Police Discriminate Against Criminals

Found via Michele Malkin a story of political correctness taken to a degree of absurdity beyond belief. As reported in the Oakland Tribune

Oakland police halt DUI checkpoints

Immigrant activists say roadblocks discriminate against those without licenses

By Heather MacDonald, STAFF WRITER

OAKLAND -- Oakland police officers have stopped setting up roadblocks to check whether drivers are under the influence because of a rash of complaints from the Latino community and City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente.

The checkpoints, which allow officers to demand licenses and proof of insurance, are an effective way to get drunken drivers off Oakland's streets, city leaders agree. But the checks also have ensnared dozens of illegal immigrants who are not licensed to drive yet otherwise obey the law.(emphasis mine)

I don't know the law in California but I do know that where I live driving without a license is a crime. It seems to me that no matter how many other laws you dutifully obey when you break one, you break one. I can't see "yes I shot him five times but I otherwise obey the law" as a viable defense.

And here's the real kicker, the people getting caught, are more than likely to be illegal immigrants. Being in the country illegally pretty much wipes out their "otherwise obey the law" theory.

The halt in checkpoints is apparently temporary while they draft new guidelines.

The new checkpoint guidelines, which are not final, may call for police to notify Latino community organizations of the time and location of coming checkpoints. The checkpoints will be held after the evening rush-hour commute and rotated throughout the city, officials said.

I'm sure once the public at large has been alerted to where an when roadblocks will be set up their value as a law enforcement technique is just going to skyrocket.

One voice of sanity in the whole PC mess is City Councilmember Larry Reid.

"I don't care if they are illegal immigrants," Reid said.

"They should not be driving on our streets without a license, without insurance. I expect the Oakland Police Department to do its job and get them off the street."

He almost got it right. A big part of the problem is that he should care if they are illegal aliens.

When Headlines Collide

Unlike this in which a random ad conflicts badly with a news story, today's screen shot is just an unfortunate grouping of headlines from one of my favorite news sources.

(Click to enlarge)

Lawyers Guns and Money

Michele Malkin has compiled an excellent roundup of the twisted twisting tale of John Kerry's favorite gun. If his aim with a real gun is as bad as his aim with a gun story, you don't want to be anywhere near the man when he has a loaded weapon.

FOXNews.com Strikes Again

I have noted before the lack of any filter on the random advertising that appears on FOXNews.com. I have also taken the time to inform them of a few previous incidents when the ad and the lead story should not have been displayed together. Apparently this doesn't seem to bother them, because they did it again tonight. (Click to enlarge)

Oliver Stoned

I thought I was done for the night, having already done six post today. But then I read this article on comments made by director Oliver Stone at the premiere of his new film "Looking for Fidel." Stone remains convinced that Bush stole the election if Florida with the help of Anti-Castro Cuban-Americans.

"When (Vice President Al) Gore lost, or rather, when they stole the elections from him, I sensed that something dirty was going to happen, but the harm has already been done and its extent is very significant," said Stone. "Now, I am praying that something of that sort does not occur once again."

A reporter asked stone to elaborate on the extent of power and influence the Cuban-American population has. Stone was all to willing to continue his flight from reality

"To start with, anti-Castro groups were vital in implementing the dirty business of the butterfly ballots ensuring Bush's victory at the 2000 elections."

Given that the official who designed the infamous butterfly ballot for Palm Beach County was a Democrat and not Cuban I have to wonder what Stone might be smoking other than Cuban cigars.

How does Stone really feel about Bush?

George Bush will go down in history as one of the great baddies.

Whoa that's mighty strong language there Ollie.

In case you were wondering what sort of man Oliver Stone thinks makes a great leader

Stone was effusive in his praise for Castro.

"I admire Fidel because he is a survivor," he said. "He has survived several U.S. presidents who have tried to eliminate him."

He also said he admired Castro because of "his self confidence and honesty." The filmmaker confirmed that Castro "is one of the few world presidents who does not have one cent stashed abroad, and, at the same time, has brought his people to such a high educational level."

None of this though is as asinine as his comparison of the two countries.

"In Cuba, I observed an openness and freedom that I had not found in any other country in the region, the Caribbean or Central America," Stone said. "I have met many world leaders in Panama, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, but have never seen the kind of spontaneous affection for a leader expressed on the streets as I have seen in Cuba towards Fidel."

Tell that to those rotting in cells for expressing less than spontaneous affection for the dictator. Tell that to the thousands who have risked their lives to escape Cuba and come to the United States. But then Stone has no great love for America

"My country is becoming more violent and negative every day," he said. "Bush has never been interested in consensus. In the year 2000, as we have unfortunately come to learn, a dangerous radical with a huge hidden agenda was hiding behind the mask of a compassionate conservative. This is a shame and a tragedy. The world would be completely different today had Bush not stolen the elections from Gore. Bush is only adding more fuel to the fire. He is a slave and the puppet of the large weapons and oil companies which put him into office."

Some would also make comment about the fact that he spewed forth this nonsense on foreign soil in time of war. Personally I don't think it matters where he said it. But I would expect nothing less from a complete moonbat speaking in Spain before the premiere of his cinematic display of spontaneous affection for Fidel.

The AP Underground

Powerline has two posts (so far) on Associated Press writer Jennifer Lovens Kerry campaign press release written as an AP news story. I set out to explore the dark places of the internet looking for entertainment and there I found a much much different take on the story. Here's just a sampling.

BullGooseLoony  (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-25-04 06:06 AM
Response to Original message

4. It's on the front page, too!

I'm hoping this has to do with that Peter Jennings clip I sent out to about three hundred media people.

BullGooseLoony  (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-25-04 06:22 AM
Response to Reply #5

8. LOL I just checked, and I DID send it to Jennifer Loven- it's on my send list. jloven@ap.org

Write her a thank you, if you like!

10. I sent her an enthusastic Thank You!

And thank you again BGL!

Then it was discovered that original headline had been replaced with a slightly more balanced version.

31.  DAMMIT!!! DAMMIT!!! DAMMIT!!! n/t

34. WTF is up with this??

I can't believe it! No doubt they came under right-wing pressure.

35. The Associated Press responds to White House pressure again

This is a pattern from the AP - they run constant stories bashing Kerry, but when they run one story critical of Bush, they change it after publication to spin for Bush.

Someone in the White House must be putting pressure on them.

One lone soul tried to interject a touch of reason but didn't get far.

29. Bad wording

Bush took advantage of Kerry's amphiboly, Kerry needs to be more careful with his wording. It'll get ugly in the debate if he opens up these loopholes like this again. We all know he meant that we have made Iraq worse than the dicatatorship we removed, but by saying "traded" he implied an either/or choice, and put himself in the position of "choosing" the dictatorship. Semantically, Bush's interpretation was right.

Until recently this campaign has been frought with these ambiguous statements. I don't know who's been writing this stuff, but it's good that the Clinton team came on board. We can only hope it's not too late.

I would say go read the whole thing but that's pretty much the best of it.

You Snooze You Lose

I have been pondering how best to verbally eviscerate John Kerry over his untimely and unseemly response to the speech given to a joint session of Congress by Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. My problem was the quest for perfection. I wanted to write the definitive dressing down of the candidate. But while I pondered, someone else took the prize. It is small consolation but at least I can know that I was beaten by the best. Maybe next time.

The title is "Kerry's looking for American failure - and he's it." The author Mark Steyn. Here's a couple of highlights before you go and read the rest.

Kerry didn't show up for Allawi's visit to Washington -- he was in Ohio again, which is evidently becoming the proverbial Vietnam-type quagmire for him. Nonetheless, barely had the prime minister finished than the absentee senator did a daytime version of his midnight ramble and barged his way onto the air to insist that he knew better than Iraq's head of government what was going on in the country.

[...]

What a small, graceless man Kerry is. The nature of adversarial politics in a democratic society makes George W. Bush his opponent. But it was entirely Kerry's choice to expand the field, to put himself on the other side of Allawi and the Iraqi people.

[...]

So for Kerry the new world war is just a wedge issue. After their schooling in Switzerland, those well-mannered English gels used to describe themselves as ''finished.'' If he wasn't ''finished'' after graduating from the Institut Montana in Zug in 1955, this week John Kerry is looking finished in a far more American sense.

Has CBS Learned From Its Mistake?

According to an AP story on FOXnews.com CBS may have learned something from the beating it took over the broadcasting of forged documents in an effort to smear President Bush shortly before the election:

CBS News has shelved a "60 Minutes" report on the rationale for war in Iraq because it would be "inappropriate" to air it so close to the presidential election, the network said on Saturday.

The report on weapons of mass destruction (search) was set to air on Sept. 8 but was put off in favor of a story on President Bush's (search)  National Guard service. The Guard story was discredited because it relied on documents impugning Bush's service that were apparently fake.

CBS News spokeswoman Kelli Edwards would not elaborate on why the timing of the Iraq report was considered inappropriate.

If CBS has legitimate reporting of a legitimate story, they should certainly air it. The idea that a news outlet would not report a story because it might impact the election is disturbing. Providing the public with information necessary to make an informed decision is why that whole freedom of the press thing is in the First Amendment.

On the other hand if their recent scandal caused CBS to take a second look at the story and decide that it was not legitimate news but rather a broadcast piece of Kerry Campaign Propaganda and decided that the cost to what little respect they still have as a news agency was just not worth it, then good for them.

Tin Foil Hat Theory
Of course it is also possible that they decided in the end that the story or the blowback from broadcasting it would hut Kerry more than Bush. Thus rendering it inappropriate.

I speculate, you decide.

UPDATE: Wizbang has its own doubts about CBS' motives

Bush Leads in Major Poll. Kerry Kicked.

My 9 year old daughter told me today she knows who is going win the election. George W. Bush. She followed this pronouncement by stating that there is no way John kerry is going to win. He's just like Clinton and she wants to kick him.

heh.

Michael Mooredor

I left this as a comment at Little Green Footballs in a thread discussing this statement from Michael Moore

Later today (Wed.), the Boston Globe, the A.P. and Dan Rather all present new and damning information about how George W. Bush got moved to the front of the line to get in the Texas Air National Guard, and how he then went AWOL. I am putting every ounce of trust I have in my fellow Americans that a majority of them get this, get the injustice of it all, and get the sad, sick twisted irony of how it relates very, very much to our precious Election 2004.

I think it may be one of the better comments I have ever left on someone else's blog so I'm repeating it here.

Must have the precious. We wants it. They takes it from us. Nasty filthy Republicanses.

A Question for John Kerry

You have said that if you were president you would secure greater participation from our allies in the war in Iraq. You have said that this increased participation would be in the form of bearing the financial cost as well as troops on the ground.

Recently you have described the war in Iraq as the "wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in the wrong way.

How can you, Senator Kerry, go to our allies and ask that one of their soldiers be possibly the last man to die for a mistake?

From My Cold Dead Fingers

Here's a scary thought. How long could you go without the internet? The full article is quoted below but I just want to say that my results, measured more likely in hours or minutes, would have thrown off the median.

Cut off their connection to the Web and people have moments of "withdrawal and feelings of loss, frustration, and disconnectedness" according to a report released Wednesday by Yahoo. Dubbed -- and we're not making this up -- the Internet Deprivation Study, the Yahoo-sponsored research tried to get a group of consumers to give stay offline, then report back. Nearly half couldn't take the Web-less world for more than two weeks, and the median time participants could go without logging on was a measly five days.

"It was incredibly difficult to recruit participants for this study, as people weren't willing to be without the Internet for two weeks," said Wenda Harris Millard, Yahoo's chief sales officer, in a statement.

Those in the study described their offline time as "feeling left out of the loop," reported Yahoo, having to "resist temptation" to check out the Web, and missing their "private escape time" during the day.

Among the other finds of the deprivation study were that participants felt that they were at a disadvantage over those still online when it came to finding lower prices, that they were cut off from their outer circle of friends (those they typically kept in touch with via e-mail and instant messaging), and believed they looked "lazy" to co-workers when they resorted to traditional means of communication or news gathering such as talking on the telephone or reading a printed newspaper.

Ouch!

Here's a paragraph form Time that you don't really want to read while you're scanning the web for tech news on your 17 inch Powerbook.

Even after a lot of customization, the 17-in. iMac G5 is still perhaps $1,000 less expensive than the 17-in. G4 PowerBook it outperforms. So, if the reason you're shopping for a notebook is so you can use it at the kitchen table (or even at your house but also your summer rental), save some money and put the rest into the iMac G5.

The Religion of Inhuman Scum

The vanguard of modern day Islam has once again shown its utter lack of humanity by brutally murdering two innocent civilians, and does anyone seriously doubt that the third man captured with them will meet the same fate? The videos are of course available all over the internet for anyone who is interested in seeking them out. I have not and will not watch them. I watched the video of the murder of Nicholas Berg and that was enough for me. Another video of another beheading can do nothing to add to the complete disgust and loathing I already feel for this inhuman scum.

At Captain's Quarters is a story that should be on front page of every news source, but doesn't seem to be.

AMMAN, Jordan - The spiritual leader of a militant group that claimed to have beheaded two American hostages in Iraq has been killed in a U.S. airstrike, and his Jordanian family is preparing a wake, a newspaper and Islamic clerics said Wednesday.

Sheik Abu Anas al-Shami, 35, was killed when a missile hit the car he was traveling in on Friday in the west Baghdad suburb of Abu-Ghraib, said the clerics, who have close ties to the family. They spoke on condition of anonymity.

Al-Shami was a close aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the militant group Tawhid and Jihad. The al-Qaida-linked group is blamed for some of the biggest attacks in Iraq, including the bombing of the U.N. headquarters last year, and the beheadings of foreign hostages — including two Americans this week.

Al-Zarqawi is believed to have personally decapitated the American hostage Eugene Armstrong on Monday.

This is yet another step in the right direction in the War On Terror. This is ANOTHER DEAT TERRORIST. may there be many, many more to follow.

The Kerry Quiz

Pop Quiz Senator.

What is you position on the war in Iraq?

A. I fully support the action the President has taken in Iraq.

B. I was misled into voting for the war.

C. I am the anti-war candidate.

D. Knowing what I know now I would still vote to authorize the use of force.

E. We would have been off dealing with Saddam than the chaos we have now

F. All of the above.

More Media for Powerline

Everywhere you look in the mainstream media these days you can find a story about the impact of blogs, particularly in regards to the CBS forgeries. And in most of those stories you will find PowerLine. I came across a particularly nice piece on blogs in the Christian Science Monitor. The headline:

Blogs look burly after kicking sand on CBS

The wonderfully accurate sub-head:

Bloggers enjoy a moment of glory after pooling their expertise to uncover the truth about the forged memos on Bush's service record.

And the lead goes to Scott Johnson:

Scott Johnson took a bite out of CBS's "60 Minutes II" and came away with 15 minutes of fame.

Mr. Johnson, a Minneapolis lawyer with a political website called Power Line, proved to be instrumental in challenging the authenticity of documents CBS used to impugn George W. Bush's record in the National Guard.

The rest of the piece is pretty good explanation of how the process works, and along the way a lot of great blogs are noted for their contributions.

These are the people that set the standard for the rest of us and I begrudge none of them their well earned 15 minutes.

The Cost of the Drug Vote

It would seem that buying the votes of senior citizens is a lot like doing renovations to your home. It turns out to cost a lot more than the original estimate. Michele Malkikn calls it President Bush's Medicare Debacle and I think she is being kind.

According to the Washington Post current estimates show a $42 Billion increase over 10 years. That is not $42 Billion on top of the $400 Billion over 10 years that White House said would be the cost of the votes program while lobbying for the plan's passage. That is $42 Billion on top of the previously revised estimate of $534 Billion.

The cost to the taxpayers for the federal government purchasing the votes of a large and growing voting block now stands at $576 Billion over 10 years. For the math challenged i.e. those responsible for this legislation that's $176 Billion dollars more than the original projection. The opposition's primary complaint to the original $400 Billion proposal, was that it didn't do enough.

Is there anyone out there willing to bet $10 that this is the last time this number will be revised upwards? How about $100 that after 10 years the current estimate proves to be close - within say one billion dollars?

This massive new federal entitlement amounts to really nothing more than funneling large amounts of tax dollars to the aging baby boomer generation. Both parties generally think this is a good idea even if they have peripheral disputes over how they payoff should be made. Debating how much senior's votes are worth gives them leverage with a large voting block.

As the Baby Boomers begin to reach retirement age is massive numbers, the age card will replace the race card in electoral politics. The payouts will continue to grow sweeter, and the rest of us will have to keep paying.

Pulling Punches

A lot of people seem to being careful about how they respond to the latest round in the CBS forgery story. In particular they seem to be dancing around the Burkett statement the CBS came to him for the fake memos and that he did not approach them. People are asking where CBS learned that Burkett had the memos.

THEY GOT THE INFORMATION FROM THE KERRY CAMPAIGN.

Kerry operative Max Cleland has already revealed that Burkett had contacted him regarding the memos and he had referred Burkett to the Kerry Campaign. Did the Kerry campaign know they were forgeries before they sent CBS after them? That is the only question left to be answered.

CBS Coming Out?

The Washington Post is reporting today that CBS is working on a statement saying that it was misled on documents showing Bush received special treatment while serving in the Texas Air National Guard.

It is not clear whether the statement will include an apology for a story now believed to be based on forged documents, although that is under consideration, sources familiar with the matter said. The sources said they could not be identified because CBS is making no official statement.

CBS has stood by the story, even as numerous document experts have called the memos forgeries and a former secretary in Bush's Guard unit told reporters, including Rather, that the memos were fake -- although she said they reflected the feelings of Bush's former squadron commander in the Texas Air National Guard.

The statement was being hammered out last night after Rather went to Texas to tape an interview with Bill Burkett, the retired Guard official widely believed to have helped provide "60 Minutes" with the memos. Burkett, who has urged Democratic activists to wage "war" against Republican "dirty tricks," would not comment in an e-mail to The Washington Post on whether he had been CBS's confidential source.

CBS has dug themselves in a deep on this storyand at this point it seems that any statement not accompanied by one or two high profile departures from the network would be inadequate to mitigate the damage.

Voting Procedure

In the aftermath of the Great Festival of the Hanging Chad election officials in many states, including Florida, have switched to electronic voting. In some states, in addition to recording your vote, the touch screen will display a small quiz the results of which will let you know which Founding Father you would be.

There are of course many concerns about the safety of the system some of which are reviewed here by columnist Dave Berry

One big concern is that electronic voting machines could be tampered with by "hackers," as was the case recently when an 11-year-old New Jersey boy named Jason Feeblehonker, using only his Game Boy, was able to get himself elected governor of both North Carolina and Wisconsin. (He's actually doing a decent job, although some state police officers are not thrilled about having to carry light sabers.)

There are also concerns on the part of some voters that the electronic voting systems could be dangerous to operate. Barry notes that voters have no reason to worry:

Electronic voting is fast and harmless, unless they get the voltage wrong, in which case an overhead sprinkler system will automatically extinguish any flames in your hair. So there's nothing to worry about! Remember: Before electronic voting was approved for use on humans, it was extensively tested on laboratory hamsters (87% for Dennis Kucinich).

There is much more of Barry's in depth analysis to be read but you should finish your beverage first.

Best Wishes For Happiness and Pie

All shout Yay!

For today we celebrate the anniversary of a day on which the world became a good deal better.

Today is the birthday of Pixy Misa a gentleman and a genius.

With best wishes for many happy returns, and pie.

Russia Takes on Terror

Russia is preparing to launch preemptive measures against against Chechen Terrorists. No mention was made of U.N. Security Council authorization, or whether Putin had had consulted the French.

The Texas Bitch-Slap

Blackfive has a letter from a Texan who has a few things to say to Dan Rather. If you follow the link, I highly recommend that you refrain from the consumption of liquids.

What's the Contradiction Kenneth?

Powerline makes note of the attempt by a CBS spokesperson to dismiss the testimony of General Staudt

Staudt's testimony would seem to definitively put the lie to CBS's faked memos, but that's not how CBS sees it. Yesterday CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius brushed off Staudt's comments:

In a debate this heated, one can hardly expect Gen. Staudt to endorse the point of view that he exerted undue influence.

So if you slander a man, as CBS did General Staudt, the fact that he has been slandered makes his response so suspect that it can safely be disregarded.

What seems even more glaring to me is that CBS, while discounting General Staudt's testimony as self serving, expects us to accept the confession of undue influence by Kerry campaign advisor Ben Barnes.

From Kinkos to Kerry?

Bill Burkett, the former officer in the Texas National Guard, who is widely believed to be the source of the forged documents presented by CBS, was apparently in contact with the Kerry campaign regarding the documents. According to a New York Times report Burkett wrote the following in an email newsletter:

"I talked with Max Cleland," Mr. Burkett continued, referring to the former senator from Georgia who has been supporting Senator John Kerry's Democratic presidential bid.

Alluding to advertisements by a veterans group that deprecates Mr. Kerry's Vietnam service, Mr. Burkett continued, "I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. He said counterattack."

"So I gave them the information to do it with," Mr. Burkett wrote. "But none of them have called me back."

The documents have been traced back to a fax machine in a Kinkos near Burkett's home where he maintains an account. When this information came to light, I think most people (including myself) concluded that Burkett faxed the fakes to CBS News. Now it seems that there is a possibility that he faxed them to the Kerry campaign, and that is the source Rather and company are trying to protect.

Similar thoughts from:
Wizbang
Powerline

I Don't Want To Hear You Now

If you think flying sucks now just imaging what it is going to be like when your stuck in the middle seat in coach flying across the country listening to 100 or so cell phone conversations.

Sorry Dan, Someone Else Broke This Story

There is not much left to say about Dan Rather and CBS news after this, from where else, Powerline. Not only have the documents been proven forgeries, but the statements of the one surviving witness named in the memos has pretty thoroughly put an end to the forged but accurate defense. Along the way, he also shreds the whole Ben Barnes influence confession as well.

ABC news has done the interview that Rather and company should have done. They interviewed retired Brigadier General Walter Staudt. Gen Staudt, if you recall, was named in one of the forgeries as pressuring Lt. Col. Killian to "sugar-Coat" Bush's performance review. Here are a few of the highlights:

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

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

"No one called me about taking George Bush into the Air National Guard. It was my decision. I swore him in. I never heard anything from anybody."

"He was a well-educated, bright-eyed young man, just the kind of guy we were looking for. He presented himself well. I'd say he was in the upper 10 percent or 5 percent or whatever we ever talked to about going to pilot training. We were pretty particular because when he came back [from training], we had to fly with him." [Ed.: That's a heck of a good point, if you think about it.]

Staudt retired from the Guard in March of that year and said he was never contacted about Bush's performance.

"There was no contact between me and George Bush … he certainly never asked for help," Staudt said. "He didn't need any help as far as I knew."

He added that after retiring he was not involved in Air National Guard affairs. "I didn't check in with anybody — I had no reason to," he said. "I was busy with my civilian endeavors, and they were busy with their military options. I had no reason to talk to them, and I didn't."

At this point it is clear the Rather and CBS owe absolutely no protection to the source of the forged documents. The only reasons for them not to name names are that either they believe the damage done by the revelation would be to severe, i.e. sinking the Kerry Campaign, or they were complicit in the forgery from day one and they know that if they burn the source, the source will burn them. A good deal of evidence points top the documents coming to CBS via Bill Burkett and his account at Kinkos is Abaline TX. If this proves to be the source, it will be interesting to see if Burkett was working alone or if he was doing someone else's dirty work.

Football... Some People Like It

Here's one for you football fans and prediction experts. Black & Decker is running a contest. 16 Lucky winners get to go to the 2005 Pro Bowl in Hawaii. You have to register which means you'll probably get a few emails about tools and stuff. But if you're into football and free trips to Hawaii wouldn't it be worth it?

The Butcher of Beslan

There are very few human beings about whom I would say without reservation that they do not deserve to draw another breath. Via Interested Participant let me introduce you to Shamil Basayev.

Basayav, described as a "Chechen Warlord" has claimed responsibility for the Beslan School massacre and has threatened further attacks by any means he sees fit. Since this brutal terrorist has already shown that shooting children in the back is an acceptable tactic, it would be safe to assume that there is no act of violence this animal would not condone.

"We are not bound by any circumstances, or to anybody, and we will continue to fight as is convenient and advantageous to us, and by our rules," he said in an unrepentant statement published on a rebel Web site.

The web site www.kavkazcenter.com is currently not available.

Basayev has also claimed responsibility for the bombing to two Russian passenger planes on August 24, killing 90.

This man needs a bullet to the head.

1000 Words

The Story

It's About Time

Time Magazine that is. Time has apparently interviewed and photographed the guys from Powerline for an upcoming article on Rathergate. Just to prove a point, they changed out of their jammies and into their good clothes just before the photographer arrived.

The Question of the day

The destruction of CBS continues in blogs everywhere. While Dan rather says that if the documents are fake he wants to be out in front and break that story. Which is pretty ironic when you consider that some already saying that it may be time to move on.

And yes there is much more out there to be looked at than the CBS forgeries story. Sometimes, when you go looking for something else, you find something that applies.

Rob at Business Pundit quotes a Seth Godin column on deceptive marketers and asks a question that the folks at CBS news should be answering:

Can trust be a competitive advantage?

John Kerry, Financial Planner

I think I figured out how John Kerry's jobs plan is going to work. Bear with me as I go through this, it's a little confusing.

Kerry wants to give companies tax credits to encourage them to hire more workers. Essentially he wants to use tax dollars to pay companies to hire employees they don't need. Companies tend to add staff when there is a business need for more people. If the state of their business is such that they don't need more people, they don't hire them. If the state of their business is such that they don't need some of the people they already have, they let them go. That's the way it works. Trust me, I know this. Carrying (or should it be Kerrying) people on your payroll that you don't have a need for is generally not good for the company.

Where is all of this money to pay for all these unnecessary employees going to come from? Tax Hikes For The Rich. Kerry plans to raise taxes on the highest income Americans, i.e. the people he is going to give tax credits to in order to encourage them to hire workers they don't need.

And of course some of the money used to pay for federally funded private employment will be coming from the taxes of the workers hired under the Kerry plan. The net effect being that there would be no increase in tax revenue from all of these incentive workers because the taxes they pay wouldn't cover the cost of the incentive program.

What else is Kerry going to do with all of the money from his Tax Hikes For The Rich? He's going to use it to buy insurance. He plans to use federal dollars to pay 75% of catastrophic health care costs currently paid by employers. Of course when you take into account that all of the money employers (aka The Rich) will be saving by not paying for catastrophic health insurance would be used to pay their now much higher taxes needed so the government can pay for catastrophic health insurance, it's hard to see how this accomplishes anything more than furthering the cause of creating a government run health care system.

Oh, and Kerry also plans to use the revenue from his Tax Hikes For The Rich cut the deficit in half in four years.

A plan like this kind of makes me glad I'm not one of The Rich. I'd hate to be hit with tax hike big enough to pay for all of that.

How Low Can You Go

This should be really easy. They didn't have lot to say in their own defense.

We established to our satisfaction that the memos were accurate or we would not have put them on television.

Since CBS took an extra 6 hours to draft this statement the use of the word accurate vs authentic is certainly interesting. And it's nice that the accuracy of the forged memos was established to their satisfaction. I just don't see the bar being too high on this one. I'm guessing it would be more of a challenge in a limbo contest than the high jump.

There was a great deal of corroborating evidence from people in a position to know.

(ed: There was a typo in this sentence in the original. Since I am the last person on earth who should be commenting on someone else's typing, I fixed it. Though I have to wonder why their copy of Word didn't catch it.) As for the corroborating evidence, I have to ask, corroborating what? They have evidence to prove the contents of their forged documents is accurate? Then why not just report the evidence and shred the forgeries?

Having said that, given all the questions about them, we believe we should redouble our efforts to answer those questions, so that's what we are doing.

So they are going to do twice as much as ignoring reality altogether and consulting a new age handwriting spiritualist. We should all just sit quietly while they pretend to investigate for a week or so. This will give them enough time to write their next carefully worded release copping to the fact that they were misled. And begging for the forgiveness of pajama wearing bloggers everywhere. Oh and their source in the Kerry campaign? Will be protected until the end of time.

The number of words from the pajama partisans will undoubtedly dwarf the actual statement by several orders of magnitude. The guys who got it all started will of course have their say. As will everyone else who helped move the story along.

Click One

There's something new on the sidebar today. I signed up for Google Ads. I figured that for absolutely zero investment if enough people actually click on one of them I can get a check. I'm o.k. with that. According to the good folks at Google the system looks at the content of your page and serves up ads that are appropriate based on what it finds. Based on today's results, I couldn't be prouder. Four ads all of them from or related to the U.S. Military.

Support the troops. Click on one today.

Hoax or Fraud?

It is now known with 100% certainty that the CBS memos are forgeries. The only questions remaining to be answered are what did CBS know and when did they know it? More directly, is CBS the victim of a hoax or the perpetrator of a fraud?

I am not a psychologist. I am not in my living room. I am not in my pajamas. But I believe that when CBS aired the memos on 60 Minutes the knew them to be forgeries, but that they believed their name and the claims in the faked memos would be powerful enough to keep anyone from questioning them. Their failure to grasp the changed and changing nature of the information landscape lead them to the hubris that will be their undoing.

What do I base this conclusion on? The concept of organizational self-preservation. News organizations have been duped before, including CBS. They issue a retraction and an apology and by and large people forgive them. Mistakes happen and no person or organization is perfect. If CBS could demonstrate that they made a good faith effort to authenticate the documents and that they a reasonable basis to believe they were genuine people would accept that. Their credibility would take a hit that would take some time to repair, but the organization would survive. Some people would have to be shown the door, but only some minor players. Then they would face what in sports parlance is called a rebuilding year.

But as the mountain of evidence proving the documents to be very poorly done forgeries continues to grow, CBS seems to be digging in its heals. Their lines of defense are failing fast. With other major news outlets not only covering the story but also, in the case of the New York Times of all places, breaking new information they can no longer dismiss the story as the speculation of a bunch of partisan bloggers.

CBS has missed the opportunity to get out in front of this storm. Instead they have chosen to try to ride it out in the harbor. In doing so they have put the entire organization on the line. They have to be doing so because they know the damage from this story would be total. They know this because they knew the memos were bogus when they chose to broadcast them. What remains to watch now is when they begin to sink, who will be allowed onto the lifeboats and who will go down with the ship.