September 1, 2004
HOTEL PENN, 12:16 AM -- It doesn't take much imagination to know on what subject tongues will wag tonight and tomorrow, and it won't be an analysis of Arnold's speech. Instead, talking heads will focus on the performance of the Bush twins, introducing their mother's keynote speech for Day Two at the RNC. Inevitably, the girls will be compared to John Kerry's children and stepson, and just as surely they will suffer in the comparison ... and it's unfair. True, I would have held them back a bit from treating the introduction as a wedding toast, which was one criticism I heard (sotto voce) in the Garden on the way out. But that would mean having them put on an act, which would have seemed a lot more phony. The one quality that strikes people most about the Bushes is their genuine nature, in that they don't pretend to be...
Mark Follman at Salon.com writes a review of the credentialed RNC bloggers for the Wednesday edition, and he doesn't much like what he's reading (registration or ad torture required). Follman points out that we bloggers set our expectations high and argues that we've failed to even try to meet them: The bloggers, in brief interviews with the Journal, promised some big things themselves. After a good bit of hemming and hawing about their counterparts' failure to turn out any meaningful coverage at the Democratic get-together in Boston, the cutting-edge RNC crew pledged to zero in on the important issues in New York. "Readers rightly criticized the number of 'hey, look at me' posts from DNC bloggers," remarked Kevin Aylward, a technology consultant who authors the Wizbang! blog. "I'm aware much of the audience isn't interested in what I had for dinner and what my hotel room is like." "Being there...
Ron Fournier, AP's premier political analyst, catches a whiff of desperation at Campaign Kerry as his numbers continue to erode and the Republicans stage a better convention than they had considered possible. Fournier reports that John Kerry has been bombarded with criticism and advice, much of it contradictory and all of it pointing to rising panic within the Democratic Party: Anxiously watching President Bush's convention, Democratic leaders are urging John Kerry to step up his attack on the Republican incumbent before eroding approval ratings become a serious political problem. The candidate and his beleaguered staff are being flooded with advice, much of it contradictory. Some party officials want Kerry to criticize the president for sitting out the Vietnam War in the Texas Air National Guard. Others say that would draw unwanted attention to accusations about Kerry's combat experience. Democrats have seen Bush erase the gains that their nominee made at...
Having read Tom Shales' review of the Republican convention thus far, I'm not sure whether to be encouraged or irritated. Shales obviously thinks that the GOP has managed to out-stage the Democrats in putting on "rubber-stamp" conventions, as if we have had any other kind in the last five decades. Shales even notes success in impressing the media. However, he takes several opportunities to sneer down his cheaters at Republicans as a bunch of hicks: People don't commonly associate adjectives like "cool" and "hip" with the Republican Party, but the first broadcast television coverage of this year's convention, from Madison Square Garden in New York last night, revealed the GOP to be more media-hip and glitzy than the Democrats were earlier this summer. ... The message of the Tuesday Night Follies was that Democrats are wimps and Republicans are symbolically still down in Texas fending off the invading army that's...
After making my sale to the New York Sun a week or so ago -- my first outright sale as a writer -- the editor with whom I worked encouraged me to drop by their offices while I was in New York for the convention. I had a couple of hours this morning (which is why I had no posts earlier) and stopped by their offices on Chambers. I suppose I had an image in my mind of a newsroom; an open area with simple desks piled high with papers, people scurrying around in order to stay on top of the news, phones ringing off the hook, and an editor in the office riding herd on it all. I realize that's a movie cliche, but in this case, it also happened to be the truth. After initially being greeted by Mark Tumin, he introduced me to a few other people...
Former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson came by Bloggers Corner just a few minutes ago and spoke to the group about liberal Republicanism, the electoral college, the current campaign and its tone, and John Kerry's Senate career. As you might imagine from his press conferences during his tenure in Congress, Senator Simpson spoke directly and even bluntly in responding to our questions. My audio of the interview turned out poorly as Sean Hannity's show insists on blaring out their program over speakers pointed directly at our area, but I can rebuild the important parts. In response to questions regarding the Electoral College, Simpson strongly defended the current structure and explained that any attempt to eliminate it would never pass muster with enough states. Too many smaller states would lose their impact on presidential contests, and as Simpson said, no one would ever see a campaign outside of New York, Chicago, and...
In a brief visit to Bloggers Corner, DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe told the bloggers that John Kerry was in Cambodia -- twice -- and took fire, while taking the opportunity to get in a dig at George Bush: Q: Does it bother you that the Democrats have nominated a candidate that told a fable about spending Christmas in Cambodia on the floor of the United States Senate? A: John Kerry went to Cambodia twice. He was over in Viet Nam and at one point, as you know, he took some CIA operatives into Cambodia, and he did a lot more than George Bush ever did for his country. George Bush never got to Viet Nam. Q: Mr. McAuliffe, do you have any proof -- A: You said only one question. You're chewing up their time [gesturing to camera crew]. Power Line has the video. Go check it out. And note...
One of the many distractions that all convention attendees must juggle are the continuous invitations to outside events, which sometimes conflict with convention business. Certainly this is true for the delegates, and it's widely known that if a delegate plays his cards right, he need never pay for a meal. This also applies to the candidates, who must coordinate a flood of invitations by being readily accessible to constituents and supporters on one hand without getting tied down to such a full schedule that it interferes with their ability to network at the convention itself with media, delegates, donors, and so on. I received an invitation to a typical outside event, a lunch given on behalf of Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman. Coleman serves as co-chair of the convention, which means that he has certain nominal duties to which he must attend here at the Garden. On this occasion, Coleman was...
Federal agents have arrested a Des Plaines, Illinois man as a deep-cover Iraqi spy living undercover in the US for eleven years, awaiting orders from his IIS handler that apparently never came: After the arrest of Sami Khoshaba Latchin, 57, prosecutors said he became a naturalized citizen after making false statements to immigration officials in 1999 and planned to "lay low" until contacted by his Iraqi handler. Latchin entered a not guilty plea at a hearing Monday. According to a federal indictment returned July 21 and unsealed Monday, Latchin worked for the Iraqi Intelligence Service, known as the Mukhabbarat, the foreign intelligence arm of the Iraqi government. The indictment said that in addition to failing to disclose his ties to Iraqi intelligence, Latchin, a Baath party member, lied about overseas trips he made in 1994, 1996 and 1997. Latchin, who was born in Dohuk, Iraq, and has lived in the...
Being in Bloggers Corner has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Not only am I in the center of a historic event at a historic location, but the RNC gave us tremendous opportunities by locating us at the entrance of the radio center -- which has been key to our access to some amazing people, including the famous and the yet-to-be famous as well. Some I haven't mentioned simply because I had no opportunity to do anything in-depth with them. For example, today I asked Tim Russert of NBC to stop by and take a few questions from the bloggers as he waited to get on Sean Hannity's radio program. Russert stopped over to say hello and exchange a few pleasantries with us, but he didn't have time to do much more than encourage us with a "Blog on!" Sam Donaldson did much the same thing...
10:02 Wild applause; I don't think he expected that. He makes his support for Bush personal. "My family is more important than my party." Great moment. 10:05 Great story about Wendell Wilkie, especially the epitaph. "Where are such statesmen today?" He's on fire. 10:07 Wow, he's tossing bombs at Terry McAuliffe and John Kerry tonight, and his rhetoric has the passion of all his anger. This is powerful stuff, and it sounds like it's built up over a long period of time... 10:08 "It is the soldier, and not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of speech." A series of such linkages are very effective. 10:10 "No pair has been wrong more often over a longer period of time than the two Senators from Massachussetts -- Ted Kennedy and John Kerry." Let me tell you this -- right now, the Democrats are wishing that the networks had carried...
10:20 Lynne Cheney gives the introduction for the Vice President, Dick Cheney. She comes across as sharp, blunt, and likeable. She seems tougher than Laura Bush. In an imperfect comparison, she reminds me stylistically of Katherine Hepburn, while Laura reminds me more of Audrey Hepburn. 10:23 Good reception for the VP, who seems a little amused by it ... 10:25 That was Sarah Janisczak [sp] from Minnesota on screen ... 10:26 And that was Col. Joe Repya from Eagan, MN, who I will feature in an interview later on tonight .. 10:30 Dick Cheney has a much more mellow speaking style than Miller, obviously. After a great, self-deprecating riff on John Edwards get s a laugh, he follows that up with a good policy speech, this time targeting Edwards a bit more bitingly with tort reform... 10:31 Another disturbance on the floor? I'll try to get some information tomorrow ......
I mentioned a few days ago that both John and I were interviewed by the hometown newspaper, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, for a story about Bloggers Corner from a local perspective. Sharon Schmickle turns in a fair and balanced look at the intersection of blogging and big-league politics: It was one thing to watch the cool and sassy Bush twins in television's lights, cracking scripted jokes and teasing their parents about their days of being "young and irresponsible." It was another to see 22-year-old Jenna and Barbara through Captain Ed's analytical filter: "The Bush twins are -- as they said in their speech -- young, irrepressible, and a little immature. Personally, I found their humor a little charming, if overdone. I noticed (former New York Mayor) Rudy Giuliani laughing his butt off at the Sex And The City joke." ... Here's Hinderaker's summary of his first day: "This has been one...
I don't have a lot to add to what I've already written, but I do have a few thoughts about the tandem of firebrand Zell Miller and the more stoic surgery of Dick Cheney. I've read some who think that the pairing was deliberate -- that the RNC knew how Zell would go after the Democrats and John Kerry, and that the contrast between Miller (who isn't running for anything) and Cheney would emphasize Cheney's reasonableness. It's the kind of counterpoint that could take the edge off of Cheney's unwarranted image as a warmonger. Well, maybe. As Deacon at Power Line says, it may well be that the Republicans attempted to play good cop/bad cop. Unfortunately, if they did, they may have done too good a job, as both men made excellent points in their speeches that their wildly divergent styles will obscure. Miller was especially effective when talking about...
September 2, 2004
MS-NBC has posted the transcript of Zell Miller's appearance on Hardball with Chris Matthews, during which many of you wrote or commented last night that Zell took the wood to Matthews in a most satisfying way. After reading the transcript, I have to say you were right, and I think that maybe the appearance on Hardball may be even more effective that his appearance at the convention. Miller made it clear that he was not about to allow Matthews to throw strawmen at him as Matthews does with lesser-prepared guests. The turning point occurred early on, as far as I read: MILLER: But I think his record is atrocious. MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you, when Democrats come out, as they often do, liberal Democrats, and attack conservatives, and say they want to starve little kids, they want to get rid of education, they want to kill the old people......
I'm sitting in a restaurant watching a soundless C-SPAN broadcast across the room and noticing that Glenn Reynolds is being interviewed by telephone about the impact blogs have had on the political process this year. Fortunately, the TV had closed-captioning turned on, although I think the guy sitting right by it is under the impression that we are "having a moment". Glenn addressed media bias and mentioned Newsweek's contention that most of the news media want to see Kerry elected, and that gives him a 15-point boost. That may have been true in past electoral cycles, but I think blogs have erased much of that advantage (which may have been Glenn's point, since I missed a bit of the first part of his call). I'm sure Glenn will have more, so head over to his site for an update....
The BBC brings us an update on the lack of seriousness shown about worldwide terrorism in Bali, as a convicted conspirator in the bombing that killed hundreds in a nightclub has been allowed out for a latte break: Convicted Bali bomber Ali Imron has been allowed on an outing to a Starbucks coffee shop in Jakarta. Reporters spotted him laughing and joking with Brigadier-General Gorries Mere, one of the officers investigating the Bali attacks. A police spokesman said the excursion was part of an ongoing effort to investigate cases of terrorism. Did al-Qaeda decide to target baristas in Bali? Does he have some insight into what coffee blend Osama finds irresistable, in order to set up a trap for him at the game tables? Stories like this make Michael Dukakis' prison-release policies look like a Georgia chain gang by comparison. The man has been sentenced to life in prison, which...
CQ commenter FredRum points us to a USA Today article on the talking-head coverage of the Republican convention that not only supports my earlier diagnosis of Chris Matthews' self-infatuation but asserts that narcissism has spread across the entire television punditry like an epidemic. Media analyst Robert Bianco has a simple solution: As President Bush's acceptance speech tonight closes the Republican convention and sends us full speed into the final electoral push, would it be too much to ask one tiny favor of TV's anchors, analysts and pundits? In the name of all that's holy, shut up. Sometime over the past few years, interview shows morphed from the intent to draw information from guests that would inform and entertain viewers to a pitched duel between the interviewer and the subject/victim, a duel to the rhetorical death in front of a nationwide arena of rapidly diminishing numbers of fans. Chris Matthews did...
I had an opportunity to meet with a member of the Minnesota delegation to the Republican convention last night, Kimani Jefferson, who represents the Anoka area. Kimani spoke for a few minutes with me regarding his transformation from a moderate Democrat to a 9/11 convert to the new national-security-based conservatism, and his enthusiasm for George Bush in 2004. Kimani is a former military officer who served aboard USS LaSalle, based in Italy, after graduating from the Air Force Academy in 1998. CQ: You've gone through this entire [delegate selection] process, which takes quite a bit of effort. What's your motivation for doing that? KJ: My daughter, more than anything else. My daughter is four, and I have another child on the way, November 12th. And I want the Constitution to mean something when she grows up. CQ: What are your big issues here at the convention? KJ: My big issue,...
While we at Bloggers Corner have been congratulating ourselves on being the New Media here at the convention, this morning I got an opportunity to meet the really new media. Two young journalists for the New York Daily News took a break at Bloggers Corner this morning: Kibuchi Banfield, 17 years old, and Marie Ponsot, 11 years old. The Daily News credentialed them to do some free-lance reporting from the convention, and their work appeared in today's edition (second item): We think if the state is offering the services, it should be responsible for getting residents enrolled. She was talking like people are totally independent from the federal government. Plus, schools are busy enough trying to meet testing standards without doing extra work. Maybe older teens can help younger kids get health insurance through a community service project. But an uninsured child under the age of 5 can't be responsible...
While Bloggers Corner stayed relatively quiet this morning, a few people have come by to take advantage of the open chairs here. One of them was Congressman Steve Pearce of New Mexico's 2nd District, who took a few minutes to speak with me today. CQ: Good morning, Congressman. Which district do you represent? SP: New Mexico's 2nd District, the southern district of New Mexico, about 70,000 square miles. It takes about nine hours to drive across it. CQ: What do you think about the chances of Bush taking New Mexico this time around? SP: Chances are very good. Last time we lost by 366 votes, but there was an unprecedented snowstorm on Election Day, and the snowstorm occurred only on the eastern side of the state, where the Republicans are. On the western side of the state, where it's 25% Republican, they didn't have any snow. We lost 10,000 votes...
Just to let you know what my schedule looks like today, I may be appearing on Dennis Prager's show in the next few minutes. We tentatively arranged something yesterday but have yet to firm it up. We'll also be meeting with J.C. Watts in the next few minutes, which should be very interesting indeed. I want to ask him his opinion on the Alan Keyes debacle, which has set tongues to wagging around here, although mostly off the record. Stay tuned ... UPDATE: Both John Hinderaker and I will be on Dennis Prager's show at 2:15....
Former Congressman and Republican activist J. C. Watts visited with a few of us at Bloggers Corner. After his appearance on Hardball along with Zell Miller last night, we anticipated speaking to him about the exchange between Miller and host Chris Matthews, which we eventually discussed. However, Watts spoke at length on a number of issues, especially Republican outreach to black communities. In fact, the interview went into such depth that I think a transcript may run too long. I'll recap and quote where appropriate. We started off discussing GOPAC, the Republican political-action committee dedicated to promoting grassroots growth for the GOP. Watts currently serves as its chairman, and he talked about how the 1994 Republican victory in capturing the House may have made the GOP too "fat and sassy" about its majority. He talked about the need to get away from the idea that Republicans (or anyone) can just...
I met Chris Suellentrop as we both came through security checkpoints together on Monday and were both held up by colleagues having difficulty with the metal detectors. That's how I know Chris actually attended the Republican convention; he's a nice guy and chatted us up for a few minutes while we waited. Because if I had to rely on his reporting to confirm his attendance, I'd have to assume him to be a no-show. In Slate today, Chris writes about a lack of enthusiasm among Republican delegates that has managed to escape my notice: One of the most striking things about watching the Republican National Convention from inside Madison Square Garden has been the lack of enthusiasm among the delegates on the floor. When they formally, and unanimously, nominated George W. Bush as their party's presidential nominee Wednesday at the conclusion of the roll call of the states, the delegates...
If you're wondering why you haven't heard from me, it's because I just walked back to the hotel from Madison Square Garden. For some reason -- I suspect for security considerations -- no unsecured wireless networks were available from my seat at the Garden, and I wasn't about to head back to a television in Bloggers Corner for the President's speech. I'm getting a bite to eat and then I'll review my voice notes and post my thoughts on the main events tonight....
As I stated earlier, I was prevented from live blogging by the sudden lack of an unsecured wireless network in the Garden. Instead, I relied on a digital voice recorder and my fresh memories of the speeches that the Republicans presented as a run-up to George Bush's acceptance speech. After a few preliminaries, we discovered the first, and rather poorly-kept, secret of the evening: former General Tommy Franks had been added to the program. Franks had publicly endorsed Bush for re-election on Tuesday, an unexpected development first reported by the RNC bloggers. That interview seemed like a warm-up to the speech, as many of the same themes that came through in our talk wound up in his speech. I anticipated that Franks would be popular with the crowd, but he was even more successful than I'd have guessed. Franks speaks excellently and offered little in smooth words; he sounded like...
Governor George Pataki opened for President Bush, a spot in the lineup guaranteed him by his position as the highest-ranking Republican in the state of New York. Once again, as on Tuesday night, the Republicans may have been better off by eschewing tradition in this convention and swapping Pataki for Giuliani's Monday-night speech. That arrangement would have allowed one of the weakest speakers in their lineup to play leadoff, where expectations would have been lower, while also putting one of the best speakers in prime time with President Bush, giving a spirited defense of the war on terror. Not that Pataki was bad -- but I would describe his performance, and his voice especially, as weak. At times, at least in the Garden, he was almost inaudible, even though the crowd gave him all their attention. He did manage to mix it up and even became inspiring on occasion, but...
September 3, 2004
As anyone could tell you, this speech carried tremendous expectations for George Bush, and not just because of its national exposure. For one thing, the external expectations of surviving the convention put the onus on the Bush adminstration to ensure security and to eliminate the possibility of having visited another tragedy on New York City. Also, since Bush has a reputation as both a dunderhead and an atrocious public speaker, he needed a flawless delivery and a tone-perfect speech. I think he succeeded admirably on all counts. Not that he's free from all criticism, of course. Most noticeable was the running time of the speech. We had been led to believe that it would be about 45 minutes, about the same run time as his appearance two weeks ago in Saint Paul. Instead, he spoke for almost an hour and a half, and at a couple of points during the...
My analysis would not be complete -- and I'm dangerously low on sleep, so I want to get to 'complete' soon -- without mentioning the disturbances during the evening in the Garden. Three different protestors managed to get by the extraordinarily tight security at the Garden. One man wound up getting arrested before George Bush even spoke, and found himself rapidly escorted from the auditorium. He exposed an undershirt, I believe, with an anti-Bush slogan and started shouting, but it didn't take long (a few seconds) before he got taken out the door. The second and third incidents occurred when Bush spoke to the audience, although if you were watching on TV, you may have missed both. If you recall two times when spontaneous chants of "Four More Years" erupted when it didn't appear that Bush had paused for an applause break, that's when the protests took place. The first...
Just as when I arrived in New York, I wound up overcoming a couple of obstacles getting back out. When I woke up this morning ,I had overslept by over two hours, and I barely had time to get showered and packed so I could catch a cab to JFK. For those who don't know, taking a cab from midtown Manhattan to JFK (in Queens) isn't a quick journey; there's a good reason it's price-fixed at $45. I just got home and haven't even yet unpacked anything but the computer, but I wanted to write about my experience in New York before I take a nap. My last visit to New York was in 1974 when I was eleven years old -- in fact, I think I turned 11 while I was there, or just before. I recall almost nothing about that trip, or at least I didn't before I...
Thanks to Power Line and Instapundit for linking to this new Time Magazine poll taken during the final three days of the convention. Among likely voters, George Bush has opened up a double-digit lead against John Kerry with 60 days left to go to the election: For the first time since the Presidential race became a two person contest last spring, there is a clear leader, the latest TIME poll shows. If the 2004 election for President were held today, 52% of likely voters surveyed would vote for President George W. Bush, 41% would vote for Democratic nominee John Kerry, and 3% would vote for Ralph Nader, according to a new TIME poll conducted from Aug. 31 to Sept. 2. What happened to the bounceless conventions this year? Supposedly this year's election featured an electorate so firmly divided that no one could get a bounce from a convention, and the...
Earlier this week, I posted part of a blog conference we conducted with former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. Fleischer gave us quite a bit of his time, and when I posted it, I had not yet transcribed the rest of the interview. Originally I had intended to simply update the post, but after listening to the recording, I found Fleischer's remarks in the rest of the interview so interesting that I figured it would be a shame to bury them in the archives. Q: What effect do think the 527s have had on this election? A: I think it's almost made a mockery of campaign finance reform. We were warned this was going to happen. The parties are more accountable to the people. These organizations aren't accountable ... People should have seen this coming. Q: Were you surprised that the Swiftboat ads were effective given their lack of...
One of the most fascinating parts of going to a convention has to be the people you meet. I met some very memorable men and women at the RNC in New York, but perhaps no one more memorable or admirable as a man who lives almost around the corner from me in Eagan. Lt. Colonel Joe Repya has served his country in five decades of military action, starting as an infantry officer in Viet Nam. Joe became politically active last year as war grew near in Iraq, when he distributed "Liberate Iraq" yard signs around the Twin Cities in response to signs opposing the war effort sent out by groups like International ANSWER. Joe did more than send out signs -- he also requested a return to active duty, and has traveled to Iraq and met with troops there, working with them to ensure the success of America's mission. In...
September 4, 2004
My Northern Alliance colleague and fellow RNC blogger Hindrocket from Power Line notes a horrendous example of media bias that should shock anyone who reads the news. The Associated Press, one of the primary resources of the mainstream news media, deliberately reported false news regarding Republican reaction to Bill Clinton's emergency bypass operation to make GOP supporters and George Bush look petty and mean-spirited: WEST ALLIS, Wis. - President Bush (news - web sites) on Friday wished Bill Clinton (news - web sites) "best wishes for a swift and speedy recovery." "He's is in our thoughts and prayers," Bush said at a campaign rally. Bush's audience of thousands in West Allis, Wis., booed. Bush did nothing to stop them. Bush offered his wishes while campaigning one day after accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in New York. Clinton was hospitalized in New York after complaining of mild...
In a sign that the Republican base may be more fired up than the Bush-haters on the left, Nielsen Media Research reported that the RNC garnered 3 million more viewers than the Democratic Party's convention in July -- and that viewership at Fox far outstripped the three traditional broadcast networks: Nearly 28 million Americans -- more than a quarter of them watching cable's Fox News Channel alone -- tuned in to see Bush accept his nomination for a second term at the climax of the Republican National Convention on Thursday, according to Nielsen Media Research. Bush's national TV audience topped Kerry's speech at the Democratic convention in July by just over 3 million viewers, among those watching Big Three commercial networks ABC, CBS and NBC and the three leading cable news outlets -- Fox, CNN and MSNBC. The Republican meeting as a whole also drew bigger audiences than the Democrats,...
Justin Webb, the BBC's Washington correspondent, files an odd and cranky report from his time in New York at the Republican National Convention. Webb starts off his time wondering why Republicans decided to host their convention among hostile and rude New Yorkers, and his upturned nose catches even more rain as he continues along: What can the Republicans make of this place? When you talk to them they are polite in a glassy-eyed kind of way. But it is an odd paradox that the Republicans chose to show their solidarity with people who regard them with contempt at best. Most New Yorkers are Democrats but, more importantly, most New Yorkers are cross and busy. I stood on a Manhattan corner this week as the president passed. The police hemmed us in, batons drawn. The helicopters buzzed overhead and the sirens blared. Now on most corners of most cities in the...
The Northern Alliance gang comes back to the Minnesota State Fair again today from noon to 3 pm, and this time we have some heavy-hitting guests! No, I'm not talking about the Los Angeles Dodgers, although that would be pretty darned good, too. I'm talking about Senator Norm Coleman and Congressman Mark Kennedy, two Minnesota politicians who have bright futures with the Republican party. You can catch us on the Internet stream at this link, but make sure you enable pop-up windows or the stream won't work. If you can make it to the Fair, be sure to hang around after the show. The Northern Alliance will have a blogger's party after the show (starting at 3:30) at the Beer Gardens. Like our Keegan's appearances, this is a non-partisan bloggers' event; we just want to hang with Upper Midwestern bloggers regardless of affiliation. If you come to the booth between...
One of the people with whom I had a chance to spend some time was Kevin McCullough, a radio talk-show host in New York as well as a columnist for WorldNetDaily and a blogger to boot. Kevin invited me on his show and I had a great time talking blogs for a quick segment. Kevin wanted me back later, but unfortunately pressing schedules for both of us made that impossible. However, Kevin spent a lot of time at Bloggers Corner and we had some great conversations regarding media and the dawn of the blogosphere's political influence. In yesterday's WND column, Kevin reviews the media response at the RNC and has especially harsh words for Salon and Mark Follman's superficial and transparently self-serving flagellation of the RNC bloggers: On Tuesday, Mark Follman of leftist news website Salon.com released an op-ed that raged of "Internet traffic envy." Follman, obviously put off by...
In a body blow to the Kerry campaign, the AP reports that Newsweek will shortly announce the results of their polling from the end of the week, and that they have the same results as the Time poll released yesterday -- Bush up by 11 points over Kerry: Newsweek, Sept. 2-3, 1,008 RV, MoE +/-3 (Results from late July Newsweek poll in parentheses) Three-way race: George W. Bush-Dick Cheney 52 percent (42) John Kerry-John Edwards, 41 percent (49) Ralph Nader-Peter Camejo, 3 percent (3) Unsure, 4 percent (6) Two-way race: George W. Bush, 54 percent (44) John Kerry, 43 percent (52) Unsure, 3 percent (4) Since their last poll in July, Newsweek finds that a nineteen-point swing has occurred in the presidential race. Kerry had led by eight points in the two-way race and seven in the three-way race. Now Kerry trails by eleven in both models, a tremendous erosion...
CQ reader Bill Shrumm points out an article in today's Boston Herald which emphasizes the point Zell Miller made regarding his extreme dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party -- their repeated hijacking of national-security and homeland defense issues for partisan political advantage. Ann Donlan reports on the Massachussetts' state troopers union push to endorse George Bush in the upcoming election and the thinly-veiled threats coming from state Democrats as a result: The state troopers' union is seriously considering an endorsement of President Bush, a vote that would be an embarrassment for Sen. John F. Kerry and a risky move for the union, according to government and law enforcement sources. "It would be embarrassing for the senator that the state police in his own state aren't supporting him," said one law enforcement source. ... The SPAM union, which represents about 2,000 troopers and sergeants, endorsed Republican Gov. Mitt Romney when he ran...
60 Minutes plans on running an "expose'" on Sunday night regarding George Bush's assignment to the Texas Air National Guard. Ben Barnes, former Lieutenant Governor of Texas, will tell CBS audiences that he arranged for Bush's assignment, expecting that the Bush family would be grateful for the assistance even though no one asked him for his help. CBS also will tie in the fact that Bush had a drinking problem at the time, although Bush himself admitted that years ago. But McQ at QandO (an invaluable neolibertarian blog) wondered about who Ben Barnes is and whether he has any connections to John Kerry. Certainly the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have been tarred with the contributions of Bob Perry, who gave them $200,000 in contributions. That led to all sorts of Rube Goldberg charting at the New York Times, trying to tie Republican policymakers to the Swiftvets. It began to...
My (brand-new) laptop seems to have taken a flying dumpola tonight. It stopped in its tracks and now won't power up. Unfortunately, it had all the keys to my e-mail, which I'm now going to have to retrieve via the Web interface. It may be a while before it gets fixed. I don't expect it to impact my output -- I have a desktop computer that works just fine -- but the laptop certainly was more convenient. My e-mail response in the next few days will be limited, as you might imagine. Be patient and I'll try to get back to everyone....
We had a real treat today at the AM 1280 The Patriot booth today, or I should say, a whole series of treats. The Northern Alliance had a couple of terrific guests and afterwards got together with some great bloggers from the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers, or MOB. (That's a perfect nickname, by the way ...) Our first guest today was Senator Norm Coleman, who not only kept us well-informed about the election and his duties in Congress, but thoroughly captivated the large crowd that gathered in front of our booth. Senator Coleman talked at length about what's at stake in this election and reminded us that we need to stay active in order to get Minnesota to end its 32-year losing streak. He also revealed that he wants to add a blog to his website in order to facilitate communication with his constituents. Hey, Senator Coleman -- if you're...
Matthew Pennington at the AP reports that a State Department counterterrorism official says that the US is closer than ever to catching Osama bin Laden and his top deputies: "If he has a watch, he should be looking at it because the clock is ticking. He will be caught," Joseph Cofer Black, the U.S. State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, told private Geo television network. Asked if concrete progress had been made during the last two months — when Pakistan has arrested dozens of terror suspects including some key al-Qaida operatives — Black said, "Yes, I would say this." Black, who briefed a group of Pakistani journalists after talks with officials here Friday, said he could not predict exactly when bin Laden and other top al-Qaida fugitives would be nabbed. "What I tell people, I would be surprised but not necessarily shocked if we wake up tomorrow and he's been caught...
Some British Muslims apparently will mark the upcoming third anniversary of 9/11 in their own unique way -- by holding a convention celebrating the murder of 3,000 "infidels", according to this MEMRI report: Al-Muhajiroun leader Omar Bakri, a Syrian residing in London, told the paper by phone that the convention would feature Al-Qa'ida "surprises," with the screening of a never-before-shown video. He said that the convention will focus on "the anniversary of the division of the world into two great camps – the camp of faith and the camp of unbelief," and would take place September 11, 2004 from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Bakri added: "On this day, we will talk about the ramifications of these [9/11] operations for Afghanistan and Iraq… We want the world to remember this operation … that lifted the head of the [Muslim] nation." Bakri called 9/11 "a cry of Jihad against unbelief and...
September 5, 2004
In a dramatic reversal highlighting the rapid decline of the John Kerry campaign, the AP's political analyst Ron Fournier reports that George Bush has firmed up at least 237 Electoral College votes at this point in the election: The race is spread over 19 states, with the fiercest competition in Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, according to state polls and interviews with strategists in both parties. Two months before Election Day, the president has 20 states firmly in his column and eight leaning his way, for a total of 237 electoral votes. It takes 270 to win the White House. The Democratic challenger has 11 states plus the District of Columbia in hand, with five states leaning his way. That puts Kerry at 211 electoral votes. Normally, this kind of pre-election tallying would be of little note, except that these results have reversed themselves over the past...
Reuters reports that Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam's #2 on the military side and long suspected of leading the terrorist insurgency in Iraq, has been captured by Iraqi forces in Tikrit: The most-wanted Saddam Hussein aide in Iraq, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was captured in the town of Tikrit on Sunday, Iraq's defense ministry said. The ministry said Ibrahim was captured by members of Iraq's national guard backed by U.S. forces. Tikrit was Saddam's hometown and one of the powerbases of his regime. ... The U.S. military has said Ibrahim was directly involved in organizing and funding attacks on U.S. forces since the fall of Saddam. There was a $10 million bounty on his head, and in a deck of cards issued to U.S. troops to help them identify fugitives, Ibrahim was the King of Clubs. ... Ibrahim was Saddam's number two in the Revolutionary Command Council, and held a senior post...
The New York Times takes a look at the Bush momentum coming out of the Republican convention as George Bush goes stumping across Ohio to firm up his support. John Kerry attacked Bush for raising the price of Medicare even though the benefits have been widely expanded, suggesting that Halliburton should pay for the increases without explaining why. And in the meantime, the Kerry campaign suddenly shifted positions on convention bounces, trying to pass off Bush's sudden upsurge as a passing phenomenon: Fortified by new polls showing him with a clear lead over Senator John Kerry, President Bush talked of economic renewal and tried to blunt Democratic attacks on his economic record as both he and Mr. Kerry campaigned Saturday across northeastern Ohio. "In order to make sure this economy grows, we've got to make sure we keep your taxes low," Mr. Bush said in Kirtland, Ohio, lampooning Mr. Kerry,...
We'll be doing our fourth and final State Fair show today, from noon to 3 pm CT -- in other words, just a couple of minutes! Check us out on our Internet stream if you're not in the local area. We'll be talking homeland security, the election, and other great subjects....
Last week, Leslie Seifert from Newsday contacted me to request my permission to excerpt my convention blogging in order to give their readers a taste of our coverage. I had anticipated that a few media outlets would want to do this, so the request did not especially surprise me. I wrote back and asked them to send me the excerpt they planned to use, and they selected this: One of the challenges we faced yesterday was the lack of beverages available at the Garden . . . I assumed that we would have all of the concession stands open, but they seem to be closed . . . Stepping into the breach to soothe dry throats is Political Grounds, which describes itself as "America's Politically-Incorrect Coffee." They've set up a booth giving away free bottled water and very good cups of coffee to anyone who wants to stop by their...
John Kerry's campaign has now responded to the speakers at the Republican National Conventionby calling them all liars and distorters. Apparently no one is safe from Kerry's poisoned pen, including his first choice for running mate, John McCain. The author of this piece doesn't bother to list opposing arguments or any supporting evidence that the plethora of statements -- their website lists a whopping 143 of them -- are false, misleading, or half-truths, as the title labels them. In fact, they don't even distinguish which is which. McCain comes under fire for these four statements: Bush Has Done A Good Job With Our Allies. 10. Senator John McCain: “My friends in the Democratic Party and I'm fortunate to call many of them my friends assure us they share the conviction that winning the war against terrorism is our government's most important obligation. I don't doubt their sincerity. They emphasize that...
September 6, 2004
For years, the US has been explaining that the threat posed by Islamofascist terror was not limited to al-Qaeda or the Taliban, nor bounded by Afghanistan's borders. Our enemy has broad support, fights on many fronts, and has a pan-Islamic goal of eliminating Western civilization and its influence, starting in Southwest Asia but certainly not stopping there. And, we have insisted, one of the main fronts of this new world war has been Israel. This last lesson has taken the longest to sink in, given the Left's infatuation with the Palestinian cause. They march and holler on behalf of the Palestinians who suffer under occupation, without ever explaining the context of two major wars being launched against Israel through their territory preceding that occupation. And the Left continues to laud Yasser Arafat as a statesman, despite his long track record of terrorism, including the murder of Israeli athletes in Munich...
John Kerry has shaken up his campaign staff after a disastrous August which in two polls has seen him suffer a nineteen-point turnaround, in a year where the electorate supposedly only can shift three or four points overall. However, his new addition to the campaign may raise more eyebrows than confidence in his ability to turn the Kerry campaign around: Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, under pressure to bring new focus to his campaign, added a veteran political strategist to his travelling campaign entourage, rounding out changes to his senior staff. Democratic National Committee General Election Manager John Sasso will become the senior campaign staffer aboard the Kerry campaign plane, a key role in the final weeks leading up to the election. Sasso's résumé includes a stint managing the failed 1988 presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis. In a campaign that already reminds too many people of the Dukakis disaster --...
Today's Boston Globe runs a lengthy article about John Kerry's decision to feature his Viet Nam service as the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. Patrick Healy's report uncovers several interesting nuggets from his in-depth research into this ultimately disastrous strategic choice, but none quite so interesting as this assertion by David McKean, a Kerry advisor: Yet in meetings with Kerry, McKean and other advisers say, they told the Democrat that he had an extraordinary story of heroism to tell Americans. Campaign advisers say they felt sure of two things: Past Vietnam critics like John O'Neill, now a leader of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, would probably resurface, but Kerry and his allies could neutralize the criticism as they had done before. The attacks on Kerry by the swift boat group, however, have stunned many in the camp and left Kerry frustrated that the media have not dismissed the charges...
John Kerry, in an appearance today in Pennsylvania, continued to vacillate on his approach to Iraq as supporters forced him to answer questions on the issue at an appearance on Canonsburg. Kerry flipped back to his earlier, fully anti-war position of the primary campaign and eschewed his assertion last month that he would have gone to war against Saddam regardless of the WMD question: Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry on Monday called the invasion of Iraq "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" and said his goal was to withdraw U.S. troops in his first White House term. Under pressure from some Democrats to change the subject from national security -- regarded by many as President Bush's strongest issue -- Kerry tried to focus exclusively on the economy and other domestic topics at a neighborhood meeting but supporters raised Iraq. The Massachusetts senator, who has said...
In another poll confirming Bush's breakout this week, USA Today shows George Bush leading John Kerry outside the margin of error for the first time in the campaign: President Bush widened his lead over John Kerry after a combative Republican National Convention deepened questions about the Democratic candidate's leadership, especially on terrorism. As the campaign enters its last eight weeks, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday shows Bush at 52%, Kerry at 45% and independent candidate Ralph Nader at 1% among likely voters. Before the convention, Bush led Kerry by 2 percentage points. Just as with the more dramatic Time and Newsweek polls, the real story shows in the poll's internals. Terrorism has moved back to the top of the list of concerns for voters this fall, and Bush has extended his lead over Kerry on that issue by ten full points, to a gap of 27: But...
I mentioned earlier that my laptop crumbled under the strain of my Republican convention blogging; it started malfunctioning on Saturday evening, which (fortunately) happened after the convention, but still presents me with an incredible inconvenience. Since I just bought the computer on July 29th, I presumed that CompUSA would try to do their best to make this right. Unfortunately, that presumption was incorrect. I took the Toshiba S126 laptop back to the CompUSA outlet in Bloomington, MN, where I was told that despite the six-week-old status of the laptop, my only option was to send it back to the manufacturer, despite my having purchased a three-year maintenance agreement from CompUSA. I told the CompUSA clerk that I needed my laptop for my business, which requires me to be mobile, and that being without my laptop would create tremendous difficulties for me. I inquired whether CompUSA could just provide me with...
CQ readers Bandit and Tom "River Rat" Mortenson have completed an extensive analysis of John Kerry's medals during his tour in Viet Nam. Bandit and Mortenson did in-depth research into the qualifications of each award type and the circumstances at each engagement described by Kerry and the other men present at each one. They conclude that all of the medals Kerry received, with the exception of his second Purple Heart, have some taint due to misreporting by Kerry himself. For instance, they deconstruct the first Purple Heart, which we all covered earlier at Captain's Quarters: Action: December 2, 1968 while patrolling in a small foam-filled boat, known as a Boston Whaler or "skimmer" that floats silently on a river without its engines running, with three other men in the darkness of early morning. The mission, apparently, was a training patrol in an area that was known for contraband trafficking. Upon...
Continue reading "Further Analysis Of Kerry's Medals" »
Reuters reported yesterday, to almost no fanfare, that the Iraqi judiciary announced that Saddam Hussein will stand trial within "weeks", after the Iraqi government urged them to expedite the process: Iraq's toppled leader Saddam Hussein and his top aides will go on trial within weeks, Iraqi Minister of State Kasim Daoud says. Daoud told a news conference in Kuwait City on Sunday after talks with top officials that "Saddam Hussein and his band will stand trials within a period of weeks." Asked if the United States will play any role in the trials, he said: "We have barred the Iraqi government from playing a role, how can we allow a foreign faction to have a role in Saddam Hussein's trial? No...Saddam Hussein will be tried by the Iraqi judiciary and it will issue its just sentence against him." I missed this report yesterday. In fact, in reviewing the news feeds...
September 7, 2004
John Kerry has a huge problem with connecting on a personal level to his audiences. It doesn't come naturally with the Boston Brahmin, and every time he tries to make a special effort, it appears forced and unnatural. Yesterday, in West Virginia, his attempt to joke around with the audience turned downright creepy: In West Virginia, Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, gave Kerry a rifle as a gift. Kerry, a self-described gun-owner and hunter, quipped: "I thank you for the gift, but I can't take it to the debate with me." I know that John Kerry doesn't want to assassinate George Bush, but doesn't he think about what he's saying before opening his mouth? Given the level of Bush-hatred and irrationality among the Democrats at the fringe, joking about bringing guns to a debate seems particularly irresponsible this electoral cycle. If assassination jokes are what...
Vladimir Putin, obviously angry from the massacre in Beslan that left hundreds of children dead at the hands of militant Islamists, lashed out at both the European Union and at the US for refusing to take the Chechen insurgents seriously as terrorists rather than freedom fighters. Regarding American policy, Putin charged that the US encourages the ongoing rebellion by maintaining diplomatic ties to the insurgents: Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that mid-level officials in the U.S. government were undermining his country's war on terrorism by supporting Chechen separatists, whom he compared to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. ... But Putin said each time Russia complained to the Bush administration about meetings held between U.S. officials and Chechen separatist representatives, the U.S. response has been "we'll get back to you" or "we reserve the right to talk with anyone we want." Putin blamed what he called a "Cold War...
Two days ago, I wrote that John Kerry called John McCain (and just about everyone else at the Republican Convention) a liar, based on a press release at his website. A number of you wrote to tell me that the page had disappeared from Kerry's website, but it had mysteriously reappeared by the time I checked on it. Well, it has disappeared once more, as the Kerry campaign tries to keep its candidate from infuriating the one man who has tempered the criticism from the right in this electoral cycle. McCain, who constantly refers to his friendship with Kerry, might take the gloves off if Kerry impugns his character as he did with the Viet Nam veterans who have campaigned against Kerry. The campaign made a smart move taking down that list, especially since they never bothered to factually refute even one of the 143 statements they listed as lies,...
Ah, the power of persuasion ... After talking with a manager at the local CompUSA outlet, I convinced them that swapping out my six-week-old lemon of a laptop for a brand-new one would be considered proper customer service, rather than making me wait three weeks while Toshiba searched for the correct parts on the faulty model I brought back. I just picked up the replacement and am testing it out during my lunch break. So far, so good! Looks like I'm back in business. They even gave me my old hard drive, so my data is still intact. The maintenance agreement even starts fresh. All in all, a satisfactory resolution, and one we could have easily reached yesterday had a manager been on duty....
George Bush continued to hammer John Kerry's lack of consistency on the Iraq war, and noticed that Kerry yesterday didn't just change his position -- again -- but stole one from other Democrats: President Bush said Tuesday that rival John Kerry appropriated the anti-war position of one-time presidential candidate Howard Dean in Kerry's latest criticism of the president on the war in Iraq. On Monday, Kerry described the Iraq war as "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." Kerry "woke up yesterday morning with yet another new position, and this one's not even his own; it is that of his one-time rival, Howard Dean," Bush told thousands of supporters at a rally in the Kansas City suburbs. Bush said Kerry "even used the same words Howard Dean did back when he supposedly disagreed with him ... Senator Kerry flip-flops. We were right to make America safer...
One of the most striking actions of the past few days has been the almost-total silence of the American media on the horrific massacre in Beslan, where over 350 people died, mostly children. Mainstream news media outlets have covered this story only in the most superficial manner; they gave much higher prominence, for instance, to the hurricanes in Florida, which killed 17 and did billions of dollars in damage. The biggest outlets that arguably could commit the most resources to the story have instead glossed over the atrocities committed by the Islamist terrorists, preferring to present the nuances of Russian politics rather than a true picture of the animalistic nature of the Beslan mass murderers. For instance, in today's coverage -- mere days after the slaughter of the children in Beslan -- the New York Times prefers to review the anger of the victims' families and its potential political impact...
For months, the Kerry campaign has made the claim (stolen from Howard Dean, naturally) that John Kerry will stand up to lobbyists and special interests and fight for the common folk. This claim, as I noted back in January, is patently ridiculous. Even back then, Kerry had taken over $640,000 in special-interest money throughout his career, including $225,000 for his presidential campaign just to that point. That didn't keep Kerry from assimilating John Edwards' rhetoric on lobbyists and special interests. On their website, Edwards uses his Two Americas theme to rail against lobbyists and their corrupting influence: We still have two governments in America: one for the insiders, the lobbyists, and the special interests, and then whatever is leftover is for you. But in the America you and I build together, we will have one government that works for you—not those insiders, not those lobbyists, not those special interests but...
September 8, 2004
Muckraking author Kitty Kelley, whose hack jobs on the British royal family, Elvis, and Sinatra have been widely panned, turns her guns loose on her next conservative target, George Bush. Kelley's upcoming book, The Family, reportedly contains salacious revelations about cocaine use by W at Camp David which come from his ex-sister-in-law Sharon, who has long been at odds with the Bush family. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reports on the media storm gathering for the book's release: Kitty Kelley's volume on the Bush family won't be published until next week, but the White House communications director yesterday dismissed the book as "garbage" and a Republican National Committee spokeswoman said journalists should treat it as "fiction." With the author booked for numerous television interviews -- including three straight mornings on NBC's "Today," starting Monday -- "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty" is certain to generate media attention...
Fox reports that Canada's obsession with political correctness may wind up endorsing Shari'a law for the nation's Muslim residents: Two parties in a Canadian civil dispute, like a divorce, can opt to use a religious leader as a mediator, and the mediator's decision is binding. Canadian native tribes, Christians and Jews use this system. ... But some Canadian Muslim women fear that Muslim law, or Sharia, will be imposed on them in these civil mediations. Critics say Sharia has been used, or abused, to discriminate against women. And some Canadian Muslim women say they will be badgered into accepting decisions from conservative imams acting as mediators. "They will be oppressed in a sense because they'll be coerced into feeling they need to follow this process of binding arbitration, implementing Sharia. Otherwise they're deemed as blasphemous and labeled by the community and then where else is she to go?" said Iman...
Talk about missing all the important lessons! The Guardian's Richard Norton-Taylor continues the benighted direction of the London Guardian with this incoherent, self-contradictory rant about how the West is losing the terror war because we aren't paying attention to poverty and illiteracy. And guess who the biggest obstacle to peace is, according to Norton-Taylor: It is hard not to conclude that one of the greatest obstacles to the kind of better world Blair says he wants - one with less cause for terrorism, even if terrorists will always be around - is the Bush administration, and notably the likes of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. They have consistently dismissed British interests and embarrassed a prime minister who has attached himself so closely to the president with such little reward. ... We have just witnessed the latest manifestation of the so-called war on terror in the Caucasus. Further east, across the...
Readers of this blog are familiar with the terrific milblog Mudville Gazette, run by Greyhawk, an active-duty member of our armed forces. Greyhawk founded the Milblog ring and together with his fellow milbloggers provides the blogosphere with the true perspective of the fighting man and woman. Greyhawk has received new orders and needs a bit of help to keep his excellent blog going. He'll be doing some fundraising to purchase the equipment needed to continue running Mudville Gazette while on his new assignment. He's also running Blogads and some extra traffic will help him with his sales (I second that!). Make sure you drop by and help Greyhawk keep one of the blogosphere's great resources up and running....
The Kerry campaign and the mainstream media have played up George Bush's Texas Air National Guard service, claiming for months that Bush went AWOL while transferring to Alabama after the Air Force started phasing out the F-102 he flew for years. The Hill, a DC newspaper targeted at the political elite in the nation's capitol and hardly a bastion of conservative thought (although Byron York writes for National Review), has analyzed the new data released by Bush earlier this year, and their analysis shows a much different picture than that painted by Kerry or the media: The future president joined the Guard in May 1968. Almost immediately, he began an extended period of training. Six weeks of basic training. Fifty-three weeks of flight training. Twenty-one weeks of fighter-interceptor training. That was 80 weeks to begin with, and there were other training periods thrown in as well. It was full-time work....
CQ reader Mike Maerten noticed this analysis from the Small Business Survival Committee over at Townhall.com regarding John Kerry's voting record on small-business issues over the past 10 years. Bear in mind my earlier analysis of National Journal's ratings of John Kerry during the Clinton Administration, where his votes skewed more conservative when Bill Clinton occupied the White House than when Republicans held executive power. Even during this more conservative period, John Kerry's voting record displays a remarkable hostility to small businesses: • Of the 101 votes in the U.S. Senate that SBSC has rated since the 103rd Congress Senator Kerry’s record is unsettling. He has voted on the side of small business a mere 13 times out of the 101 votes that SBSC rated during the past decade – giving him a weak 13 percent rating on key small business issues. • Senator Kerry voted against small business 94...
The Bush-Hitler comparisons just keep on coming from the Democrats, who not only have no sense of history but also a tin ear when it comes to attracting centrist voters. The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, the state's Democratic Party franchise, offered bumper stickers to its faithful at their headquarters with the Nazi theme at the forefront: A small stack of bumper stickers at the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party caught the eye of a Minnesota Republican Party official who had stopped by to deliver a letter. "Bush/Cheney -- Most hated world leaders since Hitler," proclaimed the stickers, which also carried the name of a Web site, www.changetheregime.us, according to the Associated Press. The Democrats denied culpability, but the Republican National Committee issued a statement from Sen. Norm Coleman (Minn.) saying, "Someone needs to tell John Kerry that this is not the way we do things in the American heartland." After John Glenn's invocation...
Kitty Kelley's only source for her blockbuster allegation of drug use by George W. Bush at Camp David during his father's administration strenuously denied telling Kelley any such thing, according to Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post. Not only does Sharon Bush, W's ex-sister-in-law, deny alleging the drug use but also categorically states that the accusation is false: Sharon Bush, who is divorced from the president's brother Neil, said in a statement: "I categorically deny that I ever told Kitty Kelley that George W. Bush used cocaine at Camp David or that I ever saw him use cocaine at Camp David. When Kitty Kelley raised drug use at Camp David, I responded by saying something along the lines of, 'Who would say such a thing?' "Although there have been tensions between me and various members of the Bush family, I cannot allow this falsehood to go unchallenged." Further, Sharon Bush...
September 9, 2004
Part-time rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the 21st century reincarnation of Enver Pasha in his military skills, has seen his position erode considerably since his ejection from Najaf and the Imam Ali shrine. The AP's Hamza Hendawi reports that Sadr's once-rabid militia has lost its zeal and the loss of senior members undermines their ability to rebuild: The erosion of some of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's status showed recently when his supporters gathered outside his office here. They chanted a prayer for their leader but showed none of the zeal that marked similar rituals just weeks ago. ... [T]he mood among al-Sadr's followers has become somber. Gone is the swagger of the men loathed and feared by many people here for bringing death and destruction to one of Islam's holiest cities. ... Some al-Sadr aides believe joining the mainstream would transform a charismatic movement into just another political party and cost...
John Kerry's campaign has shrunk the electoral map despite promising for months to come out of the conventions fighting in every area of the country. Their new ad strategy only includes 14 states, possibly adding in another seven next month, according to the AP's political reporters Ron Fournier and Liz Sidoti: After months of pledging to contest President Bush in every region of the country, Sen. John Kerry and Democrats are limiting television advertising to 14 battleground states as the fall campaign opens. The shift bumps GOP-leaning Missouri, Colorado, Arizona and several Southern states off the political playing field — at least for now — and gives Bush reason to consider moving money from some of those states to others that historically trend Democratic. Of course, Kerry's allies in 527s may choose to run ads in the other states, but it's revealing that the campaign has given up on more...
Islamic terrorists have apparently attacked the Australian embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia this morning, killing eight people and again injecting themselves into two election cycles: At least eight people have been killed and about 100 injured in a massive blast outside the Australian embassy in Indonesia's capital, Jakarta. Jakarta's police chief said a suicide car bomb may have caused the blast, and linked it to bomb expert Azahari Husin. ... Police chief General Da'i Bachtiar said police believed the explosion was caused by a car bomb, similar to those used to attack the Marriott Hotel last year and the Bali nightclubs in 2002. Mr Bachtiar said it bore the hallmark of militant Islamic group Jemaah Islamiah (JI), which is widely blamed for both bombings. The BBC's report notes that not only does this bombing attack one of America's staunch allies in the war on terror but also comes on the eve...
Much has been made by George Bush's political opponents about his rejection of the Kyoto accord, limiting the US in greenhouse-gas production, even though the Senate rejected the treaty unanimously during Clinton's term. John Kerry claims it to be one of the primary reasons his favorite country, France, refused to support the US when it came to toppling Saddam Hussein. It's instructive, then, to see how France's Jacques Chirac demonstrates his personal support for global-warming activism in his daily routine. Is France really committed to implementing controls on the unecessary emissions of greenhouse gases? Perhaps the French people are, but Chirac's support only extends to the limits of his beauty sleep: The most direct route from Paris to Moscow by aircraft is to fly due east. Unless you are President Chirac, that is. The French premier likes his sleep so much that, en route to a Black Sea summit with...
CBS News and 60 Minutes claims that it has documents from George Bush's TANG service that prove undue influence had been used to get Bush his excellent ratings. As one of the exhibits, CBS produced this internal memo, dated but unsigned and with no letterhead, stating: "Staudt has obviously pressured Hodges more about Bush. I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job. Harris gave me a message today from Grp regarding Bush's OETR and Staudt is pushing to sugar coat it. Bush wasn't here during rating period and I don't have any feedback from 187th in Alabama either." As Power Line notes and Free Republic first saw, something is terribly amiss with this memo. Take a look at "187th". The suffix is represented in superscript, which in 1973 could only be accomplished with a typesetting device -- which in 1973 would have cost thousands of dollars, making it extremely...
The Labor Department delivered more good news on the economic front today, announcing that the level of new unemployment claims fell last week to 319,000 -- the lowest level since December 2001: For the week ending Sept. 4, new applications for unemployment insurance dropped by a seasonally adjusted 44,000 from the previous week to 319,000, the lowest level since July 3, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The decline of 44,000 was the largest decrease since the week ending Dec. 8, 2001. ... The latest snapshot of the layoffs climate was better than analysts were expecting. They were forecasting a smaller drop of around 17,000 for last week. "We're getting there. When you look at the underlying trend, the jobs picture is improving," said Richard Yamarone, economist at Argus Research Corp. Bill Clinton's advice to Kerry to focus on the economy looks more and more like a losing proposition. The economy...
The son of the officer who supposedly wrote memos in 1972 and 1973 describing political pressure to make George Bush look good in the TANG says that he has suspicions about the authenticity of the documents: The authenticity of newly unearthed memos stating that George W. Bush failed to meet standards of the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War was questioned Thursday by the son of the late officer who reportedly wrote the memos. ... Gary Killian, who served in the Guard with his father and retired as a captain in 1991, said one of the memos, signed by his father, appeared legitimate. But he doubted his father would have written another, unsigned memo which said there was pressure to "sugar coat" Bush's performance review. "It just wouldn't happen," he said. "The only thing that can happen when you keep secret files like that are bad things. ......
Just wanted to give a shout out to my good friends at Power Line, who have been all over the TANG forgeries sent out by CBS news. Keep checking back on this post as they continue to update it with breaking news on this story. Edward R. Murrow still lives; he just took up residence at Power Line after leaving the Tiffany Network in disgust. I just took a peek and saw that their post, The Sixty-First Minute, has over 270 Trackback pings. That has to be some kind of a record, doesn't it?...
Stephen Hayes writes in a column just made public at the Weekly Standard that a group of independent document experts express serious doubts about the authenticity of the memos CBS used as proof of their allegations against the President. Hayes notes that one of the experts is a self-described Kerry supporter who nonetheless says he is "99% sure" that the memos were created well after their dating: DOCUMENTS CITED Wednesday by 60 Minutes in a widely-publicized expose of George W. Bush's National Guard Service are very likely forgeries, according to several experts on document authenticity and typography. The documents--four memos from Killian to himself or his files written in 1972 and 1973--appear to indicate that Bush refused or ignored orders to have a physical exam required to continue flying. CBS News anchor Dan Rather reported the segment and sourced the documents this way: "60 Minutes has obtained a number of...
ABC News and the Washington Post have released the results of their latest polling in the presidential race, and they confirm that John Kerry has headed downhill faster than a runaway eighteen-wheeler burning through its brakes. Kerry, who had led by two points after his convention, now trails by nine among likely voters, 52-43, for an eleven-point freefall. But even more significant than the overall vote result are the underlying polling, which shows how complete Kerry's collapse has been. For instance, 84% of Bush supporters claim to support the President rather than just casting an anti-Kerry vote. Bush's numbers on that question have been remarkably consistent for the past six months. So, too, have Kerry's -- but that should give him no comfort. Only 41% of Kerry's votes are a positive affirmation of his candidacy, while more than half, 55%, plan to vote against Bush rather than for Kerry. And...
Rule #1: Don't have a Caption Contest that finishes on a travel day. Rule #2: Have e-mail backed up before laptop crashes, taking with it the list of winners. Rule #3 ... well, I'm sure if I look around, I can find Rule #3. Anyway, thanks to Bear's e-mail getting rediscovered on my replacement laptop and the patience of all those who entered, I finally have an opportunity to present you with the winners! Since everyone's probably forgotten the picture from two weeks ago, here's a reminder -- a strangely unsettling reminder: Here are the winners! Captain's Award (Watch Your Back 'Cause They'll Turn on You) - Retired Military: John Kerry on Nov 3rd "Theresa, does this mean I won't get to ride on Air Force One?" "Shut up, John. And oh yeah, I filed for divorce, Mr. War Hero." You Have The Conn #1 (In Touch With Joe Average)...
As the documents from CBS get wider dissemination and the questions mount about the typefaces and fonts used, other eyes have noticed other discrepancies. A CQ reader who spent decades in the Air National Guard but who prefers to remain anonymous notices the following problems with the memo purportedly ordering Lt. Bush to submit for a medical exam: 1. The format used in this letter, dated 04 May 1972, which was allegedly prepared/published 16 months prior to Lieutenant Bush’s request for discharge, is completely wrong, as the letter is formatted in a manner that was not used by the Air Force until the very late 1980’s/early 1990’s. 2. The terminology “MEMORANDUM FOR” was never used in the 1970’s. 3. The abbreviations in this letter are incorrectly formatted, in that a period is used after military rank (1st Lt.). According to the Air Force style manual, periods are not used in...
Any hope that the mainstream media would protect its own and ignore the obvious forgeries coming from CBS dies on the pages of tomorrow's Washington Post. Michael Dobbs and Mike Allen report that several news agencies hired documents experts who concluded that the documents were likely faked: After doubts about the documents began circulating on the Internet yesterday morning, The Post contacted several independent experts who said they appeared to have been generated by a word processor. An examination of the documents by The Post shows that they are formatted differently from other Texas Air National Guard documents whose authenticity is not questioned. William Flynn, a forensic document specialist with 35 years of experience in police crime labs and private practice, said the CBS documents raise suspicions because of their use of proportional spacing techniques. Documents generated by the kind of typewriters that were widely used in 1972 space letters...
Drudge reports that CBS has launched an internal investigation into the faked documents that 60 Minutes used to attempt a smear job on George Bush: CBS NEWS executives have launched an internal investigation into whether its premiere news program 60 MINUTES aired fabricated documents relating to Bush's National Guard service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. ... The source, who asked not to be named, described CBSNEWS anchor and 60 MINUTES correspondent Dan Rather as being privately "shell-shocked" by the increasingly likelihood that the documents in question were fraudulent. If true, CBS News still has not updated its web site to inform its readers that the documents may be unreliable. If The Dan was truly "shell-shocked", wouldn't he want to pull the story off the Tiffany Network's web site in order to keep a false story from spreading any further? Failing that, he could at least insist that some mention be...
September 10, 2004
John Kerry had enough problems over the last five weeks trying to keep his head above water after suffering an almost unprecedented meltdown in the polls. CBS' embarassment over the forged documents wouldn't have been anything but an albatross around their already-sinking necks anyway, but the Prowler may have added the millstone that takes them to the bottom. Published shortly after midnight and inaccessible at the moment, The American Spectator column claims that the forged documents came directly from the Kerry campaign: More than six weeks ago, an opposition research staffer for the Democratic National Committee received documents purportedly written by President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard squadron commander, the late Col. Jerry Killian. The oppo researcher claimed the source was "a retired military officer." According to a DNC staffer, the documents were seen by both senior staff members at the DNC, as well as the Kerry campaign....
NOTE: This post has been substantially updated -- see below. The blog Threshold -55 does some crack investigative work on the Chicago Tribune, which appears to be attempting to "disappear" the Killian-memo story from its archives. Beth and Terry explain how the ChiTrib (whose parent, I believe, also owns the LA Times) keys its archives to allow for searches and how that has been manipulated here: A Threshold -55 examination of the Chicago Tribune website reveals that the newspaper appears to have quietly removed all references to a September 10th front page article that called into question President Bush's military service during Vietnam. The article, "Questions Raised About Bush Guard Service" has been completely replaced with a new article titled, "Bush Piloted Guard Trainers Before He Quit". The new one tries to paint the President as a poor flyer who frequently required multiple approaches to land his jet. The removed...
The head of the US Interests Section in Havana has decided to build a replica of a Cuban jail in his back yard as a publicity event to highlight the human-rights abuses of Fidel Castro, apparently sparing no expense for authenticity: The chief U.S. diplomat in Havana built a model of a Cuban prison cell in his backyard to draw attention to the island's human rights record, drawing fierce criticism from the speaker of Cuba's parliament. James Cason, head of the U.S. Interests Section here, presented the structure, a model of what he said is a typical solitary holding cell in a Cuban prison, during a small diplomatic reception at his home Wednesday night. ... A little over six feet high and three feet wide, the holding cell of wood and metal features a drain on the floor for a toilet, a plastic bowl of food, a sheet for a...
Matt Kelley writes a story that I first noticed from Threshold -55 (see below) that attempts to cast aspersions on the flight skills of George Bush while also moving the forgery story forward, which provides a textbook case of burying the lede: George W. Bush began flying a two-seat training jet more frequently and twice required multiple attempts to land a one-seat fighter in the weeks just before he quit flying for the Texas Air National Guard in 1972, his pilot logs show. The logs show Bush flew nine times in T-33 trainers in February and March 1972, including eight times in one week and four of those only as a co-pilot. Bush, then a first lieutenant, flew in T-33s only twice in the previous six months and three times in the year ending July 31, 1971. The records also show Bush required two passes to land an F-102A fighter...
Power Line notes a rare Dan Rather appearance on CNN, where Rather personally vouched for the authenticity of the Killian memos despite all evidence of their fraudulent nature. He also told CNN viewers that there is no need for any investigation, apparently believing that his own personal credibility can make up for the fact that errors in both content and typography unequivocally demonstrate them to be fakes. No transcript is available as of yet, although hopefully CNN will provide one soon. However, it moves the question from "how did CBS allow such obvious and poor forgeries to form the heart of their story" to "how long has Dan Rather been able to bypass any editorial control at CBS"? Because Rather, it would seem from this new statement, forced the story on the air without doing any journalistic work to verify the facts, something that even bloggers routinely do before writing....
Via Instapundit, the CBS meltdown continues. Just hours after Dan Rather told the nation that he personally vouched for the authenticity of the Killian memos due to the preponderance of supporting evidence surrounding them, the "preponderance" told ABC News that he thinks the documents are forged: Retired Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor at the Grd, tells ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "well if he wrote them that's what he felt." Hodges also said he did not see the documents in the 70's and he cannot authenticate the documents or the contents. His personal belief is that the documents have been "computer generated" and are a "fraud". So now we find out that not only did CBS fail to show the documents to the one...
September 11, 2004
Rowan Scarborough at the Washington Times reports this morning that the signatures on the memos CBS produced to bolster its claim of preferential treatment for George Bush during his National Guard duty are forged: Eugene P. Hussey, a certified forensic document examiner in Washington state, said yesterday there is another flaw in the CBS memos. Mr. Hussey studied the known signatures of Col. Killian on Air Force documents, and two signatures on documents dated 1972 and 1973 that aired on "60 Minutes" Wednesday night. "It is my limited opinion that Killian did not sign those documents," Mr. Hussey told The Washington Times. He said he uses the phrase "limited opinion" because he does not have the original documents. He, like other experts interviewed by the press, relied on copies of originals first obtained by CBS. Dan Rather had earlier tried to pre-empt any debate about the documents by producing the...
Each generation shares a "Where were you then" moment, an event so awful that its memory sears itself into the collective psyche and the circumstances surrounding one's first awareness of it can be instantly recalled. For my grandparents, that event was Pearl Harbor, and for my parents it was the assassination of John Kennedy. My generation had two within four years of each other -- the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan and the accidental destruction of the space shuttle Challenger. And yet none of these really quite compares to the impact that 9/11 had on Americans. Perhaps only Pearl Harbor is analogous, but still not quite the same. For the first time in almost 200 years, Americans had suffered massive casualties in an attack on our homeland, something we thought we could defend with our massive Navy and Air Force. But it wasn't just the attack or the deaths; it...
CBS has not yet learned its lesson from the Killian forgery debacle, according to CQ reader Retired Military. RM saw the following notice in the Killeen Daily Herald's on-line user forums, which is the newspaper for the community near Fort Hood. Nancy Lessin and Charley Richardson are scouting for 60 Minutes producers, who want to hear any stories they can find that cast the military in a bad light: Dear Military Families, We received the email below from Leslie Cockburn, a producer for CBS's 60 Minutes. She is looking into the lack of supplies, equipment, maintenance of vehicles/equipment, etc. in Iraq. If you are interested in contacting her, her email is LCCockburn@aol.com and her phone number in Washington DC is 202 342 9488. In Peace and Solidarity, Nancy Lessin and Charley Richardson, for Military Families Speak Out www.mfso.org www.bringthemhomenow.org According to this post, Cockburn's objective approach to CBS News investigations...
Dan Rather interviewed former Texas legislator and Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes in order to establish that Barnes used undue influence to get George Bush into the Texas Air National Guard. Rather didn't mention the fact that Barnes has been a major contributor to the Democrats and to the Kerry campaign; over the past five years, he has generated almost a half-million dollars for the DNC and John Kerry, as I reported earlier. Rather treated Barnes as a reluctant witness instead of the partisan he is. However, CBS News did not always treat Barnes with such kid gloves. New Jersey blogger Just Dan notes that as late as June, CBS looked at Barnes more critically as a potential beneficiary of a John Kerry victory: The Kerry campaign has begun tracking major fundraisers using a Trustee Leader Board, CBS News has learned. While keeping tabs on fundraisers is nothing new, the twist...
It's Friday, so it must be time for another edition of the Captain's Caption Contest! Since I've managed to mess up the timing of the last couple of Caption Contests, I've decided to give John Kerry a rest for this week and take the shots myself. (Besides, his week's going so bad that I don't think we could possibly provide captions that adequately describes the meltdown!) Here's my picture from our hometown newspaper, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which accompanied this article on my RNC blogging: In order to pre-empt an entire series of attacks from one of our regular contributors (and to help promote his book again), this week's guest judge will be Steve Filippini. Steve wrote a hilarious book about his experiences as a technician for alarm companies, so get yourself a copy and check it out! As always, put your best caption entries in the comments section -- NO...
Self-imposed humiliation seems to be a theme for this weekend at Captain's Quarters -- I made myself the focus of your derision in the Caption Contest; Dan Rather swears that documents from 1972 and 1973 with computerized typesetting and talking about pressure coming from retired generals are authentic; and last I looked, John Kerry is still running for president. Instead of fighting the trend, I'm upping the ante by playing golf on Sunday at a fundraiser for Pam Wolf, the Republican candidate for Minnesota State House in District 51B. For a minimal entry fee -- $30 covers everything, including a small donation for Pam's campaign -- you can play nine holes, get a sleeve of golf balls, have a great lunch, and watch the most hilarious activity you've ever seen: Captain Ed playing golf. We're on the Brightwood Hills Golf Course between 1 - 4 PM Sunday, and you can...
John Kerry told the Congressional Black Caucus that the Republicans want to suppress the black vote in November, repeating the canard that a million black votes went uncounted in 2000: "We are not going to stand by and allow another million African American votes to go uncounted in this election," the Democratic presidential nominee told the Congressional Black Caucus. "We are not going to stand by and allow acts of voter suppression, and we're hearing those things again in this election." Kerry has a team of lawyers to examine possible voting problems to try to prevent a repeat of the 2000 election disputes. He also has said he has thousands of lawyers around the country prepared to monitor the polls on election day. "What they did in Florida in 2000, some say they may be planning to do this year in battleground states all across this country," Kerry said. "Well,...
Two days ago, spotters in Beijing reported a large mushroom cloud in an area of North Korea where the Kim Jong-Il regime stations missiles, the Associated Press reports: A large explosion rocked the northern part of North Korea, sending a huge mushroom cloud into the air on an important anniversary of the communist regime, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Sunday. Citing an unidentified source in Beijing, Yonhap said the explosion happened on Thursday in Yanggang province near the border with China. The damage and crater left by the explosion in Kim Hyong Jik county was big enough to be noticed by a satellite, the source said. "We understand that a mushroom-shaped cloud about 2.2 miles to 2.5 miles in diameter was monitored during the explosion," Yonhap quoted an unidentified diplomatic source in Seoul as saying. The timing of the explosion would indicate that it was no accident. The regime...
September 12, 2004
Allah has a picture up that expresses Dan Rather's isolation after the document-forgery debacle that he brought on himself and CBS. Thank Allah for Photoshop and his delicious sense of humor, and while you're at it, give up a Spasebo to The Commissar, who made the image clickable. UPDATE: Yeah, my Russian is almost non-existent. That's why I originally said "goodbye" rather than "thank you" to the Commissar. I fixed it now....
Frustration rarely brings out the best in people. Many times, the stress causes people to get more extreme and lose context for their issues. That's about the only charitable explanation I can make for Ralph Nader's remarks yesterday in remembrance of 9/11, in which he not only asserted that the US has no enemies but that terrorism is overrated: Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader told supporters Saturday that a far larger number of Americans die each year from poverty, hunger, pollution, dangerous jobs or poor access to high-quality health care than terrorism. "Who weeps for these people?" Nader asked before remarking that it would take a press release from al-Qaida to get Democrats and Republicans to pay attention to the nation's social ills. Nader met with about 175 supporters in a Philadelphia church as many Americans observed the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Despite those attacks, Nader...
The Los Angeles Times is the latest mainstream news media source to write about the breakdown of direction in the John Kerry campaign. Matea Gold and Mark Barabak report that panic is rising among Democrats in their candidate's inability to stay on message and the split among his senior advisors that has created a strategy of vacillation: Even as he fights to regain momentum in the presidential race, Sen. John F. Kerry faces a debate among advisors over the tone and content of his message, according to insiders and other Democrats familiar with the campaign's discussions. ... Advisors to Kerry dismiss suggestions their internal debates have hamstrung the campaign, calling them "routine discussions." They maintain that the "fundamentals" of the White House race remain in their favor, arguing that Bush's lukewarm approval ratings and the nation's slow economic recovery create an environment in which Kerry can quickly gain ground. The...
Evelyn Nieves tries her best to rebuild the reputation of Teresa Heinz Kerry in today's Washington Post, offering laughable defenses for her erratic behavior during the campaign. While reading her article, you can almost feel the breeze coming from Nieves's spin: Teresa Heinz Kerry was talking, and so the entire room at the St. Moritz restaurant was dead silent, the back rows leaning forward as if the floor itself were tilted. This held for nearly an hour, the whole time Heinz Kerry spoke. Her voice was so soft that pity the person who coughed. People would turn to the offending noisemaker with faces that said "shush -- or leave." Nieves uses this speech on health-care proposals to paint a picture of an audience enraptured by Teresa's "wonkish" speech. However, a much better explanation is that Heinz Kerry is a poor public speaker, a quality that has not gone unnoticed before,...
The Decatur Daily (Alabama) published an interview this morning with former Air Force Sgt. James Copeland, who insists that he saw George W. Bush doing his required drills at Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Montgomery, AL during the period CBS and Democrats claim he was AWOL: Copeland, who lives in Hartselle, retired from the Air Force on Jan. 31, 1980. He was the disbursement accounting supervisor, a full-time position, for Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Montgomery from Oct. 28, 1971, to Oct. 27, 1975. His office was less than 100 yards from the hangar where Bush performed drills. Rumors say Bush went AWOL while assisting Winton "Red" Blount in an unsuccessful campaign for U.S. Senate focus on 1972 and 1973. Copeland, 65, remembers meeting Bush on two occasions. He does not remember the precise dates. On one occasion, Copeland said, Bush and Lt. Col. John "Bill" Calhoun came...
Russia, reeling from a flurry of terrorist attacks that have left hundreds dead, signalled today that it intends to pursue closer ties to the US rather than Europe based on anti-terrorism priorities, according to Reuters: Russia will revamp its security forces and seek international cooperation to hunt militants in the wake of a school siege which killed more than 300 people nine days ago, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Sunday. ... He added that the United States was best placed to understand Russia's situation because it had also been the target of major attacks, and he said he had discussed the issue with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld twice this week. "In this sense it seems easier to find grounds for an understanding with the United States than with some European states," Ivanov said. France and the Netherlands angered Russia by asking for an explanation of what had happened at the...
The New York Times runs an amazingly balanced analysis from the notoriously partisan R. W. Apple, who usually only comes second to Robert Fisk in blogosphere disdain for his slanted pieces. Today, however, even Apple can't work his magic for John Kerry in a look at how badly the Democrat has stumbled in Ohio, where according to Apple, all indicators point to a great opportunity for Kerry: Everything seemed to be in place for a powerful run by Senator John Kerry in Ohio in the stretch drive after Labor Day. Al Gore lost the state by 175,000 votes in 2000, despite having pulled all his advertising early in October. Ohio has shed 250,000 jobs since George W. Bush became president. Rocked by scandals and an unpopular tax increase, the statehouse Republicans, from Gov. Bob Taft down the line, have been in unaccustomed disarray for weeks. At the end of last...
September 13, 2004
Matt Drudge reports that the Democrats have prepared a new smear on George Bush regarding his National Guard service that is not only pathetic and laughable, but also reveals the incredible ignorance of the military of Bush's opponents: Faster than a CBS eye can blink, dogged Dems are set to take to the airwaves anew hoping to keep questions about President Bush's National Guard duty in play, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. Candidate Kerry apparently has rejected former President Clinton's advice not to get further locked in a 2004 Vietnam quagmire. "George W. Bush's campaign literature claimed that he 'served in the U.S. Air Force.' The only problem? He didn't," slams a new DNC press release set for distribution. ... "George Bush has a clear pattern of lying about his military service," DNC Communications Director Jano Cabrera blasts in the new release. "From 1978 to the present day, George Bush...
Yesterday I had the pleasure to spend the afternoon with the terrific folks behind Pam Wolf's run for the Minnesota state House in District 51B, playing golf at her fundraiser. Despite my golf handicap -- which is my complete lack of talent for the game -- I even managed to make par. (On one hole.) Pam, I found out, is not just a schoolteacher but also a golf instructor. I asked her for a few tips and she said, "Vote Republican." Great advice, especially this year! You couldn't ask for a nicer day to play golf or a nicer group of people to walk a course. Pam's campaign manager, Brian, was my partner for the tournament, and fortunately both of us had the same attitude towards winning. Afterwards, everyone had hamburgers and hotdogs, and chatted about Pam's district, the issues involved, the seeming disappearance of her opponent (Connie Bernardi), and...
As I've been reading the on-line newspapers, especially the New York Times, I've been seeing an ad campaign for something called Retro vs Metro. The ads feature a bad picture of George Bush with the label Retro, and a smiling John Kerry with the label Metro. The first impression this ad gives is that Kerry has co-opted yet another part of Howard Dean's campaign and declared himself a 'metrosexual', or at least a Democratic 527 has done that for him. Another ad laughably asks, "Smarter bombs or smarter kids?", apparently unaware that the two are not mutually exclusive. I looked more into the website and discovered Retrovsmetro.org, a smug, self-congratulatory site that scorns religious expression unless it's superficial, and advances the most bigoted impressions of rural and suburban America as anything you're likely to read anywhere. Here's what the creators have to say about Retro America: On the Retro side...
Now that the entire blogosphere has had a crash course on typography and word processing, CQ reader Jeff C. spotted something interesting at the John Kerry campaign web site. Kerry's campaign has made available two of the three separate citations for the single Silver Star for his engagement of 28 February 1969, the Hyland and Lehman citations (the Zumwalt citation is not provided). Take a look at the first citation in the scan, which is the older Hyland citation. Two odd observations jump out at me. First, the entire citation is typed in italics, which strikes me as strange, for military use. The second oddity, though, is the fact that this document is also typed in a proportional font with fairly obvious kerning. For a demonstration of how that differs from a standard typewriter product, simply look at the Lehman citation on the second page of the PDF, which uses...
In a move that has been widely anticipated, Russian President Vladimir Putin made sweeping changes to the Russian electoral system, citing the massacre in Beslan to excuse the emergency action: The Kremlin leader, speaking in the wake of the hostage crisis in Beslan, told top officials he wanted a new election law to limit the number of political parties and to have full control over nominating regional leaders. ... The president later issued a decree giving the government two weeks to draft proposals to deal with emergencies and a month to prepare "appropriate measures on foreseeing and preventing terrorism in any form." In acting to limit the number of political parties and to force all seats in the Duma to be elected directly from their lists, Putin hopes to contain any radical elements from blocking his legislative programs and causing any disruption in his executive power. It also will have...
After two years of allowing the EU-3 to vacillate on Iranian defiance of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the US has decided to push the Internation Atomic Energy Agency to take Iranian violations to the UN Security Council, where serious economic and military sanctions could result: Buoyed by growing European support, the United States lobbied the U.N. atomic watchdog agency Monday to send Iran before the U.N. Security Council for refusing to freeze work that can produce nuclear weapons. A European diplomat said Washington had revised a resolution originally drafted by France, Germany and Britain, adding an Oct. 31 deadline and toughening language meant to force Iran to dispel all suspicions it is trying to make nuclear arms in violation of treaty commitments. The draft, summarized by the diplomat for The Associated Press, demands "complete, immediate and unrestricted access" to all sites and information requested by the International Atomic Energy Agency...
Ratherbiased.com has an instant transcript of Dan Rather's latest evasion of the charges that he used forgeries in a crude attempt to smear George Bush. After noting, finally, that not all of the critics of the documents are "political partisans", Rather latches onto a very arcane defense in order to establish their authenticity: Rather: Richard katz, a software designer found other indications in the documents. He noticed the lower case l is used in documents instead of the actual numeral one. That would be difficult to reproduce on the computer today. If you were doing this a week ago or a month ago on a normal laser jet printer, it wouldn't work. The font wouldn't be available to you. Really? I could also note that the Selectric had a number 1 as well as the lower-case l, unlike some other typewriters of the time. If you think that authenticates the...
The spot report for John Kerry's Silver Star action has resurfaced at Bandit's Hideout, and it affirms the story told by the Swiftvets while contradicting the later two versions of his citation. Bandit, who has done yeoman work on Kerry's Viet Nam narrative, has posted scans of the two-page document from Newscentral.tv. Fox News reports that this spot-action report was written by Kerry himself, ironically, since it supports the Swiftvet version of events for the engagement. I've transcribed the relevant portion here: ...While troops conducted sweep, PCF 94 and 23 movefauimkiver [sic] towards area from which Army advisor reported gunshots. PCF 43 remained at original ambush site to provide support for troops. PCF 94 and 23 proceeded to VQ 984831 and then turned to return to PCF 43 location. At VQ 984830 a B-40 rocket exploded in water close aboard PCF 94 blowing out window frame. Both units received heavy...
USA Today reports that Wisconsin has started to tip towards George Bush, who has opened an eight-point lead in a state Al Gore carried by a hair in 2000, according to a new USAT/CNN/Gallup poll: President Bush has widened his lead over Democrat John Kerry in the battleground state of Wisconsin, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows. ... The newest poll should hearten Republicans. President Bush holds a lead of 8 percentage points among likely voters and a lead of 4 points among the larger group of registered voters. The week before the Republican National Convention in New York City, Bush held a 3-percentage point lead over his challenger Kerry. Now, that lead has ballooned to 8 points. His edge is within the poll's margin of error. But the momentum in the state in Bush's direction — and the fact he has gotten over the 50% threshold — is troubling to...
Michael Dobbs and Howard Kurtz continue the Washington Post's tough look at the Killian forgeries promoted by CBS and Dan Rather as "authentic", even as late as today, as both their typography and their content clearly show them to be fraudulent. Now their expert witness has recanted his support, leaving Rather twisting in the wind: The lead expert retained by CBS News to examine disputed memos from President Bush's former squadron commander in the National Guard said yesterday that he examined only the late officer's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves. "There's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them," Marcel Matley said in a telephone interview from San Francisco. The main reason, he said, is that they are "copies" that are "far removed" from the originals. That makes two "experts" cited by CBS and Rather who have backpedaled furiously in the face...
Hey, our favorite radio producer has finally decided to hang a shingle for himself in the blogosphere. Make way for Duane's new blog, Radioblogger, which is off to an auspicious start. Duane advises to "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," but in Duane's case, that's poor advice. I've blogrolled him and you'll want to check him out on a regular basis. UPDATE: Don't forget about our other favorite radio guy, too. UPDATE II: Fixed the link to Chumley's site, now that he has gone pro with his hosting ......
September 14, 2004
The New York Times' publisher, Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger, whined to a Kansas State University audience about the tone of public debate yesterday, saying that news organizations attempting to provide objective coverage face unprecedented cynicism: The publisher of The New York Times complained Monday about what he called a cheapening of the public debate but said he thinks news organizations can improve the situation. Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., speaking at Kansas State University, said newspapers and broadcast stations that try to give unbiased information face increased skepticism and even cynicism from the public. Cynicism? You don't say! Sulzberger mentions the Jayson Blair scandal, in which a favored reporter took advantage of a lack of leadership in the newsroom to file a string of fictional reports despite numerous indications of his fraudulent behavior. But Pinch must be suffering from massive self-delusion if he thinks that Jayson Blair is the root of the...
The Washington Post takes a look at a little-discussed phenomenon and explores the ethical and Constitutional implications of the senile voter. Shankar Vendantam uses some disturbing anecdotal evidence to make the point that, in a population skewing older, more voters may simply be incapable of casting a ballot and are vulnerable to manipulation: Florida neurologist Marc Swerdloff was taken aback when one of his patients with advanced dementia voted in the 2000 presidential election. The man thought it was 1942 and Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. The patient's wife revealed that she had escorted her husband into the booth. "I said 'Did he pick?' and she said 'No, I picked for him,' " Swerdloff said. "I felt bad. She essentially voted twice" in the Florida election, which gave George W. Bush a 537-vote victory and the White House. Vedantam indulges in some poor structural composition; the patient's wife didn't cause...
For all you Whiskey fans out there, I've just heard from my globetrotting partner in crime here at Captain's Quarters. She's established herself in a new, undisclosed location and getting caught up with her Internet connection. We should hear from her as early as this weekend ... and believe me, no one will be happier than me!...
After the US finally started talking tough about Iran's nuclear research and development and the EU stiffened its own backbone this past week, the focus shifted to the International Atomic Energy Agency for completion of its investigation and inspection of Iranian nuclear efforts. The West seems to agree in principle to a deadline of October 31 for Iranian compliance with its non-proliferation responsibilities. The IAEA, on the other hand, argues that deadlines are meaningless altogether, revealing the uselessness of the agency and its head, Mohammed ElBaradei, in combating proliferation and its connections to terrorism: The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Tuesday that he cannot guarantee his probe of Iran's suspect nuclear activities will be complete by November, the deadline sought by the United States and its European allies. Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, also repeated that his investigation has not definitely established...
The John Kerry campaign announced another addition to its advisory staff -- Mike McCurry, the former Clinton press secretary whose tenure preceded Joe Lockhart's, another recent addition. In a petty cruelty, Kerry's increasingly overshadowed and overmatched communications director Stephanie Cutter made the announcement: Sen. John Kerry on Tuesday added Bill Clinton's former press secretary, Mike McCurry, to his campaign, picking up yet another adviser who worked for the two-time Democratic presidential winner. McCurry will travel with Kerry as a non-paid senior adviser for the final weeks of the campaign. One senior Kerry aide said McCurry will help keep the candidate's comments focused on his daily message. Another said his role will be to make sure the traveling press corps knows what Kerry is doing and why. Either way, the hiring is an acknowledgment that Kerry and his team have failed to communicate a concise, persuasive argument. McCurry starts Wednesday. It...
ABC Evening News continues to chase down its competitor, CBS, on the Killian forgeries. Tonight, they broadcast an expose that alleges that CBS ignored the advice of several document experts who tried to warn them that the Killian memos were faked: ABC's Brian Ross interviewed the two experts who CBS hired to validate the National Guard documents and reports they ignored concerns they raised prior to the CBS News broadcast. "I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply," Emily Will told Ross. "I did not authenticate anything and I don't want it to be misunderstood that I did," Linda James told Ross. Ross reports 2 experts told ABC News today that even the most advanced typewriter available in 1972 could not have produced the documents. Up to now, we assumed that CBS ran with the forgeries not out of malice as much as avarice and ignorance....
Channel News Asia reports that tomorrow's edition of the German paper Die Welt will publish allegations that Syria used chemical weapons in Darfur: Syria tested chemical weapons on civilians in Sudan's troubled western Darfur region in June and killed dozens of people. The German daily Die Welt newspaper, in an advance release of its Wednesday edition, citing unnamed western security sources, said that injuries apparently caused by chemical arms were found on the bodies of the victims. ... Die Welt said the sources had indicated that the weapons tests were undertaken following a military exercise between Syria and Sudan. Syrian officers were reported to have met in May with Sudanese military leaders in a Khartoum suburb to discuss the possibility of improving cooperation between their armies. According to Die Welt, the Syrians had suggested close cooperation on developing chemical weapons, and it was proposed that the arms be tested on...
September 15, 2004
Drudge links to a Sioux City (IA) Journal interview with Bob Schieffer, host of the CBS show Face the Nation and their longtime Washington correspondent. Schieffer distances himself from both Rather and his network by acknowledging that CBS has to either prove the memos are genuine or withdraw their story: CBS News' Bob Schieffer said Tuesday he hopes the network does more reporting to definitively prove the authenticity of memos 60 Minutes II received about President Bush's service in the Air National Guard. "I think we have to find some way to show our viewers they are not forgeries," Schieffer, CBS' chief Washington correspondent and host of the network's "Face the Nation," said at a news conference in Sioux City. "I don't know how we're going to do that without violating the confidentiality of sources." I believe this is the first attributed source within the Tiffany Network to acknowledge on...
Fox News picks up on a story that was first uncovered by Bandit and River Rat last month. Steve Pitkin, a Viet Nam veteran who testified to wartime atrocities in John Kerry's Winter Soldier investigation, now claims in a sworn affadavit that Kerry and other WS leaders pressured him to lie about war crimes in order to further their cause: Steven Pitkin, an Army combat veteran, told FOX News that Kerry coached him and others to say they had witnessed war crimes, even after Pitkin told Kerry that he had not. "Before they started the camera, they told me, 'We need you to speak about the atrocities that happened over there.' The whole company line that I initially came out and said, I was coached to say that over and over again," Pitkin said. Pitkin's new statements present a problem for Kerry, if true. Kerry has recently tried blowing off...
Jam VanderHei looks to an incident in Green Bay last month, which I noted at the time, to explain Kerry's sudden erosion in Wisconsin and elsewhere. VanderHei explores the underlying issues of Kerry's phoniness on the campaign trail, revealed in his error-filled invocations of sports references, and how the Bush campaign has taken advantage of it with voters: At a campaign event last month, the Democratic presidential nominee called it Lambert Field -- a slip of the tongue carried on television, in papers throughout the state and on ESPN's Web site. That's akin to calling the Yankees the Yankers or the Chicago Bulls the Bells. This is a place where Packers jackets often outnumber sports coats in church and thousands of fans wear a big chunk of yellow foam cheese atop their head with the pride of a new parent. President Bush's warning to terrorists is apropos to the passions...
The Kerry/Edwards campaign has a bad case of Vietnamitis -- no matter what the issue or the debate, they find a way to throw in Vietnam as their rebuttal, usually in a hysterical shriek that could serve as a parody in and of itself. The latest example of these non-sequitur responses came from Dick Cheney's speech yesterday, in which he reminded people of the many positions John Kerry has taken on the Iraq war: Vice President Dick Cheney turned Sen. John Kerry's own words against him Tuesday while criticizing the Democrat for calling the war in Iraq "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." In an echo of a charge President Bush leveled at Kerry last week, Cheney contended that Kerry's position was held early in the primary campaign by Democratic presidential rival Howard Dean. "Sen. Kerry said, and I quote, 'Those who doubted whether Iraq...
Deborah Orin -- one of this blog's favorite columnists -- verifies the after-action report from John Kerry's Silver Star action which I reviewed earlier this week: A newly surfaced document from John Kerry's Navy record says he shot a lone, wounded enemy who was running away in the incident that led to his Silver Star, his highest military decoration. Members of the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth say the report vindicates their claim that Kerry didn't show the kind of valor that merits a Silver Star. The after-action report was obtained from the Navy archives by syndicated TV commentator Mark Hyman of "The Point." A Navy official confirmed its authenticity. This report came from Bandit's review of previously overlooked documents at the Naval Archives, which the intrepid CQ contributor is still reviewing. Expect more revelations if Bandit's track record holds up, and hopefully I can help get the word...
Fox News reported that CBS would be making a statement today at noon ET regarding the forgery fiasco that Dan Rather brought upon the Tiffany Network. If this is their response to the demands for accountability coming from new media and old, then CBS has more problems than just Dan Rather. CBS continues to insist that the memos are genuine, laughably both relying on and disputing the same statement by the octogenarian former secretary of Jerry Killian to authenticate the documents: CBS News continued to defend the legitimacy of its recent story about President Bush's Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard, even as two experts it hired to examine records CBS used told ABC they could not vouch for their veracity. Meanwhile, a former secretary in the guard said Tuesday she believed the documents in question were fake, although they accurately reflected the thoughts of one of Mr....
UPDATE, 6:15 ET: UPDATE, 6:30 ET: UPDATE, 6:40 ET: Okay, CBS didn't release this on their own website, but Drudge got it instead, from CBS News division President Andrew Heyward: We established to our satisfaction that the memos were accurate or we would not have put them on television. There was a great deal of coroborating [sic] evidence from people in a position to know. 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. As Instapundit and Kerryspot have both noted, Heyward not only misspelled "corroborated" (and they sat on this for six-and-a-half hours?), but they pronounce the memos "accurate" and not "authentic". The message: We presented America with fraudulent materials, for which Dan Rather personally vouched. Having spent the past four days desperately seeking anyone to back us up, we've now given...
So, this time I put myself as the big victim of the Caption Contest, and I learned a little something about CQ's readers. You guys are brutal. No wonder I like you! Now that Steve has returned from his two days in training for his job, he's ready to pick the winners of last week's contest. Just to remind everyone of the sex machine at the heart of this effort, here's the picture you all pilloried: Here are the winners! Captain's Award (Good News/Bad News Dept.) - Warren Meyer: To: Cialis customer support I am writing because of the warning on your site. It has been well over 4 hours since I took your product and I still cannot stand up without embarassment... You Have The Conn #1 (Perfect Timing) - Dan The Man: Okay, that looks good. Now all I need is Rather's email address. BBWHWAAAAHWHAAAA! You Have The...
Michael Dobbs continues his excellent work on Rathergate for the Washington Post, breaking the news that the Killian memos came from a Kinko's in Abilene -- just a half-hour drive from an old and disturbed nemesis of George Bush, Bill Burkett: Documents allegedly written by a deceased officer that raised questions about President Bush's service with the Texas Air National Guard bore markings showing they had been faxed to CBS News from a Kinko's copy shop in Abilene, Tex., according to another former Guard officer who was shown the records by the network. ... There is only one Kinko's in Abilene, and it is 21 miles from the Baird, Tex., home of retired Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, who has been named by several news outlets as a possible source for the documents. Robert Strong, who was one of three people interviewed by "60 minutes," said he was shown...
The Post recently did a spin piece on Teresa Heinz Kerry, arguing that the Kerry campaign unfairly kept her under wraps. Unfortunately for both Kerrys, it turns out that the Post was incorrect: Teresa Heinz Kerry, encouraging volunteers as they busily packed supplies Wednesday for hurricane relief efforts in the Caribbean, said she was concerned the effort was too focused on sending clothes instead of essentials like water and electric generators. "Clothing is wonderful, but let them go naked for a while, at least the kids," said Heinz Kerry, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. "Water is necessary, and then generators, and then food, and then clothes." At least this isn't "Shove it" or "Asses of Evil", but it's just as foolish. Who tells people that have just gone through a hurricane that clothing isn't important? Maybe Teresa likes running around naked, but for people who have lost...
September 16, 2004
John Kerry penned his economic plan for the pages of the Wall Street Journal, which made it available through Opinionjournal.com this morning (free registration required). The plan focuses on a series of targeted tax credits intended to bolster his standing among specific demographics, while promising class war on the top 2% of American earners -- who already pay over half of all revenues from income tax. Kerry starts out by trying to convince his readers that the economic expansion currently under way, fueled by the Bush tax cuts, is the worst in 50 years by focusing on job growth. However, the expansion itself as measured by GDP (the normal measurement) actually is the best in 20 years, almost outstripping the Reagan expansion in 1984. Even job growth, a lagging indicator, has improved remarkably this year, although buffeted by a summer of skyrocketing energy prices. One reason that Kerry can claim...
The AP's Nedra Pickler writes an unintentionally hilarious analysis of the Kerry campaign bi-weekly attempt to recast itself, this time in what Pickler and the campaign says is a new direction ... Bush Lies: Kerry has less than seven weeks to take over the lead in the presidential race. Democrats hope a major shift will come from the debates, but his strategy in the meantime is based less on building himself up than on tearing down the president. Bush has enjoyed a lead of about 5 or 6 percentage points in national polls since the Republican National Convention, which portrayed Kerry as a vacillating opportunist. Democrats remained largely positive during their convention five weeks earlier, but now are trying to make the case that Bush has not been honest in his life and his leadership. "It's time we had a president who tells the American people the truth," Kerry said...
Yesterday's news that Bush edged ahead of Kerry in New Jersey, a Democratic stronghold, shocked election observers (via Kerry Spot). However, today's Albany (NY) Times-Union notes an even more ominous turn for Kerry's campaign: Republican President George Bush has gained significantly on challenger John Kerry in Democrat-dominated New York, according to two statewide polls released Wednesday. Bush trails Kerry 47-41 among registered voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. An Aug. 13 poll showed Bush at 35 percent to Kerry's 53. A Marist College poll of registered voters found Kerry leading Bush 48-40 -- a far cry from an April poll that put Kerry ahead 13 points. Democrats outnumber Republicans in New York by a 5-3 advantage. That would translate to 62-38 on a party-line vote. Apparently, the Republican convention and the Kerry meltdown in August has put the Empire State back in play, as Bush has wooed Democrats to...
Sorry for the slow load times. Blogrolling appears to have some problems responding. Please be patient ... UPDATE: Disabled all blogrolls for now. They'll be back soon, I promise, I'm about to appear on Hugh Hewitt -- tune in!...
Via the Ace of Spades, the AP reports -- buried so far in another story that you need an exhumation order to find it -- that Gallup will announce tomorrow that Bush now leads Kerry nationally by 14 points: A new poll from the Pew Research Center said the "bounce" that seemed to propel Bush to a lead just after the Republican convention had disappeared. But he was ahead by double digits in another survey. The Pew poll found the race at 46-46 among registered voters, and 47-46 Bush among likely voters. A Gallup poll being released Friday has Bush up 54-40 in a three-way matchup, with Ralph Nader at 3 percent. We'll see what Gallup's methodology is tomorrow so we can determine how seriously to take this latest result. Having a pollster with Gallup's stature come out with a fourteen-point gap in mid-September has to rock the Democrats, who...
CQ reader Cwiregrass e-mailed me with an intriguing perspective on John Kerry's Senate testimony in 1971. While we all know that Kerry testified that American soldiers and their command routinely participated in atrocities, accusing the US of "murdering" 200,000 Vietnamese every year, what we missed was an early example of Kerry's penchant for rewriting history. In another foreshadowing of Kerry's campaign style, anti-war activist Kerry transferred a sentiment from Great Society Democrat Lyndon Johnson to centrist Republican Richard Nixon. John Kerry testified to the Committee on Foreign Relations of the U. S. Senate on April 22, 1971 accusing U. S troops of Vietnam of war "crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command," The entire official transcript of this hearing is available on C-Span. In addition to this infamous unsubstantiated war-crime statement, with great certainty Kerry also testified that Republican President...
The possibility that the Taiwanese may have an espionage system in the United States has increased, as a career officer in the State Department faces up to five years in prison for illegal travel and contact in Taiwan: A former top-level State Department official illegally took a secret, unauthorized trip to Taiwan last year and met with Taiwanese intelligence officers, according to a criminal complaint. Donald W. Keyser, a 30-year veteran at the State Department, was charged Wednesday with deliberately concealing from his superiors that he took a four-day trip to Taiwan last September. Federal law requires an individual with Keyser's security clearances to report all foreign travel. Keyser would not have been permitted to travel to Taiwan on official business because the United States and Taiwan do not have formal diplomatic relations, according to court papers. ... FBI agents monitoring Keyser's activity in recent months found that he frequently...
Bill Burkett, the man suspected to be the source of the forged Killian memos, wrote a scathing editorial piece for Online Journal as an open letter to George Bush, explicitly calling him a "liar" several times. More to the point of the recent controversy, Burkett made a startling assertion in the body of this op-ed piece: George W. Bush, you may be the president [sic]. But I know that you lied. I know from your files that we have now reassembled, the fact that you did not fulfill your oath, taken when you were commissioned to "obey the orders of the officers appointed over you". I know that you not only lied to the American people in 1994, but have lied consistently since then. Mr. Bush, not every serviceman except you is incompetent. When you failed to show up as ordered for duty, they simply recorded the truth. And the...
September 17, 2004
The AP report from yesterday was only one point off. USA Today reports that a new Gallup poll taken in the aftermath of Rathergate has Bush leading among registered voters by eight points and among likely voters by thirteen: President Bush has surged to a 13-point lead over Sen. John Kerry among likely voters, a new Gallup Poll shows. The 55%-42% match-up is the first statistically significant edge either candidate has held this year. Among registered voters, Bush is ahead 52%-44%. The boost Bush received from the Republican convention has increased rather than dissipated, reshaping a race that for months has been nearly tied. Kerry is facing warnings from Democrats that his campaign is seriously off-track. Gallup finds a statistically significant lead in both categories, which I believe is the first poll to show that so far this year for either candidate. Note that other polls that showed a drift...
The New York Times runs a series of corrections on its Rathergate coverage in today's edition that makes a reader wonder what exactly they got right. They blow a quote and can't fact-check George Herbert Walker Bush's resume, even though the guy turned out to hold a fairly significant job later on. (See: White House, 1989-1993.) But what I find interesting is the quote they blew. David Van Os represents Bill Burkett and also is running for the Texas Supreme Court. Here's what Van Os has to say about forgery: Mr. Van Os posed a hypothetical chain of events in which someone - not Mr. Burkett, he said - reconstructed documents that the preparer believed existed in 1972 or 1973. Mr. Van Os then asked "what difference would even that make" to the "factual reality of where was George W. Bush at the times in question and what was he...
Claudia Rosett, who has dedicated the past year of her life to the UN Oil-For-Food scandal, has uncovered some interesting financial connections between Saddam Hussein and known al-Qaeda associates through Saddam's business contracts. Rosett and George Russell report for Fox News that documents uncovered by the Iraq war and the UNSCAM investigations show deliberate overpayments to companies run by AQ operatives: Now, buried in some of the United Nation’s own confidential documents, clues can be seen that underscore the possibility of just such a Saddam-Al Qaeda link — clues leading to a locked door in this Swiss lakeside resort. Next to that door, a festive sign spells out in gold letters under a green flag that this is the office of MIGA, the Malaysian Swiss Gulf and African Chamber. Registered here 20 years ago as a society to promote business between the Gulf States and Asia, Europe and Africa, MIGA...
The New York Times reports today on the final summation of American arms inspector Charles Duelfer, who concludes that Saddam Hussein had no significant stocks of WMD but had every intention of producing them as soon as UN sanctions were weakened or removed: A new report on Iraq's illicit weapons program is expected to conclude that Saddam Hussein's government had a clear intent to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons if United Nations sanctions were lifted, government officials said Thursday. But, like earlier reports, it finds no evidence that Iraq had begun any large-scale program for weapons production by the time of the American invasion last year, the officials said. The most specific evidence of an illicit weapons program, the officials said, has been uncovered in clandestine labs operated by the Iraqi Intelligence Service, which could have produced small quantities of lethal chemical and biological agents, though probably for use...
The First Mate has another procedure to endure today, a rather routine event in the CQ household these days. I've pirated a wireless connection and working on a few blog details while keeping an eye on the e-mail. I have a great story to tell you about the First Mate. One of our running arguments, as is the case with so many other couples, is about the climate of the house. My wife has a very narrow degree of comfort, as it turns out, which can be a problem in Minnesota. She gets cold when the indoor temperature falls below 72, and warm when it rises above 74 -- about which I tease her unmercifully. For my part, as long as frost isn't forming on the bannister and the plumbing doesn't sweat with condensation, I'm happy. This morning, she told me it was too cold in the house, so I...
In an article sure to raise blood pressure among CBS and Viacom executives, the Houston Chronicle reports that Bill Burkett -- the main suspect in the forgery scam that CBS propogated -- has a long history of false accusations against George Bush: Bill Burkett, who has emerged as a possible CBS source for disputed memos about President Bush's Guard service, has a long history of making charges against Bush and the Texas National Guard. But Burkett's allegations have changed over the years, and have been dismissed as baseless by former Guard colleagues, state legislators and others. Even Burkett has admitted some of his allegations are false. If that last sentence isn't bad enough, Michael Hedges provides the background on those charges which Burkett has yet to acknowledge as false: In an article Burkett wrote for the Internet last year he compared Bush to Hitler and Napoleon as one of "the...
NOTE: This post has a significant update - scroll to bottom ... I knew that the campaign was getting nasty, but a group of Kerry/Edwards supporters hit a new low today when they grabbed a Bush sign from a three-year-old girl and tore it up in front of her. You can see her reaction here, as well as the glee and hatred on the faces of her assailants: The AP caption is the only reporting so far on the incident: Three-year-old Sophia Parlock cries while seated on the shoulders of her father after having her Bush-Cheney sign torn up by Kerry-Edwards supporters on Thursday, Sept. 16, 2004, at the Tri-State Airport in Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards made a brief stop at the airport as he concluded his two-day bus tour to locations in West Virginia and Ohio. Bandit sent this over to me, rightfully disgusted about anyone who...
Rarely if ever have I read an editorial which managed to pack more intellectual dishonesty and partisan spin as the one that the Boston Globe runs in today's edition. The Globe attempts to take the position that everyone should drop the talk about what happened thirty years ago, but then betrays its own position as an anatgonist in that particular catfight. Each paragraph is chock-filled with Terry McAuliffe spin and ignorance in equal measure: UNLESS THE documents used by "60 Minutes" in a broadcast on President Bush's National Guard service were fabricated by a campaign operative, they are part of a story relating to the news judgment at CBS and have little to do with presidential politics. Well, it wouldn't, except that the Kerry campaign, McAuliffe, Tom Harkin, Tom Daschle, and a slew of Democrats rushed to jump onto the story and demand "answers" to the allegations that arose from...
Longtime CQ reader Bob Stakel forwards me a message from his neice's husband, a Major in the Marine Corps who cannot understand why the American media keeps painting such a gloomy picture of their work. I've copied it, unedited, for CQ readers: A thought from Iraq – “Doom & Gloom about Iraq’s future….I don’t see it from where I’m sitting.” [For those of you who haven’t gotten my “Thoughts” before, I’m a Major in the USMC on the Multi-National Corps staff in Baghdad. The analysts and pundits who don’t see what I see on a daily basis, in my opinion, have very little credibility to talk about the situation – especially if they have yet to set foot in Iraq. Everything Americans believe about Iraq is simply perception filtered through one’s latent prejudices until you are face-to-face with reality. If you haven’t seen, or don’t remember, the John Wayne movie,...
ABC News finally located retired National Guard colonel Walter Staudt and interviewed him this afternoon. Andrew Heyward will wish that Dan Rather and the CBS News crew had taken the time to do the same before running with the Killian forgeries: The man cited in media reports as having allegedly pressured others in the Texas Air National Guard to help George W. Bush is speaking out, telling ABC News in an exclusive interview that he never sought special treatment for Bush. Retired Col. Walter Staudt, who was brigadier general of Bush's unit in Texas, interviewed Bush for the Guard position and retired in March 1972. He was mentioned in one of the memos allegedly written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian as having pressured Killian to assist Bush, though Bush supposedly was not meeting Guard standards. "I never pressured anybody about George Bush because I had no reason to," Staudt told...