a Rather insanity defense?

From the Hollywood Reporter:

"And then there was this: 'Ed Murrow's ghost is here. I've seen him and talked to him on the third floor of this building many times late at night. And I can tell you that he's watching over us.'

If Rather has been spending too much time of late yakking with the ghost of Murrow and too little confirming the veracity of his sources, maybe we need to cut the dude a little slack."

With the cBS investigative report still not out but rumored to be very critical of Rather, why not try to get a little sympathy with an insanity (or perhaps senility) defense? You couldn't have a better set up than this.

"But as Rather prepares his final hurrah as the face of CBS News in March, we need to remember that this guy is a towering figure in the TV news pantheon and a man who's earned far more respect than he's getting."

If Rather has indeed "lost it", then the management of cBS needs to get rid of him before he does even more damage (although one can't do much worse than being #3 in a 3-way race). But the fact is that the bogus Bush national guard story was not some minor accident but was tailored and timed to damage the president's re-election hopes.

Rather has been an interesting character to observe but he has become less and less able to control his liberal leanings and his crude attempt to bring down the president and cover up the facts when caught will cause his actions to be linked forever with those of Richard Nixon, a fate he richly deserves.

tough case to plea bargain

From the local bay area ABC affiliate:

"TAMPA - When a young Hillsborough County teacher was accused this summer of having a sexual affair with a 14-year-old student, many people's first reaction to the notorious case was, 'She's crazy.' Tuesday, Debra Lafave's attorney announced that his client would indeed be using an insanity defense.
Lafave, 24, is facing charges of lewd and lascivious behavior, stemming from accusations that the former Greco Middle School teacher had sex with the student both at school and in a car driven by the student's cousin in Ocala. "

I don't see how an insanity defense is going to work in this case. The alleged behavior was clearly planned out and is quite intricate and complex. However, with similar charges pending in two separate jurisdictions (with two different prosecutors), coming up with some sort of a plea bargain that did not involve some substantial incarceration would look to be a longshot.

"One factor the defense might use to invoke an insanity defense is the recent trauma Lafave's family has been through. Her pregnant sister was killed in a high-profile drunk driving accident three years ago, and Lafave was in court for that trial alongside the rest of her family, who also turned out for today's hearing."

Using the unfortunate incident involving her sister as an excuse for not behaving responsibly would certainly be dishonoring the sister's memory. One presumes none of the other family members were affected by that incident in a manner such that they became child sexual predators.

dope smoking at moveon?

After almost a month, the folks at moveon still haven't figured out that their guy lost big. Here is an example of how lame their operation is:

"We're all hearing the stories and wondering what's true and what isn't. But at least two cases of serious problems are accepted beyond doubt:
In Broward County, Florida, electronic voting machines counted backwards: as more people voted, the official vote count went down. [1]"

1. Broward Machines Count Backward, Palm Beach Post, November 5, 2004
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/news/epaper/2004/11/05/a29a_BROWVOTE_1105.html


And if you look at the underlying story in the Palm Beach Post, it indicates that there was a problem when tallies in an individual precinct got over 32,000 for a particular item. Now, at moveon, perhaps 32,000 is a number that is somehow associated with Karl Rove, the generic devil and whipping boy of the liberals these days. A more thoughtful and careful read of this story suggests that the mystery number is most probably 32,768 which happens to be the largest integer which can be stored in 16 bits of data. In most cases, if you add to such a number, it doesn't count down but starts over again from 1 -- a little bit of thinking takes all the mystery out of it.

But nothing that happened or didn't happen in Broward County (where the elections are run by democrats) had any effect on the presidential race or, for that matter, was not fairly easy to understand.

The American people responded to four years of hearing the democrats whine and complain about having the election of 2000 stolen from them by re-electing George W. Bush by a margin so substantial that even John (cry-baby) Kerry and 10,000 lawyers decided it was not worth challenging.

O'Reilly in the twilight zone

Media bad-boy Bill O'Reilly was most recently in the news for a multi-million dollar payoff to a woman who claimed he repeatedly pressed her for phone sex.

Now, O'Reilly moves straight to the twilight zone of reality when he concludes that Dan Rather was smeared relative to his use of forged documents in an attempt to attach George Bush.

O'Reilly's column starts out by noting that Kitty Kelley's attack on Bush, relying primarily on anonymous sources, was featured prominently by the media. So far, so good.

Then, O'Reilly turnes to the Swift Boat Veterans for truth. He points out that "some of the Vietnam vets had valid points" but then states that "more than a few of the accusations against Kerry were simply untrue". and concludes that "[i]t didn't matter though - his war record became a negative." In this case, partly true but the claim that any significant number of the allegations were "simply untrue" is an ongoing fiction created by the liberal media.

O'Reilly then turns to Dan Rather "Right-wing talk radio in particular ... bludgeoned Dan Rather for his role in another smear incident - the charges against President Bush about his National Guard service. Again, Rather was found guilty without a fair hearing. Charges that he intentionally approved bogus documents that made Bush look bad were leveled and widely believed. It was chilling."

These three items are somehow linked in O'Reilly's view of the world. The reality is quite different. As almost everyone else have figured out, the mainstream media were over-the-top in this election cycle to support John Kerry. If that meant publicizing Kitty Kelley's latest output of trash, that was fine. It also included ignoring the Swift Vets as much as possible. Mainstream media coverage of the Swiftees was completely negative and, in many cases, based on attack stories planted by Kerry partisans. The stories of the Swift Vets only gained credibility because they were believable and because Kerry had no adequate response. As far as Rather is concerned, he did himself in by not only attempting to pass off obviously forged documents as real but attempting to cover up the actual facts of the story and attacking his critics.

While the pajama bloggers discovered Rather's documents were bogus within hours, it took Rather over a week and a half to admit that there was anything untoward and, even then, all he would concede was that the documents had not been adequately authenticated before being used in the story. This about documents that had already been proved to be obviously forged to anyone with even marginal eyesight. Rather has never withdrawn his claim that the underlying allegations against Bush are true, regardless of the use of forged documents to make the case and the absence of any credible evidence whatsoever to support it.

And far from smearing Rather, his competitors, Brokaw and Jennings in particular, made statement supporting him showing a continuation of solid liberal bias by the major networks.

With Rather, it gets back to that he either knew the documents were bogus or he should have known it. If he was so unperceptive that he was not aware of his producer's bias, he is a total idiot. But the facts suggest that Rather was aware of the explosive potential of the story and cleared it with his boss (another anti-Bush liberal) before broadcasting it. This is the sign of someone who knows exactly what is going on and is simply covering his a**.

But O'Reilly shouldn't feel sorry for Dan Rather being caught and perhaps lightly punished for using bogus documents in a story and then covering it up. After all, even if Dan is sent packing tomorrow, he will have made a very substantial sum of money and will certainly want for nothing. In fact, I'm sure he would be a shoe-in for a big position in a Kerry administration if, God forbid, Kerry runs in 2008 and wins. Instead, he should look into the case of Steve Gardner who was subject to harassment because he spoke out again John Kerry. And Gardner spoke out based on his personal experiences and his convictions and not, as Rather did, as an attempt to "get" someone he just didn't personally like.

Shame on you, Bill O'Reilly.

payback for criticizing John Kerry

"This is the story of a military veteran whistleblower. He spoke out against someone he thought was dangerous for the nation, talked to local newspapers, and appeared on talk shows. In return, he was vilified by reporters, threatened by a political operative, fired by his company, and now he's broke."

Steve Gardner was brave enough to speak out against John Kerry and, according to this Chicago Sun-Times column, has apparently suffered for it.

Is what's good for Wal-Mart good for the country?

During the 1950's, GM president Charles E. Wilson stated, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." At the time, GM was the largest company in the country as well as the largest employer.

These days, Wal-Mart is the giant of American companies with over 1,000,000 employees and, by itself, counting for an amazing $15 billon of the trade imbalance between the United States and China. From forcing suppliers to lower prices to claims of abuse of employees, Wal-Mart has become quite a controversial operation.

According to Financial Times, "Worries about the sustainability of the US economic recovery were stoked on Sunday after Wal-Mart, the discount retailer that is a bellwether for the country's retail sector, announced that sales grew by only 0.7 per cent in the year to November.

The world's largest retailer had estimated growth of 2 to 4 per cent just 10 days ago. But Wal-Mart revised its estimates down on Saturday evening after disappointing sales on “Black Friday”, the day after Thanksgiving so called because it is traditionally the time retailers move into profit for the year. It is an indicator of spending for the holiday season, when a quarter of annual retail sales are rung up."

and, had Kerry been elected....

"A South Korean woman paralyzed for 20 years is walking again after scientists say they repaired her damaged spine using stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood"

This is one that Michael Moore needs to pick up for his next anti-Bush film -- here are folks all the way in Korea who were so inspired by just the possibility of a Kerry win that they managed to make a paralyzed woman walk using stem cell work. (Of course, the type of stem cells used had nothing to do with the issue the democrats raised during the election but that kind of factual detail would carry no weight (pun intended!) with Moore.)

In fact, Moore could easily take it further; had Kerry actually been elected, these researchers, using Bush-banned type step cells would surely have been able to raise Christopher Reeves from the dead and, thereby, fulfill John Edward's campaign promise.

Hey, with wealthy ambulance-chaser John Edwards in power, the United States could have been able to eliminate all doctors and all medical care; the mere threat of malpractice tort action would surely inspire the Lord to cause all Amercians to be healed. Now, that would have been a plan for John Kerry.

cutting a dragging anchor loose

The announcement from cBS that Dan Rather plans to step down as anchor and managing editor at cBS Evening News leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

The timing, coming before the delayed report of the investigation of the forged documents story, is certainly suspect.

The network indicated that Rather will stay with the network and, believe it or not, will focus his efforts on investigative stories. Doesn't this send a message to the folks looking into the forged doucments case that Rather is not to be touched?

The millions of folks who were outraged by Rather's bias and attempts to cover up the fact of the forgeries are not going to be satisfied by this action.

rewriting history, Clinton style

With the elections over and with Republican victorys across the board and with the liberally-baised mainstream media in retreat after getting caught in their over-the-top support for John Kerry, one might expect that the Clintons would lie low and wait for better times. But no -- instead it appears that the opening of the Clinton library with its paranoid ("that bitch set me up") view of the Clinton scandals has launched a new effort by Clinton partisans to whitewash and sanitize the records regarding the Clintons.

Salon.com has carried water for the Clintons and other liberals since its inception. So loyal are they to the liberal cause that they even publicized a story that had been leaked to them by the anti-Bush staff at the CBS 60 Minutes II operation. The story involved the bogus claim that George Bush relied upon forged documents in claiming in his state of the union message that British intelligence had uncovered information that Saddam Hussein had attempted to puchase uranium in Nigere. CBS itself decided to cancel the story lest it remind viewers of Dan Rather being duped by forged documents regarding Bush's national guard service.

But now we see Salon writer Eric Boehlert showing just how far a liberal writer will carry water for the Clintons.

"History will show that the Clintons were exonerated of all the Whitewater accusations and that the president was acquitted of all charges in the impeachment trial. For refusing to testify before the grand jury to implicate the Clintons in crimes as Starr had demanded, McDougal was held in prison for 18 months, sometimes in solitary confinement. And when she finally did testify, she said she knew of no wrongdoing by them; she was acquitted of all charges in the case."

While it is true that the Clintons were not charged criminally with any Whitewater-related offenses, it is misleading to say the least to characterize what happened as "exoneration". In addition, holding up Susan McDougal as some sort of hero for her failure to cooperate with the grand jury is even worse. McDougal was imprisoned for contempt of court for her unwillingness to testify before the grand jury. Solitary confinement or not, as in all such cases, McDougal had the keys to her own cell -- she simply had to testify to the grand jury (as any American would be expected to do). She was finally released when the grand jury expired. As a result, she never did testify. If she knew of no wrongdoing by the Clintons she had the opportunity to testify to that effect to the grand jury instead of spending 18 months in jail.

John McCain, remember the Keating Five

The Keating Five were five United States senators; Dennis DeConcini, John McCain, Alan Cranston, Don Riegle, and John Glenn. Of these, DeConcini and McCain were republicans the the other three were democrats. These senators received substatial financial contributions from Charles Keating who was busy running Lincoln Savings and Loan as his own presonal piggy bank.

When Keating started getting in trouble with Federal banking regulators in 1987, he called upon the five senators he had "purchased" for help and, initially, he was not disappointed as they stepped in to shield him to some extent from the regulators. Unfortunately for him, Keating's banking operations were so bad that even the five Senators on his side could not change the ultimate course of the investigations which would reveal Keating for the crook that he was. History might have changed had Keating spread a bit more of his money around more generously -- given the amount of money paid to each of the Keating Five, he could certainly have afforded to purchase a quorum.

The story of the Keating Five came out when Keating's house of cards started falling down. Of the five, Alan Cranston was a sick man and had already decided not to run for relection in California. Therefore, he was saddled with most of the blame for the actions of the Keating Five. The remaining senators were given slaps on the wrist.

John Glenn, whose qualification for the Senate appeared to be riding a space capsule, finsished out his career getting another ride into space from NASA justified as a special mission no one had asked for (interestingly at the same time that NASA was attacking the Russians for selling space station trips to "space tourists"; i.e., individuals with inadequate political connections). During the years of the democratic majority in the Senate, Glenn also ran the Investations Committee and helped to make sure nothing was investigated.

Of all the Keating Five, however, John McCain has come out the best of all; turning himself from a political hack taking payoffs from corrupt bankers into a champion of campaign "reform". McCain's particular flavor of campaign reform have made him the darling of the liberal mainstream media since the limits on political speech in "campaign reform" do not apply to media outlets dominated by liberals.

John McCain is to be admired for both his service in Vietnam and saying "no" to John Kerry when Kerry tried to put together the liberal "dream team" ticket of Kerry and McCain. On his signature issue of campaign reform, however, his hands remain dirty.

getting ready for Bill Clinton

It looks like the United Nations may end up being in a position to actually bring in Bill Clinton as a reformer to clean up it's scandal-ridden operations. Incredibly, it is starting to look like John Kerry's best buddy U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan is more corrupt and inept than Clinton.

"UN staff are expected to make an unprecedented vote of no confidence in Secretary-General Kofi Annan, union sources say, after a series of scandals tainted his term in charge of the world body.
Annan has been in the line of fire over a series of scandals including controversy about a UN aid program that investigators say allowed deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to embezzle billions of dollars.

Annan stands accused of obstructing US investigators, especially since his hand-picked official Paul Volcker this week rejected calls from the US Senate to turn over documents from the program and waive UN staff immunity."

Some of Saddam's money has evidently ended up in the pockets of Annan's son and some of it went to buy off friends of John Kerry's other good friend French president Jacques Chiraq who, in return, was adamatly opposed to taking any action that would take power away from Saddam (and end the gravy train of money to his friends).

The Clinton show continues

Another Clinton day -- "Top Clinton administration officials, both Presidents Bush, rock stars and ordinary admirers of Bill Clinton turned out Thursday to pay homage to 'a man of compassion' at the opening of the Clinton Presidential Center."

And Clinton really is like a rock star; a lot of showmanship and not much substance.

We seem to have a lot of "Clinton days" and, after Kerry's loss, this is likely to continue. The media always loved Clinton and his era was the best of times for them; before Drudge broke the Monica Lewinsky story and before the bloggers caught Dan Rather's forged documents story within hours after the story aired.

Clinton likes to state how well the economy did on his watch and how he was able to reduce the federal defecits but a lot of the economic boom was due to the dot com bubble that ultimately burst and the reduction in deficits was due to a major tax increase and savings due to hollowing out the military.

While liberals music acts U2's Bono and The Edge provided the live music for the festivities, one can imagine the words "Don't Worry, Be Happy" which was the real theme of the Clinton years. Don't worry about bin Laden, be happy with Monica. Don't worry about structural weaknesses in the economy, be happy with the runup in stock prices of companies that never made any money (and never would).

Of course, the biggest part of the Clinton "legacy" is scandal but, in the Clinton library, all is spun to Clinton's advantage:

"The Lewinsky matter is covered in an alcove dedicated to the "politics of persecution." The display lumps together Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" and independent counsel Kenneth Starr's Whitewater investigation."

So, in Clinton's imaginative view of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (VRWC), the whole Lewinsky matter is somehow the fault of Newt Gingrich or Ken Starr. In a couple of years, Clinton might even be bold enough to claim that Lewinsky was a plant by the VRWC and one can imagine Clinton claiming "that bitch set me up" in the manner of Washington D.C.'s own Marion Barry.

The library building itself it supposedly styled to represent Clinton's "bridge to the 21st Century" -- see Newsweek's puff piece for an artist rendering. Of course, a lot of folks are seeing a mobile home in the sky. For Clinton, it all make sense; the man who calls himself the first black president with his grand visions is loathed and despised by others as something akin to a petty criminal.

Junk science for Kerry

"Irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 excess votes or more to President George W. Bush in Florida."

It must have been Diebold...

Note, there are no actual "irregularities" that exist or are even claimed by thiese "researchers". Instead, they tell us they took some data and ran it through a computer program and couldn't understand all of the results they got. They explain their lack of understanding as an "irregularity" in the voting results favoring George Bush (of course). These "irregularities" in favor of Bush all happened to occur in democratic counties. Perhaps these folks don't understand but in Florida elections are run by the counties not the state. Therefore, elections in democratic counties are run by democrats.

the final flip-flop?

"Lawyers with John Kerry's presidential campaign are gathering information from Ohio election boards about uncounted ballots and other unresolved issues from last week's election.

Dan Hoffheimer, the statewide counsel for the Kerry campaign, said the goal is to identify any voting problems to prevent them in the future - and quell doubts about the legitimacy of the Ohio election being raised on the Internet."

So we are to believe that Kerry is going to spend some of his $15 million "mad money" fund on improving future elections in Ohio. Sure, and pigs really do fly!

Or maybe it is just that he had all the lawyers with no cases and ....

Kerry's campaign nest egg

"Democratic Party leaders said Wednesday they want to know why Sen. John Kerry ended his presidential campaign with more than $15 million in the bank, money that could have helped Democratic candidates across the country. "

Sounds like this could simply be a bit of "mad money" in case Teresa takes a powder. Teresa is a very ambitious and volatile woman (to put it mildly). Maybe she thinks her husband still has a chance at the brass ring in 2008 (even though very few others think so) or perhaps she might figure things out and act accordingly.

Clinton still doesn't get it

In an interview with ABC's Peter Jennings discussing Ken Starr:

"And still, [there's] not any example of where I ever disgraced this country publicly."

I think that most folks consider Clinton's use of the Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky and his phone calls with Congressmen during episodes with her to be a public disgrace. Using the Clinton parsing method, of course, that kind of stuff would be categorized as a private disgrace not a public one.

And also "No one ever had to try to save people from ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and people in Haiti from a military dictator that was murdering them, and all the other problems I dealt with, while every day, an entire apparatus was devoted to destroying him."

Still blaming others for his own transgressions -- the conspiracy theory that Hillary imagined still exists in their minds.

Ohio To Go Through Statewide Vote Recount After All

"A statewide recount of the presidential vote appears inevitable after a pair of third-party candidates said they have collected enough money to pay for it.
The recount would be conducted after the election results are certified in early December.
Libertarian Michael Badnarik and the Green Party's David Cobb said on Monday they raised more than $150,000 in four days, mostly in small contributions. "

Interesting -- Badnarik and Cobb garnered a total of less than 14,500 votes out of 5.5 million cast but they are able to order up a recount that will cost the state of Ohio about $1.5 million for the bargain price of $113,000.

Perhaps we could ask Bill Clinton to parse the phrase "mostly in small contributions" or ask John Kerry to explain the nuances possible in such a term. Maybe they had 12 guys from the office each throw in $10 and Teresa and/or George Soros took care of the rest. It would be interesting to know who was behind the curtain on this one.

Psychologists blast Rush Limbaugh for mocking traumatized Kerry voters

This looks like an early April Fool's item to me but, coming from Palm Beach county, it could be for real.

"Mental health officials in South Florida blasted Rush Limbaugh on Monday, saying the conservative talk show host' offer of free therapy for traumatized John Kerry voters has made a mockery of a valid psychological problem.
Rush Limbaugh has a way of back-handedly slamming people, said Sheila Cooperman, a licensed clinician with the American Health Association (AHA) who listened Friday as Limbaugh offered to personally treat her patients. He's trying to ridicule the emotional state this presidential election produced in many of us here in Palm Beach County. Who is he to offer therapy?
The Boca Raton News reported last week that more than 30 distraught Kerry supporters in South Florida contacted the non-profit AHA following their candidate's Nov. 3 concession to President Bush. AHA officials have diagnosed the disorder as Post Election Selection Trauma (PEST) and have scheduled the first of several free group therapy sessions for just after Thanksgiving.
Cooperman, whose professional practice is based in Delray Beach, said the election-related symptoms she sees in the Kerry supporters more than quality PEST as a legitimate syndrome or disorder within the trauma spectrum, according to the American Psychiatric Association' Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders."

kerry tops in media support -- no surprise here

In a report dated November 1, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs "John Kerry is getting the most favorable network news coverage of any presidential candidate in the past quarter century. CMPA also reports that George W. Bush’s coverage is highly negative this year, but doesn’t approach the record for bad press held by Ronald Reagan"

Members of the liberal media were the most loyal part of John Kerry's base. The media provided cover for Kerry for months after the Swift Boat Vets started to criticize him. Even after the media could no longer ignore the Swift Vets, the resulting coverage was amazingly onesided; no liberal media outlet ever demanding that Kerry release his Navy records. Instead of responsibly investigating the claims of the Swift Vets, the media launched counterattacks on George Bush's national guard service. After this blew up and actually began to backfire (the Dan Rather forgery incident), ABC, spending large amounts of money, even went so far as to send correspondents to Vietnam to collect information favorable to Kerry. ABC never demanded that Kerry release his records.

When the Kerry campaign criticized the Bush record on the economy, the media responded by citiing all kinds of dire statistics. Amazingly, unemployment rates that were considered positive during the Clinton administration were considered to be signs of an impending depression in the Bush years.

Media coverage of Iraq seemed to also be tailored to support Kerry. Abuse at the Abu Ghraib prision, known to the media in January, was warmed up and presented as news months later. Each individual still picture pose was treated as a separate news story by no less than the Washington Post.

Another friendly Kerry post-mortem

The Boston Globe puts together another discussion of the failures of the Kerry campaign. One of the contributing writers is Kerry-friendly biographer Michael Kranish.

Kranish is also remembered for being the first "reporter" to assist the Kerry campaign by attacking the Swift Boat Veterans in a poorly-researched story that was refuted within a day.

There are a lot of excuses for Kerry's failure. For example, Kerry's comment that he would have authorized the Iraq war despite subsequent knowledge that no weapons of mass destruction had been found is blamed on poor hearing due to (no surprise here) loud noises he encountered during his brief Vietnam service. According to the Globe story "[w]orried advisers briefly considered issuing a clarification, but feared it might further feed Republican efforts to portray Kerry as a "flip-flopper."" No further explanation is given as to how one more flip-flop would have somehow made a difference.

Showing that the Globe can't seem to get even basic stories involving the military correct, the statement is made describing Max Cleland of Georgia. that he had "lost both legs and his right arm in combat". Perhaps the Globe is using some special dictionary but the ordinary definition of "combat" would not include picking up a friendly (but armed) grenade from the ground. (I've always thought the contrast between Kerry who got three purple hearts with no serious wounds or injuries and Cleland who incurred very serious injuries but no purple heart was interesting.)

The discussion of the effect of the Swift Boat Vets suffers from the typical liberal blind spots.

"An angry Kerry summoned longtime friend Thomas J. Vallely, a Bostonian and Silver Star recipient, and told him to "find me Billy Rood." William B. Rood had been present during the action that garnered Kerry the Silver Star the swift boat foes were now calling into question. Rood, an editor at the Chicago Tribune, had refused to speak publicly about the action. He took Kerry's call, though he didn't tell the senator what he planned to do.

On Aug. 22, an article by Rood appeared in the Tribune condemning the swift boat veterans and backing Kerry's version of the event leading to his Silver Star. The story spread, adding to a growing consensus that the campaign against Kerry was based on exaggerated or unproven claims."

Interesting, but while the Rood story was generally more supportive of Kerry's position than it was not, it was hardly definitive. Neither this story (nor any liberal publication I have even seen) ever mentions the fact that Kerry consistently refused to either authorize release of all of his Navy records or the complete version of his Vietnam diaries. In fact, many of the Swift Boat criticisms of Kerry were supported by the limited parts of Kerry's own diaries that were made available. But the Globe doesn't seem to quite get it, seemingly wondering how the Swiftees could have been so effective.

Killer!

half of my kingdom for a blog

Someone else looking for that one little mistake that kept Kerry from winning the election.

Would John Kerry have been elected President if he had used bloggers to respond to the issues raised by the Swift Boat Vets? Daniel Terdiman, writing for Wired, suggests that may be the case.

"When the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacks on John Kerry's war record began to hurt his presidential bid, many felt that he waited too long to respond. One theory is that his campaign was conserving money for later in the race. But some feel he ignored an easy and inexpensive avenue for defending himself: the political blogosphere.
Because popular political blogs like Daily Kos, Atrios, Instapundit and others are widely read, the argument goes, discussions started there can quickly make their way into the national conversation. "

But this theory assumes that Kerry would have wanted the issues raised by the Swiftees to be discussed in the mainstream media and that is clearly not the case. There are two reasons that Kerry did not respond rapidly to the Swiftees; first because he was hoping that no one would pay attention to their charges and second, he really didn't have good responses to the issues that they had raised.

The Swift Vets held their first press conference in early May and garnered no attention from the mainstream media. Kerry had every reason to believe his media backers would continue to ignore the Switees later on.

The substance of the issues raised by the Swift Vets also put Kerry in an awkward position. Many of the allegations were based on inconsistencies between Navy records that had been released and the snippets of Kerry's own Vietnam diaries that he had arranged to have written into a book Tour of Duty. While it is possible that additional infomation related to the allegations of the Swift Vets could have been found in Kerry's unreleased Navy records or the rest of Kerry's own diaries, Kerry refused to provide these materials. It would have been difficult even for Kerry's media backers for them to undertake any kind of responsible "journalistic" style review of the allegations made by the Swift Vets without access to these materials. Also, while the vast majority men who served with Kerry opposed him, he did have a handful of supporters (his "band of brothers") who travelled with Kerry and who appeared to be on the campaign's payroll. But these folks were not made available for interviews.

In fact, once Kerry realized that the attacks of the Swift Vets were hurting him, he arranged for some of his liberal media supports to plant stories attacking the Swiftees. One of the first was by Michael Kranish of the Boston Globe who just coincidentally was writting a book in support of Kerry. Kerry's liberal media supporters in the New York Times and the Associated Press also published one-sides stories attacking the Swift Vets and these were picked up by other media as well.

Although Kerry never addressed the bulk of the allegations made by the Swift Vets, he did have to change his story in two key areas. One, he had to back away from his oft-repeated claim that "seared in his memory" was an incursion he made into Cambodia on Christmas of 1968 that was ordered by Richard Nixon. Of course, Nixon was not even president at that time. Also, Kerry had to conceed that his first purple heart award "may" have been caused by a self-inflicted wound which would, of course, have made it completely invalid.

The fact is that the Swift Vets deserve a lot of the credit for saving the country from a Kerry presidency. These individuals spoke up due to a sense of duty and some have had to endure person attacks at the hands of the Kerry campaign, the democratic party apparatus and liberal reporters. It is nothing short of absurd to think that an earlier airing of the Kerry's weak response to the allegations made by the Swift Vets would have helped Kerry. Even Dan Rather and his team of Kerry partisans couldn't have twisted the facts enough to aid Kerry.

Huh?

CBS Axes Producer for Arafat Cut-In

"CBS News has axed a news producer who cut into prime-time programming Wednesday night to report the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

CBS apologized for the interruption Thursday, saying an “overly aggressive” staffer “jumped the gun on a report that should have been offered to local stations for their late news.” "

So, at CBS it is an immediate firing offense to interrupt an entertainment program with a legitimate factual news story but it is apparently okay to convert a news broadcast into a fictional presentation by introducing obviously forged documents and treating them as if they were real. It is also okay to coordinate a news program's product with the democratic party.

I'm also sure it would have been okay to interrupt the CSI show a couple of weeks ago to report something damaging to the Bush administration, even if it turned out to be untrue.

election fraud claims

There are a lot of theories going around that have no merit at all. Folks pretending to be Dan Rather are out there picking up some numbers and making something up to go along with their preconceived conclusions but even Rather himself seems to have stayed away from this one.

My favorite is the one that says that the election is invalid because the results did not agree with the exit polls. That one turns logic on its head. Even the folks doing the exit polling are a bit embarassed by the inaccuracy of their work.

The folks looking at voter registrations and expecting them to closely match the election results don't seem to even understand that registering with one party is not a committment to vote the party line in every election. In fact, in Florida, there is no way to vote for all candidates of a particular party as one selection.

This has gone almost as far as it can. I guess the next step will be someone producing a picture of some aliens altering voting results. Maybe that will be enough to end it.

As far as reality, one can only assume than if John Kerry's army of 10,000 lawyers had found anything worth complaining or litigating about they would certainly have done so.

what has he been smoking?

As reported in the Washington Post:

"Democrat John F. Kerry plans to use his Senate seat and long lists of supporters to remain a major voice in American politics despite losing the presidential race last Tuesday, and he is assessing the feasibility of trying again in 2008, friends and aides said yesterday.
Kerry will attend a post-election lame-duck Senate session that begins next week and has said he is 'fired up' to play a highly visible role, the friends and aides said. "

Perhaps the results of the election have not quite sunk in to Mr. Kerry. In addition to losing the race to George Bush (despite an unprescedented effort in his favor by the mainstream media, the Hollywood kooks, and the likes of George Soros), Mr. Kerry's party also lost four senate seats. This will likely translate into fewer choice committee assignments for the remaining democrats. Are they really going to be happy to see Kerry showing up after missing the first two years of his term?

"Bob Shrum, Kerry's chief campaign consultant, told reporters during a Democratic panel yesterday that Kerry "will not do what Al Gore did after the last election -- he will not disappear."

"He will be active and vocal," Shrum said. "He has one of the most powerful lists in the Democratic Party and one of the most powerful fundraising bases in the Democratic Party, and I think he intends to use it to speak out." "

Of course, more of Shrum's record in presidential contests (0 for 8 if I recall correctly) is just what the republicans are looking for.

But I guess some democrats are a bit more realistic:

"Another Democrat involved in Kerry's campaign strategy -- who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, in order to be more candid -- said: "I can't imagine people are going to say, 'It worked pretty well last time. This is what we need next time.' " "

interesting point made by George Will

" On election night, news organizations were very hesitant to call a winner in Ohio, where Bush led all night and won by 136,483 votes. They were less hesitant about calling Pennsylvania, where Kerry led all night and won by only 127,927 votes. "

I had thought about this myself. It did seem that calls were made for Kerry relatively earlier than those made for Bush.

still getting no respect

Sometimes the knowledge of success is all the reward that one gets from a productive endeavor. In the case of the Swift Boat Veterans for truth -- http://www.swiftvets.com -- the liberals have, by and large, begrudgingly conceded their effectiveness. But the liberals and the mainstream media they control have still not accepted the validity of the charges made by the Swifties.

Newsweek's view of the campaign acknowledges the effectiveness of the Swifties but repeats much of the liberals mantra in failing to admit the validity of the allegations

Newsweek reports:

"The attack of the Swift Boat vets did not catch the Kerry campaign by surprise, not entirely at least. Kerry's operatives had worried from the beginning that some right-wing group would try to use his old Vietnam antiwar speeches against him. In the summer of 2003 the Kerry campaign had quietly made some inquiries with C-Span, asking the cable network not to release old videotapes of Kerry as an angry young vet fulminating about war crimes and atrocities. Portions of his sometimes overwrought testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 could be twisted into an attack ad, the Kerryites feared. They were told not to worry: the rules prohibited the use of the tapes for political advertising."

It seems outrageous to me that there should be restrictions on media coverage of a public event that was either completely funded by (or subsidized) by the taxpayers.

In any event, the first press conference of the Swift Vets was not in the midst of the campaign but back on May 4. I'm sure that the fact that the Swifties received almost no media coverage of this event heartened and enboldened John Kerry considerably. At that point in time, Kerry could certainly have appologized for his rash statments as a young man; certainly George W. Bush had done something in a similar vein regarding some of his conduct as a young man.

Newsweek also reports:

"The Swift Boat ads—a first round charging that Kerry had lied to win his medals, then a second batch accusing him of betraying his mates by calling them war criminals—were misleading, but they were very effective. The Kerry high command failed to see the potential for damage until it was too late.

The old-fashioned mainstream press was ignoring the claims of the Swifties"

But the fact is that Kerry was put in a difficult position. While the mainstream media were protecting him as best they could by not publicizing the allegations made by the Swifties, were Kerry to openly and directly challenge the allegations, the media would have had to at least create the apperance of looking into both sides of the issue (except maybe for Dan Rather and CBS) and that would certainly have included demands for Kerry to authorize release of all of his service records (which George W. Bush had done long before).

One can only conclude the the Kerry campaign made the conscious decision to ignore the Swift Boat vets for two reasons, (1) hoping that their allegations would not become a major issue and (2) because directly responding would have surely required releasing Kerry's Navy records and maybe those portions of his Vietnam diaries that he had also previously refused to release.

Instead, the strategy became to arrange for stories attacking the Swifties to be published in friendly liberal publications. "The Kerry campaign did work closely with the major dailies, feeding documents to The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe to debunk the Swift Boat vets. The articles were mostly (though not entirely) supportive of Kerry, but it was too late. The old media may have been more responsible than the new media, but they were also largely irrelevant." The irony here is that these newspapers published stories attacking the Swift Boat Vets but never published anything about the underlying allegations. Someone only exposed to the Boston Globe, for example, would have read a story written by a Kerry-friendly reporter attacking one of the Swifties without any knowledge of why he was being attacked. The transparency of the liberal bias was obvious!

The Kerry campaign and the DNC had been aggressively attacking Bush's Air National Guard service for months. Although Bush never claimed his Guard service entitled him to the Presidency (contrary to Kerry's claim regarding his Vietnam service), the libera media actually invested much more time and effort in exploring Bush's service than it did Kerry's.

The maximum extent of media bias regarding the service records of Bush and Kerry was Dan Rather and CBS.

"In mid-September CBS's "60 Minutes II" aired a sensational report, claiming to have obtained long-lost records of George W. Bush's superior officer in the Texas Air National Guard complaining that Bush had shirked his duty. For a moment it looked as if the tables had turned, and Bush would have to endure an uncomfortable round of questions about his spotty attendance record in the stateside guard while Kerry had been dodging bullets in the Mekong Delta. But the moment did not last. Even before the "60 Minutes" segment finished airing, a blogger was up on the Web questioning whether the documents were fakes. The story quickly turned from Bush's war record to Dan Rather's carelessness and overzealousness—and even to the question of whether CBS had been secretly working with the Democrats to smear Bush. Rather and CBS kept the story alive by refusing to admit error."

According to Newsweek, "[t]he Democratic involvement in the story was minimal and essentially meaningless" , but how could they know that when the CBS internal investigation into the whole matter, including the coordination with CBS News and the Kerry campaign, has yet to be released.

But Newsweek cannot control it's liberal biase concluding as regards Rathergate, "the whole flap diverted attention away from questions, never entirely resolved, about whether Bush had skipped out on his guard service." What is known for certain about Bush's service is that he received an honorable discharge on a timely basis. What is known about Kerry's service is that he has disclosed an honorable discharge that was evidently granted through some sort of panel review several years after his time in the service should have ended. This observation was never of interest to any of the liberals in the media.

The bottom line is that the Swift Vets, using a total budget that would be pocket change for the likes of George Soros or the other billionaire backers of the likes of moveon, had a tremendous effect on the election results. They can be proud of what they accomplished for their country.

Liberals eat one of their own

For anyone who voted for Bush but found themselves at least somewhat swayed towards Kerry by the positive media coverage of his campaign or anyone who voted for Kerry due to his support by the liberal mainstream media, the Newsweek coverage of the election is a must read.

Although there were hints buried in the coverage of the campaign that there was a certain amount of chaos in Kerry's operation and occasional notes about "eruptions" of his wife Teresa, by and large the mainstream media coverage of the Kerry campaign apparatus was very positive. On the other hand, the Bush campaign was treated like the evil empire with Karl Rove as the designated "Darth Vader" of the Bush team.

The reality, according to Newsweek is that the Kerry campaign was in considerable disarray with staffing issues and the candidate unable to decide what his positions were ("Flipper?"). As far as Teresa was concerned, her burning ambition to be first lady was apparently not matched by an understanding of the extent to which she needed to interact with "common folk", at least until the election is won. One is left with the feeling that she felt that her two well-selected marriages was all that she should be expected to accomplish.

Being President of the United States is a difficult and challenging management job. The cornerstone of Kerry's case as to why he should be elected was the four months he spent in Vietnam leading a handful of crew members on a small boat. And, while the Swift Boat Veterans (including all of Kerry's chain of command) joined in declaring him unfit for command, efforts of the Swifties were ignored (and derided to the extent possible) by the liberal media. But here, some 30+ years later, we have a John Kerry that was unable to command his own campaign staff.

What was worse, however, was that the media assigned to report on the Kerry campaign were biased in favor of Kerry and so did not report on the utter chaos and mismanagement that was apparently endemic in the campaign operation. According to Newsweek (no friends of the Bush administration):

"Though they groused about the campaign's tardiness and loved to gossip about Teresa, the reporters on the Kerry tour were at the same time somewhat protective of the candidate and reluctant to pass on rumors. Kerry might not be the warmest or jolliest politician, but he was still their candidate, the man they spent day and night following around the country, and whom some of them might follow right to the most prestigious beat in Washington, the White House. No hint of the Kerry-Heinz domestic discord crept into their stories, and the reporters sometimes gave the candidate the benefit of the doubt when he rambled or talked in circles."

While the understanding between the campaigns and Newsweek was that the Newsweek reporting would not be published until after the election, there was no excuse for the failure of the reporters assigned to the Kerry campaign to make the public aware of the serious management and organizational problems of the Kerry campaign, problems that would certainly grown substantially had Kerry been elected.

60 Minutes II, double bias

"Players involved in the notorious 60 Minutes II story, reported by Dan Rather, which employed dubious documents regarding President Bush's National Guard service, may have been rooting for a John Kerry victory. No, it wasn't that old bugaboo liberal media bias as much as it was a bias toward saving their own skins. The report from an internal investigation into the documents mess was purposely being held until after the election."

The story goes on to say that the guilty parties in the forged documents case expected a kinder fate if Kerry had won.

Of course, the folks all have the traditional liberal bias as well as this new bias. In any event, delaying the investigative report until after the election could only have been intended to help Kerry as well. The fact that the "independent" panel was apparently willing to agree with that timetable suggests their "independence" should be questioned.

In fact, the Republican triumphs in the election might make it less likely that there will be any consequences for the anti-Bush forgery story since CBS senior management may be inclined to double the efforts to damage Bush in his second term.

Someone who took P. Diddy a bit too seriously

"Veal apparently was distraught over President Bush's re-election, Newsday reported Saturday on its Web site edition, citing an unnamed police source. The newspaper also said the man was a registered Democrat who opposed the war in Iraq."

If he had read the Newsweek articles on how badly the Kerry campaign was run -- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6420967/site/newsweek/ -- he might have concluded the country was better of with adults remaining in charge.

Fall colors in central Florida (II)

Fall colors in central Florida

From Michael Moore's pep talk for the losers

"Finally and most importantly, over 55 million Americans voted for the candidate dubbed 'The #1 Liberal in the Senate.' "

An interesting observation except that Kerry spent the entire campaign trying to avoid being tagged with the "liberal" label.

another salon.com rant from a democratic party intellectual

"Ayelet Waldman is the author of 'Daughter's Keeper' and the Mommy-Track Mysteries."

"I'm hard at work drafting Articles of Secession for the Republic of California. "

Maybe she can start with the work Jefferson Davis did back in 1861 -- no need to reinvent the wheel.

from the sore loser section -- here is one that needs a visit from the Brain Fairy

From the rantings at salon.com

"Mark Crispin Miller is a media critic, professor of communications at New York University, and author, most recently, of 'Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order.'"

"First of all, this election was definitely rigged. I have no doubt about it. It's a statistical impossibility that Bush got 8 million more votes than he got last time. In 2000, he got 15 million votes from right-wing Christians, and there are approximately 19 million of them in the country. They were eager to get the other 4 million. That was pretty much Karl Rove's strategy to get Bush elected. "

One has to assume here that Karl Rove also somehow bought off Kerry's 10,000 lawyers and who knows how many poll watchers. But it gets better...

"And that's not even talking about Florida, which is about as Democratic a state as Guatemala used to be."

Hmmm -- I wonder how long it has been since this guy was outside of his padded cell and actually in Florida? For that matter, when did Guatemala join the United States?

But the best is yet to come....

"I actually got invited to a Kerry fundraiser so I could talk to him about it. I raised the issue directly with him and with Teresa. Teresa was really indignant and really concerned, but Kerry just looked down at me -- he's about 9 feet tall -- and I could tell it just didn't register."

Yes, this explains it all -- Kerry took a dive in favor of Bush and even Teresa couldn't prevent it. I wonder if this guy discussed the Guatemala vote with her.

Naivete on the left coast

Here from the Tacoma News Tribune

"Election dust is mostly settled. It is time to answer Rodney King’s profound question, “Can’t we just all get along?” A good start would involve John Kerry, the junior senator from Massachusetts, releasing the details of his secret plans.
The News Tribune endorsed Kerry based on his strategies for fixing the economy, unemployment, the medical care crisis, the flu vaccine shortage, the pending failure of social security, emigration, and most of all the smeg-up in Iraq. Regrettably he kept the details to himself.
At this juncture it is almost un-American to sequester vital recovery details from President Bush. Keeping these details hidden away will not help heal the nation, fix her problems or move the fractured masses toward a group hug."

Are these folks for real? Did they really believe that Kerry actually had real plans to address these issues? What are they going to think when they find out the truth about the Tooth Fairy and Santa Clause?

Still not getting it

"They ran a Vietnam war hero on a moderate platform of deficit reduction and reuniting a divided America, against a president facing middling approval ratings, the most job losses in 70 years and a bloody, uncertain war in Iraq. Yet the Democrats narrowly lost another bid for the presidency and relinquished four seats in the U.S. Senate, a buffeting that has rendered them virtually powerless in national affairs and brings into question, at least for the time being, the fitness of the two-party system."

And here lies the problem. Only in the minds of the liberal media establishment (including the St. Petersburg Times from which this was extracted) can John Kerry be characterized as above with a straight face. The credibility of the war hero claim has been very successfully challenged by the Swift Boat Veterans; Kerry and his media supports never credibly addressed the issues raised by the Swift Boat Vets.

Also, while Kerry may have claimed to be supporting a "moderate" platform, his rating as the #1 liberal in the Senate, even to the left of Ted Kennedy stuck with him and could not just be imagined away.

Kerry's entire approach was to divide America; his crude attacks on the President were so broad that they spilled over into attacks on American soldiers involved in fighting a war. Although a member of the super, super rich upper crust, Kerry couldn't help himself from the class warfare approach that typifies the democratic party.

Election comments II

I don't think that Kerry's issues resonated with voters who were not already going to vote for him.

Claiming that the economy was in terrible shape when it is not didn't work; perhaps Kerry was lulled by liberal media claims into believing that a 5.4% unemployment rate in a Republican administration was terrible although the same 5.4% unemployment rate under Clinton was considered to be favorable to the President.

As far as Iraq is concerned, it really does not have a large impact on the day-to-day lives of most Americans. Perhaps the super-negative coverage got readers of the liberal newspapers excited but, again, these folks were already in Kerry's base. The families of men and women in the service are mostly red-states and supported Bush by a wide margin. Perhaps the handful or so of service personnel and/or families supporting Kerry found by the liberal media led Kerry and his handlers to believe there were many more.

Election comments

Here in central Florida, the election process seemed to run quite smootly. There were no lines to speak of and no sign of any of Michael Moore's hired photographers or Kerry's claimed 10,000 lawyers.

It was good that Kerry decided to concede instead of attempting to litigate his way to victory. A bit of back-of-the-envelope calculation (as I presented earlier today) was probably enough to convince him that he had no realistic chance to prevail and there were also a lot of military ballots that remained to be counted and those would have broken heavily against him.

Kerry's concession speech was quite well done. Giving it, he seemed to be a real person, unlike the other times I have seen him in which he seemed to be like an actor reciting his lines.

I think that the liberal bias of the mainstream media in their support for Kerry may have hurt him as well as helped him. It is likely that most of those folks who believe Dan Rather is an unbiased reporter are concentrated in the blue states and those people were going to support Kerry in any event. Perhaps Kerry impressed the reporters covering his staged "goose hunt" with his outdoor and hunting skills but I don't believe that went over at all well with real hunters.

Also, while the liberal media seemed to be obsessed with Karl Rove and his claimed "control" of Bush, Bush always seemed to be a "real" person and comfortable with himself. It was Kerry who seemed to be "windsurfing" on issues based on the advise of his compaign team of the week.

But I suspect that the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth deserve a lot of credit for the outcome of this election. As Kerry used his short tour of service in Vietnam commanding a handful of men on a small boat as the centerpiece of his campaign, the details of this service were fair game. But Kerry never responded to the issues the Swift Vets raised about his character. In that regard, the liberal media provided cover for Kerry; never questioning him about his service record or demanding that he release his service records. Mainstream media coverage of the Swift Vets was limited to attacking them. But the story told by the Swift Vets got out anyhow through the Internet, conservative talk radio and the book "Unfit for Command". Despite the efforts of the liberal media to attack the story told by the Swift Vets, it reasonated with a lot of voters.

A little Ohio Research

If you look at the listing of Ohio provisional ballots by county http://election.sos.state.oh.us/ProvBallots.htm -- as of 10:35am, there are a total of 135,149 listed with 10 counties showing no report. If you look at the 2000 census figures by county for Ohio, those counties account for 1,597,190 of the total state population of 11,353,140. If you project provisional ballots for those counties at the same ratio as the other counties, you would come up with an estimate of 22,126 additional provisional ballots for a total of 157,275.

Assuming the above figures are accurate and that 90% of the provision ballots are valid and can be counted, for Kerry to prevail, he would have to capture 97.8% of the provisional ballots.

It looks to me like Kerry should do the honorable thing and concede but this will be his one and only shot at the brass ring so he may not go easily.

Kerry's free ride

Here it is election day and John Kerry has still not released his military service records.

George Bush long ago executed a Standard Form 180 releasing all of his military records. Not content with what those records revealed, the liberal mainstream media have continued to invest significant time and effort to uncover other documents which might conceivably exist. In the case of CBS, the network was so anxious to damage Bush by virtue of his military service that it accepted without question documents that were clearly forged.

When it comes to John Kerry, however, the media approach has been completely different. Since Kerry has used his brief military service as the cornerstone of his campaign to be president, one would think that the media would be motivated to collect and analyze all of his service records. In addition, groups such as the Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth have raised questions about Kerry's service that might well be answered in the unreleased records. But instead of demanding release of Kerry's military records, the liberal media have done the best they can to ignore the issue. Instead of accepting (or even considering) the issues raised by the officers in Kerry's chain of command about Kerry's fitness for command, the media have blindly accepted the views of the few low-ranking sailors that accompany Kerry and seem to be working for his campaign.

Regardless of who wins the election, the outragous bias of the liberals in the mainstream media will long be remembered.

Tin ear at CBS

A few weeks ago I sent an email to CBS complaining about the outrageous bias involved in Dan Rather's use of forged documents in an attempt to unfairly attack the president. Not surprisingly, I never heard back from CBS and it appears that the network simply plans to "ride out" the storm of criticism without taking any action.

Adding insult to injury, however, it now appears that I am on a mailing list for CBS promotions including the following "Dan Rather, who has covered every major election since 1964, will anchor CBS News' on-air coverage of Election Night 2004".

Say hello to Hal, 3lb, 13 oz born 10/31/4

Helen Thomas out of the closet

As I recall, Helen Thomas was a reporter at one point -- if you read this anti-Bush scribe you will realize that she can no longer pretend to be anything other than a knee-jerk liberal.