to be made aware of the volumes of information available here. And so, in the spirit of trying to help a couple of hard-working journalists do a better job in covering this important issue, I offer you their email addresses so you can send them an email telling them of your displeasure at the biased, incomplete coverage, and provide them links to the resources they need to do a better job next time.

You can email Jay Newton-Small at jnewtonsmall@bloomberg.net. And you can email his editor, Glenn Hall, at ghall@bloomberg.net.

Well, if unnamed foreign leaders weren't good enough, John Kerry has a new "endorsement" he can add to his list: convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Just in case anyone was wondering what one glorified cop killer thinks about the presidential campaign, Mumia Abu-Jamal has weighed in with his advice to Democrats.

"For millions of people, there exists in their minds, in their hearts a hunger for change," Abu-Jamal writes in the latest issue of Workers World. "That hunger is becoming a driving force in the upcoming elections, and is being expressed in a way that can best be summed up: 'Anybody But Bush.' "

Abu-Jamal's death sentence for gunning down Philadelphia Police Officer Danny Faulkner in 1981 has made him an idol to many extreme leftists. The convicted murderer regularly contributes columns to Workers World, the weekly journal of a Marxist revolutionary party that is the main sponsor of International ANSWER, which in turn is a major sponsor of protests at next week's Republican convention in New York.

It's nice to know where Kerry's support is coming from.

Even the foreign press has reported that President Bush has honored John Kerry's military service.

US President George W Bush has praised the military record of his election rival, John Kerry, and called a halt to unofficial negative advertising. -Reported by the BBC, Britain's largest television news organization.

"John Kerry served admirably and ought to be proud of his record," Mr Bush told reporters at a press conference after a meeting of his top military and defence aides at his Texas ranch. -Reported by the Herald Sun, Australia's largest daily.

But when Democrats make wild accusations, the domestic press seems to lap it up. This goes for Max Cleland's rantings about the President, as reported by CNN:

"These scurrilous attacks on John Kerry's credibility in war, courage and valor are false and George Bush is behind it," he said.
"We want George Bush to put up or shut up," Cleland said. "Stand up to the plate and say, 'This is wrong. An attack on valorous service of a fellow American is wrong.' And he's behind it, and his campaign is behind it."

Be sure to check out Peter Kirsanow's great column on questions John Kerry should be asked (if we had a responsible press):

Here are only a few of the questions Kerry hasn't adequately addressed. They don't even have anything to do with swift boats. There are no "gotcha" questions. They're posed in a respectful manner. In fact, many are softballs.

1. The Bush campaign maintains that you spent 20 years in the Senate with no signature legislative achievements. What do you consider to be the five most important pieces of legislation that you've authored?

a. What's the most important piece of legislation regarding intelligence you've authored?

b. What's the most important piece of antiterrorism legislation you've authored?

c. What's the most important piece of health-care legislation you've authored?

d. What's the most important piece of education legislation you've authored?

2. You'd agree that on paper, Dick Cheney's experience and qualifications dwarf those of your running mate. Why would John Edwards make a better president during the war on terror than Dick Cheney?

As we're all aware, former Georgia Senator Max Cleland made a show-boating trip to Crawford, Texas on Wednesday supposedly to deliver a letter to President Bush regarding the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth issue.

We've covered the letter and the response from some of President Bush's supporters to the letter earlier, but its time we took a look at Max Cleland a bit because he typifies the modern Democrat.

Cleland, as I'm sure we all know, served in Vietnam and lost three limbs while serving there. He did more than his fair share for his country when he was a young man but we must remember that one event, regardless of how honorable, does not cover one for a whole lifetime; you don't get a free pass, ever.

After recovering from his wounds, Cleland entered political life becoming, over 33 years in public office, a Georgia State Senator, a staffer on the US Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, head of the Veterans Administration under Jimmy Carter, Georgia Secretary of State from 1982 to 1996, when he won a very narrow victory to the United States Senate - winning mostly because the then-Democratic controlled Georgia legislature changed the election laws to help Cleland eke out a win (49% to 48%) in increasingly conservative Republican Georgia.

Cleland was defeated for re-election by a fairly resounding margin (53% to 46%) in 2002 and he immediately blamed his defeat on a alleged GOP campaign questioning his patriotism. Needless to say, our Democrats have bought this whopper hook, line and sinker - none of them apparantly willing to recognise that a Georgia Senator who earns a 100% rating from the extreme leftwing Americans for Democratic Action just might not be acceptable to Georgia's rather conservative electorate. It should tell us something that while Cleland is a war veteran, the Veterans of Foreign Wars endorsed his non-veteran opponent in 2002 because the VFW perceived (correctly) that Cleland was weak on US national defense issues. At bottom, Cleland blames the GOP in general and President Bush in particular for his defeat - and, also, Cleland is one of that species of Democrat who just cannot get over being defeated.

Like Jimmy Carter, who has never gotten over his 1980 defeat at the hands of Reagan, Cleland has not gotten over his 2002 defeat - he burns with indignation over his loss, and is determined to get revenge upon those he feels have wronged him. According to a Washington Post article, Cleland said his defeat was "...the second big grenade in my life,'' he says. "It blew me up. It happened very quickly and very intensely, and I was left with virtually nothing but my life."

Nothing but your life, Cleland? Seems to me that a persons life is worth something - but I guess for our Democrats, life isn't worth living unless you've got political power and the perks which with it.

Of course, Cleland's anger over all things Republican didn't prevent from accepting at the hands of Republican President Bush and with the confirmation of the Republican controlled Senate a position on the board of the Export-Import Bank - a position which pulls down a $136,000 annual salary and has duties which can apparantly be exercised over the phone once or twice a month. Clelend holds this position - accepted from a man he apparantly despises - and while he's out doing a bit of anti-Bush grand-standing, we don't get a press release stating that Cleland has given up his cushy, over-paid sinecure.

There's a word for such a man - hypocrite; and it describes the whole Democratic Party as well. Our Democrats demand we don't question their military service, while the ruthlessly attack President Bush's. Our Democrats demand that we don't do any attack ads, while they spend a hundred million dollars on attack ads against the President. Our Democrats demand that the President do the impossible - get the SBVT to pull their ads, while they wont do the very possible in getting Kerry's own aides who also work for MoveOn to tone down the anti-Bush rhetoric. Hypocrits. Disgusting hypocrits, that is all the Democrats are these days.

UPDATE: The newsies were playing the Cleland story yesterday with the tag that President Bush refused to accept the letter - not so:

A Texas state official and Vietnam veteran, Jerry Patterson, said someone from the Bush campaign contacted him Wednesday morning and asked him if he would travel to the ranch, welcome Cleland to Texas and accept the former senator's letter to Bush.

"I tried to accept that letter and he would not give it to me," said Patterson. "He would not face me. He kept rolling away from me. He's quite mobile."

Patterson, who spoke with the president on the phone, said the campaign asked him to give Cleland a letter for Kerry written by the Bush campaign and signed by Patterson and seven other veterans.

Cleland didn't want to deliver a letter, he just wanted to create a media circus, with himself as Clown in Chief, it would seem...

Hat Tip: National Review Online

ABC News' Noted Now provides the Kerry campaign's reaction to the resignation of Bush's campaign attorney Ben Ginsberg:

KERRY CAMPAIGN REACTS: "The sudden resignation of Bush's top lawyer doesn't end the extensive web of connections between George Bush and the group trying to smear John Kerry's military record. In fact, it only confirms the extent of those connections," Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill says in statement.

And in the linked piece above is a unique section you don't see to much reported about (unless you are reading blogs):

The Kerry campaign used the same lawyer as America Coming Together, an independent political group that has been running attack ads against Bush, the New York Times said.

The lawyer cited by the Times, Robert Bauer of the Washington law firm Perkins Coie, had ``a limited role'' in the campaign during the primaries and doesn't work for it now, Kerry spokesman Phil Singer. Singer said he didn't know when Bauer stopped working for the campaign. Bauer didn't return calls to his office.

In addition, attorney Joe Sandler said he works for both the Democratic National Committee and MoveOn.org., a group running advertisements criticizing Bush. Sandler declined to discuss his dual role, referring questions to the DNC.

The Wall Street Journal has put out their feature on the RNC Bloggers.

Republican Web loggers are getting ready for their shot at posting convention news and commentary, and they say they've learned from their left-leaning counterparts' experience five weeks earlier.

At Madison Square Garden, the official blogger group will number about 15, a tiny fraction of the estimated 15,000 journalists expected, and less than half the size of the accredited Boston blogger set. "That's just the number we landed on," said convention spokeswoman Alyssa McClenning. She wouldn't discuss how convention planners chose the group, but said the bloggers "reflected a mix of ideologies." Adding to the blend are some delegates and traditional journalists who also plan to blog from the convention.

Bloggers given credentials to the Convention received a questionnaire from the Wall Street Journal, and this piece features all of our answers. So check it out!

You read that correctly. Now, may that was a typo, but if it wasn't, then that's a record breaking flip flop!

John Kerry decries the attenuated connections between the Swift Boat Veterans and Republican interests. Well, Kerry's campaign has numerous DIRECT connections to the far better funded and truth-eluding 527s supporting his candidacy. Check out the below graphic that diagrams it explicitly:

(click on the graphic for the full-size image)

Let's see how aggressively the New York Times and Washington Post investigate these OBVIOUS and DIRECT connections to the Kerry campaign.

I dare any of these organizations to prove me wrong.

UPDATE: The DNC is boasting about partnering with these 527s (scroll to the bottom of the link, just above Quote of the Week):

The Democratic Party is partnering with MoveOn.org, People for the American Way, Campaign for America's Future, and dozens of other groups representing millions of Americans to organize a massive public mobilization. On Wednesday, May 14, join us by calling and emailing your representatives in Congress to let them know that the majority of Americans oppose more irresponsible tax cuts that go overwhelmingly to the wealthiest sliver of Americans.

Update II: Jay Caruso adds more color to the 527 connection in the above graphic and the Cracker Barrel Philosopher over at the Country Store finds a nice photo of MoveOn.org's Zack Exley with Democratic Senator Frank Leahy and the DNC's Chief Operating Officer Josh Wachs. Of course they "only" coordinated on the petition drive, not any campaign activity for Kerry (wink, wink)... Of course, it was only a few months later that Exley officially joined the Kerry campaign, but I'd bet he never coordinates his efforts with his former organization. (sarcasm meter off).

Update III: OK, 67 trackbacks deserves an update. (Great job everyone!). Many fellow bloggers have done the diligence we used to trust traditional media to perform. Here is a great sampling:

» The Templar Pundit itemizes individuals directly related to the Kerry campaign and active (with over $77 million for these alone) in the anti-Bush 527s.

» N.Z. Bear at The Truth Laid Bear had a prescient post on 527s sharing lawyers with both campaigns -- even though most press led with damning headlines against the Bush campaign and either didn't mention Kerry's connections or buried deep in the story.

» Kevin Patrick (hey, that's me!) digs up some nice photos (compliments of the DNC) showing MoveOn.org's arm-in-arm coordination with the Kerry campaign as far back as December 2003.

» Lynxx Pherrett of Assume the Position shows John Kerry trying to have it both ways in his misdirection of accusations regarding his links to 527s.

» Captain Ed over at Captain's Quarters has his usual thorough research on Kerry's links to the 527s

You can also check out the "Blogs for Bush" Kerry 527 connections or check out any of the amazing trackbacks from the original post!

John Kerry sent his guys out for a good old Texas Cheap photo op.

You may have heard that former Sen. Max Cleland and Jim Rassmann went out to the presidents Texas Ranch to deliver a "letter".

The letter urged the president to specifically condemn the ads (Swift Boat), saying they "represent the worst kind of politics."

In return the President, Texas State Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, Rep. Duke Cunningham, Rep. Duncan Hunter, Rep. Sam Johnson,Lt. General David Palmer, Robert O'Malley-Medal of Honor Recipient, James Fleming-Medal of Honor Recipient and Lieutenant Colonel Richard Castle (Ret.) sent this..

August 25, 2004

Senator John Kerry
304 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Kerry,

We are pleased to welcome your campaign representatives to Texas today. We honor all our veterans, all whom have worn the uniform and served our country. We also honor the military and National Guard troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan today. We are very proud of all of them and believe they deserve our full support.

That’s why so many veterans are troubled by your vote AGAINST funding for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, after you voted FOR sending them into battle. And that’s why we are so concerned about the comments you made AFTER you came home from Vietnam. You accused your fellow veterans of terrible atrocities – and, to this day, you have never apologized. Even last night, you claimed to be proud of your post-war condemnation of our actions.

We’re proud of our service in Vietnam. We served honorably in Vietnam and we were deeply hurt and offended by your comments when you came home.

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.

We are veterans too – and proud to support President Bush. He’s been a strong leader, with a record of outstanding support for our veterans and for our troops in combat. He’s made sure that our troops in combat have the equipment and support they need to accomplish their mission.

He has increased the VA health care budget more than 40% since 2001 – in fact, during his four years in office; President Bush has increased veterans funding twice as much as the previous administration did in eight years ($22 billion over 4 years compared to $10 billion over 8.) And he’s praised the service of all who served our country, including your service in Vietnam.

We urge you to condemn the double standard that you and your campaign have enforced regarding a veteran’s right to openly express their feelings about your activities on return from Vietnam.

Sincerely,

Texas State Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson
Rep. Duke Cunningham
Rep. Duncan Hunter
Rep. Sam Johnson
Lt. General David Palmer
Robert O'Malley, Medal of Honor Recipient
James Fleming, Medal of Honor Recipient
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Castle (Ret.)

Dean Esmay of Dean's World links us to an on-line edition of John Kerry's Winter Soldier book and asks why Kerry is so determined to get ahold of every copy of the book he can and has instructed the publisher not to reissue the book. I doubt much we'll get an answer from Kerry about why he might not want this book out in the public square, but we can read the book and draw our own conclusions.

The book, itself, is mostly just a collection of quotes from alleged Vietnam veterans who participated in a Vietnam Veterans Against the War march in Washington, DC. Given that since the time the book was published we have learned that a lot of the supposed veterans in VVAW turned out to not actually be Vietnam veterans, there is not much we can say about the quotes plus or minus (though some of the quotes are clearly absurd and obviously lifted bodily from North Vietnamese Communist propaganda tracts), but we can take to heart the stated purpose of the book and the words of its author, John Kerry. Here are some quotes from the book:

“It is their {VVAW} hope that Vietnam will not be just an immoral and obscene memory, but rather, as Kerry said before the Senate committee, the place where American finally turned…” (from the introduction to the book)

“We cannot consider our selves America’s best men when we are ashamed of and hated for what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia. (direct quote from John Kerry)

“I think that, more than anything, the New Soldier is trying to point out that there are two Americas…(direct quote from John Kerry)”

“We were sent to Vietnam to kill Communism. But we found instead that we were killing women and children. (direct quote from John Kerry)”

Emphasis added - as and aside, I never knew that Edwards lifted his main campaign theme (Two Americas) from this old John Kerry work. There are more such quotes in the book, all of them equally mendacious. I think we can see why Kerry doesn't want the book floating around.

The mainstream media is doing its damndest to defend John Kerry and discredit the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth by killing the messenger - attacking the SBVT, and digging for any suggestion that the Bush campaign illegally coordinated activities with the Swifties.

Of course, they are largely ignoring the mountain of provable and illegal connections between the Kerry campaign, the Democratic National Committee and so-called "527s" such as MoveOn.org and America Coming Together - coordination on campaign activities including events, advertising, message, voter registration, mobilization, and fundraising. (Click the link - every single piece of evidence is backed up with links to the documentation. These are facts, not assertions.)

So far, Big Journalism seems disinterested, while the blogosphere does the real work of exposing the broad connections between Kerry, the DNC and the left-wing 527s. This is how things work in the media today: the mainstream media either misses the real story, or ignores it out of partisan bias. But truth can route around the Big Media censors via the Internet and the blogosphere until, eventually, Big Media is forced to cover it.

Republicans can help. Republican officials need to be prepared to turn stupid media inquires about alleged Bush connections to the SBVT into answers that discuss Kerry's extensive connections to MoveOn.org and the rest of their rancid ilk.

Republican "lay people" need to be prepared to turn back the comments of their Democratic friends and co-workers with hard evidence of Kerry's links to the left-wing 527s.

And pro-Bush blogs ought to be hammering on the story.

Polls are showing that, despite Big Journalism's yeoman's effort at ignoring Kerry's Christmas-in-Cambodia lie, and their ongoing efforts to "kill the messenger" rather than investigate the claims made by the SBVT, the message of the SBVT's ads is reaching the public, and having an impact on Kerry's poll numbers.

That is why the Kerry campaign and its allies in Big Journalism are counter-attacking with such ferocity. First they ignore you. Then they attack you. Then you win.

So, this memo to all Republicans likely to be interviewed by the media: If they ask you about supposed connections between Bush and the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, your answer should be something like this:

"Unlike John Kerry, whose campaign has been proven to be coordinating with MoveOn.org and other 527s on fundraising, events, voter registration, mobilization, message, and advertising, and has a revolving door of shared personnel between the campaign, the Democratic National Committee and the 527s, President Bush does not want his campaign workers to coordinate illegally with the 527 organizations. When the Bush campaign found out that some of its volunteers had also worked with the Swift Boat Veterans organization, possibly in violation of the law, they were immediately separated from the campaign. Why hasn't John Kerry done the same?"

We're just days away from the Republican National Convention and I will be there as credentialed blogger representing Blogs for Bush. As a credentialed blogger I will "have the opportunity to connect with delegates, guests and other surrogates for interviews, and to provide original content, including multimedia, to their audiences." Bush bloggers and visitors of this site still have an opportunity to submit questions for potential interviewees.

This is a great opportunity for Bush bloggers and visitors of this site to participate in my coverage of the Republican National Convention.

Please visit this page to access the form to easily submit questions to potential interviewees. You can submit as many questions as you would like to as many people as you would like. Please keep your questions positive and related to the campaign, George W. Bush, and the election.

NOTE: Please use the form and not the comment threads...

Jeff Cornwall points to evidence of the entrepreneurial economic boom. Here's an excerpt - there's more details and links on his blog.

The Young Entrepreneurs Organization (YEO) is a group of "business professionals, all of whom are under 40 years of age and are the owners, founders, co-founders, or controlling shareholders of a company with annual sales of $1 million or more." In many cities, this group represents the leading edge of high growth entrepreneurs. This group is clearly an economic bell-weather. In a recent poll of their membership, they found that 84 percent were planning on hiring in the next few months, and 11 percent indicated that they plan to hire at least 10 employees this year. Even more see growth in their companies over the next year, with 92 percent expecting sales to grow this year compared to last year.

BlogsofWar.com notes that former US Attorney General Secretary Ramsey Clark (brief bio) is poised to join the legal team seeking to defend former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before a special Iraqi tribunal. The panel's chairman, Mohammad Rashdan, told Arab News yesterday that, "Negotiations are under way for Clark's joining of the team."

Who is Ramsey Clark? Salon.com, a left-wing online magazine, once called him "the war criminal's best friend,", adding "The former U.S. attorney general has become the tool of left-wing cultists who defend Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Rwandan torturers as anti-imperialist heroes."

When he flew to Belgrade to support Slobodan Milosevic during NATO's campaign, there was no word about the siege of Sarajevo, the massacre at Srebrenica or the million homeless refugees from Kosovo - and even less of those olfactorily eloquent mass graves that NATO is now uncovering. But then, urging Belgrade to resist NATO, while he was there picking up an honorary degree, he told his hosts, "It will be a great struggle, but a glorious victory. You can be victorious."

In Grenada he went to advise Bernard Coard, the murderer of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. Other clients include Radovan Karadzic, the indicted Bosnian Serbian war criminal whom he defended in a New York civil suit brought by Bosnian rape victims, and the Rwandan pastor who is accused of telling Tutsis to hide in his church and then summoning Hutus to massacre them, and then leading killing squads.

As this article notes, Kerry and Clark have longstanding ties:

Clark served as LBJ's Attorney General in the 1960s and then participated in the anti-Vietnam War movement in the early 1970s with Kerry, just back from the war, who accused his fellow soldiers of war crimes and genocide. Clark was a lawyer for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and Kerry was a major leader of the group. A photograph at the time shows Clark on the same stage with Kerry.

He also represented PLO leaders in a lawsuit brought by the family of Leon Klinghoffer, the wheelchair bound elderly tourist who was shot and tossed overboard from the hijacked Achille Lauro cruise ship by Palestinian terrorists in 1986. Prior to the start of the second Gulf War, Clark was retained by the state of Iraq, serving as legal counsel for the Hussein regime.

After backpedaling on his Christmas in Cambodia story ("seared" memories are apparently not all they're cracked up to be), it appears Senator John Kerry now has to confront a credible claim that he did not earn his first Purple Heart, as reported by the Washington Times. What makes the challenge legitimate is that it is made by the Senator's own diary:

"A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky," wrote Mr. Kerry, according the book "Tour of Duty" by friendly biographer Douglas Brinkley.

While Olympic gymnastics has been much in the news with amazing feats, the Kerry campaign swung into verbal gymnastics and demonstrated skills rivaling those of any other contortionists (not to mention the speciousness of the judges' scoring):

A Kerry campaign official, speaking on background, told The Washington Times yesterday that the "we" in the passage from Mr. Kerry's journal refers to "the crew on Kerry's first swift boat, operating as a crew" rather than Mr. Kerry himself.

This is reminiscent of another fine instance of Kerry-esque nuance that may call into question his definition of family values. It pertained, of course, to the simple issue of SUV ownership, which the average American would consider a straightforward proposition.

"I don't own an SUV," said Kerry, who supports increasing existing fuel economy standards to 36 miles per gallon by 2015 in order to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil supplies.
"The family has it. I don't have it," he said.

In the end, most Americans would have preferred that this election focus on the future threats and opportunities we face and on how the records of President Bush and Senator Kerry indicate they would address them. But when Senator Kerry made his 4 1/2 month service in Vietnam the central element of his candidacy, reasonably choosing to ignore his 200+ month Senate record, he chose the terms of the debate. In the meantime President Bush will continue to focus on making America safer and more prosperous. American voters, meanwhile, can decide for themselves whether they view Senator Kerry as a man who is courageous, honorable and resolute, or one who is vain, self-promoting and slippery.

John Kerry has taken to pleading for a return to debate on current issues and more relevant qualifications for the presidency in a bid to bury the debate on his Viet Nam record, which at one time was all Kerry would discuss on the stump. Speaking in New York, Kerry told a crowd that all the Bush campaign had was fear, while he wanted to talk about how he could outperform Bush in areas such as foreign policy.

So let's talk foreign policy, as practiced right here at home, by Senator Kerry.

Earlier this evening, I had the pleasure of speaking with Bradley Clanton of the law firm Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC, in Jackson, MS and Washington, DC. Brad represents several Vietnamese-Americans who came to the US as refugees of the Communists in their native land. Some of his clients have names that students of the era would recognize, such as Bui Diem, former ambassador to the US from the Saigon government. This group of Vietnamese refugees filed a lawsuit against the University of Massachussetts (Boston) and the William Joiner Center, one of its research centers, due to irregularities in its awarding of fellowships for researching the Vietnamese disapora.

Their case -- and I stress it has not been concluded -- is that the Joiner Center failed to follow the protocols outlined in its research grant when selecting candidates for the Rockefeller Foundation fellowships offered for the grant. Among other actions, the Joiner Center allegedly failed to publish notices of the grant's availability until just before the deadline for applications expired, failed to advertise in any of the required scholarly journals which targeted the American Vietnamese community, and in general made it almost impossible for the scholars of that community to know about the paying jobs in time. The effect of this failure is to keep Vietnamese who emigrated to the US as adults in the Diaspora from taking part in the program, as younger members of academia already had some access to the grant information up front.

Why? Because the Joiner Center and UMass already had scholars in mind to study the forced migration of the South Vietnamese people. And half of those scholars came from the People's Republic of Viet Nam -- the same Communists who tortured and massacred the refugees into fleeing Viet Nam in the first place, after the fall of Saigon. (The other two fellows are an American-born, 25-year-old person of Vietnamese ancestry and a Caucasian listed in the complaint as "under 40".)

This is akin to hiring Khmer Rouge officials to study the Cambodian killing fields. It's intellectually indefensible, on several grounds. First off, the "scholars" that one gets from a totalitarian government are hardly free thinkers; the Vietnamese would not approve researchers who weren't prepared to toe the Party line. Furthermore, if any of them suddenly got a bad case of truthtelling, their families would certainly suffer the consequences, and in Viet Nam, that means the re-education camps that killed hundreds of thousands of people over the past 30 years. The biggest problem is that the current government in Hanoi has a great deal of interest in ensuring that any such research points away from their atrocities in the final product. They would only approve those researchers who understand that need, which renders the entire exercise unreliable.

So Vietnamese-Americans over 40 got passed over by UMass-Boston and the Joiner Center on behalf of two Vietnamese Communists with an axe to grind. They started protesting the university's management of the research grant in June 2000 and throughout the summer and fall, finally filing suit on several grounds on October 27, 2000. When the protest hit the local press, it provoked a negative reaction in Boston. The controversy made Joiner Center management uncomfortable, and they decide they need political cover from as high up as they can get it.

This is where Senator John Kerry makes his appearance in this case.

Kerry wrote a letter to Kevin Bowen, director of the Joiner Center, dated September 27, 2000, in order to praise both his research and his selection of scholars for fellowships. This is the final paragraph in Kerry's letter to Bowen supporting the hiring of Communist nationals from Viet Nam over hiring Americans who escaped and survived the persecution of the government which these two 'scholars' represent:

I commend and extend my welcome and congratulations to the initial group of fellows selected. Choosing two established and accomplished scholars from Vietnam and two emerging scholars from the United States assures a diversity of views and combines fresh perspectives with time-tested observation. It is essential and critical that a project of this magnitude regarding a phenomenon as sweeping as the Vietnamese diaspora consider candidates from all countries, political backgrounds and cultural orientations to achieve free and unencumbered inquiry. Only through such a free and thorough inquiry and a generous sharing of findings will the cause of the Vietnamese people be advanced.

It may be impossible to find more fatuous thinking in such a short paragraph anywhere else. Before dissecting Kerry's intellectual failings, let's be clear about his intent. He made it clear that he understood that half of the fellowships went to Communist nationals in a study that purported to research a refugee catastrophe their government initiated. Implicit in this letter is Kerry's contention that any dissent erupting from this choice would be invalid. This letter is no mere boiler-plate salutation for a constituent; Kerry knew the situation and gave his blessing to Bowen's handling of it.

Now, looking at the actual reasoning behind this letter, one can safely state that John Kerry has no concept of totalitarianism; the intervening years between 1971 and 2000 taught him nothing. He presumes that Communist 'scholars' have academic freedom. Kerry lauds the diversity of views they bring to the research but fails to recognize the lock-step mentality of a single-party system, and one that caused the deaths of as many as 750,000 of its men, women, and children in concentration camps or on the run from its oppression. He repeats the same tired moral relativism he did in his radical days of 1971 when he presumes that the diversity of "political backgrounds and cultural orientations" will ensure that truth results from the inquiry, even though by 2000 the world understood that totalitarian regimes and truth coexist on rare and usually coincidental occasions.

Kerry's reasoning reveals much more about his philosophy, and this isn't just the radical youth that Kerry uses to excuse his activities at the end of the war. This letter was written less than four years ago. Kerry defended Communist nationals in the Senate in 1971, and 29 years later continued to do so (not to mention defending Bowen's outsourcing of jobs to a country known for its sweatshops). This uncomprehending naivete does not befit the office of President even in times of peace and prosperity, and recalls the more ludicrous exploits of the Carter presidency. In a time of war against Islamofascist aggression, such unseriousness will get us killed.

Next week is the Republican National Convention in New York. After that you will not legally be able to donate to the Bush campaign.

Today is Wictory Wednesday. Every Wednesday, over one hundred bloggers ask their readers to volunteer and/or donate to the Bush 2004 campaign.

If you're a blogger, you can join Wictory Wednesdays simply by putting up a post like this one every Wednesday, asking your readers to volunteer and/or donate to the Bush campaign. And then e-mail wictory@blogsforbush.com so that you'll be added to the Wictory Wednesday blogroll, which will be part of the Wictory Wednesday post on all participating blogs:

With the new SBVT ad out detailing Kerry's obscene Senate testimony - Brent Bozell over at National Review Online gives us the result of a Nexis search on references to this testimony in the major media:

How many times have our most "reliable" hard news outlets passed along this passage of monstrous American evil that so inflames the veterans against John Kerry? A Nexis search reveals a list of some of the national outlets that had never relayed a quote of these words before the second Swift Vet ad was released: CBS, NBC, National Public Radio, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today. Here are the major newspapers who’ve captured this testimony exactly once: The Washington Post and The New York Times, buried inside their papers on Saturdays in late February. ABC repeated one snippet of the paragraph, the "Genghis Khan" snippet, in four stories surrounding the anniversary of the testimony in April. Kerry said then: "I’m sorry that they’re offended by that, but that’s what happened."

Amazing, isn't it? I mean, we of the right have long been familiar with the major media's leftwing bias but I don't think until recently with the advent of the blogosphere have we understood the full nature of this bias. I don't even bother picking up a newspaper even for "bored while in a waiting room" reading - I just cannot trust any news report contained therein: without having access to the internet and its tools for immediately checking the validity of a story I'm reading, I just can't be bothered with what may be, after all, just a story planted in the paper by someone with an agenda.

Donald Sensing of One Hand Clapping gives us the words of Maj. General Brady, awarded a Medal of Honor in Vietnam on John Kerry:

Before Kerry played his “hero” card, he played the atrocity card. When Kerry came back from Vietnam he joined with Jane Fonda and in 1971 denounced “those who wear the uniform” as terrorists-like rapists and assassins who “cut off heads, taped wires … to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks” … and said he “committed the same kinds of atrocities as thousands of others”. He made these charges under oath. Kerry says today that he would have framed some of what he said in 1971 differently. But he does not say he lied, which he did, nor does he apologize. How can one properly frame the denunciations of ones comrades in arms as modern day Genghis Khans? ...

He could have attacked the war without attacking the warrior. He could have questioned policy without supporting the communists’ claim that our soldiers were war criminals. He could have kept faith with those who wore the uniform with him. But he did not and he should be held accountable.

The crux of the matter, good people: Kerry called his fellow servicemembers war criminals. The moment Kerry gave his Senate testimony all those years ago, he forever made himself unfit to be President of the United States and Commander in Chief of the armed forces.

Meanwhile, the American Spectator's Washington Prowler states that there are rumors flying around that Kerry is looking for a friendly television venue to do some sort of a mea-culpa in the hopes of salvaging his campaign:

Rumors floating around Washington mid-day Tuesday had the Kerry campaign reaching out to a couple of media outlets -- NBC's "Meet the Press" and CBS's "60 Minutes" -- to discuss a possible appearance by candidate John Kerry this coming Sunday.

A Democratic strategist outside the campaign said the thinking appeared to be to get the candidate out to speak about the mounting Swift Boat Veterans for Truth controversy before the Republican Convention.

"I don't know if they are thinking a full-blown mea culpa from Kerry, but that seems to be the way some people are thinking," says the strategist. "He wouldn't use the words 'I'm sorry' in speaking about his actions after Vietnam here at home. But he would seek to try to put this thing to rest."

Would such a thing work? Perhaps - in my view, it might be entirely too late for a half-hearted retraction; only someone like a Bill Clinton with his facile ability to connect emotionally with an audience could even attempt to pull off this sort of thing - a cold-hearted elitist like Kerry is going to have a hard time making this (a) believable and (b) sincere enough to get Vietnam vets to forgive him at this late a date.

Clearly, Kerry and his advisors are worried - and the senior Democratic leadership has to be in a funk; with Real Clear Politics aggregate of polls showing a nearly exact tie between Kerry and President Bush (and with most recent polling showing an upward trend for the President), Kerry has to do something to staunch the bleeding. Its a certainty that in the aggregate polling by, say, September 15th President Bush will be ahead - Kerry has to figure out some way to make President Bush's to-be mid-September lead a manageable 5 percentage points or less...if it winds up 10 or more percentage points, then Kerry might as well pack it in; this SBVT issue is simply killing Kerry out there - if he can't defuse it, then by mid-September the only issue up for discussion is the eventual margin of President Bush's coming victory.

I eye the future with the confidence of a Christian...holding four aces.

Instapundit has resurfaced a page from Kerry's official campaign website blasting Bush's National Guard service.

This clearly adds merit to the theory that Kerry's condemning of the latest MoveOn.Org ad attacking Bush's NG service was a set up coordinated between the Kerry campaign and MoveOn.org in an attempt to get Bush to condemn the Swift Vets ad...

Especially since Kerry feels we should be focusing on the issues, I present Jeff Jarvis' tackling the matter of character and why it shouldn't matter in an election. So point by point, a discussion.

1. Character is not a measure of competence. And what I really want in a President is competence. Jimmy Carter had character; he was a terrible President. Jerry Ford was his Republican counterpart: good guy, nothing President. Bill Clinton ended up with a cracked character but I say he was a good President. Richard Nixon had the character of a cockroach, yet he was, in many ways, quite competent.

Kerry gave a speech in New York today complaining about how the campaign isn't being focused on the issues.

"The Bush campaign and its allies have turned to the tactics of fear and smear because they can't talk about jobs, health care, energy independence and rebuilding our alliances — the real issues that matter to the American people."

This from the man whose entire convention was only about the fact that John Kerry served in Vietnam. Senator Kerry doesn't want to discuss the issues. If he did, he would have when he had the chance to, unedited, for four straight days. But he knows that he'll lose on the issues. Unfortunately for him, focusing on his Vietnam record isn't really turning out too well either.

There is a huge amount of new information on the Kerry meltdown available over at NRO's KerrySpot. Some samples:

From the Drudge Report:

Dem presidential hopeful John Kerry personally phoned anti-Kerry swift boat vets, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Kerry reached out to Robert "Friar Tuck" Brant Cdr., USN (RET) Sunday night, just hours after former Sen. Bob Dole publicly challenged Kerry to apologize to veterans.

Brant was skipper of the #96 and # 36 boat and spent time with Kerry in Anm Thoi. Kerry and Brant slept in the same quarters, and Brant used to put Kerry back to be at night when Kerry was sleepwalking...

...BRANT: "You should know what you said when you came back, the impact it had on the young sailors and how it was disrespectful of our guys that were killed over there.

[Brant had two men killed in battle.]

KERRY: "When we dedicated swift boat one in '92, I said to all the swift guys that I wasn't talking about the swifties, I was talking about all the rest of the veterans."

From the New York Post:

Real heroes don't call themselves heroes. Honorable soldiers or sailors don't brag. They let their deeds speak for themselves. Some of the most off-putting words any veteran can utter are "I'm a war hero."

Real heroes (and I've been honored to know some) never portray their service in grandiose terms, telling TV cameras that they're reporting for duty. Real heroes may be proud of the sacrifices they offered, but they don't shout for attention.

This is so profoundly a part of the military code of behavior that it cannot be over-emphasized. The rule is that those who brag about being heroes usually aren't heroes at all. Bragging is for drunks at the end of the bar, not for real vets. And certainly not for anyone who wishes to trade on his service to become our commander-in-chief.

Emphasis added.

From the New York Daily News:

He's bleeding," said a top Democratic strategist. "Kerry's got to get out there and defend himself. He can end this right now by saying: 'In the midst of this slanderous debate, I want to remind the American people: They didn't serve. I did.'"

Democratic sources say Kerry is eager to counterattack but has been held back by advisers who want to take the high road and believe the public will see through the attacks.

This is pathetic - "release the records, answer the questions, and clear up our side of the story" is apparently not even being considered.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Kerry's denunciation of the U.S. at that time presaged a career in which he has always been quick to attack the moral and military purposes of American policy — in Central America, against the Soviet Union, and of course during the current Iraq War that he initially voted for. It's certainly fair to wonder if Mr. Kerry will have the fortitude to fight to victory in Iraq if he does win in November. Or will he call for retreat the way he and so many other liberals did when Vietnam became difficult?

I think we might be past the point where Kerry can actually fix this - fixing it was possible, I think, had Kerry come clean early on; his stonewalling, counter-charges and smear campaigns have dragged this thing on too long. From this point forward, anyone who votes for Kerry will have to decide to do so knowing that he's dishonest about his own life.

UPDATE: Aaron at Pardon My English has some more thoughts.

Another Democratic politician has endorsed President Bush, after getting in touch with reality:

The mayor of a Democratic stronghold in Ohio known for its steel industry job losses endorsed the Republican president Monday. George M. McKelvey, a Democrat in his second term, said he had no intention of becoming a Republican but might accept an invitation from Ohio Republicans to attend the Republican National Convention in New York.

In the 2000 presidential election, Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic nominee, received 69,212 votes to 40,460 for Bush in Mahoning County, which includes Youngstown. Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 5-1 ratio, according to the Mahoning County Board of Elections,

"What has our community received in return for the past loyal support for Democratic presidential candidates? Dare I speak the answer? Nothing," McKelvey said.

NRO's Kerry Spot tips us off to this interesting report about a phone call between Bob Dole and John Kerry. Apparantly, John Kerry took exception to Senator Dole's comments a couple days ago - you know, where Bob Dole (who's right arm is still paralyzed from the near-fatal wounds the Nazis inflicted upon then-Lt. Dole as he did his bit to liberate a continent from a tyrant) observed that Kerry's purple hearts didn't entail well, you know, actually being seriously injured and, also, that perhaps Kerry might want to apologise for his absurd claims that American troops in Vietnam were routinely committing war crimes. I recommend you listen to the full audio available here, but here are the main points:

He said he was very disappointed, we'd been friends. I said John, we're still friends, but [the Swiftvets] have First Amendment rights, just as your people have First Amendment rights. Dole told Kerry, "I'm not trying to stir anything up, but I don't believe every one of these people who have talked about what happened are Republican liars.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is nothing quite like getting the story from Bob Dole - it was an unfortunate event that he had to wait until 1996 to get the GOP nomination, and then had to contend against an incumbant President who was running during booming economic times; it is fortunate, however, that Bob Dole is now removed from any personal ambition and can really say what is on his mind.

This is the truth laid out for us with precision. Democrats, you may try to contest this, but you'll look like fools for trying.

This past weekend I joined about 45 other Bay State supporters of President Bush in a trip to Maine. With about 30 volunteers going door-to-door doing literature drops, and 15 hitting the phones, we made some good progress in Bush's reelection efforts in the state of Maine. Enthusiastic volunteers, young and old, made this special trip to help our President.

I was part of the contingent that made phone calls at the South Portland Bush-Cheney Headquarters. By the end of the afternoon it was said our group had made over 900 phone calls to the York County area.

Afterwards, we joined up with the lit-droppers at the Kennebunkport Bush/Cheney Headquarters for dinner and dessert.

It was a great weekend and everyone had a good time. Click below for some photos taken while phone-banking in South Portland.

In the lobby of the headquarters

The happy worker

John Racho, of EssexClub.Org

Our star phone-banker!

Hard at work

No wall was left uncovered

« Show less.

With President Bush's stimulative tax cuts an issue in this election, it seems wise to remind voters of exactly how taxes work and how tax cuts are distributed. Because the topic is somewhat esoteric and the numbers almost incomprehensible due to their size, this is an apt situation for an analogy. And the esteemed William F. Buckley has the parable to end all parables in order to help people understand tax cuts and why the cry that they "favor the rich" is absurd. Here it is:

Every night, ten men met at a restaurant for dinner. At the end of the meal, the bill would arrive. They owed $100 for the food that they shared. Every night they lined up in the same order at the cash register. The first four men paid nothing at all. The fifth, though he grumbled about the unfairness of the situation, paid $1. The sixth man, feeling generous, paid $3. The next three men paid $7, $12, and $18, respectively. The last man was required to pay the remaining balance of $59.

The ten men were quite settled into their routine when the restaurant threw them into chaos. It announced that it was cutting its prices: Now it would charge only $80 for dinner for the ten men. This reduction wouldn't affect the first four men — they would continue to eat for free. The fifth person decided to forgo his $1 contribution to the pool, and the sixth contributed $2. The seventh man deducted $2 from his usual payment and now paid $5. The eighth man paid $9, the ninth, $12, leaving the last man with a bill of $52. Outside of the restaurant, the men compared their savings, and angry outbursts began to erupt. The sixth man yelled, "I got only $1 out of the total reduction of $20, and he" — pointing to the last man — "got $7." The fifth man joined in the protest. "Yeah! I got only $1 too. It is unfair that he got seven times more than me." The seventh man cried, "Why should he get a $7 reduction when I got only $2?" The first four men followed the lead of the others: "We didn't get any of the $20 reduction. Where is our share?"

The nine men formed an outraged mob, surrounding the tenth man. The nine angry men carried the tenth man up to the top of a hill and lynched him. The next night, the nine remaining men met at the restaurant for dinner. But when the bill came, there was no one to pay it.

If only Johns Kerry and Edwards were as intelligent as President Bush and able to comprehend the nuances of tax policy they would understand that a tax cut for ALL Americans means that those who pay the MOST TAXES will receive the MOST TAX CUTS. They would also realize, if they were learned and wise (or if they read the UPI article a week ago), that the tax system now is more progressive than it was before President Bush's tax cuts (the more regressive Clinton tax system):

U.S. taxpayers face lower effective federal income tax rates than they would have without the tax cuts, the CBO said. The CBO also said the tax cuts did not shift the burden of taxation to the middle class, but instead made the tax system more progressive.

The highest 20 percent of earners now pay a larger share of federal income taxes than they would have without the tax cuts, while the share of income taxes paid by all other income groups fell.

One can debate how progressive or regressive or unbiased the tax system ought to be, but one cannot claim that President Bush's tax cut was a sop to the rich. So next time somebody laments "tax cuts for the rich," you can explain how: (i) the rich are taxpayers and if all taxpayers get a cut then, by definition, those who are rich will get a cut; and (ii) President Bush made the tax system more tilted in favor of the poor and middle classes. So if the Johns want to repeal President Bush's tax cut, they are, in actuality, seeking to make the system more regressive.

You can't make these things up. Check out John Kerry's own blog for the latest in links to this tangled web they weaved in their effort to deceive:

The East Bay for Kerry/MoveOn House party on December 7th combined the forces of two grass-roots organizations based in San Francisco East Bay Area. We had 200 guests eating, drinking, and watching the MoveOn Documentary “Uncovered” featuring Joseph Wilson and Rand Beers from the Kerry campaign.

When Teresa Heinz-Kerry arrived, she handed me a pin that read in the center: “Asses of Evil” with “Bush”, “Cheney”, “Rumsfeld” and “Ashcroft” surrounding it.

[John Kerry] also spoke about the recent Bush Thanksgiving visit to our military in Iraq, carrying a platter laden down with a fake turkey, smiling for a photo op.

• Click here for link

What ever happened to Joseph Wilson's association with the Kerry campaign?

Also they mention a PBS producer working on that documentary. Shouldn't the publically funded PBS be non-partisan and does anyone want to check to see if this producer use PBS equipment for this partisan effort?

Maybe even Kerry's own blog is part of the evil Republican attack machine?

Jeff Cornwall notes the good news in this report from vFinance Investments, Inc. (press release). vFinance says it's Entrepreneurial Confidence Index increased 13 percent in the second quarter of 2004 as compared to the first quarter of 2004 and is up "an impressive 33 percent from the same quarter a year ago."

Entrepreneurial confidence - the willingness to take a risk and start a business - is the essential building block of an economic boom. I think you're already seeing it in the strong growth in employment over the past year or so as shown by the government's Household Survey, which captures the growth of the small-business/home-based business/independent-contractor segment of the economy that the government's Payroll Survey of large employers misses. That's why the media reports sluggish job growth (based on the Payroll Survey) while the Bush Boom has lead America to the highest total employment in its history. Here's an excerpt from the vFinance report:

Analysis of the relationship between the ECI and the general economy indicates that this surge in entrepreneurial confidence reflects the strong increase in employment that began in the first quarter of 2004. When employment increases, confidence in the economy rises. Confident entrepreneurs are more willing to take the risk of starting a new business secure in the knowledge that if they fail they will be able to find employment. Thus, the climb in the ECI in the second quarter reflects the acceleration of employment growth seen in the first and second quarters. To the extent that this increase in interest is turned into actual new businesses, this process should become self-reinforcing. The new businesses that are created will hire more employees helping to generate healthy employment growth that will create an environment in which more potential entrepreneurs feel confident enough to strike out on their own.

The Washington Post is soliciting nominations for best blogs in a variety of categories.

"Blogs for Bush" has done remarkable things in such a short time and I would like to ask everyone to nominate this blog as the Best Republican Party Coverage blog (or nominate us in any category you'd like) in the Washington Post's survey.

As an unaffiliated blog, there is no bankroll like the professionals, or full-time bloggers (all of us actually have full-time jobs NOT related to journalism -- as a point of reference, I am a corporate bond analyst on Wall Street).

The many services provided by this blog like Carnival of the Bush Bloggers, Wictory Wednesday, the DNQ Watch during the Convention in Boston, Letters to the Editor Friday (what ever happened to that guy?) and so much more.

Please help promote Matt's phenomenal effort by nominating "Blogs for Bush" today! Thanks in advance.

This is the post of the day.

Chris Lynch goes through the August calendar itemizing the daily mis-steps in the Kerry campaign. It is an absoutlely fantastic post that juxtaposes the Drudge-like headline bombshells we see in the New York Times versus how these headlines panned out upon further scrutiny.

Glenn Reynolds likes the August 12th entry. I love the August 2, 5, 6 (both entries), 10, 17 and 22 entries. Check out the link and choose your own!

Be sure to read the whole thing. Hat tip, Instapundit.