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October 30, 2004
LeMonde Endorses John Kerry
It is the hieght of arrogance for a foreign paper to endorse any candidate of another country. That, of course, does not stop the French:
To take party in an election abroad is not in the tradition of the World . Exceptional stake of the presidential election of November 2, however, and the terms in which this historical choice arises us convinced that a victory of John Kerry was desirable, beyond the borders of the United States.I am aghast, not only at their arrogance but at their ignorance. George Bush's message has ever been that we live in a new and different world since 9/11. John Kerry himself has said 9/11 did not change him. Yet Le Monde has it backwards. If papers like this are the main source of information the French have it is no wonder they they hate us. Al Jazeera is more "fair and balanced."Because it is indeed a choice between two visions of the world and the right. George W Bush proposes to its compatriots to leave the system which they knew until September 11, 2001, that one even for which it had made countryside in 2000, when it promised a struck American foreign politics seal of "humility" . The vision of president Bush is that of a country in war, the new shape of war to contours and the rules impossible to define. A war so particular that it is necessary to sacrifice legal provisions to him on which is founded the American democracy, to replace the tradition of transparency by opacity and handling, and to be unaware of the international architecture which is in the center of a world consensus since more than one half-century.
John Kerry knows that the world changed on September 11, 2001. But it refuses to see in terrorism some higher force which justifies a questioning of the bases of the American democracy and of an international nature. Its personal engagement during the war of Vietnam, its experiment of the foreign politics and its vision "internationalist" of the world, his capacity to recognize its errors, as well as the force of conviction of which it made proof during three presidential debates make of it a statesman much more suited than Mr. Bush to answer the challenges of after 11-September.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:06 PM | Comments (0) |
Authenticity vs. Politics - Part II
David Brooks catches Kerry politicizing again:
Bush's response yesterday to the video was exactly right. He said we would not be intimidated. He tried to take the video out of the realm of crass politics by mentioning Kerry by name and assuring the country that he was sure Kerry agreed with him.Kerry did say that we are all united in the fight against bin Laden, but he just couldn't help himself. His first instinct was to get political.
On Milwaukee television, he used the video as an occasion to attack the president: "He didn't choose to use American forces to hunt down Osama bin Laden. He outsourced the job." Kerry continued with a little riff from his stump speech, "I am absolutely confident I have the ability to make America safer."
Even in this shocking moment, this echo of Sept. 11, Kerry saw his political opportunities and he took 'em. There's such a thing as being so nakedly ambitious that you offend the people you hope to impress.
But politics has shaped Kerry's approach to this whole issue. Back in December 2001, when bin Laden was apparently hiding in Tora Bora, Kerry supported the strategy of using Afghans to hunt him down. He told Larry King that our strategy "is having its impact, and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will. I think we have been doing this pretty effectively, and we should continue to do it that way."
Posted by bubba138 at 09:28 AM | Comments (0) |
October 29, 2004
Authenticity vs. Politics
Both the Kerry and Bush campaigns have accused the other of politicizing 9/11 and Iraq. The mother of soldier who was killed in Iraq found out which candidate believed in the soldiers and their families, and which only believed in how the family could help politically:
Six weeks later, Peggy Buryj claims that she received a phone call from a representative of John Kerry's presidential campaign. The caller identified herself as "Linda" and asked Mrs. Buryj, a registered Democrat, if she would appear at a Canton rally for John Kerry. Buryj agreed, but with a condition. She wanted to ask Kerry one question: "Why did you vote against the $87 billion for support troops in Iraq?""They were inviting me because of my son," she says.
She never heard back from the campaign.
A month later, Buryj received a call from the Bush campaign. President Bush wanted to meet her, in private, along with the families of two other fallen soldiers from Stark County. There would be no reporters in the room. She was not asked if she supported the president.
Bush spoke to a rally of 5,000 at the Canton Memorial Civic Center on July 31. Afterwards, he met for 20 minutes with Buryj, the Rameys and the family of Sgt. Michael Barkey, who had been killed in Iraq on July 7. Buryj says she cried when she saw Bush. "He cried on my shoulder as much as I cried on his."
Posted by bubba138 at 04:37 PM | Comments (0) |
Can I Itemize This?
Does this go on the long form?
An Australian drug dealer who dug up hundreds of thousands of dollars from his backyard to buy heroin but had the money stolen in the deal can claim a tax deduction for his losses, an Australian court has ruled.Under Australian law, income earned from illegal activity can be subjected to income tax. The High Court of Australia ruled this week that if illegal income is subjected to tax, then losses should be deductible.
The ruling ended a 10-year battle between convicted drug dealer Francesco Dominico La Rosa and the Australian Tax Office, which argued the tax deduction was against good public policy.
Posted by bubba138 at 03:25 PM | Comments (0) |
Hello Hawaii
He is not the President, but Hawaii is getting a distinguished Republican visitor:
The Bush-Cheney campaign says Hawaii is within reach and that every electoral vote is worth fighting for — in Hawaii's case, four electoral votes.Maybe Mr. Hawaii will keep us updated.“The polls look so good in Hawaii that we are going to drop in,” Mr. Cheney told hundreds of cheering Republican volunteers Friday morning in Wisconsin. The vice president said he and wife, Lynn, have campaigned in 48 states over the past year “and yesterday we booked the 49th.”
Posted by bubba138 at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) |
Kerry is God's Man
That's what Senator Harkin claims:
Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin says John Kerry has been gaining in the polls every day since Oct. 21, and George Bush has been going down every day.Unbelievable."That's how God wants it to be," Harkin told a group of about 25 people at the Benton County Headquarters in Vinton on Thursday afternoon.
Posted by bubba138 at 01:24 PM | Comments (0) |
Looking Good For Bush
An interesting election analysis from none other than Dan Rather:
Should Bush lose this time in Ohio and New Hampshire, states he won last time, he would be at 254 - providing he wins every other state he won in 2000. That would push him down to 254. But if he then carried Wisconsin and Iowa (both of which went for Gore in 2000), he would pick up 17 electoral votes, pushing the president back up to a winning 271.Dan's analysis is pretty close to what I have been sensing as well. Unlike him, I don't think Colorado is as close as it appears, I am confident it will end up in Bush's column (probably Iowa as well).It is, of course, only one of many possible scenarios in which Bush could win. But if one puts one's nose to the wind and sniffs, it may be as good a guess as any. And better than most.
Oh yes, there is also this: keep eyes peeled for surprises. There'll probably be one or more. Like what? Well, maybe New Jersey. Most lists have it reasonably safe for Kerry, but there are some poll numbers and gut instincts among veteran pols hinting at a possible upset.
Looking at today's electoral map, Bush stands at 232 electoral votes (New Mexico moved into Bush's column last night) and Kerry holds 207. As Rather says, the key to this year's election are the big three, Florida, Pensylvania, and Ohio. The candidate who wins two of those three most likely takes the entire election. As a matter of fact, Kery must win two out of three, if he does not, the race goes to Bush. Bush, on the other hand, can lose the two biggest prizes, Florida and Pennsylvania (combined 58 electoral votes), and still pull off a victory. For instance, if Bush wins only Ohio, Wisconsin and Minnesota we have four more years of Republican domination. He also takes the prize with trading either Wisconsin or Minnesota for both Iowa (which will go Bush) and New Hampshire (which I think will go Kerry).
NOW THE FUN STUFF
We do have the entertaining possibility of a tie again this cycle. If Bush wins Ohio, either Wisconsin or Minnesota, and Iowa with Kerry taking the rest both candidates will have 269 electoral votes. What happens then is more fun than I care to explore at this time.
NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY WACKY
Bryon's Way Off, Are You Outta Yer Mind, Complete Surprise, Election Night Prediction: California goes for Bush.
The polls in all the battlefield states, and especially in the big three, will close as people in California are driving home from work. If Bush does take two of the biggies, Democrat voter turnout will decline in California. Although many place the People's Republik of Kalee-vornia in the safe column, California's Field Institute (which normally polls to the left) shows that it is only seven point race here, with nine percent undecided. Earlier this month, it was eleven percent undecided; two percent have since broken Bush's way. Last cycle, the difference of 11 points between Gore and Bush amounted to around 1 million votes. In California that is a drop in the bucket of eligible voters. A seven point spread then translates to around 700 thousand votes, a number that is not insurmountable.
Let me 'splain. No time, let me sum up. If the polls show Bush winning, California Republicans will continue to the polls while Democrats will stay home. We are not electing any major statewide offices and Barbara Boxer is more than safely ahead of her Republican challenger. If the Republican's GOTV effort (which has been much more intense this cycle than last) pays off, California could very well add 55 electoral votes to the Republican ticket.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:25 AM | Comments (0) |
Kerry's Evolution
John Kerry has managed to transform our Afghan venture into a failure -- a botched operation in which Bush let Osama bin Laden get away because he "outsourced" bin Laden's capture to "warlords" in the battle of Tora Bora.Outsourced? The entire Afghan War was outsourced. How does Kerry think we won it? How did Mazar-e Sharif, Kabul and Kandahar fall? Stormed by thousands of American GIs? They fell to the "warlords" we had enlisted, supported and directed. It was their militias that overran the Taliban.
"Outsourcing" is a demagogue's way of saying "using allies." (Isn't Kerry's Iraq solution to "outsource" the problem to the "allies" and the United Nations?) And in Afghanistan it meant the very best allies: locals who had a far better chance of knowing what cave to storm without getting blown up. As Kerry himself said on national television at the time of Tora Bora (Dec. 14, 2001): "What we are doing, I think, is having its impact and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will" -- i.e., not throwing American lives away in tunnels and caves in alien territory. "I think we have been doing this pretty effectively and we should continue to do it that way."
Posted by bubba138 at 08:20 AM | Comments (0) |
The Real Divide
For all Sean Penn's rants, Rather's sermons, Michael Moore's mythodramas and Jon Stewart's postmodern snickers, America, even in times of a controversial war and rocky economy, is still not impressed. National Public Radio, "Nightline" and the New York Times are working overtime to assert their views in this philosophical debate; Jimmy Carter and Al Gore -- not George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole -- are fuming. Most Americans snore or flip the channel.It is apparently a terrible thing to be sensitive, glib, smart, educated or chic -- and not be listened to, as we have seen from this noisy and often hysterical campaign among elites. That is the real divide in this country, and it is only going to get worse.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:17 AM | Comments (0) |
Shilling on the Trail With Bush
Update: Then again, maybe not.
Red Sox pitching ace Curt Schilling will accompany President George W. Bush to his campaign stops in Manchester and Portsmouth on Friday.The Union Leader has learned Schilling will appear with Bush at rallies at the Verizon Wireless Arena and at the Pease International Tradeport.
Schilling urged viewers to vote for Bush on ABC’s “Good Morning America” program yesterday morning. The Bush campaign then quickly invited him to join the President in his final campaign visit to the Granite State, sources said. Schilling gladly accepted.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:14 AM | Comments (0) |
The October Surprise Is Here
On the Friday before the election last cycle, the press eagerly "broke" the story of George Bush's drunk driving arrest -- just in time for the weekend news shows and big voter impact. Many have thought that the "missing weapons" story was this cycle's lame attempt at an October surprise, but I thought it was too early to be such. I knew there had to be something someone was saving up until today, and my suspicion has been confirmed:
It reminds me of the satirical headline "The world ends, women and children hardest hit."Household Survey Sees 100,000 Iraqi DeathsResearchers have estimated that as many as 100,000 more Iraqis - many of them women and children - died since the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq than would have been expected otherwise, based on the death rate before the war.Writing in the British-based medical journal The Lancet, the American and Iraqi researchers concluded that violence accounted for most of the extra deaths and that airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition were a major factor.
There is no official figure for the number of Iraqis killed since the conflict began, but some non-governmental estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000. As of Thursday, 1,106 U.S. servicemen had been killed, according to the U.S. Defense Department.
"Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children," the researchers wrote.
That this report was released today is more than coincedence:
The report was released just days before the U.S. presidential election, and the lead researcher said he wanted it that way.Don't let the fact that the report's number is 600% larger than the wildest anti-Bush estimates undermine your confidence in Robert's assertion that his "science has transcended our perspectives."Les Roberts, the lead researcher from Johns Hopkins, said the article's timing was up to him.
"I emailed it in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the election," Roberts told The Associated Press. "My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq.
"I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives," Roberts said.
No matter, the study and its unprovable claims will be splashed all over the screens in voter's living rooms all weekend. The report could have been released any time during the last thirty days, but for some reason it was saved until today. The publishers knew that if released anytime before this weekend the report would be stripped of all credibility by fact checking bloggers and its effect on the election would have been negligible.
More coming...
Posted by bubba138 at 07:29 AM | Comments (0) |
October 28, 2004
Who Wants the Draft?
One of the presidential candidates is more inclined to reinstitute the draft, and it is not George W. Bush:
Military conscription was abolished more than 30 years ago by Richard Nixon (yes, that's right) after a six-year campaign by Republicans to replace draftees with volunteers attracted to service by decent pay and better living conditions. I know, because my book, "The Wrong Man in Uniform," in 1967, helped launch a movement for reform that borrowed heavily on the ideas of economist Milton Friedman and was led in Congress by a young Illinoisan named Donald Rumsfeld.Fighting on the other side of the issue were Democrats led by none other than Ted Kennedy. President Johnson's administration had resisted draft reform and Kennedy and company wanted to retain conscription and make it more universal. Since only a small share of each age cohort of young men was needed to serve in the armed forces, Republicans sought to enlist that share with positive incentives while the Democrats proposed to draft everybody for "National Service," a new kind of conscription that could be fulfilled in the military, but also in various government-assigned jobs.
If anyone doubts what is going on here, he might simply examine who backs Kerry, and he will find that almost all the longtime advocates of national service (including many who wish to resume a draft) are among them. On the other stand nearly all of us who worked to introduce a volunteer military in the first place and have worked ever since to preserve it.
It is demagogic, therefore, for Kerry to claim that it is Bush who would like to bring back the draft, not him. It is even more reprehensible that Kerry's friends in the media have refused to explain the background on this issue to a generation of voters who are too young not to be gulled by campaign propaganda.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:00 PM | Comments (0) |
What Did You Expect
This is what happens when a newspaper becomes nothing more than a hack propaganda rag for the left:
For the six months ended Sept. 30, 2004, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday-Saturday average daily circulation of 902,164, a decline of 5.6 percent compared with the prior year, and Sunday circulation of 1,292,274, a decline of 6.3 percent from the prior year, according to figures filed with the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), subject to audit.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:52 PM | Comments (0) |
The Liberalization of Afghanistan
It is no surprize that Hamid Karzai has won the Afghan presidential race. But one tidbit that has not received the attention it deserves is how well one of his competitors did:
Karzai faced 17 candidates in the election, which took place almost three years after the Taliban were ousted in the U.S.-led war against terrorism. An estimated 75 percent of the more than 10 million Afghans eligible to vote took part.A woman finished well in the top half of the candidates. George bush and the United States armed forces have done more to liberalize Afghanistan (and the entire Middle East) in three years than the combined efforts of N.O.W. and the Democrat party has in the last thirty-five.The fifth-placed candidate has won 1.2 percent of the vote, according to the Web site. Massooda Jalal, the only woman to stand in the election, is sixth with 1.1 percent of the vote.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:32 PM | Comments (0) |
How To Steal an Election
As John Fund explains, vote fraud is part of the long and indistinguished tradition of the Democrat party:
Tammany was so efficient at election fixing that between 1868 and 1871, the votes cast in the city totaled 8 percent more than the entire voting population—"the dead filling in for the sick," as one contemporary wag put it. Historian Denis Tilden Lynch describes how thugs would go from one polling place to the next, impersonating citizens who hadn't yet voted. One such "repeater" posed as the dignified pastor of a Dutch Reformed church. The election clerks asked him his name.Democrats think that the ambiguity in election laws will work to their benefit this fall, allowing them to litigate every single close race. Unfortunately, if "anything goes" continue to be the ballot bywords, the nation may soon wake up to a crisis even bigger than the 2000 Florida nightmare. Perhaps then the public will demand to know who subverted the election laws. But wouldn't it be better if we did something about the problem now—even if it's as simple as requiring everyone who votes to show an ID? In 2004, we should be well past the days of Boss Tweed.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:24 PM | Comments (0) |
Hawaii In Play
True, by now the news that Hawaii is close is old, but I had pretty much assumed that was an anomoly in the polling. It seems, however, my assumption is wrong:
If Kerry has turned Clinton's attention westward, there is a problem. The Democrat's internal polling must be showing that state weakening. Perhaps bush should do something creative.
A KITV 4 News poll has the presidential race virtually tied in Hawaii. As a result, the Democratic National Committee is spending $200,000 on television ads here.The DNC also arranged for satellite interviews with Clinton, from his home in New York.
KITV 4 News asked him to explain why the race in Hawaii is neck and neck with Kerry and President George W. Bush in this former Democratic stronghold.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:12 PM | Comments (0) |
Love that Girl
Teresa Heinz Kerry is at it again:
Teresa Heinz Kerry called attacks on her husband's foreign policy views "Neanderthal" while meeting with current and former Republicans who said they plan to vote for Sen. John Kerry.If you are not a U.N. homey, you are a neanderthal. If you think we need to run from Iraq, you are a neanderthal. If you would rather not have despots like Saddam in power you are a neanderthal. If you think it is a bad idea to give nuclear fuel to Iran then you are a neanderthal."The perpetration of certain myths that diplomacy and alliances are a sign of weakness is Neanderthal," Heinz Kerry said at the Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign headquarters in Pittsburgh. "I never heard of teaching a child to make enemies so they can get along in the playground."
Sigh.
Posted by bubba138 at 01:43 PM | Comments (0) |
Stepping In Qa Qaa
Finally, the ammo dump story appears to have left the Kerry campaign deep in al-Qaqaa.Tommy Franks is going to enter this story and rip Kerry and the New York Times a new one. The Kerry folks are acting like they realized they have botched this story, and want to shift back to domestic topics. Lockhart, Bill Richardson on Imus — when asked about al-QaQaa, they dodge the question and quickly try to bring up other issues.
The campaign is going to avoid the Russian angle and go with the straightforward, "As the facts mount in this story, American people have a choice between believing Kerry-NYTimes-CBS or believing Bush and the Troops."
Posted by bubba138 at 11:19 AM | Comments (0) |
Quick Hits
It is a busy day for me today so for now here are some articles of note:
A Shameless Lie: The Missing Weapons Myth.
What did Russia have to do with the missing weapons?
Doesn't the "Missing Weapons" story add support to Bush's case for war? Glassman thinks so.
Republicans are stepping up the ground game in Ohio.
If you are going online for your election news, you are not alone.
Posted by bubba138 at 11:11 AM | Comments (0) |
October 27, 2004
Vote Fraud in New Mexico
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A voter registration card arrived in the mail at the south valley home of Patricia Laven last week. The card was addressed to her father.Do you suppose there is any chance the walking dead will vote Republican?“My father had passed on about two and a half years ago,” says Laven. “(The card showed) a social security number that wasn't my father's, a date of birth that wasn't my fathers.”
Seventy four-year-old Donald Clark died from lung cancer in March of 2002. A check of the county's records shows someone requested his voting card last month.
Kim Racette collected her mail this week, leafed through it, and went inside to take a closer look. One envelope caught her attention.
“It looked like a voter registration card, but it was addressed to somebody other than me, but it was my address,” says Racette.
It was a voter registration card for an Edward Gomez. The problem is, Racette’s home has been in her family for more than 30 years, and no one by that name has ever lived there.
Fred Chanatry is also steamed. “I did not solicit this card. It just came out of the clear blue,” says Chanatry.
He also received a phony voter registration card last week, but this one was a little more clever—it at least it got his name mostly right.
“That middle initial was wrong. The social security number was totally foreign to me, and my birth date was way off,” Says Chanatry.
Posted by bubba138 at 05:02 PM | Comments (0) |
Yasser Not Well
Hannity just said he's getting calls from dozens of people asserting that Yasser Arafat has died. Interesting rumor, as Reuters just today released this:
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's health worsened on Wednesday and an ambulance rushed to his West Bank headquarters, medical sources and witnesses said.Israel Radio said Arafat had lost consciousness, but a senior Palestinian official said that was untrue.
Palestinian officials have repeatedly said that Arafat is recovering from a bout of "stomach flu," but he has not appeared in public for days, fueling speculation over the seriousness of his condition.
Update: It looks like ABC News is getting a jump start on the obit. (Hat tip)
Posted by bubba138 at 02:38 PM | Comments (0) |
Voter Intimidation Continues
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A man was arrested Wednesday after he was accused of trying to run down Rep. Katherine Harris and a group of supporters with his car.Update: Then again, this is not any better."I intimidated them with my car," Seltzer told police. "I was exercising my political expression."
Posted by bubba138 at 01:13 PM | Comments (0) |
Jews For Bush
Kerry strategist (and shoe-in for Secretary of State in a Kerry administration) Richard Holbrooke is now campaigning for Bush?
"I'm not here to criticize President Bush," Holbrooke, a former United Nations ambassador, told hundreds of members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, a major pro-Israel lobbying group, gathered for their annual summit. "His support for Israel is, in my mind, unquestionable."It was not supposed to be, but it was. While Alan D. Solomont, Joe Lieberman, and Cameron Kerry continue to suggest that Kerry is just as pro-Israel as the President, certain very interested foriegn parties would beg to differ.The crowd -- to Holbrooke's chagrin -- offered rousing applause. "That was not," he said wryly, "supposed to be an applause line."
Posted by bubba138 at 01:03 PM | Comments (0) |
The Summer John Kerry Got Religion
Early in life? Nope, it was just this year:
I HAVE BEEN following John Kerry's career for 22 years, ever since his 1982 run for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. I have encountered him in small private gatherings and in large public settings. I have spoken about him often with people who know him well. I have read innumerable accounts of his non-political passions and pastimes. And if at any point during all those years you had asked me whether I thought Kerry was a religious man, I would have answered without hesitation: "No, not at all.""But what about Bush," you ask, "Doesn't he often talk of his faith?"The senator who had never shown much public interest in religion suddenly can't seem to stop talking about it. Biblical quotations now lace his speeches. He makes a point of referring to himself as a former altar boy. He frequently attends church - particularly churches in battleground states. He (or his staff) has let it be known that on the campaign trail he wears a crucifix and carries a rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal.
At the Democratic convention in Boston, religious references abounded...
And since then, the "religification of John Kerry," as Steven Waldman, the editor of Beliefnet, has termed it, has grown even more pronounced.
You bet he does. But when he talks of it it is to either illustrate how his religion has has changed his life (put him on the straigh and narrow), enriched him (through his own prayers and those from others), and to offer hope ("freedom is the Almighty's gift to all people").
Bush has not used his religion as a club with which he beat his opponent over the head. Bush has not preached politics from a pulpit while the resident pastor compares him to Moses. Bush's faith does not feel wrong because is authentic. And, as Jeff Jacoby points out, that is exactly what rubs wrong about Kerry's religiosity:
When James said that faith without works is dead, he wasn't urging politicians to spend taxpayers' money. Jesus and James were insisting that the true measure of a man's compassion lies in how much he gives of himself ...Me too.During his Senate reelection campaign in 1996...the previous six years, it turned out, Kerry had given less than $5,000 to charity - a minuscule seven-10ths of 1 percent of his gross income for the period. During the same six years, his Republican opponent, former Governor William Weld, had donated to charity nearly $165,000, or more than 15 percent of his gross income.
"There is something very wrong with a man who makes more than $120,000 a year," I wrote then, "and gives only scraps to help those who are less fortunate than he."
...promiscuous God-talk in presidential campaigns doesn't elevate our spiritual profile. It feeds the suspicion that religion is being invoked for cynical political reasons. Is Kerry right with his God? I certainly hope so. But for nearly 22 years he managed to keep that part of his life extremely private. I wish he would have kept it that way.
Posted by bubba138 at 12:33 PM | Comments (0) |
Hard Intellegence
ABCNews has a video tape that purports al Qa'eda is planning election day attacks:
The terrorist claims on tape the next attack will dwarf 9/11. "The streets will run with blood," and "America will mourn in silence" because they will be unable to count the number of the dead. Further claims: America has brought this on itself for electing George Bush who has made war on Islam by destroying the Taliban and making war on Al Qaeda.Waziristan? That is the second time in a week we have heard that place name. AsparaGirl did background work on the prime suspect, Adam Pearlman, way back in May.ABCNEWS strongly denies holding the tape back from broadcast over political concerns during the last days of the election.
The CIA is analyzing the tape, a top federal source tells the DRUDGE REPORT.
ABCNEWS obtained the tape from a source in Waziristan, Pakistan over the weekend, sources tells DRUDGE.
Update: Pearlman wrote of his conversion to Islam:
As I began reading English translations of the Qur'an, I became more and more convinced of the truth and authenticity of Allah's teachings contained in those 114 chapters. Having been around Muslims in my formative years, I knew well that they were not the bloodthirsty, barbaric terrorists that the news media and the televangelists paint them to be. Perhaps this knowledge led me to continue my personal research further than another person would have.
It is interesting that one of the reasons for his conversion was what he percieved to be the incorrect belief that Muslims are not "bloodthirsty, barbaric terrorists." Yet the AP reports that "he attended al-Qaida training camps and has served as an al-Qaida translator." According to him the Muslims he knew were not terrorists, but he eventually actively sought them out and became one.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:34 AM | Comments (0) |
It's a MAN, Baby!
Some people might say that the new homecoming queen at Saint Cloud State University is unqualified for the job.That's because the new queen is a man.
Fue Khang, a student from Minneapolis, was crowned homecoming queen on Thursday night after a vote by students. School officials say a man has never been chosen queen in the 65 years the school has elected royalty.
University clubs and organizations nominate royalty candidates, and Kang was the nominee for the student senate. A school official says it is rare for student groups to nominate a man for the post.
Student government president Hal Kimball says the nomination was sincere. He says the student leaders wanted to make a point about not supporting gender stereotypes.
(Hat tip)
Posted by bubba138 at 09:25 AM | Comments (0) |
Iraq and al Qa'eda
Has there been a connection between al Qa'eda and Iraq? Bill Clinton said (says) so (subscription required):
By Stephen Hayes
Op-Ed
October 27, 2004With Bill Clinton alongside him at a campaign rally on Monday, John Kerry said he'd asked his fellow Democrat if he had anything in common with George W. Bush. Mr. Clinton's tart response ... "In eight days and 12 hours, we will both be former presidents." Well, it appears that Messrs. Clinton and Bush have a lot more in common than that piece of wishful thinking. Both have warned -- Mr. Clinton first, of course -- that the nexus between rogue states like Iraq and terrorists like al Qaeda poses the greatest threat to America. On this point, in fact, Mr. Clinton has much more in common with Mr. Bush than he does with John Kerry.
According to 9/11 Commission co-chairman Thomas Kean, Mr. Clinton believed with "absolute certainty" that Iraq provided al Qaeda with weapons of mass destruction expertise and technology in the 1990s. He believed it as president when he ordered the destruction of the al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, and he believes it now. And it's not just Mr. Clinton. According to Mr. Kean, "Top officials -- Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger and others -- told us with absolute certainty that there were chemical weapons of mass destruction at that factory and that's why we sent missiles."A brief chronology: On Aug. 7, 1998, al Qaeda terrorists bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 257 -- including 12 Americans -- and injuring more than 5,000.
On Aug. 20, 1998, the Clinton administration retaliated. Tomahawk missiles struck an al Qaeda terrorist training facility in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan. ... the decision to take out the al Shifa plant in Sudan was immediately controversial. Top Clinton administration officials said that the building was a chemical weapons factory. ...
The Sudanese denied this. And when reporters on the ground found aspirin bottles and other drug paraphernalia the Clinton administration, on Aug. 24, 1998, made available a "senior intelligence official" to provide more information. The official told reporters that the intelligence indicated "strong ties between the plant and Iraq." ...
Both the Iraqis and the Sudanese denied this. Sudanese officials made their case by pointing out that the al Shifa factory had been granted a contract for $199,000 to produce goods under the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program. But the contract was never fulfilled and that program has, since the fall of Saddam's regime, been exposed as an elaborate money-laundering scheme that allowed Saddam to circumvent sanctions. ...
To justify its response to these al Qaeda attacks the Clinton administration repeatedly cited an Iraqi connection with al Shifa. ...
That journalists also seem to have forgotten that the Clinton people made the Iraqi connection is strange. The central question of the presidential campaign is this: Was the Iraq war a diversion from the war on terror, as John Kerry claims, or the central front of the war on terror, as George W. Bush contends? Recent intelligence that Iraqi scientists provided WMD expertise to al Qaeda -- especially if that intelligence led to military action -- seems highly relevant.
So who is right? Did Iraq provide al Qaeda with WMD technology and expertise, as Bill Clinton claimed in the late 1990s and continues to believe today? Or is John Kerry correct when he claims, as he did last week in Dayton, Ohio, that Iraq "had nothing to do with al Qaeda?"
Now is a good time to ask.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:18 AM | Comments (0) |
IAEA Drops the Ball
The chief American weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, told The New York Sun yesterday that in 1995, when he was a member of the U.N. inspections team in Iraq, he urged the United Nations' atomic watchdog to remove tons of explosives that have since been declared missing.Keep in mind the agency that failed to destroy these explosives at any time during a nine year period is the very same agency that Kerry wants to have overarching control over the rebuilding of Iraq.Mr. Duelfer said he was rebuffed at the time by the Vienna-based agency because its officials were not convinced the presence of the HMX, RDX, and PETN explosives was directly related to Saddam Hussein's programs to amass weapons of mass destruction.
Instead of accepting recommendations to destroy the stocks, Mr. Duelfer said, the atomic-energy agency opted to continue to monitor them.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:38 AM | Comments (0) |
Vote Often
Ohio has more voters registered than living:
"We have four counties where you have more voters registered than you have 18 and over population," [Ohio’s Republican Governor Bob] Taft said.Taft noted the role of Democrat 527 groups that have inflated Ohio’s voter registeration rolls.
"We've had a lot of fraudulent voter registrations already, mostly by those 527 groups. There will be unprecedented scrutiny of this election on both sides,” he said. Taft noted that many of these new registrations appear to be fraudulent.
"A lot of these voters don't have addresses," he said of the new registrations. "When they send the postcard out to them, after they register, that comes back undeliverable. You're talking about thousands of cases like that all across the State of Ohio."
Taft says he hopes the heightened level of scrutiny will lead to "an accurate count for the state of Ohio."
Posted by bubba138 at 06:57 AM | Comments (0) |
It Is Still Bush's Fault
George, the ALL POWERFUL is responsible for the weather now:
Because President George W. Bush has "ignored the threat of global warming," Floridians can expect to be hit by increasingly destructive hurricanes, a new billboard campaign says.Sometimes this blogging thing is like shooting fish in a barrel.The billboards, going up along Interstate 4 between Tampa and Orlando -- a week before the presidential election -- read, "Global warming equals worse hurricanes. George Bush just doesn't get it." The billboards show a photo of a hurricane swirling toward Florida.
Update: The Politiker has more.
Posted by bubba138 at 06:51 AM | Comments (0) |
Libertarians Urged: Vote Bush
The defecit is to high and has grown too much under Bush's watch. Bush's support for the Federal Marriage Amendment is socially extreme. The government should stay out of the bedroom. Bush's overreaching war stance is off base, he should completely cut the U.N. off, quit the world and focus on the problems right here in the U.S. Oh, and as long as we are talking, Ashcroft's war on legalized marijuana must be stopped.
If any of these has been your reason to vote against Bush, you should know that John Hospers, the Libertarian party's first candidate for president (1972) has written an open letter to his political brothers urging them to vote for the President's reelection:
There is a belief that's common among many libertarians that there is no essential difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties -- between a John Kerry and a George W. Bush administration; or worse: that a Bush administration would be more undesirable. Such a notion could not be farther from the truth, or potentially more harmful to the cause of liberty...There is much more. If you are a Libertarian, go read it.The president has been berated for taking even minimal steps to deal with the dangers of this war (the allegations made against the Patriot Act seem to me based more on hysteria and political opportunism than on reality). But Bush, like Churchill, has stood steadfast in the face of it, and in spite of the most virulent hate and disinformation campaign that any American president has had to endure. Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven for terrorists. Saddam's regime is no longer a major player in the worldwide terror network. Libya has relinquished their weapons of terror. The Pakistani black market in weapons of mass destruction has been eliminated. Arafat is rotting in Ramallah. Terrorist cells all over the world have been disrupted, and thousands of terrorists killed. The result: Americans are orders of magnitude safer.
National defense is always expensive, and Bush has been widely excoriated for these expenditures. But as Ayn Rand memorably said at a party I attended in 1962, in response to complaints that "taxes are too high" (then 20%), "Pay 80% if you need it for defense." It is not the amount but the purpose served that decides what is "too much." And the purpose here is the continuation of civilized life on earth in the face of vastly increased threats to its existence.
Posted by bubba138 at 06:45 AM | Comments (0) |
Vote Early
A significant chunk of voters have already done their civic duty, especially in one Texas county:
One week into early voting and local election officials are thrilled by the record turnout. As of Sunday night, the Travis County Clerk's Office reports more than 102,000 voters have cast a ballot.ABC has added a question to their polling asking if the person's vote as already been cast:
That's nearly 20 percent of registered voters in the county.
While the 2004 election is locked in a virtual dead heat, for nearly one in 10 likely voters it's all over but the counting: They've already cast their ballots.Of course, for some people no effort to provide opportunities to vote will ever be enough:Nine percent of "likely" voters in the ABC News tracking poll say they've voted for president, either by absentee ballot or early voting, a number that's jumped in the last week. Fifty-one percent say they went for George W. Bush, 47 percent for John Kerry.
U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, said the lack of early voting sites in Palm Beach County black neighborhoods was "a blatant slap in the face to people in the African-American community."Umm, wouldn't that be Democrat Teresa LePore? Alcee Hastings can hardly refute her statement as pertisan rhetoric."Does it assist in suppressing the early vote?" he said. "Of course it does."
Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Teresa LePore said early polling places were determined by geographic location and historical voter turnout statistics. She also noted that two early voting locations are within 6 miles of Riviera Beach, a largely black community.
The complaints are "just a way to whip up their segment of the population," she said.
Posted by bubba138 at 06:29 AM | Comments (0) |
Off To a Fine Start
Florida election lawsuits are already going hot and heavy:
Democrats in Florida already are pursuing nine election-related lawsuits, accusing state election officials of conspiring to disenfranchise minority voters.The Democrats have done their best over the last twenty years to take all the power away from our legislatures by clubbing them over the head with the judicial system. That strategy has worked so well they seek to pull one of the pillars of our Democracy out from under us using the same weapon.Led by the Florida Democratic Party, the People for the American Way, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the AFL-CIO, the lawsuits target, among others, Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, President Bush's brother.
The suits say Republican officials refused to count provisional ballots, improperly disqualified incomplete voter registrations, established overly restrictive rules to disproportionately hurt minority voters and actively sought to disenfranchise blacks.
The unspoken issue of this campaign has been the one that could well have more effect than any other. The next president will be appointing at least one and up to three new United States Supreme Court justices. These justices will influence how the law is interpreted, whether our country is going to treat the Constitution as if it means what it says, or if we are to treat it as a living, growing document, meaning what we want it to mean at any particular moment. I for one want a president who is going to appoint judges that adhere to the first of those interpretations.
Posted by bubba138 at 06:17 AM | Comments (0) |
Iraqi Insurgents Endorse Kerry
Leaders and supporters of the anti-U.S. insurgency say their attacks in recent weeks have a clear objective: The greater the violence, the greater the chances that President Bush will be defeated on Tuesday and the Americans will go home.Now that I think about it, they are probably not so much staunch Kerry supporters as they are a part of the "anybody but Bush" crowd. But it should say something when enemies like the insurgents and Yassar Arafat all would prefer Kerry."If the U.S. Army suffered numerous humiliating losses, [Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John] Kerry would emerge as the superman of the American people," said Mohammad Amin Bashar, a leader of the Muslim Scholars Association, a hard-line clerical group that vocally supports the resistance.
Posted by bubba138 at 06:06 AM | Comments (0) |
October 26, 2004
Draft Scare Tactics Continue
Regardless of the fact their assertions are completely baseless, the Democrats draft-mongering scare tactics continue full force. The latest attack comes from Democrat hack, Senator Tom Harkin, who is sending letters to college newspapers across the nation in a pathetic effort to frighten college kids away from their keggers long enough to vote for Kerry.
Contrary to the Democrat's fearbaiting talk, we have plenty of troops and plenty of volunteers. Troops morale is only suffering in the imaginations of the Democrats.
Harkin asks, "What if all-out civil war breaks out in Iraq, and we have to increase our troop strength to 200,000 or 300,000 to quell it? What if a newly re-elected President Bush decides to act pre-emptively against Iran, Syria or North Korea?" Well, what if Russia, China, and Germany all gang up on us at the same time and attack without warning? Harkin can spin "what if's" all day long -- doing so does not make any of his prognostications accurate.
But lets say one of those scenarios do play out. The position of the Bush administration and the generals in the field has been that we have plenty of troops in Iraq to handle the situation. Contrawise, it has been the Democrats who have screamed for more "boots on the ground." Further, Kerry has come out completely against Bush's proposal to redeploy troops from Europe into more tactical positions that more effectively address today's military needs.
In other words, since the Democrats are the ones who keep talking about needing more troops, is it not more reasonable to assume a draft is more likely under their leadership? Case in point, from Harkin's own letter:
But we would do well to remember when President Lyndon Johnson was running for election in 1964. Voters were afraid that he had a secret plan to escalate the war in Vietnam.Correct me if I am wrong, but was not Lyndon Johnson a Democrat?He denied it, repeatedly promising, "I will not send American boys half way around the world to do a job that Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."
Johnson was re-elected. And sure enough, millions of American boys were drafted and sent halfway around the world to Vietnam. More than 17,000 of those draftees got killed in combat.
Posted by bubba138 at 05:36 PM | Comments (0) |
Missing Weapons Update
REDSTATE points out that the 3rd Infantry Division beat the NBC embed to al Qa Qaa by a week. His conclusion, therefore is that the NBC report does not completely debunk the proposition that the site could have been looted before the embeds got there. But the Capn has done a little math and determined that it would have taken an entire company of men two weeks to loot all 380 tons of weapons.
This makes it safe to say that if the weapons were not there when the NBC embeds got there, they were not there a week earlier.
Kerry Spot is all over this, with emails from several soldiers actually participated in the clearing of al Qa Qaa.
Update: That the story has been completely debuked is no deterent for the Kerry campaign, which has already released a TV spot condemning the President over al Qa Qaa.
Posted by bubba138 at 02:21 PM | Comments (0) |
Electoral Analysis
Looking at today's electoral map reveals a close race in the college. Bush currently stands at 234 votes while Kerry, showing significant gains over the last fourteen days, has garnered 228.
Although close, Bush is showing a distinct advantage. At this point he only needs Florida and any one of Ohio, Wisconsin or Minnesota. He also wins if he takes Florida and both New Mexico and New Hampshire. Boding well for Bush is the latest CNN/Gallup poll that shows him up eight points in Florida. Bush is also showing favorably in Wisconsin. Winning those two states puts the game away for Bush.
Posted by bubba138 at 11:58 AM | Comments (0) |
The Black Vote (Reprise)
Star Parker offers something I had not considered:
The substance of Kerry's remarks was as revealing as his behavior. Kerry knows zero about Mary Cheney's personal struggles. However, he used her to claim that there is no choice in homosexual behavior. So, in one swoop Kerry threw thousands of years of religious tradition and teaching into the garbage. We're all victims now. And, of course, from a black perspective, John Kerry will argue that an individual's sexual behavior is as pre-determined as his or her race. So, indeed sexual behavior should fall into the realm of civil rights.Blacks are picking up on all this. This is what these new polling results are telling us. View this as a trend.
Posted by bubba138 at 11:03 AM | Comments (0) |
How Soft We Have Become
Noemie Emery says Bush has no need to appease the liberals with an apology:
According to critics, one thing for which Bush ought to apologize is the number of Americans killed in Iraq, now more than l,000 in over a year and a half. Regarding this number, four things should be said. First, it is well below the minimal projection of casualties made before the invasion. Second, it is still only about one third the number of Americans killed in two and a half hours on a September morning three years ago. Third, in a six-week period in 1863, Grant lost 60,000 American soldiers. Fourth, in a training exercise days before D-Day, British and American forces lost nearly as many forces as have already died in Iraq to mistakes and confusion. Churchill and Roosevelt did not apologize, nor did their generals. Nobody stateside complained.The fact that a loud and sizable segment of Americans are clamoring about the thousand we have lost speaks volumes about us as a country. We were once known as a country that was willing to sacrifice for right. We were once known as a country with a backbone. What these whining, sniveling, spineless calls for an apology do is confirm bin Laden's beliefs about the U.S.:
Describe the situation when your men took down the American forces in Somalia.I believe bin Laden's assessment was only half right. The American soldiers in Somolia would have gladly stayed and kicked butt, but Clinton and the appeasement party did not have the backbone to stay and affirm that we were the dominant force in the world. One cannot argue the fact that our retreat in Somolia emboldened bin Laden, al Qa'eda, and scores of other militant Islamic groups.
After our victory in Afghanistan and the defeat of the oppressors who had killed millions of Muslims, the legend about the invincibility of the superpowers vanished. Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. ... As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled...After a few blows, it forgot all about those titles and rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace, dragging the bodies of its soldiers.
Given this, it is imperitive that voters understand that Kerry's primary, overarching, and most important goal for Iraq is not now nor has ever been to win:
"We want those troops home, and my goal would be to try to get them home in my first term," Kerry said, speaking to a fellow Vietnam War veteran at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania who had asked about a timetable for withdrawal. Bush has not provided a specific timetable for withdrawal.By his own words, Kerry's number one stated goal is to run away as soon as practical. If running from Somolia emboldened Islamic terrorism, one can only imagine what running from Iraq will do.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:40 AM | Comments (0) |
Not Missing, But Moved
It turns out the "missing weapons" were already gone when U.S. forces arrived at al Qaqaa
NBC News reported that on April 10, 2003, its crew was embedded with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division when troops arrived at the Al Qaqaa storage facility south of Baghdad.Nevermind that the Kerry campaign "hyped" the intellegence that these weapons went missing after our forces had invaded Iraq. Check out the campaign's bizarre response to the facts:While the troops found large stockpiles of conventional explosives, they did not find HMX or RDX, the types of powerful explosives that reportedly went missing, according to NBC.
"In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately flailing in an effort to escape blame," Lockhart said. "It is the latest pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no matter how disastrous."At the same time Lockhart baselessly accuses the President of distortions, Kerry's claims of meeting with the UN Security Council are being exposed to be no more credible than his claims of spending Christmas in Cambodia.Lockhart did not elaborate on how the Bush campaign was distorting the NBC report.
Update: The Belmont Club makes an astute observation:
Although one may retrospectively find some fault with OIF order of battle, most of the damage had already been inflicted by the dilatory tactics of America's allies which allowed Saddam the time and space -- nearly half a year and undisturbed access to Syria -- necessary to prepare his resistance, transfer money abroad and disperse explosives (as confirmed first hand by reporters). Although it is both desirable and necessary to criticize the mistakes attendant to OIF, much of the really "criminal" neglect may be laid on the diplomatic failure which gave the wily enemy this invaluable opportunity. The price of passing the "Global Test" was very highIndeed.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:22 AM | Comments (0) |
October 25, 2004
Missing Explosives
The blogosphere is buzzing loudly about the missing weapons cache in Iraq:
HMX and RDX can be used to demolish buildings, down jetliners, produce warheads for missiles and detonate nuclear weapons. HMX and RDX are key ingredients in plastic explosives, such as C-4 and Semtex — substances so powerful that Libyan terrorists needed just 1 pound to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 170 people.Sounds pretty serious. As a matter of fact, by that description I think it would be fair to say that these missing weapons could have caused (maybe will cause) mass destruction.
Wait a minute, I thought there were no WMDs in Iraq.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:47 PM | Comments (0) |
No More Crushing of Dissent
The majority were actually with the elections but some of them just didn’t like that someone is still claiming responsibility for them and threatening them if they disobey, regardless of the nature of the threat. The conversations left poetry and switched to politics and this is natural for any meeting here in Iraq; we start talking about something and suddenly we find ourselves talking about politics and the voices get loud and anxious.I started shooting pictures and I was full of joy; having such a conversation with no fear was impossible in the past and I just can’t help feel the joy every time I see it till now! Everyday I see a similar situation in a house or a university. Everyone feels responsible for Iraq’s future and everyone is looking forward for active contribution.
We’re changing so quickly and the concept of one opinion and one point of view is becoming part of history.
Who said that nothing has changed?! Who claimed that the present is worse than the past?!
I wish they could attend even one of those meetings or lectures to see the progress we’ve so far made, and let them know that these meetings and discussions are much more in number and in effect than the car bombings but unfortunately they don’t attract the same attention.
Posted by bubba138 at 06:11 PM | Comments (0) |
Iran to Iraq: Pay Up
The Lebanon Daily Star reports:
Iran has asked the International Monetary Fund to add $97.2 billion to its Iraqi debt assessment to cover reparations and reconstruction for the 1980-1998 war between the two states, Middle East Economic Survey (MEES) reports in its latest edition.Omar of Iraq the Model responds:
Don’t worry our Muslim brothers, we’re never going to run away from our commitments towards our friends in Iran and we intend to compensate for those damages although were cause by Saddam’s regime...Hmmm...One small detail, we want to schedule this, as it’s not possible to pay all this money tomorrow! So I think it would be fair that our future elected government start handing this money to the Iranian government without any delay...soon after Operation Iranian Freedom.
Posted by bubba138 at 06:05 PM | Comments (0) |
Posuer and Panderer
Last week Kerry...
It boggles my mind that this race is close.
Posted by bubba138 at 05:53 PM | Comments (0) |
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Liberal Scorned
Jennifer Nelson explains what it is to be a Republican in San Francisco:
I can't wait for November 3. Not only will all of the political commercials on television cease, but I'll be celebrating another four years of Bush-Cheney leaders in the White House. I'll also be faced with another four years of whining from my fellow Bay Area residents.(Hat tip)Just drive around the Bay Area and read bumper stickers if you want a sense of how over-the-top some people's anger is toward Bush. How else do you account for the "Bush/Satan 2004" and "Dubya Stands for Whore" bumper stickers? And the liberals scream that Rush Limbaugh is hateful? Calling John Edwards the Breck Girl just doesn't compare to the level of hate folks around here express towards Bush.
In Oakland, there is a community rock that people regularly paint to celebrate new babies, anniversaries, birthdays, you name it. When a close friend of ours turned 40, we decided to paint the rock in red, white and blue in honor of this very patriotic man. We barely got any paint on the rock before a woman stopped her car and asked in a horrified voice, "That's not going to be a flag, is it?" And while new messages are usually left up a day or two, by the next morning, our friend's birthday tribute had been painted over.
While we Americans are supposed to be hypersensitive about the different ethnic and cultural groups in the United States, flying the flag as a sign of national pride and unity is somehow wrong. Folks around here would rather drive around with a "These Colors Don't Run the World" sticker on their car than have their child say the Pledge of Allegiance at school!
Posted by bubba138 at 05:30 PM | Comments (0) |
One Year Ago
This is how my world looked exactly one year ago.
Recent and upcoming rainfall now menace the area, as hillsides once held together by vegetation threaten to slide into the homes that were mercifully passed up by last year's blaze.
All in all, however, San Diego is putting itself back together.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:55 PM | Comments (0) |
bin Laden Capture Close?
From Afghanistan:
Since last February, the U.S.-led military coalition has intensified its search by bolstering manpower by 50 per cent to its current 18,500 troops stationed in Afghanistan.One must wonder whether a bin Laden capture would do the President any good at this point. If finally caught, splashing the demon's dirty, tired face all over TV news in these final days before the election might actually make it easier for people to buy the canard that we've had him tucked away all along.They pay for information, track suspicious areas by satellite, conduct house-to-house searches, monitor cell and SAT phones, search vehicles at surprise checkpoints and conduct air assaults.
Last March, the U.S. House of Representatives doubled bin Laden's bounty to $50 million.
The concentrated effort seems to have paid off. In the past two months, dozens of terror suspects, including some key Al Qaeda operatives, have been arrested in Pakistan, near the Afghan border.
Maj. Scott Nelson, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, says the coalition receives daily tips on bin Laden's whereabouts from Afghans and Pakistanis, ranging from first-person sightings in the mountainous border region to someone who talked to someone who talked to someone who saw the fugitive.
"There's a tendency for people to embellish these things," says Nelson, adding that following up every lead is a painstaking procedure.
Yet, Nelson says the coalition is getting closer to nabbing their man.
"His routine is going to give him away," he insists. "Somebody is going to turn him in."
Posted by bubba138 at 04:26 PM | Comments (0) |
No Mourning for Mainstream
NOTE: Once in a while Russ Vaughn delights Slings and Arrows readers with his gift for prose verse. What follows is his latest effort. Enjoy!
Ah, once so grand you owned this land,
With your wisdom you did ply us,
Until old dears this election year,
You at last unmasked your bias.
Yes, once were you our only view,
No challenge did you face.
You had your say and called the play,
‘Til the Blogs got in the race.
We’d like to see fair honesty
But our breath now we’re not holding
Because we know how really low
Are the odds of that unfolding
So what is left when we’re bereft
Of hearing truth from you?
We’ll place our bet on the Bloggers’ net
To let the truth come through.
That pajama’d host really wants to roast
Your assets that’s for certain.
To debunk the myth of your monolith,
On your act to drop the curtain.
Alas old dears, you’re done we fear,
Your dynasties doomed to tatters,
And ‘tween the coasts your opinions toast,
About anything that matters.
Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66
Posted by bubba138 at 04:17 PM | Comments (0) |
"I Would Have..."
At the end of last year, during 3 1/2 hours of interviews over two days, I asked President Bush hundreds of detailed questions about his actions and decisions during the 16-month run-up to the war in Iraq. His answers were published in my book "Plan of Attack."He would have.In August, I was talking with Kerry's scheduler about possible dates. On Sept. 1, Kerry began his intense criticism of Bush's decisions in the Iraq war, saying "I would've done almost everything differently." A few days later, I provided the Kerry campaign with a list of 22 possible questions based entirely on Bush's actions leading up to the war and how Kerry might have responded in the same situations. The senator and his campaign have since decided not to do the interview, though his advisers say Kerry would have strong and compelling answers.
And had he proven himself a fiscally conservative hawk eager to find and kill terrorists no matter where they hide (including Iraq) I would have voted for Kerry.
No, really.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:00 PM | Comments (0) |
Make Your Vote Count
The wife and I were sitting on the couch the other day and our local station flashed up a graphic showing Kerry's marked advantage over Bush in California. My wife looked over at me and said, "I hate the way my vote for Bush is not even counted. It's almost as if it does not matter if I vote for the president."
With our system of elections, the winner is not the man with the greater popular vote, but the one who garners the most electoral votes. It can be disheartening to live in a state in which all its electoral votes are going to the guy for whom you would never vote. That does not mean, however, that your vote is worthless.
While the popular vote carries with it no systematic worth, it is priceless politically. The popular vote directly affects the political power the President has to enact his agenda. If President Bush is solidly re-elected by both the electoral college and the popular vote, it will send a message to the carping, ranting, raving Michael Moore-locks that the country has had enough of their tripe. It will tell Daschle (if he survives) and Kerry (who still has not reigned his Senate seat) and Pelosi that they are the miority party for no other reason than their failed, unpopular adherance to special-interests such as unions, gays and hyper-enviromentalists.
Even before voting day in 2000, the Los Angelese times noted that neither Gore nor Bush would have a "mandate" from the people:
Come Tuesday, Al Gore or George W. Bush will claim the White House. But, barring an unforeseen landslide, neither will claim much of a mandate.And "lack of mandate" became the press mantra over the next two years everytime Bush moved in a direction the Democrats did not like.Their race is too close, their difference on issues too blurred, the voters too focused on personalities for the election to offer a ringing endorsement of any of their major policy proposals, experts and analysts in both parties agree. Instead of a mandate, the election results more likely will be a muddle.
Ever active, protesters lined the streets at Bush's inaguration trumpeting his lack of mandate:
One group of about 100 noisy demonstrators lined Pennsylvania Avenue carrying signs with slogans such as "Hail to the thief" and "Selected not elected.""I think it's important to remind the incoming administration the country does not want a right-wing mandate," said protester Mary Anne Cummings of Chicago. "They did not vote for a right-wing mandate."
John Dean complained that Bush had tried to pack the courts with "right-wing judges" even though he had no mandate:
The Bush administration tried to push judges without a mandate earlier, too.And this article makes hay out of Bush's ambition in cutting taxes without a mandate:It has been known ever since the early months of the Bush-Cheney administration that the fact they do not even have a majority of public support is, in their view, irrelevant. They have the power, and that's all that counts.
The Gipper was elected at a time of mounting deficits with a mandate to cut government down to size--yet never came close to taming the beast. Bush avoids Reagan's sharp rhetoric and is governing without a mandate during a time of surpluses, yet he proposes to hold federal spending to a 4% increase overall, barely more than the rate of inflation. That sounds "reasonable and responsible," as he says, but in fact it is wildly ambitious, even radical.It is easy to see how a lack of mandate has hurt the Bush administration and left it open to partisan attacks. Winning the popular vote takes the power out of the opposition.
The bottom line here is if you live in California, New York, Illinois, or any Kerry-centric state your vote counts toward the popular vote, and that popular vote is the primary weapon against the left. More importantly, with a popular vote mandate, the President can govern more effectively and constructively, and partisan carping will be minimized. And that is something from which benefits us all.
Posted by bubba138 at 02:57 PM | Comments (0) |
Fun With Ballots
Do you think the butterfly ballot in Florida was fun? How about this one from Cuyahoga County in the battlefield state of Ohio:
Update: By the way Cleveland, one of Ohio's largest cities, is in Cuyahoga county. With the county population at over one million, This mistake could affect hundreds of thousands of votes. The good thing is this appears to only have occurred on absentee ballots. Even so, the possibility of ballot spoilage is high.
Posted by bubba138 at 12:59 PM | Comments (0) |
Iraqi Ambush: An Inside Job
BBC:
The officials say the militants must have been informed that the soldiers, who had just completed basic training, were being taken home in minibuses.Their bodies were found close to their training camp, in the north-east of the country, near the Iranian border.
Local police say the convoy appeared to have been ambushed.
"There was probably collusion among the soldiers or other groups," Diyala province deputy Governor Aqil Hamid al-Adili told al-Arabiya television.
"Otherwise, the gunmen would not have got the information about the soldiers' departure from their training camp and that they were unarmed," he added.
The rebels who ambushed the army recruits close to Baquba were reportedly dressed in police uniforms.
Posted by bubba138 at 11:01 AM | Comments (0) |
Jumbo Shrimp. Pygmy Hippos.
The governor did introduce an alternative Friday - a hydrogen-powered Hummer custom-built by General Motors at his request.I have long been excited about hydrogen-powered vehicles (to the point stupidly of losing thousands on hydrogen investments) so I find this news quite promising. But the technology is not close to being mature, yet:The governor drove the shiny blue SUV to a hydrogen fueling spot at Los Angeles International Airport to tout his $100 million plan for a "hydrogen highway" of such stations.
Officials said the hydrogen Hummer needs to refuel every 50 miles and there are only about a dozen fueling stations across the state.A fifty mile range makes such vehicles impractical, but that should not be too big a hurdle to conquer.
Üpdate: If hydrogen doesn't work, maybe we can turn anger into energy.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:59 AM | Comments (0) |
October 24, 2004
Politics 101?
Check out these assignments for students in a class at California State University Long Beach:
In this required class, Snider asks students to think about: "Is it right for the Bush administration to use the War on Terrorism for political or commercial purposes? Should Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (search) have been impeached for her partisan, political actions in the Bush v. Gore case? What evidence do we have that Mr. Bush and his cronies lied to the American people in promoting the Iraq war?"A Poli-Sci class? Nope, English 101.Snider also prohibits students from writing about prayer in public schools, same-sex marriage, the "so-called faith-based initiative (search)," abortion and "so-called creationism," which in his opinion, "[there is] no other side apart from chauvinistic, religious, or bigoted opinions."
Posted by bubba138 at 03:34 PM | Comments (0) |
GOP Black Vote Growing
The black vote is beginning to fall out of goose-step with the Democrats:
Dozier is among a growing group of black leaders trying to bring African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans into the Republican fold.Perhaps more and more black voters are educating themselves on the truth of the Democrat party's historic and consistant racist treatment of black people.Black Republicans are a demographic group often ridiculed by other African-Americans, who sometimes portray them as "sellouts." The late Buddy Watts, the father of former Republican Congressman J.C. Watts, once said, "A black person voting for a Republican makes about as much sense as a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders."
But in this age of White House faith-based initiatives and a growing black middle class, many blacks no longer view black Republicans as self-haters.
John Kerry, who is so woefully white he had the audacity to voice his desire to become the country's "second black president," again spent this weeked courting black votes in another blatant violation of seperation of church and state:
For the fourth consecutive Sunday, Kerry spoke at a predominantly black church, this one in Fort Lauderdale in heavily Democratic Broward County, and promised worshippers their votes would be counted this time. The county saw some of the worst of Florida's 2000 vote-counting abuses. "I want you to turn out," the Democrat said.With polls showing that Bush has doubled his share for black support (from 9% in 2000 to 18% this cycle), Kerry's efforts are not doing as well as he'd like. Since there is little chance of him becoming the second black president, he has brought in the first to shore up that demographic.
Posted by bubba138 at 03:17 PM | Comments (0) |
October 22, 2004
Divided Along Married Lines
The big split is no longer on gender lines:
Married voters — men and women — are strong Bush groups: Married women support him by 19 points, 56-37 percent, and married men by 22 points, 59-37 percent. Kerry, though, is favored by six in 10 single men and women alike.One difficulty for Kerry is that there are a lot more married voters than single ones. More than a third of likely voters, 37 percent, are single, compared with 63 percent married. That's very similar to the turnout in 2000, as measured in the national exit poll.
Posted by bubba138 at 05:06 PM | Comments (0) |
With Which Candidate Do You Agree?
 | I preferred Kerry's statements 33% of the time I preferred Bush's statements 67% of the time Voting purely on the issues you should vote Bush Who would you vote for if you voted on the issues? Find out now! |
Posted by bubba138 at 04:51 PM | Comments (0) |
Stiring Up Trouble
Elliot Fladen at the Bush speech in Canton, Ohio mixes it up with anti-Bush protesters:
So I approached with my Bush-Cheney '04 Yard Sign (it has the two prongs, which I used to hold by each hand in the air) over to the opposite corner where the Kerry supporters were organizing. Immediatly the jeers started. Expected. What was unexpected was that quite a few of those jeering were yelling in accents that weren't quite from this area - and those were the people yelling the loudest. More unexpected was a group of these people who seemed bused in surrounded me, and grabbed the plastic portion of my sign from me. To the cheers, applause, and laughter of the crowd.I was pissed. I ran at the 6'2 300 pound guy and demanded my sign back. Bear in mind that I'm 5 foot 7 inches, and 150 pounds. Not a fair fight, and the guy was on the verge of slugging me as pushed me aside.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:46 PM | Comments (0) |
New bin Laden Info?
9/11 Commissioner John Lehman says the Pentagon knows where bin Laden is:
Bin Laden is living in South Waziristan in the Baluchistan Mountains of the Baluchistan region, Lehman told The San Bernardino Sun after delivering a keynote speech on terrorism at Pitzer College in Claremont.Interesting. More to come...In the exclusive interview, Lehman noted, "There is an American presence in the area, but we can't just send in troops. If we did, we could have another Vietnam, and the United States cannot afford that right now."
"We'll get (bin Laden) eventually, just not now," he said. Asked how bin Laden was surviving, Lehman said he was getting money from outside countries, such as the United Arab Emirates and high-ranking ministers inside Saudi Arabia.
Department of Defense spokeswoman Capt. Ronnie Merritt confirmed that the U.S. military believes bin Laden is in Pakistan.
Pakistani security forces have found no sign of Osama bin Laden hiding in a mountainous region bordering Afghanistan, and suspect the terrorist leader may not be there, the top military commander in the area said today.US authorities have long said they believed bin Laden was in the rugged tribal region, but there has been no firm evidence of his whereabouts for three years.
Lietenant General Safdar Hussain, the top commander in north-west Pakistan, said late yesterday that his forces had scoured the region looking for bin Laden, but with no success.
“Everything is in our view. If Osama bin Laden was there we would know. He can not hide there. He is not there,” Hussain said.
And this is interesting. And this too:
Pakistani forces pounded suspected Islamic militants with helicopter gunships and mortar fire on Friday, but have failed to find the mastermind of the kidnapping this month of two Chinese engineers.U.S. officials believe al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and other senior figures in the network are most likely to be hiding in Pakistan and could be protected by foreign fighters in remote tribal regions.
There certainly seems to be a good amount of al Qa'eda activity in that region. It is interesting to note that at least one former Guantanamo detainee is known to be operating in that area:
Another former detainee made headlines in Pakistan earlier this month with the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers working on a dam in Waziristan.One hostage was freed and the other killed in a Pakistani rescue attempt. However, the alleged mastermind, Abdullah Masud, a 29-year-old militant tribal leader who was released from Guantanamo in March, remains at large.
Update: Powerline notes Lehman's assertion echos one made on Tuesday by Colin Powell.
Posted by bubba138 at 03:07 PM | Comments (0) |
Seven Straight Days
Bush has garnered 50% or better on the Washington Post tracking poll for seven straight days.
Posted by bubba138 at 02:09 PM | Comments (0) |
Say So-Long to the South
Except for Florida, Kerry has all but given up in the South:
Kerry, in a virtually unprecedented move for a Democrat, is relying more on the West than the South in his plan to reach the 270 electoral votes needed for victory.Kerry and his aides began the general election pledging to recapture some Southern states — or at least contest them seriously. His campaign and the Democratic National Committee bought television time in North Carolina, Arkansas, Virginia and Louisiana. And Kerry's selection of Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina as his running mate seemed designed, in part, to broaden the ticket's appeal in the South.
But Kerry and the DNC have not been on the air with ads in North Carolina since July, Louisiana since August, and Arkansas and Virginia since early September, according to the ad tracking.
Of course, the same Democrats who accuse Bush of seeing te world through rose-colored glasses see this not as defeat, but as progress:
But even if Kerry falls short in the Southwest in November's vote, the senator has set the right direction for his party by intensifying its focus on the rapidly growing Southwest states, said Democratic pollster Paul Maslin. Many Democratic-leaning states, he noted, have lost electoral college votes in recent decades as population has increased more quickly elsewhere.Interesting reasoning when one considers that the Democrats lost fourteen electoral votes as a result of the last census."It is the first time in a generation … that Democrats are gaining strength in a growing part of the country," Maslin said.
Posted by bubba138 at 12:34 PM | Comments (0) |
You Just Can't Mke This Stuff Up
Then again, maybe you can:
In the Oct. 17 Sunday Source, the "Gatherings" story described a Republican barbecue held to watch a presidential debate. The item reported "the possibly unprecedented occurrence of a young woman in a cowboy hat pretending to make out with a poster of Dick Cheney." The item should have explained that the woman was asked to pose with the vice president's picture by the photographer working for The Washington Post. The woman also did not pretend to "make out" with the picture; at the photographer's suggestion, she pretended to blow a kiss at it. The item should have explained that the party was hosted in response to a request from The Post, which discussed the decorations and recipes with the host and agreed to reimburse the cost of recipe ingredients.(Hat tip)
Posted by bubba138 at 11:09 AM | Comments (0) |
Iraq Naysayers
With all that's gone wrong in Iraq, critics of the war can take a certain grim satisfaction in being vindicated. Why on Earth didn't President Bush listen to their warnings, which now appear eerily prescient? Just recall what antiwar advocates said:Sen. John Kerry: "I do not believe our nation is prepared for war. If we do go to war, for years people will ask why Congress gave in. They will ask why there was such a rush to so much death and destruction when it did not have to happen."
Columnist Robert Novak: "It is probable that after Bush orders the first shot fired, anything that looks American throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe could come into the cross hairs of a rifle sight or be blown up by a car bomb."
Actually there's a perfectly good reason why President George H.W. Bush didn't listen to these Cassandras: They were wrong. You see, all these gloomy predictions weren't made prior to the war of 2003. They were made before the war of 1991.
We have no way of knowing what would have happened if the United States hadn't invaded Iraq last year, but the recent report by the CIA's special weapons inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, suggests that sanctions were falling apart and that Hussein was plotting to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction. The consequences of inaction will, thankfully, remain in the realm of speculation. The daily drumbeat of terrible tidings appears to lend credence to the critics who foresaw disaster. Maybe, like a stopped clock that's right twice a day, their predictions have finally come true. Maybe. The occupation of Iraq has definitely proved more difficult than its architects anticipated. The United States could even lose.
But victory is not out of reach yet. Recent events — U.S. and Iraqi forces going on the offensive, Muqtada Sadr's apparent decision to enter the political process, the reelection in Australia of a staunch supporter of the war effort — give fresh reasons for hope. If we hang in there, the U.S. can still prove the naysayers wrong. Again.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:21 AM | Comments (0) |
Voter Intimidation in Florida
If the parties were reversed, Jesse Jackson would be screaming about voter intimidation:
I just got off the phone with a friend of mine who travelled down to Florida to work for the GOP at the polls. He's monitoring the early voting in southern Florida and he says it's a zoo. There's very little Republican presence monitoring the voting, while Democrats are out in force at the early voting stations. He reports that Democratic thugs are blocking parking access for clearly Republican voters, and there has been at least one incident involving a shotgun.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:14 AM | Comments (0) |
Just. Can't. Help. Myself.
Update: Kerry's new foreign policy: "let's get 'em all slouched and they will do what ever we want, and never remember a thing"
Posted by bubba138 at 09:56 AM | Comments (0) |
Triple Down Teresa
Hugh Hewitt on MommyGate:
The women's vote is crucial this year and is one demographic that the Democrats have classically been able to control. But the Kerry campaign has done its best to offend women across the country, first with the "Mary Cheney is fair game" blunder and now with Teresa Heinz-Kerry's oblivious display of snobbery.When the would-be first lady decided to take a shot at Laura Bush in yesterday's USA Today by stating that Mrs. Bush had never held a "real job," she committed the rarest of things--a triple gaffe. Like triple plays in baseball, these are rarely seen in these days of well-coached candidates and spouses. But Tuesday's was one for the ages.
First, it is bad form--very bad form--to speak in anything other than the most complimentary terms of your opponent's spouse. It's just tacky. But after the assault on Mary Cheney's privacy by John Kerry, Mary Beth Cahill, and Elizabeth Edwards, I guess more appearances of the merely tacky should not surprise.
Blunder two was to denigrate, by omission, the professions of teacher and librarian. Ms. H-K quickly figured out these were interest groups in good standing in the Democratic party and rushed out an apology: She had "forgotten" Laura's service as both. Not believable, of course, but acceptable damage control.
The worst part of the Ms. H-K triple feature was failing to mention Laura Bush's "real job" as a mom. The apology crafters were no doubt in a bind when it came time to deal with that oversight. It would be hard to claim that Ms. H-K had "forgotten" the twins, but she couldn't exactly double-down on the status of mom not being that of a real job. So they said nothing. Mistake again. She ought to have begged the forgiveness of the tens of millions of American moms wondering: "What am I, a potted plant?"
Some would argue that these are petty and have nothing to do with the issues that this country is facing -- that one who based his or her vote on these gaffes is would be the prime example of an "airhead." Such arguments discount the very real fact that character and class do count. A candidate's stated position on any issue means nothing if he cannot be trusted (character) nor can he be effective if his lack of cooth (class) undermines relationships. John Kerry and his team have shown they are sorely lacking in both these areas.
Update: The Washington Times takes a peek at <shiver>a White House with Teresa Heinz Kerry as occupant</shiver>.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:22 AM | Comments (0) |
Circumventing Democracy
Regardless of their rhetoric, the most important thing to Democrats this election cycle is winning. The Wall Street Journal points out that the Democrat's legal wrangling rips at the very fabric of our system:
Not that the partisans care, but there's a larger principle that is in danger of being trampled here. A fair election requires two things: The ability to cast a ballot but also the confidence that any vote is honestly cast. The count-'em-all-legal-or-not-and-sue strategy stomps on the second principle in order to serve the first. Denying the right to vote was common in many areas before the Voting Rights Act of the 1960s, but there is no evidence that it was a problem at all in 2000.This complete hijacking of the democratic process is illustrated in the attitude if high level Democrats who assert that the very possibility of George Bush as winner would be proof of vote fraud:What we are seeing now isn't an attempt to prevent injustice but looks to be a calculated political strategy to create enough confusion at the polls to justify legal challenges that will cloud any close Presidential outcome. Let's hope we have a clear winner on Election Night, or we may all wish we were in Afghanistan.
Eric Holder, a former Clinton Justice Department official who is now on the Democratic party's "Election Task Force," made a remarkable statement in a recent appearance on Fox News Sunday.The arrogance of the Democrats is astounding, especcially considering all their attempts to register people who do not exist. So in a sense Mr. Holder is correct, if every vote is allowed and every vote is counted Kerry would win, even though in some counties there will be more votes than actual, living and breathing voters. Also keep in mind that the Democrat's position has been that every vote be counted except (if they had had their way) the military votes.Discussing a Democratic National Committee memo calling for local party members to complain "preemptively" about voter intimidation, Holder said, "If every vote is allowed to be cast, and if every vote is counted, John Kerry will be president within a day of that election."
After his comment spurred some laughter, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace said, "Well, I don't know how you can guarantee that." But Holder just responded, "You heard it right here. If every vote is allowed to be cast and every vote is counted, John Kerry will be president."
This smash-mouth mentality -- if Kerry loses, that fact alone is prima-facie evidence that Bush stole the election -- is what the Kerry campaign and affiliated Democrats bring to the seemingly inevitable post-election-day fight. The Kerry campaign is pounding its chest, boasting that any Republican advantage in the actual votes cast is nothing compared to the Democrats' ability to find sympathetic judges and the rulings they seek.
Update: Jonah Goldberg has more:
Meanwhile, in Missouri the Democratic front-group Americans Coming Together hands out fliers depicting an African-American on the receiving end of a fire hose blast. "This is what they used to do to keep us from voting," the piece reads. On the back are a list of alleged incidents of recent voter intimidation, with the line, "This is how Republicans keep African-Americans from voting now."Let's just skip over the fact that odds are the guy ordering the fire hose treatment was a Democrat.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:20 AM | Comments (0) |
October 21, 2004
You Can't Fool Me 'Cause I'm a Moron
Kerry is out hunting down conservative votes in Ohio today, showing he can brandish a gun and kill geese with the best of them (just not carry the bloody carcass, that's dirty).
But Kerry's temporary swerve to the center is not fooling anyone, least of all Michael Moore:
Moore said Kerry may not be perfect, but is far superior to former Vice President Al Gore and this year's other Democratic presidential hopefuls. "There's a reason that they're saying Kerry is the No. 1 liberal in the Senate," said Moore. "It's because he is the No. 1 liberal in the Senate."
Posted by bubba138 at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) |
Laura Bush
Again, a picture of grace under pressure:
Asked about Heinz Kerry's apology Wednesday for what she said, Bush responded, "It didn't matter to me. It didn't hurt my feelings. It was perfectly all right that she apologized. She didn't have to apologize. I know how tough it is. And actually I know those trick questions."
Posted by bubba138 at 02:05 PM | Comments (0) |
Halloween: Now Officially Offensive
For years there has been a great Halloween controversy in Christian circles. Many vocal Christians have said the entire holiday is anti-Christian and should not at all be observed. They have even tried to get schools to cancel Halloween celebrations, but to no avail. Until now, that is.
A school district in Washington state has cancelled it, not because it offends Christians, but because it offends Wiccans:
The district said Halloween celebrations and children dressed in Halloween costumes might be offensive to real witches.Personally I think too many Christian make too much a big deal about Halloween. Today it is about kids and candy and costumes more than it is about anything else. Still I think it really says something about our society when schools have become more concerned with offending witches than they are about decorating their classrooms with images of death and decay."Witches with pointy noses and things like that are not respective symbols of the Wiccan religion and so we want to be respectful of that," Hansen said.
The Wiccan, or Pagan, religion is said to be growing in the United States and there are Wiccan groups in Puyallup.
On the district's list of guidelines related to holidays and celebrations is an item that reads: "Use of derogatory stereotypes is prohibited, such as the traditional image of a witch, which is offensive to members of the Wiccan religion."
"I do lots of things that are not revolving around wearing a black outfit and stirring a cauldron," Wiccan priestess Cheryl Sulyma-Masson said in an interview with ABC News in which she explained that Wiccans, or Pagan Clergy, celebrate nature.
Posted by bubba138 at 01:37 PM | Comments (0) |
Voter Fraud in Georgia
Yet another example of false registrations for pay in Georgia:
Fulton County elections officials suspect they received as many as 3,000 bogus voter registration applications collected illegally in exchange for money."Here I am wanting a perfect election." I'd say it is about crow-eating time.The applications were submitted to the Georgia secretary of state's office in September by Unity '04, a national group working in Atlanta with civil rights leader the Rev. Joseph Lowery to register African-American voters.
In an Oct. 11 memo to his supervisor, Sullivan said the "fraudulent applications I believe were a product of greed, not an effort to affect the outcome of the election."
In an interview this week, Sullivan said: "I don't think the organization had the intent for fraud, but the net effect was that we got in thousands of them that were bogus." Sullivan worried that some legitimate voters could get lost in the sea of fake applications.
"I'm just afraid there's a potential we have messed up. There are teams of lawyers out there watching us," Sullivan said, his voice trailing off. "I don't know. Here I am wanting a perfect election. I don't need this."
Update: More vote fraud here.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:57 AM | Comments (0) |
Fodder For the Conspiracy Theorists - Part II
The right-wing tin-foil hat crowd is going to love this:
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton has set his sights on becoming U.N. secretary-general. A Clinton insider and a senior U.N. source have told United Press International the 56-year-old former president would like to be named leader of the world body when Kofi Annan's term ends early in 2006."He definitely wants to do it," the Clinton insider said this week.
This is not the first time this possibilty has been raised. Back in February of 2003, a political observer wrote that Bill was already moving chess pieces into place:
Now, here is the truly frightening aspect -- the fix is in. There are reports that Bill Clinton already has lined up support for his candidacy from Germany, France, England, Ireland and New Zealand. A handful of African states, led by Nigeria, are rooting for Bill. And Hillary has brought in Morocco and Egypt. The Russians have let it be known that they would not object to Clinton as the next secretary-general, and the Chinese love Bill almost as much as Monica did.Add to all this that Harold Ickes, Clinton's former deputy chief of staff, was present at a recent "secret meeting" of the ultra-powerful and ultra-rich and you have a pot that's just too juicy to not stir.
Update: On a more serious note, imagine having U.N.-loving John Kerry as president at the same time Bill Clinton is the Secretary General. That in itself would guarantee a surrender of U.S. sovereignty to the world community.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:53 AM | Comments (0) |
Porpoise as Plaintiff?
The Ninth Circuit appeals court is not known for making reasonable decisions, but once in a while they get one right:
A federal appeals court decided Wednesday that marine mammals have no standing to sue to stop the U.S. Navy from using sonar.I am flabbergasted at the sheer arrogance of those who think they can read the minds of animals to the extent that they can advocate for them in court. Had the judegment gone the other way, how would the "cetaceans" be compensated, in Chicken of the Sea?In upholding a lower court decision, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the world's cetaceans -- whales, porpoises and dolphins -- have no standing under the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act or the National Environmental Policy Act.
If lawmakers "intended to take the extraordinary step of authorizing animals as well as people and legal entities to sue, they could, and should, have said so plainly," said Judge William A. Fletcher, writing for the panel.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:25 AM | Comments (0) |
Peace at All Costs
John Kerry's convictions, and lack of wisdom, shine through in his pre-9/11 statements concerning defense. One example is this May 2nd, 2001 reaction to President Bush's proposal for missle defense:
"If you can't shoot down 100 percent of them [missiles], you haven't gotten rid of mutually assured destruction. And if you can, you set off an arms race to develop a capacity that can't be touched by a missile defense system."Did you catch that? Unless a missle defense system reaches the completely unattainable goal of 100% perfection, it is not worth pursuing because "mutual destruction" is still a possibility. Kerry's statment implies that is better for the U.S. to be completely destroyed and her enemies spared than it is for both to be annihilated.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:14 AM | Comments (0) |
Kerry's First Front
The date is September 23rd, 2001. America is barely two weeks out from the largest attack ever perpetrated upon her and Senator John Kerry has a clear idea what must be the top priority.
Remove the Taliban? Nope.
Go after bin Laden? Nope.
Invade Iraq? Of course not.
What was John Kerry's top priority on the (for him, uncomfortably named) war on terror? Domestic policy, of course:
I think the most important thing for Americans right now, and I'm sorry this is a switch on you a little bit, but the first front of this war is here at home, our economy. It really is. To sustain people's good will, to sustain the energy towards this, to have the resources to fight it, we've got to get the economy moving.Does this sound like a commander-in-chief that we can trust to protect the country from people who want to bomb us?And that means an unprecedented effort in the next days to face up to what was happening not just since September 11, but before September 11. We now have a huge number of new unemployed, people who were working in average jobs across this country who are going to be without health insurance, without an income. We've got to get money back into the economy, and we've got to do it rapidly.
Posted by bubba138 at 06:17 AM | Comments (0) |
Kerry For/Against Again
John Kerry has lately been deriding Bush for "outsourcing" the capture of bin Laden to the Afghanistan warlords. But as the operation was happening, he had nothing but praise for Bush's strategy:
LARRY KING: Senator Kerry -- and this is for all of you, how goes it so far in Afghanistan, in your opinion?SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: I think our guys are doing a superb job. I think we've had, things break for us, the way, one would want them to, but in addition, I think the people you just heard, they are trained, they are ready. I think we have been smart, I think the administration leadership has done it well and we are on right track...
CALLER: Hello. Yes, I would like to ask the panel why they don't use napalm or flamethrowers on those tunnels and caves up there in Afghanistan? ...
KERRY: Well, I think it depends on where you are tactically. They may well be doing that at some point in time. But for the moment, what we are doing, I think, is having its impact and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will. I think we have been doing this pretty effectively and we should continue to do it that way.
And then there is this bombshell:
KERRY: Oh, I think we clearly have to keep the pressure on terrorism globally. This doesn't end with Afghanistan by any imagination. And I think the president has made that clear. I think we have made that clear. Terrorism is a global menace. It's a scourge. And it is absolutely vital that we continue, for instance, Saddam Hussein. I think we...To be honest, Kerry does qualify what he was about to say about Iraq and Saddam Hussien. However, in this statement Kerry plainly includes Iraq in the global war on terrorism, which is exactly the opposite of what he said today:KING: We should go to Iraq?
KERRY: Well, that -- what do you and how you choose to do it, we have a lot of options. Absent smoking gun evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the immediate events of September 11, the president doesn't have the authorization to proceed forward there.
But we clearly are he ought to proceed to put pressure on him with respect to the weapons of mass destruction. I think we should be supporting an opposition. There are other ways for us, clandestinely and otherwise, to put enormous pressure on him and I think we should do it.
At a simultaneous rally 80 miles away in Waterloo, Mr. Kerry held firm to his assessment that the nation's war in Iraq was a distraction from the global war on terrorism.By Kerry's own words three years ago, Iraq was a part of the global war on terror. Today, however because there are votes in it, Kerry says Iraq is a distraction from it."President Bush likes to confuse the two. He claims that Iraq is the centerpiece of the war on terror. In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion," he said.
The entirety of Kerry's arguments on the global war on terror is based on absolutely nothing but looking back at what has been done and complaining about the mistakes. But the president has to make decisions in real time, without the luxury of looking backwards upon the results. Kerry has shown time and again that he agreed with the President's courses of action only to mercilessly criticize them when every detail did not go perfectly.
(Hat tip)
Posted by bubba138 at 05:37 AM | Comments (0) |
October 20, 2004
Miracles Do Happen
Wow.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:08 PM | Comments (0) |
Pre-emptive Action
Posted by bubba138 at 04:13 PM | Comments (0) |
John Kerry Campaigns Against John Kerry
Kerry wants everyone to think he is a new man, but his past keeps haunting him:
Kerry's belief in working with allies runs so deep that he has maintained that the loss of American life can be better justified if it occurs in the course of a mission with international support. In 1994, discussing the possibility of U.S. troops being killed in Bosnia, he said, "If you mean dying in the course of the United Nations effort, yes, it is worth that. If you mean dying American troops unilaterally going in with some false presumption that we can affect the outcome, the answer is unequivocally no."By this definition, every soldier lost in Iraq was a death not worth dying. The freedom of the Iraqi people was not worth the price because the lives given for that freedom were not given "in the course of the United Nations effort".
When John Kerry speaks of a "global test" his statement is supported by years of similar rhetoric, indicating that this recognition of the U.N. as an authority greater than any single nation is a heartfelt conviction for John Kerry. By contrast, his statements indicating he would not submit U.S. interests to world approval are brand-new to his vocabulary, which suggests such thinking has been thrown in for no other reason than the benefit of this election.
Posted by bubba138 at 03:57 PM | Comments (0) |
Carter's "Wisdom"
Former Presdident Carter on Chris Matthew's HardSoftball:
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you the question about – this is going to cause some trouble with people but as an historian now and studying the Revolutionary War as it was fought out in the South in those last years of the War, insurgency against a powerful British force. Do you see any parallels between the fighting that we did on our side and the fighting that is going on in Iraq today?Carter's answer shows his complete lack of a grasp of the facts of American history. Neither the Revolutionary war nor the current conflict in Iraq were close to being one of our country's bloodier conflicts. Both the Civil War and WWII were bloodier thean either of these wars.CARTER: Well, one parallel is that the Revolutionary War more than any other war until recently has been the most bloody war we’ve fought. I think another parallel is that in some ways the Revolutionary War could have been avoided. It was an unnecessary war. Had the British Parliament been a little more sensitive to the colonial’s really legitimate complaints and requests the war could have been avoided completely and of course now we would have been a free country now as is Canada and India and Australia, having gotten our independence in a non-violent way. I think in many ways the British were very misled in going to war against America and in trying to enforce their will on people who were quite different from them at the time.
He also completely ignores the fact that without the American revolution, the more peaceful independence won by Canada, India, and Australia would not have been possible. The American revolution taught Britian the price to be paid for holding control over people without giving them representative governmental power. Without that lesson, the other countries mentioned by Carter would most assuredly have had to endure their own bloody conflict.
What both Matthews and Carter purposely do not mention is that the goal of the U.S. is to set up a completely independent nation in Iraq, a nation based on freedom and democracy. Such a goal contrasts starkly to the stated objectives that King George had for the American colonies.
Posted by bubba138 at 03:31 PM | Comments (0) |
Fodder For the Conspiracy Theorists
It has all the components to generate unmitigated furor in the tin-foil hatted left: secret meetings of ultra-rich, ultra-powerful white men with designs to influence the U.S. election beyond the expressed will of the people.
The Bush-Cheney cabal/empire? Nope:
On August 6th, a week after the Democratic Convention, a clandestine summit meeting took place at the Aspen Institute, in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. The participants, all Democrats, were sworn to secrecy, and few of them will discuss the event. One thing that is certain, however, is that the guests formed a tableau that not many people would associate with the Democratic Party of the past. Five billionaires joined half a dozen liberal leaders in a lengthy conversation about the future of progressive politics in America. The billionaires were not especially close socially, nor were they in complete agreement about politics or strategy. Yet they shared a common goal: to use their fortunes to engineer the defeat of President George W. Bush in the 2004 election.Of course, since these guys support the chosen candidate of the fever swamp, there shall be no uproar. Understood?“No one was supposed to know about this,” an assistant to one participant told me, declining to be named. “We don’t want people thinking it’s a cabal, or some sort of Masonic plot!” His concern was understandable: the prospect of rich men concentrating their wealth in order to sway an American election was an inflammatory one, particularly given the Democratic Party’s populist rhetoric.
Posted by bubba138 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) |
A Study in Contrasts
O'REILLY: Last night, [Teresa Heinz-Kerry] was confronted with some hecklers, some pro-Bush hecklers that were going, "Four more years," and she said, "Four more years of hell. Do you want four more years of hell?" How would you react to that?LAURA BUSH: Well, of course, I don't like that. But you know, it's not easy when your husband runs for president. I mean, it's not easy for me. I'm sure it's not easy for her. There's a lot of scrutiny on families that isn't always wanted. And I think those sort of reactions, it's not easy to be heckled — you know, no one likes that.
"Well, you know, I don't know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her eye, which is good," Heinz Kerry said. "But I don't know that she's ever had a real job - I mean, since she's been grown up. So her experience and her validation comes from important things, but different things."Given a chance to slam Heinz-Kerry, Laura Bush displayed grace fitting of a First Lady. Contrawise, Heinz-Kerry does not even think twice nor check her facts before throwing the wife of the President under the bus.
Yes, Heinz-Kerry did apologize, but the fact remains, she shot her mouth off without consideration. It is not hard to imagine her making the same verbal gaffe in reference to the wife of another world leader. Like it or not, when we elect a president, the wife is part of the package. Do we want to risk offending other countries because Heinz-Kerry completely lacks the capacity to moderate her yapper?
Posted by bubba138 at 02:30 PM | Comments (0) |
Don't Go There
The no-go zones prove it is a quagmire:
The police now publicly admit what many...have known for a long time: They no longer control the situation in the nations's third-largest city. It is effectively ruled by violent gangs of Muslim immigrants...Ambulance personnel are attacked by stones or weapons, and refuse to help anybody in the area without police escort. Recently, an Albanian youth was stabbed by an Arab and was left bleeding to death on the ground while the ambulance waited for the police to arrive. The police themselves hesitate to enter parts of their own city unless they have several patrols and need to have guards to watch their cars; otherwise they will be vandalizedNajaf? Nope.
Posted by bubba138 at 12:45 PM | Comments (0) |
The Enemy We Face
In a new dispatch from the religion of peace Magdi Ahmad Hussein, the Secretary-General of the Egyptian Labor (Islamist) Party, justified the beheadings in Iraq. His reasoning? The prophet did it and that makes it OK:
"We are the weak ones. They make demands on us that don't exist in international law. There must be reciprocity. If your city is being bombed… Those who bomb Fallujah cannot prevent me from bombing Los Angeles. Why Fallujah? Why do we always feel inferior to them? What is the meaning of this inferiority complex? If we had missiles we should have bombed Los Angeles or any other city until they stopped bombing Fallujah, Samarra, and Ramadi."Sir, why do the government clerics ignore the killing of the prisoners during the time of the Prophet? 600-700 prisoners were killed in the raid on the Qurayza tribe.
"Why do they conceal this? Why do they hide the fact that the Prophet gave the order to assassinate some poets – to assassinate! Not in military operations, but rather by individual assassination.
"Why did he order the assassination of K'ab Ibn Ashraf, the Jew, leader of Khaybar ? And then he ordered the assassination of the leader who successive him. As a result, the Jews became fearful and terrified."
Posted by bubba138 at 12:40 PM | Comments (0) |
Read This...
Posted by bubba138 at 10:02 AM | Comments (0) |
Vote Early, Vote Often
The potential for voter fraud is huge in Colorado:
Now, 20 counties, including Broomfield and Summit, appear to have more registered voters than residents eligible to vote.Colorado is definitely setting up to be the crucial legal battleground this election cycle.By the clerk's count, Boulder County's voters have also surpassed the 2003 U.S. census estimate of the voting-age population. "We have been so busy inputting new registrations and putting in changes," said Boulder County Deputy Clerk Nancy Wurl.
About 260 voters statewide appear to be registered three times- some in three different counties.
Allison Solomon first registered at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Jefferson County when she turned 18. Two years later, she moved to Denver and registered in her new county. She found the new neighborhood a little dodgy, and three months later moved to Westminster and registered again in Adams County. She was shocked to learn she is listed on the rolls three times.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:37 AM | Comments (0) |
Social Security Scare-Mongering
Kerry is banking on scaring grandmas into voting for him, saying that Bush is going to cut Social Security checks for current recipients. FactCheck.org corrects the record:
The Kerry ad is wrong on several counts:There is much more so go read it all.•Bush hasn't proposed any specific plan . This ad refers to one of three different possible "reform models" that were detailed in the final report of the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security in December 2001. Bush hasn't endorsed any of them. He may propose something similar if elected, but so far hasn't spelled out for voters exactly what he has in mind.
•The plan the Kerry ad refers to doesn't affect benefits for current retirees at all, and Bush has said consistently that whatever plan he proposes won't cut benefits for those now drawing them, or those nearing retirement. Stating that Bush plans to "cut Social Security benefits" will be heard by many seniors as a plan to cut their benefits, which isn't true.
•Even for future retirees, benefits will grow under the "reform model" the Kerry ad refers to. That model would reduce the rate at which the starting point for future benefits is expected to grow, by increasing starting benefits to keep pace with rising prices, rather than with rising wages as has been the case since 1977.
The New York Times, surprisingly, also did a useful Kerry fact checking yesterday.
Update: Even the Washington Post is jumping on Kerry for his "Scare Packages."
Posted by bubba138 at 09:30 AM | Comments (0) |
Global Warming Destroys the World:
Women and Minorities Hardest Hit
The greenhouse effect could wreck attempts to lift the world's poorest people out of poverty and reverse human progress, campaigners say.Of course it never occurs to this coalition that industrialization is responsible for lifting more people out of poverty than any other cause.A report by the coalition, Up In Smoke, says global warming threatens to make the Millennium Development Goals unattainable.
They are the internationally agreed targets for halving world poverty by 2015. The report says the warming could "even reverse human development achievements".
He writes: "Most notable as a major issue of concern is the nexus between climate change and the widespread prevalence of poverty in the world.
"As the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC clearly indicates, 'The impacts of climate change will fall disproportionately upon developing countries and the poor... within all countries.'"
Posted by bubba138 at 09:15 AM | Comments (0) |
That'll Stop Him
The U.N. has a solution to the al-Zarqawi problem:
A U.N. committee announced Tuesday that it has put the network of alleged terror mastermind Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi on its list of groups subject to U.N. sanctions.I'm sure Abu-Musab is shaking in his sheets now.The Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against al-Qaida and the Taliban said it had added al-Zarqawi's network, Jama'at al-Tawhid Wa'al-Jihad - known as Tawhid and Jihad - to the list on Monday. It said the group is also known as the Monotheism and Jihad Group.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:02 AM | Comments (0) |
Judicial Activism
Margaret H. Marshall is defending the character of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the same court that ruled the state is legally required to recognize gay marriage:
"I don't think they are activist judges," Marshall said. "I think they are judges doing their constitutional duty."Asked by a reporter about Romney's criticisms of overreaching by the SJC, Marshall said: "The governor of Massachusetts is a citizen and he, like all other citizens, has protections of the First Amendment and he can say what he wants to say. That's one of the great advantages of living in a democracy."
Posted by bubba138 at 08:53 AM | Comments (0) |
The Cost of Appeasment
Spain whiplash appeasement in reaction to the train bombings certainly seems to be working:
Spanish authorities said Tuesday they disrupted a plot by a cell of Islamic radicals to blow up a Madrid court complex that serves as the home for the country's top anti-terrorism investigators and judges.It has been less than a year and withdrawing from Iraq is already not enough for them. It is not apparent yet what motivated this particular group to plan this particular attack, but the reasoning behind it is immaterial. The fundamental truth here is that appeasement only encourages further attack. Once these groups see they can get results through violence, then violence will ever be their trump card.Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso said the suspects were planning an attack on the National Court building in Madrid.
"Police are not ruling out other possible targets," he said.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:37 AM | Comments (0) |
The Move is Complete
Here we are. Slings & Arrows is now hosted on Hosting Matters servers. I am confident of better reliability and speed out of them than I was getting out of 1and1.
I am leaving the old site up as long as possible so any links to old posts remain active. I really wanted to mirror the new site exactly as the old one, but unfortunately that was not possible as imported posts were assigned new, unique IDs.
if anything does not work the way it should.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:11 AM | Comments (0) |
October 19, 2004
In Transition
Slings and Arrows is currently in a state of transition. I have the new site up and running, and I am importing posts from here into it.
Update: I am almost done and of course my 1and1 host is completely down again. Well, I got all of October's posts imported at least. I'll try to bring in the older ones later.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:13 PM | Comments (0) |
I Don't Get It Either
Yasser Arafat supports The Poodle. Arafat wants Bush defeated and Kerry in the White House, this according to several Palestinian leaders. Saeb Erekat, one of Arafat's chief negotiators, told World Net Daily that the Palestinian Authority wants a change in who occupies the White House. Another Arafat confidant said that Arafat thinks Kerry would be better for the Palestinian cause.It certainly has me stumped.Here's the oddity. Even if Arafat were to film campaign commercials for Kerry, and accompany him on the campaign trail, Kerry would still carry the Jewish vote in the United States.
Some things just can't be figured out.
Posted by bubba138 at 11:02 AM | Comments (0) |
Better Hair
An upbeat John Kerry campaigned for the first time with running mate John Edwards on Wednesday and boasted that the Democratic team has a "better vision, better ideas" than its Republican counterpart - and joked, "we've got better hair."
Well, he is right about that last point. Here is why.
(Hat tip)
Posted by bubba138 at 10:43 AM | Comments (0) |
Ashley's Story
I want a President that has a heart as well as a head. Make sure you watch the video.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:31 AM | Comments (0) |
Kerry Speaking in Tongues
Kerry decided to display his linguistic skills recently. I have no doubt Kerry can speak French, since he spent many a summer there. Still, when I listen to it, it sounds like someone is feeding him the words.
(Hat tip)
Posted by bubba138 at 10:24 AM | Comments (0) |
Crack Head Vote Fraud
By now everyone knows about the guy who got paid in crack to register voters. Still it is surprising how stupid this guy really is:
Noting that the potentially new voters had listed addresses in Defiance County, Cuyahoga County elections officials sent the forms to Defiance County, where they arrived the afternoon of Oct. 8.Jared of Thinklings hits the nail square on the head, "If you pay a guy with crack, you're going to get work that looks like . . . well, like it was done by a guy on crack.""We could tell by the handwriting that many of them were written by the same person," she said. "And of course we know the streets. Defiance being a small town, many of [the forms] had streets not even in Defiance."
And so elections workers immediately began sending out letters, addressed to the people listed at those addresses, as a precaution to ensure that a Mary Poppins, a Jeffrey Dahmer, or a Janet Jackson didn't, in fact, live in Defiance County, she said.
Letters also went out to George Foreman, Brett Favre, Michael Jordan, and Dick Tracy, among others in the bundle to see if the post office would return them as undeliverable.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:35 AM | Comments (0) |
I Don't Cross Picket Lines
"I don't cross picket lines. I never have." Those were John Kerry's words not four months ago when Boston's Police picketed the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Kerry, in a proud display of conviction cancelled his previously scheduled appearance, even though Boston's mayor Thomas Menino made an impassioned last-minute called imploring Kerry to come.
In the same time it took Kerry to go to and return from Vietnam with three Purple Hearts in tow, Kerry has changed his position. The man who declared, "I don't cross picket lines," crossed two on his way to meet Orlando mayor, Buddy Dyer:
Aides said the demonstration, staged by members of the Orlando Police Department represented by Fraternal Order of Police Local 25, was sprung on the campaign without prior notice in an effort to embarrass the city's Democratic mayor, Buddy Dyer. Local media describe the union as Republican-leaning, the same label aides to Mayor Thomas M. Menino attached to the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association in the midst of its dispute before the Democratic National Convention in July.Both of the Kerry campaign's excuses for crossing the picket line just do not hold water."It was a surprise demonstration by an organization that supports President Bush," said David Wade, a spokesman for Kerry.
First, that the police union may lean Republican is immaterial. The same charge was made about the Boston police union. Further, one must question, if Bush is doing such a poor job promoting and funding "first responders" as Kerry charges, why do they support Bush?
Second, the picketing was niether "sprung" on the mayor, nor was it a "surprise demonstration" as Kerry spokesman David Wade falsley states. Local news reported the police union's strategy two and a half weeks ago:
In the meantime, officers are not allowed to walk off the job, so they plan to picket Friday afternoon in Kissimmee, where John Kerry will be.The Florida police union was betting on Kerry to hold to his convictions. They found out the only conviction he has is to win the Presidency.Orlando officers are trying to emulate their brothers in Boston. During the Democratic National Convention, Boston officers picketed. John Kerry did not want to cross the picket line and the officers got their raise.
Orlando officers are hoping the same thing will happen here.
Although Kerry apparently did not make it to Kissimmee on the date the police union originally expected, their plan was known, only the date changed. Last week the local news reported, "they plan to use more extreme measures, including a billboard campaign like they did during a similar dispute in 1993, or showing up to picket at the next local appearance by Senator Kerry, saying it would embarrass a Democratic mayor in front of a potential Democratic president."
Posted by bubba138 at 09:27 AM | Comments (0) |
GoreBot Calling
Ouch:
Democratic group America Coming Together is running an automated "robo-call" with the recorded voice of Al Gore.You know your candidate is in trouble when you have to bring in Gore to boost support. As the loser of the 2000 Presidential race, Gore's eagerness to promote John Kerry (even though he is not Howard Dean) contrasts starkly with two-time winner Bill Clinton's measured support. The latest news is that Bill's recovery from his recent heart surgery is taking longer than expected, and that is keeping him from the campaign trail. But even before the surgery, he was appeared less than enthusiastic about Kerry's bid."Hello. This is Vice President Al Gore. Early voting starts today all across Florida. This is your chance to avoid long lines and make sure your vote is counted," intones Mr Gore.
"Every year we hear these are the most important elections of our lifetime, but this year it's true and your vote makes a difference. I know that in Florida every vote does matter," he continues.
The burning question for me, is that Al Gore or a real robot? Like the last election in Florida, too close to call.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:17 AM | Comments (0) |
October 18, 2004
The Newest Rock Sensation
Ugh.
(Hat tip)
Posted by bubba138 at 04:03 PM | Comments (0) |
Madrid Attacks May Have Targeted Election
Posted by bubba138 at 03:33 PM | Comments (0) |
This Sums It Up
Posted by bubba138 at 11:14 AM | Comments (0) |
Anglicans Say "Cut It Out!"
The Anglicans have released the results of their review of the Bishop Robinson situation and their conclusion could not be more plain -- the Bible clearly states homosexuality is a sin:
"Ordaining homosexuals is heresy, unbiblical, should never have been done and should be reversed," said Archdeacon Oluranti Odubogun, Secretary General of the Church of Nigeria Anglican Communion, the African church's most strident anti-gay voice.I can understand how gay men and lesbian women will not like this decision. But for crying out loud, where do they get off imposing their own morality on thousands of years of tradition and theology? If they want to practice religion, by all means do it. But don't base it on a document that explicitly says their lifestyle is sinful."Homosexual behavior is deviant, unbiblical, un-Christian and unnatural," said Odubogun, whose Nigerian church is the second-largest Anglican community after Britain's.
The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association said the Anglicans were creating "a fantasy world of 'evil' gays" while Peter Tatchell, Britain's leading gay rights campaigner, described the ban as "undisguised homophobia more typical of a fascist party than a supposedly Christian organization."
Update: More here:
Following the publication of the Windsor Report today, the religious think-tank Ekklesia has pointed out that the Report of the Lambeth Commission on Communion does not call on the Episcopal church to apologise, as has been reported widely in the media.One wonders, is that splitting hairs?Paragraph 134 of the document states:
“Mindful of the hurt and offence that have resulted from recent events, and yet also of the imperatives of communion - the repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation enjoined on us by Christ - we have debated long and hard how all sides may be brought together. We recommend that:
the Episcopal Church (USA) be invited to express its regret that the proper constraints of the bonds of affection were breached in the events surrounding the election and consecration of a bishop for the See of New Hampshire, and for the consequences which followed, and that such an expression of regret would represent the desire of the Episcopal Church (USA) to remain within the Communion"
Ekklesia’s director Jonathan Bartley said; "There is a crucial difference between apology and regret. Whilst regret carries with it the wish that things had been otherwise, an apology goes one stage further and implies an expression of penitence."
Posted by bubba138 at 10:18 AM | Comments (0) |
Two Is Enough
Jeb says "no" to 2008 run:
"I'm not going to run for president in 2008," Mr. Bush, who rarely grants interviews to the national news media, told George Stephanopoulos, the host of "This Week." "That's not my interest. I'm governor of this state. It's the best job in the world I have."This is the right move. There is already too much anti-Bush sentiment in the Democrat party and the conspiracy theorist have already slipped discs over the "Bush Dynasty." Adding one more Bush to the mix would surely doom any chances the GOP has for the White House in 2008.Mr. Bush has been a popular governor, even more so after his handling of four hurricanes that battered his state recently. Many Florida Republicans have encouraged him to seek the presidency, but others have worried that Americans would resist sending another Bush to the Oval Office.
2016? That's a whole different thing altogether.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:48 AM | Comments (0) |
Switching Hosts
This weekend and this morning did it form me. I am done with my hosting service, 1and1.com. The service's up time has not been consistant from the beginning, and over the last twenty four hours it has been down more often than not. The only things on which 1and1 has been consistant has been the slow response from the server when posting and repeated Error 500 from the cgi processor.
So, I just plunked down the cash for Hosting Matters to take over. I figure if they can handle Grandaddy Blogger Supreme, they should be able handle my piddly little traffic.
I am hoping the transition will be seemless. We shall see.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:29 AM | Comments (0) |
Haiti: It Is All Kerry's Fault
At least that is what the UN is saying:
In an interview posted on the website of Agencia Brasil, the Brazilian government's official news agency, Lieutenant-General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro said comments made in March by Kerry had raised the hopes of supporters of Jean-Bertrand Aristide that the former Haitian president would be able to return to power.Is the violence in Haiti really Kerry's fault? I think not. But it is ironic that Kerry is slammed by the very organization which he worships at the center of legitimacy for the nations of the world. Further, this is yet another example of Kerry's complete lack of diplomatic prowess."Statements made by a candidate to the presidency of the United States created false hopes among pro-Aristide supporters," Ribeiro told the agency. "His (the candidate's) statements created the expectation that instability and a change in American policy would contribute to Aristide's return."
Update: Wait a minute, it is South Africa's fault:
Haitian officials are blaming South Africa for allowing Haiti's ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to incite violence in the Caribbean nation.Has anyone considered the Haitians may be at fault?Latortue said that South African President Thabo Mbeki was in violation of international law by supporting Aristide.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:12 AM | Comments (0) |
October 17, 2004
Good News
Chrenkoff has been busy again. Good news from Afghanistan.
Posted by bubba138 at 11:40 PM | Comments (0) |
A Longstanding Tradition
The wife and I are watching "The Lincoln Assasination" on the History Channel. I am reminded that John Wilkes Booth was an actor. I am struck by the thought that Bush is only the latest target in the long standing grudge actors have for Republican presidents.
Posted by bubba138 at 05:25 PM | Comments (0) |
Harsh Tactics
Many detainees at Guantánamo Bay were regularly subjected to harsh and coercive treatment, several people who worked in the prison said in recent interviews, despite longstanding assertions by military officials that such treatment had not occurred except in some isolated cases.Are you kidding? Except for the shackles, that's what I call a fun weekend.One regular procedure that was described by people who worked at Camp Delta, the main prison facility at the naval base in Cuba, was making uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endure strobe lights and screamingly loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels, said one military official who witnessed the procedure.
Posted by bubba138 at 02:13 PM | Comments (0) |
October 16, 2004
To Trick or to Treat, That is the Question
Yep, this bent my mind too.
Posted by bubba138 at 03:10 PM | Comments (0) |
October 15, 2004
The Spitball Brigade
Looking back at Zell Miller:
I could go on and on and on: Against the Patriot Missile that shot down Saddam Hussein's scud missiles over Israel, Against the Aegis air-defense cruiser, Against the Strategic Defense Initiative, Against the Trident missile, against, against, against.This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces?
U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?
Posted by bubba138 at 09:18 PM | Comments (0) |
The Florida Disenfranchisement Myth
Disenfranchisement in Florida 2000 is just that, a myth. The alegations were investigated and were found to be completely without merit (video here).
FOX NEWS' BRIT HUME: "It is an article of faith among Democrats that the 2000 election was stolen from them by the deliberate disenfranchisement of hundred of thousands if not millions of voters in Florida alone. After the election, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, not noted for having Republican sympathies, conducted an investigation. And what did it find? Peter Kirsanow is a Republican member of the commission he joins me now from Cleveland. Mr. Kirsanow, welcome and thank you for joining us."US CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSIONER PETER KIRSANOW: Thank you.
HUME: "Tell me about the Civil Rights Commission's inquiries into Florida 2000."
KIRSANOW: "It was a six-month investigation into a number of allegations pertaining to voter intimidation, harassment, and disenfranchisement, much of which was alleged to have been intentional. In addition, activists had claimed that dogs and hoses were being used to prevent blacks from going to the polls and casting a vote. It was a fairly intensive investigation and what it revealed was that thousands of ballots were, in fact, spoiled by voters, but there was no evidence whatsoever of any voter intimidation, any voter disenfranchisement, intentional disenfranchisement or harassment. Mistakes were made mainly by voters and there were some glitches in the balloting, but allegations or insinuations that there was somehow some type of sinister effort to disenfranchise people is absolutely false. What was found is that blacks were approximately -- and it's difficult to tell because obviously there is no race category on the ballots -- but if you extrapolate from heavily black precincts, it would appear as if blacks were three times as likely to spoil their ballots than whites, but mistakes are not the same thing as disenfranchisement. I'd also add that the Civil Rights Division of the Department of justice also conducted their own investigation. They did find three violations of the Voting Rights Act. The allegations and the evidence showed that the violations consisted of failure to provide bilingual ballots to some Haitian and Hispanic voters in three counties."
HUME: "How many?"
KIRSANOW: "In three counties, and it is indeterminate as to how many voters didn't get it. It seems to be a handful. And in one location there was some hostility by poll workers toward Hispanic voters. In each of the counties, the county supervisor and those who controlled the election process were Democrats. And that's the same -- that's true for also 24 of the 25 counties in which there was the highest ballot spoilage rate."
HUME: "talk to me about ballot spoilage. Obviously it raises questions in the minds of at least some people when you have these allegations that ballots were spoiled and it tends to be concentrated in areas where there's a high percentage of African-American voters. What about that?"
KIRSANOW: "Well, it is true that -- or at least it appears based on the statistical evidence there that there were more, as I indicated, ballot spoilage or higher ballot spoilage rates in high concentration black areas. But everyone -- there is no indication whatsoever that there was some type of discrepancy in terms of the machinery, the ballots themselves, and if you take a look at the correlative evidence, it would suggest that ballot spoilage relates most closely to how frequently people vote and also in addition to that the educational or literacy levels of those who vote. It has absolutely nothing to do --"
HUME: "Well I just wanted to ask you what the term ballot spoilage means? It sounds like someone spilled a coca cola on their ballot or it got stepped on or it got torn or it got bent, but that isn't exactly what the word means, is it?"
KIRSANOW: "No, what it means is you saw, for example, the hanging chad issues, people who may have over voted by pressing or punching through two holes for a particular candidate or proposition or the under votes where there was simply a slight perforation in the ballot so it was impossible to actually count. That is spoiling the ballot or not casting a recordable vote."
HUME: "All right. Now, the allegation is made, though, that, I mean, the suggestion is here that you are making and that I guess the Commission found is this is voter error? Is that what this comes down to?"
KIRSANOW: "That's precisely right. It's voter error and there were some glitches in terms of getting ballots out, but those were sporadic. There was one situation in which, that caused some problems, and that was the so-called felon purge list. Where there was a list developed to prohibit the kind of fraud that had occurred in a previous election, that is, having ineligible felons vote. This list was completely inaccurate. It had a number of failings to it. And the allegation, at least the principle allegation at the outset as that blacks were more likely to be placed on the list than whites. And the insinuation or the inference to be drawn from that that this was somehow part of a scheme to disenfranchise certain types of voters. The facts are that twice as many whites were improperly placed on the ballot, on the felon purge list as blacks. And in addition to that, as The Miami Herald found, approximately 6,500 ineligible voters, ineligible felons did in fact vote, and as they concluded, the biggest problem with the felon purge list was that it permitted felons to vote."
HUME: "And in terms of people who might have been eligible who were excluded because they were mistakenly on the list, last question, quickly, roughly how many, do you know?"
KIRSANOW: "Don't know that. That is difficult to ascertain."
HUME: "We talking about hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands?"
KIRSANOW: "Probably in the hundreds."
HUME: "Mr. Kirsanow, thank you very much."
KIRSANOW: "Thank you."
Posted by bubba138 at 07:59 PM | Comments (0) |
Kill This Thing Already
Stupid, unfounded, insipid, annoying, rumors of an upcoming draft.
Some things just refuse to die.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:50 PM | Comments (0) |
Did Kerry Blow It?
A super-majority of likely voters say "YES" he did:
Fifty-seven percent say being homosexual is the way people are, not the way they choose to be — up from its level a decade ago. But likely voters by 2-1 also call it inappropriate for Kerry, when asked that question, to have noted that Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian. Cheney himself mentioned his daughter's sexual orientation in a campaign appearance in August.
Posted by bubba138 at 03:47 PM | Comments (0) |
Of Lesbians and Diplomacy
Kerry is defending his declaration of Mary Cheney's sexual orientation by saying he was trying to be sensitive:
“I love my daughters. They love their daughter. I was trying to say something positive about the way strong families deal with this issue,” Kerry said in a statement released from the campaign trail in Las Vegas.In other words, Kerry was trying to show how the Cheney family is the example of a strong family dealing with the issue of homosexuality. Fair enough, except that is not the way it came out and it is definitely not the way the Cheney family took it.
One may say that the fault lies with the Cheney family who took Kerry's comment in the worst light because of their partisan nature. This may be so, but one of the lynchpin of Kerry's bid for president is that he is a better diplomat than President Bush.
Diplomacy is the art of forwarding your position without offending your opponent. Real diplomacy never happens between friendly parties. If two parties are entirely in agreement on every issue, no diplomacy is unneccessary. Real diplomacy involves conflicting interests, conflicting positions, and often times conflicting personalities.
Kerry says he was trying to be positive. He says he was trying to point out what strong families do. What he did instead was anger a huge number of people. What we saw in Kerry's comments about Mary Cheney was the extent of his diplomatic skill in miniature. And his diplomacy was a miserable failure.
Update: Tom Maguire also thinks Kerry's "apology" was lame.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:34 AM | Comments (0) |
Success Through Low Expectations
Two men. Candidate A was a a recognized and accomplished leader and like him or not, at least the country knew him. Candidate B had been successfully defined by his opponent as a caricature of a leader. Confidence in him as at low point, an no one really expected that much from him. By out performing expectations, however he grew in stature and influence, and the race became a memorable one.
Am I describing Gore vs. Bush in the Presidential election of 2000? Nope:
The Bush team's ferocious advertising push in the spring and summer and the Republican convention were successful at defining Kerry as a vacillating opportunist who has no coherent policy on Iraq and is spineless on terrorism. But the strategy may have worked too well, pollsters and operatives say: By turning Kerry into a cartoon, the Bush campaign created such low expectations for the senator that he easily exceeded them in the debates."Leading up to the first debate, the Bush campaign very effectively defined John Kerry as a wishy-washy flip-flopper who never knew where he stood, and then they get on the stage and here's a John Kerry who differs from the perception," said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:55 AM | Comments (0) |
Extreme Gut Check
...a United Nations battle group, clustered around the U.S.S. Hillary Clinton (named after "the most uncompromising wartime president in the history of the United States"), is tasked in the year 2021 with stopping ethnic cleansing by an Islamist regime in Indonesia."AAAAAAAHHHHHH!That's plausible enough that it makes me wish Hillary were running this year...
Posted by bubba138 at 08:34 AM | Comments (0) |
Dayton Slammed By Hometown Paper
The left-loving Minneapolis Star-Tribune let loose on Senator Mark Dayton's panicy retreat from DC yesterday:
It doesn't take perfect foresight to imagine what the principal judgment will be: In staking out this Cassandra's position, Dayton has added considerably to unfortunate aspects of his reputation: loner, loose cannon, flake.This coming from the paper that endorsed Dayton. OUCH.It's simply impossible to take Dayton's alarm seriously in the absence of any other lawmaker or security official, so far, coming to a similar conclusion. Take it as political theater, it is farcical -- and counterproductive.
Indeed, it's difficult to imagine a worse way. Instead of pointing out the emperor's startling nakedness, Dayton has cast himself as the lone little chicken who claims the sky is falling.
I have to admit when reading this I did not know who this "Cassandra" was to which the Trib referred. It turns out she is a mythological character from Homer's Iliad:
According to one version of the story, Cassandra received the power to foretell the future from the god Apollo. Apparently, Apollo instructed the mortal woman and taught her about the art of prophecy because he had an ulterior motive - the god wished to win her affections. Cassandra accepted Apollo as a teacher, but not as a lover. Naturally, the god was insulted by this refusal. So he punished Cassandra. Apollo caused the gift that he gave Cassandra to be twisted, making everyone who heard her true and accurate foretellings of future events believe that they were instead hearing lies. In other words, the wondrous blessing bestowed upon a mortal became instead a terrible curse.I have to admire the cleaverness of the Trib's editorial staff. In one swipe they hit at Dayton's cowardice and simultaneously imply that he is right, yet no one will believes him.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:31 AM | Comments (0) |
October 14, 2004
I Got Yer International Support Right Here
In a diplomatic victory for the United States, NATO officials agreed yesterday to send hundreds of military advisers to Iraq this year to train local security forces as part of a new task force that could eventually grow to 3,000 personnel. Trainers from France, Germany, and other nations that bitterly opposed the US-led invasion are expected to join the effort.A meeting in Romania? Sounds alot like Kerry's international summit has already happened. Kerry reminds me of Michael Keaton's character in the movie "Night Shift" saying, "Did I tell you I thought of those first, but they already had them."At a meeting in Romania, the alliance -- which now has about 50 advisers in Iraq -- accepted US and Iraqi pleas to help speed up the training of Iraqi security forces in advance of Iraqi elections planned for January.
More than 300 trainers will begin staffing a new training academy outside Baghdad in the coming months, officials said. They said initial personnel from Denmark and Norway, which both opposed the war, could start to arrive by the end of November.
Oh, and why is this a diplomatic victory for the United States? Can we not also say this was a victory for the Bush administration?
Posted by bubba138 at 02:29 PM | Comments (0) |
Prophet Kerry Called Out
Americans United for Separation of Church and State is asking the Internal Revenue Service to investigate whether the Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Miami violated federal tax law during an Oct. 10 service featuring speeches by Mr. Kerry, former presidential candidate the Rev. Al Sharpton and other prominent Democrats.McCurry's statement parrots the same Democrat line that we keep hearing. It goes something like this, "We broke the law but it is justifiable because we did it for the morally right reason."During the service, the Rev. Gaston E. Smith introduced Mr. Kerry as "the next president of the United States" and told the crowd, "For every Goliath, God has a David. For every Calvary's cross, God has a Christ Jesus. ... To bring our country out of despair, discouragement, despondency and disgust, God has a John Kerry."
"We think it was perfectly within the bounds of propriety and the law, and, more importantly, it was a statement of the moral dimensions of this campaign, which is always welcome in a house of God," campaign spokesman Mike McCurry said.
Jesse Jackson tried to pass it off saying churches always have been at the forefront of civil rights and moral struggles. That may be so, but keeping a legally tax-exempt status requires that the curch not endorse one candidate over another. Reverand Smith's statement is about as ringing an endorsement as a clergyman can give.
I still have plenty of condemnation for Barry Lynn and his organization, Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Last weekend's Kerry lovefest is far from the first such incident. Lynn's organization has shown its partisan nature by ignoring the dozens of previous church sponsored endorsements of Democrat candidates while at the same time calling out the Republicans because they wanted to mobilize people of faith.
Posted by bubba138 at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) |
Voter Fraud: The Republican ACORN
Two days ago I referenced several cases of voter fraud in several states which all had a common denominator, the ultra-progressive advocacy group ACORN.
Well, the Republicans also seem to have their own voter-fraud albatross in the form of Arizona's Sproul and Associates. They are causing problems in Oregon, Nevada, and West Virgina.
In Roseburg, Douglas County Clerk Barbara Nielsen said she had received a complaint from voters who said canvassers working for a Chandler, Ariz.-based consulting firm, Sproul & Associates, tried to push them into registering as Republicans, saying otherwise the canvassers wouldn't get paid for their efforts.The next time any lefty reader wants to accuse Slings & Arrows of being a propaganda site ask yourselves, "Would Kos report on Democrat vote fraud without casting dispersions on the investigation?" .Additionally, Nielsen said she had gotten calls from voters who said canvassers from the same group had implied that their cards wouldn't be turned in if they registered as Democrats.
Sproul & Associates is run by Nathan Sproul, a former head of the Republican Party in Arizona who has subcontracted with the Republican National Committee to do voter outreach.
Reached in Arizona, Sproul told The Associated Press that "we registered anyone who wanted to register."
A spokesman for the Republican National Committee said the party has "a zero-tolerance policy for anything that smacks of impropriety in registering voters."
Similar voting fraud allegations surfaced against Sproul & Associates in Nevada, where authorities said Wednesday that they were "looking into whether any state or federal laws were violated."
In Nevada, a former employee of a Sproul & Associates group called Voter Outreach of America told reporters Wednesday that he had seen his boss shred eight to 10 Democratic registration forms.
Sproul denied any shredding occurred.
I didn't think so.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:14 AM | Comments (0) |
Debate Exaggerations
USA Today tackles the exaggerations from last night's debate.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:45 AM | Comments (0) |
Fallujah On Notice
Alawi has had enough:
Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim stronghold, is said to be a haven for Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group, which has claimed responsibility for recent kidnappings and beheading of foreigners.Many in the stronghold of loyalists to former president Saddam Hussein see the fighters as holy warriors.
“If they do not turn in al-Zarqawi and his group, we will carry out operations in Fallujah,” Allawi told the interim National Council on Wednesday. “We will not be lenient.” He did not give a deadline for compliance.
It is not clear, however, whether Iraqi forces are prepared to launch such an attack.
Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim recently said Iraqi forces around the city are not yet equipped or trained to take on such a major role.
“We are trying to make it an Iraqi operation,” he said. “On our side, we're not quite ready.”
Posted by bubba138 at 08:25 AM | Comments (0) |
October 13, 2004
Bush and Women
Talk about the strong women in your life. Bush gets some laughs from the audience who aren't supposed to make a peep. He can't say how much he loves Laura, and he sounds really sweet and warm.Althouse confirms exactly what I thought. As soon as I heard Bush's answer I knew he had hit a home run with women. He was personal, devoted, touching, caring. Authentic.
These things matter.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:27 PM | Comments (0) |
Getting Ugly
Voter fraud and intimidation is not the only ugly thing happening during this election cycle.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:20 PM | Comments (0) |
Debate Transcript
...can be found here.
and... Citizen Smash has a balanced round-up of debate reactions.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:36 PM | Comments (0) |
Coat-Tails
I am watching MSNBC now as they interview people in the "spin room." Has anyone else noticed the signs in the background? Many of the Bush signs also have names from other down-ticket candidates (I am now looking at a big "W" sign with Bartlett and another with Devinish) on them proudly saying "I'm with Bush." Not a single Kerry sign promotes a down-ticket candidate.
Is Kerry that much of a liability?
Posted by bubba138 at 08:26 PM | Comments (0) |
How Many Bills Did He Pass?
Just how many bills has Kerry passed? Fox News is saying that only five bills that became law. Kerry's number of 56 represents bills that have passed either the Senate or House but never became law.
Twenty years. Five bills signed into law. John Kerry is a real "get 'er done" kinda guy.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:56 PM | Comments (0) |
Mary Beth Cahill
Commenting on Kerry's low blow in bringing up Dick Cheney's daughter, Mary Beth Cahill says on Fox News, "her sexuality is fair game."
Nice. That shows Democrat compassion.
Update: The entire Hardball crew except Ronnie Reagan agrees this was a low blow.
Update II: Gaypatriot says, "Kerry and Edwards are becoming more obsessed with Mary Cheney than Pat Robertson is with beastiality."
Ouch.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:51 PM | Comments (0) |
Quick Reaction
Both men did very well, but Bush was exceptional. He still missed golden opportunities. For instance, he should have slammed Kerry on the assault weapons ban. Bush said he'd sign the bill but Kerry was not around to promote any bills let alone that one.
But Bush got rolling right off the bat and was energetic and positive and on the offense. Kerry looked tired and was on the defense for a good part of the debate.
Bush did execptionally well with his rebuttals. A good example was his "a litany of complaints is not a plan."
This was a bigger win for Bush than last week's debate.
Bush wins because of the faith question, the gay marriage question and the emphasis on education and Kerry's Global test. Kerry strong on jobs and health care, but weak on connecting with people. Shieffer probably doesn't even know how in the tank he was, a product of the deep, deep bias at CBS and MSM generally.Bush did excellently on the faith question and the one about the women in his life. He came off much more human than Kerry did. Bush captured a chunk of the women's vote with this answer. Kerry also did ok on the faith question, and came off gracious to the President's profession of faith.
Update: INDC also thought Bush's answer on his faith was strong, "Hell, I totally disagree with him on gay marriage, but I thought that he gave a good answer. I'm non-religious, and I felt him on the religion question."
That is the effect of a religion based in real conviction and authentic relationship with the living God.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:34 PM | Comments (0) |
Final Debate
And it begins...
Q1 to Kerry: Will our children ever grow up in a world as safe an secure as the one in which we grew up?
Wow, what a softball. The assuption is completely flawed. Were we safe from communism? This question is a perfect set-up to slam Bush.
Kerry has a plan...George Bush has a comprehensive strategy. Freedom is on the march. Bush slams Kerry's nusiance comment already. Too soon to shot of the best stuff.
Kerry: "Outsourced bin Laden" Outsourced should be a drinking word.
Bush: "Exaggerations" his emphasis was great
Q2: What's the deal with flu vaccine?
Flu shots? Doesn't Scheiffer know there is a war on?
Bush: Foriegn contamination, he is streching it a bit on the legal liability thing.
Kerry: Underscores the problem with the healthcare system. Talks about health insurance. Somehow I think he is not going to address the flu vaccine shortage. He does a good job listing out "shortages" in the battleground states
Ooh he has a plan.
Bush: A plan is not a litany of complaints. Nice shot. Bait and switch.
Q3: Economic security -- How can you run the country without raising taxes?
Pay as you go. (good move) Bush is the only President in history to do millions of terrible things. 1.6 million jobs lost (this is a misleading figure, it now stands at a bit more than half-a-million)
Bush has never vetoed a single bill.
Bush: Kerry's rhetoric does not match his record. 98 votes for tax increase (not quite accurate I think it is closer to 50) Links Kerry to Kennedy (good move).
Q4: What do you say to someone who's job has been outsourced?
(This question is also based on flawed assumptions. Perhaps 3 out of a thousand have lost their jobs due to outsourcing.)
Bush: Education, education, education
Kerry: Points out Bush switched from jobs to education, then he himself switches from jobs to Bush's fiscal policies.
Q5: Is it fair to blame the administration entirely for the economic woes?
Kerry: I don't blame him entirely. (That is an out-and-out lie) Lists out expensive programs on how he is going to fix what is alreadyy fixed. Says he will fight for American workers. Restore fiscal discipline.
Bush: Pell grants we increased Pell grants by 1 million students. Lists out all the things his administration did do for workers.
Kerry: Anybody can play with these votes. Its a bad thing more people qualify for Pell grants (huh?)
Bush: Kerry is left of Kennedy.
Scheiffer: Slams Bush for his rebuttal. Uncalled for.
Q6: Do you believe Gay lifestyle is a choice?
Loaded question desigend to "divide" America. Why would Scheiffer be do divisive?
Bush: I don't know. (safe answer)
Kerry: Talks about Cheney's daughter. Says it is not a choice.
Q7: What is Kerry's reaction to those who say it is a sin to vote for pro-abortion candidates.
Kerry: Cannot legislate his article of faith on another (What does that mean?) Implies Bush would overturn Roe v. Wade. I was an alter boy. (So what) Pulls out James "Faith without works is dead" He's been preaching that same sermon for over twenty years.
Bush: It is important to promote a culture of life. Talks about reasonable laws to reduce the number of abortions. Partial Birth abortion is a brutal practice. Promote adoption laws. Talks about alternatives to abortion.
Q8: Health insurance costs. Who bears responsibility for this?
Bush: Systemic problem. User is not purchaser. There is no market. Promotes health care savings account (I do not think this is a winner) Medical liability reform. Need to introduce high tech to medical industry (this of course collides with privacy issues)
Kerry: Health care costs are higher because of Bush. Bush prevented medicare from competing
Bush: Kerry has no record of healthcare reform.
Kerry: Says he did too write a health care bill. Says he authored and passed more than 50 bills. (This does not square with what I have researched. I could be wrong, though)
Q9: I missed the q but it is still about healthcare
Kerry: Talks about his healthcare plan. Buying into medicare early (Won't this increase the cost substantially?) Suggests feds take over medicaid. (My wife who is in healthcare comments "He doesn't have a clue what he is talking about.")
Bush: Slams credibility of the press, humurously done. Government run health care will fail. (Wife says "He knows exactly what he's talking about there")
Kerry: "I am not proposing a government run program." (What exactly would expanding medicare and federalizing medicaid be, then?)
Q10: Social Security
Bush: Younger workers need to privatize part of their SS savings. The cost of doing nothing far exceeds the cost of reform.
Kerry: Personal savings account is an invitation for disaster. Openly admits that SS is a ponzi scheme. Talks about Bush's fiscal irresponsibility. Kerry says he has a record of fiscal responsibility. (Umm, yeah)
Q11: SS is broken, you just said you would not change it. Are you leaving it broken?
Kerry: The tax cut would have paid to fix SS. (In other words, we want to redistribute your money to other people.) The most important thing is to start creating jobs (We have already started creating jobs) 1.6 million again, again a lie.
Bush: Tax cuts have put us on the right track. Stock market crashed six months before he took office. Lost 1 million from the attack. Great response.
Q12: Immigration. What to do?
Bush: Serious problem. (His rhetoric here does not match his record nor his proposals) He was a border governor for a while. Lays out economic motivation. Talks about temp. worker card. It will take pressure off the border (Actually it puts pressure on it because the card encourages more illegal transit) Kerry supported amnesty.
Kerry: Dodges immigration question to talk again about the economic burden. Pres. broke his promise to reform border policies. We need more than guest worker program. Contradicts himself in two sentences: We cannot reward illegal immigration and then says we need an "earned legalization" program.
Q13: Minimum wage?
Kerry: Long overdue to raise the min. wage. Repubs won't allow a vote. I will raise the wage (If he can't get the Repub congress to do it now how is he going to do it if he is Pres?)
Bush: He supported the McConnel min. wage plan. Raise standards No Child Left Behind. (Bad answer, non sequitir)
Q14: Overturn Roe V. Wade
Bush: I will not have a litmus test for Judges.
Kerry: President did not answer the question. Says he won't appoint a judge that will undo a Constitutional right, including court law. Since when is court law Constitutional law. In other words Kerry has a litmus test.
Goes into race baiting.
Bush: Only a liberal Senator from Mass. would say a 49% increase was not enough.
Kerry: You don't measure it by a % increase. Talks about lost after school programs because of the budget (How did that happen since they got more money? Does not sound like a funding problem)
Q15: Draft. Puh-leeze. Shouldn't this issue be dead by now?
Also works on false premise that forces are "over-extended"
Kerry: Add two active duty divisions. Use Nat. Guard more for Homeland Security. Change Foreign policy.
Bush: Best way to relieve pressure is to win the war in Iraq. Foriegn policy: Kerry wants to pass a global test and get international approval.
Kerry: I have never said we need to give
Bush: Kerry voted against the global test in 1990.
Q16: Assault rifles. Why did you not encourage a renewal?
Bush: I said I'd sign it. I made my intentions clear. Both Democrats and Republicans did not want to extend it. (Bush needs to point out that Kerry did nothing either. The bill begins in the legislature after all)
Kerry: Failure of President leadership. Terrorists can buy an assault weapon at a gun show. If Tom DeLay had said we don't have the vote I would have fought (This is an outright lie shown by the fact he did not fight for the extension in the Senate)
Q17: Is affirmative action still needed.
Kerry: Yes. We have a long way to go. Says we fixed quota system. Too many people still feel the stark resistance of racism. Pres. has not met with NAACP, Congressional Black Caucus.
Bush: Not true. I met with the Black Cong. Caucus at the White House. Reframes it to an economic question. Talks about small business programs
Q18: What part does your faith play on your policy decisions?
Bush: My faith is my life. I pray alot. My faith is personal. Looks directly at the camera as he makes the point that people of all faiths and no faith are all Americans. Prayer and religion sustain me. I recieve calm in the storm from it. I am encouraged by the prayers of others.
Kerry: I respect everything the President said. Everything is a gift from the Almighty. Mentions the Great Commandments. Says we have a ways to go. Nice hand work.
Q19: After 9/11 the country came together. Will you set a priority to bring us back together.
Kerry: Compliments Bush. He did a terrific job. Then blames the president for dividing us. "I've never seen such idealogical squables as we have in the Congress today" (Doesn't he need to be present in the Congress to see what happens there?) Alludes to secret meetings in White House. Campaign finance reform.
Bush (Wife talks to me about kids so I miss most of what he says) My opponent has a plan of retreat in Iraq.
Q19: What is the most important thing you have learned from strong women.
Bush: To listen to them. To stand up straight and not scowl. (Great answer, self depricating and humorous) He is very human in this moment.
Kerry: We married up (and boy did he) mentions that others would say he married up more than the rest. (Attempt at self deprication, but is defensive and less entertaining). "But I can take it" Talks about his mom. (He's a mama's boy)
Closing Kerry: (What is an ideaer?) Bush divided us. We can do better. "I ask for your help"
Bush: Painting metaphor, "to see the day that is coming." We are growing, achievement gap is closing. We have great faith in the ability of freedom to transform societies.
Posted by bubba138 at 06:02 PM | Comments (0) |
Fun Frustration With Numbers
The Annie E. Casey, Ford and Rockefeller foundations say the U.S. does not have enough good jobs:
One in every five U.S. jobs pays less than a poverty-level wage for a family of four, according to a study by the nonpartisan Working Poor Families Project.What infuriates me about studies like this is not the results of the study but the ludicrous conclusions. These foundations found that four out of five jobs provide enough income to support a family of four at above poverty levels, and somehow that is not good enough. Where is it written that every job has to support a family of four?About 28 million jobs in the United States provided less than a poverty-level wage, which works out to about $8.84 an hour, the study said. The median wage for a waiter was about $6.80 an hour; for a cashier, it was $7.41 an hour.
The report said federal and state lawmakers should put more money into adult education and job training programs, increase the minimum wage and expand subsidized child care for low-income parents. Doing so would create more skilled workers who will make more money and, in turn, increase the tax base, the study said.
There are millions of teen-agers and young, single adults who need jobs, too. Putting more money into adult education and job training programs will not decrease the number of waiters and cashiers, it will only move new people into those positions. From where will those new people come? The same place from where they are coming now: High school, of course.
Our economy needs lower paying jobs because those are the slots that provide an entry for our youth into the job market. That is why they are called "entry level" jobs.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:16 PM | Comments (0) |
Battle of the Blogs
Tonight bloggers will be covering the debate. Sacramento Bee's Erika Chavez is examining the bloggers who will be examining the debate:
This wired army will be primed and ready to fact-check, decode and deconstruct every claim, accusation and statement uttered by President Bush and his challenger, Sen. John Kerry.On the lighter side, left-leaning bloggers have been fueling speculation that Bush wore a hidden earpiece and was fed answers during the first debate, citing a rectangular bulge visible through his suit jacket. The story made its way from the blogs to online magazine Salon to the stalwart New York Times and Washington Post, forcing the Bush campaign to issue categorical denials.
Lasica says some bloggers' partisanship goes to similarly "silly" lengths, citing DailyKos.com's campaign to get its more than 300,000 readers to hit instant online news polls and say that Kerry won each debate.
Posted by bubba138 at 03:57 PM | Comments (0) |
Who Lied?
A little review:
"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real..." - Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003 | Source
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." - Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002 | Source
"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998 | Source
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." - President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998 | Source
"We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction." - Madeline Albright, Feb 1, 1998 | Source
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983." - Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998 | Source
"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton. - (D) Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, others, Oct. 9, 1998 | Source
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." - Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998 | Source
"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies." - Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999 | Source
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and th! e means of delivering them." - Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002 | Source
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002 | Source
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002 | Source
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." - Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002 | Source
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..." - Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002 | Source
"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction." - Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002 | Source
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members ... It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." - Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002 | Source
"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction." - Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002 | Source
Posted by bubba138 at 03:53 PM | Comments (0) |
The Goal of the Sanctions
John Kerry said, "The goal of the sanctions was not to remove Saddam Hussein; it was to remove the weapons of mass destruction."
But was that enough? It was not enough in Bosnia where genocide was the order of the day. Neither was it enough in Iraq. Hussein had to go. The world should not be expected to perform sanctions and inspections without end, which would have been the case had Hussein been left in power. Further, as it was in Bosnia, unfettered genocide would have also continued:
Crews have excavated two grave trenches, and officials say there could be as many as 12 in the general area. Kehoe said the bodies were apparently bulldozed into the graves.But keep in mind, the sanctions and inspections were working, so that makes it alright."Unlike bodies that you've seen in many mass graves -- they look like cordwood -- all lined up," he said. "That didn't happen here. These bodies were just pushed in."
Kehoe said the victims appear to be Kurds, based on the dress and the personal belongings found.
Many of the victims wore multiple layers of clothing and carried small personal items like jewelry and medication. One child was found with a ball in his hand.
The women -- four or five of whom were pregnant -- and children appear to have been killed with a single small caliber gunshot to the head.
Some of the women were blindfolded, but Kehoe says 95 percent of the men were blindfolded and had their hands either tied to the man next to them or tied behind their back. Al-Hatra is in Nineveh province, the location of Mosul and Tal Afar.
A lawyer, Kehoe also spent five years working on the Balkans War Crimes Tribunal.
Kehoe said that most mass graves in Bosnia largely contain men of fighting age. Graves near Hatra included many women and children, he said.
"Genocide is the attempt to eliminate, limit or exterminate a religious, ethnic, national or racial group," he said.
"The Kurds are clearly a different nationality. So could it be considered genocide? It could be. Killing, ethnic cleansing, property relocations, all of those were used to try to limit the Kurdish population.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:23 AM | Comments (0) |
Germany: Already a Part of the Iraq Coalition
Expect to soon see a media barage about German defence minister Peter Struck's warm words about Kerry's propsal to have an international Iraq summit.
Mr Struck also welcomed Mr Kerry’s proposal that he would convene an international conference on Iraq including countries that opposed the war if he were to win next month's election.Ignore the fact that the Bush administration held summit after summit on Iraq at the United Nations, and were rebuffed by France and Germany at every turn. Also ignore the fact that the same countries that would welcome this summit committed (during post-Saddam negotiations with the U.N.) to helping in Iraq but refuse to do so until the security is tighter."This is a very sensible proposal. The situation in Iraq can only be cleared up when all those involved sit together at one table. Germany has taken on responsibilities in Iraq, including financial ones; this would naturally justify our involvement in such a conference."
What you will not see trumpeted in the same fashion is that Kerry's four point Iraq plan is exactly what Bush is already doing. Note this interesting tidbit:
Mr Struck and other German officials said developments in Iraq meant the position over troops was under constant review, noting that Berlin was already providing financial assistance to Iraq and training Iraqi troops and police officers in the United Arab Emirates.So according to Defense Minister Struck, Germany is now one of the countries that are helping the U.S. with the effort in Iraq. As a matter of fact, they are doing what Kerry suggested:
Expand urgently the security forces training program inside and outside Iraq by establishing a single, common template for police training and another for military training, and enlisting our NATO allies to open training centers in their countries. Recruit thousands of qualified trainers from our allies, especially those who have no troops in Iraq.Good idea, except that we are already doing it.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:02 AM | Comments (0) |
Democrats Gone Wild!
The liberal protesters justified their actions -- including ramming the head of one of the workers into an office door -- by blaming President Bush's "negative campaign."Yep.So, the 30-second ads made them do it. It's always someone else's fault.
Liberals promise to do "whatever it takes" -- "by any means necessary" -- to win this election. If it were conservatives mouthing those slogans as shattered glass was flying and lawns were smoking, Karl Rove would be under federal investigation. Jimmy Carter would be requesting U.N. assistance. And The New York Times would be calling for a National Day of Reconciliation.
A single act of hate is a danger to the Republic, except when it's fomented by bug-eyed, rock-throwing, lighter-wielding Kerry/Edwards supporters just exercising their "free speech."
Posted by bubba138 at 07:41 AM | Comments (0) |
Kerry's Worldview
In Iraq we have seen 791 killed in action and 257 non-combat fatalities for a total of 1,048 of our brave women and men who are coming home in a box. Along with that, the nation has spent $200 billion. This is the price we have paid to liberate 25 million people, end the filling of mass graves, stop the flow of corrupt money via the Oil-for-Food scam, and put Saddam Hussein behind bars.
Kerry calls this a "quagmire".
On the other hand 2,626 Americans died in the World Trade Towers, 87 on Flight 11, 59 on Flight 77, 40 on Flight 93, 59 on Flight 175, and 125 in the Pentagon. All told, the attacks on 9/11 account for 2,996 lives that were cut short because of pure, unfettered evil.
John Kerry calls this a "nuisance".
(Hat tip)
Posted by bubba138 at 05:59 AM | Comments (0) |
October 12, 2004
Voter Fraud in California
From Aaron of Raincross Conservative, California's Democrat Secretary of State Kevin Shelley is in the middle of it:
A contract worker for Secretary of State Kevin Shelley who was paid with federal voting act funds provided materials and guidance to a Democratic voter registration drive in one of the state's most competitive legislative races, records and interviews show.As if that is not enough, Kelley also appears to be diving into pay-for-play:
Separately, evidence has emerged showing that Shelley used more than $2,000 in taxpayer funds to travel to political events in Boston and Honolulu. One week after Shelley used his state American Express card for a $1,285 airline ticket to Hawaii for a conference put on by the state's prison guards union, the union contributed $10,000 to Shelley's campaign.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:38 PM | Comments (0) |
NCAAP Participates in Voter Fraud
Interested Participant points out that the NCAAP sponsored National Voter Fund is also caught up in questionable practices:
More than 1,000 voter registration forms and absentee ballot requests may be fraudulent in Lake and Summit counties, where investigations of irregularities are broadening.The National Voter Fund is "nonpartisan?"Lake election and law enforcement officials said their investigation is centered on absentee registration attempts by the nonpartisan NAACP's National Voter Fund and an anti-Bush, nonprofit group called Americans Coming Together, or ACT Ohio.
Right, and I am a registered communist.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:38 PM | Comments (0) |
Voter Fraud in Nevada
To be fair I have found one, count it one, instance of voter fraud accusations in which the perpetrators are Republicans:
Burk said his office received more than 15 phone calls from people who complained they were badgered into registering as a Republican or denied a form if they wanted to register with another party — an apparent violation of state law.His office also received 15 voter registration forms that contained fake names written by the same hand. The problems have surfaced around a number of groups funded by the National Republican Committee to register voters in the final days before the election, Burk said.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:28 PM | Comments (0) |
Voter Fraud in Tennessee
Democrat skull-duggery is active in Nashville, too:
About 200 "citizens" who don't exist registered to vote in Davidson County for the Nov. 2 presidential election and now the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is investigating the person who submitted those forms on behalf of Tennessee Citizen Action (TCA).Tennessee Citizen Action is the state affiliate of US Action, an organization dedicated to, "Winning Social and Health Security for All," "Organizing Against Massive, Irresponsible Tax Cuts," and most importantly, "Fighting the right wing agenda."The false cards are believed to be the work of a temporary employee hired by Tennessee Citizen Action, a consumer advocacy group working to push voter registration.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:21 PM | Comments (0) |
Voter Fraud In South Carolina
Yet more Democrat voter fraud:
A Florence man has been arrested on charges of using names and personal information of people, including the mayor of Florence, on more than 1,000 voter registration forms and turning them in to the county voter registration office.In a stroke of juicy irony, SCPN's website features a page on Clean Elections.According to the arrest affidavit provided by SLED, Hines was employed by the South Carolina Progressive Network.
The Progressive Network's Web site describes the organization as a broad-based coalition of advocacy groups and individual activists from across the state who have joined forces to promote social and economic change in South Carolina.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:10 PM | Comments (0) |
Novelists for Kerry
Slate has done a piece about for whom novelists plan to vote, and unsurprisingly the vast majority are going for Kerry. Some choice selections:
Amy Tan: I'm voting for Kerry, because I have a brain and so does he.All Bush supporters are of course, brainless.
Joyce Carol Oates: Like virtually everyone I know, I'm voting for Kerry. And probably for exactly the same reasons.If everyone she knows is voting for Kerry, Oates should get out more.
Nicole Krauss: I'm voting for Kerry. I've just discovered that, through some unsurprising accident of the Board of Elections, I'm actually registered to vote in two different counties. So I'm considering voting for him twice. I really think it's not alarmist to say that if Bush is reelected to another four years, it may be the end of life as we know it.Considering breaking the law and donning the tin-foil hat in a single statement. Nice.
Posted by bubba138 at 06:30 PM | Comments (0) |
Voter Fraud: Rampant and Blatant
The Democrats have been warning about voter fraud for almost four years now and it looks like they have been strangely prescient. According to constant reports voter fraud this year just may reach epic proportions. Of course what the Democrats will not openly tell you is they are the ones doing it.
First things first. Colorado, which is already set to be a center of controversy, is inundated with forged voter registrations:
9News has discovered a record number of fraudulent voter-registrations across the state. Secretary of State Donetta Davidson tells 9News she is concerned about what the I-Team has uncovered and wants those responsible prosecuted. "It has just gone rampant," she told reporter Deborah Sherman in an interview Monday afternoon.But is this an isolated incident?Some of the registration drive workers earn $2 per application or about $10 an hour. One woman admitted to forging three people's names on about 40 voter registration applications. Kym Cason says she was helping her boyfriend earn more money from a get-out-the-vote organization called ACORN or Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN works with low or moderate-income families on housing issues. Cason said her extra registrations earned her boyfriend $50.
ACORN's state director said they are victims of the fraud as well and told 9News the group is cooperating with local investigators.
Hamilton County election officials will meet this morning to discuss 19 voter registrations for people who may not exist, which would be a rare case of election fraud.And things look worse when we get into the big city of Columbus:Board of Elections Director John Williams subpoenaed those named on the voter registration cards after similar handwriting and false addresses raised election workers' suspicions. The sheriff's department could not find them, he said.
The cards were turned in, Williams said, by someone affiliated with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a group that represents low-income people.
Prosecutors in Columbus have filed criminal charges against an Acorn registrar, saying that he filed a false registration form and forged a signature. Officials for the group say they fired the worker and instituted a quality checking system before the prosecutors acted.Move on down the road abit into Pennsylvania and what do we see? Oh, heavens no:
"It’s absolutely out of hand," Bellman said. "Not only do we have unintentional duplication of voter registrations but we have blatant duplicate voter registrations."Bellman said his office has had numerous calls from people who were registered through a group called the Association Communication Organization for Reform Now (ACORN), complaining that those taking down the voter information deliberately put inaccurate information on the form.
And what good would an election fraud story be without Florida? Gotcha covered:
The St. Petersburg Times reported Monday that former St. Petersburg Mayor Charles Schuh was the victim of registration fraud. The newspaper reported Schuh's wife, Jean, received a telephone call seeking verification for voter information her husband had filled out. "She gave the right address and telephone number, but she said his birthday was Aug. 9, 1974," Jean Schuh told the caller. "I told her Charlie was born in 1936. He was on the St. Petersburg City Council in 1974. He's 68."The caller said Schuh's application had the box "female" checked, along with "Republican."
Schuh said when she asked who the caller was with, she was told the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
This, my friends, is what any half-witted individual would call a pattern. Obviously this is not an isolated incident of bad training or misjudgement but a systemic, multi-state issue. An ex-ACORN opperative agrees:
"There was a lot of fraud committed," said Mac Stuart, former Miami-Dade field director for ACORN. Among his allegations -- that ACORN "quality control" workers routinely kicked back Republican voter registrations while paying for Democratic ones. "They said they had enough," he said.It does not get much more obvious than this. Right now there are several state prosecutions going on against ACORN. I am no legal expert, but considering how widespread their violations are, it seems to me they should be charged on the Federal level.ACORN is spearheading both a minimum wage ballot initiative and a voter registration drive. Its top two Florida directors failed to return telephone calls Friday.
Stuart is listed as a plaintiff in a notice of intent to sue ACORN and others in a discrimination class-action lawsuit. "The voter registration project has been operating illegally since it started," the intent-to-sue filing asserts.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:32 PM | Comments (0) |
Wrong is Wrong
Sinclair has ordered its 62 stations to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal" without commercials in prime time next week, just two weeks before the Nov. 2 election. Twelve of those stations are in key battleground states of Ohio, Florida, Iowa and Wisconsin. (Click here for CNN's election coverage.)You may remember there was a hub-bub about advertising Michael Moore's anti-Bush screed F9/11 on TV in the 60 days before the election.Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee plans to file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that the documentary is an illegal contribution of airtime to President Bush's campaign, a committee spokeswoman told CNN/Money.
DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe told CNN the complaint charges that Sinclair's plan is an "illegal in-kind contribution to the Bush-Cheney campaign."
It does not happen often, but this time the Democrat party is completely right. Broadcasting "Stolen Honor" two weeks before the election amounts to nothing less than a contribution by Sinclair to the Bush campaign.
The FEC has civil authority to enforce the Federal Election Campaign act, which prohibits a corporation or union from making a contribution or expenditure to a candidate in a federal election.Sinclair is a broadcaster, but how is it not a corporation? The FEC and FCC should work together, step in and not allow this program to be broadcast on public airwaves.But it doesn't apply to broadcasters producing a news story or editorial unless the facility is owned or controlled by a political party or candidate, said FEC spokesman George Smaragdis.
Update: Taranto asks:
If this is an in-kind contribution, what is "Fahrenheit 9/11"? How about Bruce Springsteen's pro-Kerry concerts, or for that matter newspaper editorials endorsing one candidate or another?The difference here is that Sinclair plans to broadcast on public, not-for-pay airwaves. In each of the venues in which Taranto references the recipients of the message have paid money to experience that very message.
I am all for free speech, but if the FEC's general counsel has said that running commercials for "Fahrenheit 9/11" is electioneering, then surely running "Stolen Honor" falls under the same limitations.
Update: Glenn also seems to be taking the other side of this matter, but is giving it even treatment. Whatever side one takes, Glenn is completely correct about this:
I think this whole thing illustrates that campaign finance "reform" is a terrible disaster. First, it hasn't cleaned things up -- it's just produced a sub rosa battle of rich guys and interest groups. Second, it's coarsened the political dialogue even further, since candidates have some incentive to play nice, but independent groups don't. Third, controversies like these are undermining free speech. And, finally, all of this is hitting in wartime, when we don't need this kind of nastiness, etc.How would Glenn put it? Oh yeah, "Yep".
Posted by bubba138 at 12:43 PM | Comments (0) |
StoryBlogging Carnival Is Up
Posted by bubba138 at 12:00 PM | Comments (0) |
Romania: On the Other Side
Romania, like Iraq, was once under the heel of totalitarianism. They are now a free country, largely due to the U.S. policies of strength and opposition to communism. Here is what their President has to say about Iraq:
President Ion Iliescu said Tuesday the war against Iraq was "moral and legitimate" after meeting U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is in the country to attend a meeting of NATO defense ministers.Romania is completing the transition that has recently begun in Iraq, and looking back their leadership says that war is a moral practice for achieving freedom."Being a country that for half a century was under a totalitarian regime (we consider) the intervention in Iraq was moral and legitimate," Iliescu told reporters.
Posted by bubba138 at 11:43 AM | Comments (0) |
Living On September 10th
In a way (but not entirely), I do agree that the United States is a nation divided. However, I do not buy into the assessment that it is divided into liberal vs. conservative, metro vs. retro, red state vs. blue state or even Democrat vs. Republican.
Instead, I believe it is sharply divided by September 11th. On the one side are those whose world view was irretrievably changed by the events of those days and on the other are those whose pre-9/11 mindset was either unchanged or, God forbid, reinforced:
When I asked Kerry how Sept. 11 had changed him, either personally or politically, he seemed to freeze for a moment.This very pointedly explains John Kerry."It accelerated -- " He paused. "I mean, it didn't change me much at all. It just sort of accelerated, confirmed in me, the urgency of doing the things I thought we needed to be doing. I mean, to me, it wasn't as transformational as it was a kind of anger, a frustration and an urgency that we weren't doing the kinds of things necessary to prevent it and to deal with it."
Before 9/11, he believed the deal with North Korea was a good one. Now he wants to give the same deal to Iran.
Before 9/11 he did not support giving the death penalty to terrorists. Now he believes he can eliminate terrorism with diplomacy.
Before 9/11 he believed that U.S. military action in the first Gulf War was the wrong war at in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now he holds onto the same position.
Ask yourself, did 9/11 change you? Did it put a new face on the world? Did it give you a new look, a new perspective of the threats we face as a people?
If you answered "yes" to those questions, do you really want this country led by one whose worldview is not shifted by the death of three-thousand Americans?
Update: Powerline also noticed Kerry's stuck-in-the-past worldview.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:48 AM | Comments (0) |
The Messiah Hath Returned
Pack it in people, the end times are here. According to Drudge, John Edwards has just stated that "When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk. Get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."
Do you think Kerry will raise Reeves from the dead before he heals him?
The Illinois Leader has more.
Update: Then again, is this not exactly what we should expect from the Prophet John Kerry?
Posted by bubba138 at 09:52 AM | Comments (0) |
Now They Are Concerned?
American Muslims think the FBI is being overzealous:
Agents to mine Muslims for dataIt is an interesting to me that the Islamic community as a whole expressed very little outward "concern" for the children in Russia, for the victims of the Cole, for the Spainiards whose guts were blown to bits at train stations. Yet they find the time to be vocally concerned about interviews with the FBI.
Questioning alarms Islamic communityMembers of the Islamic community are expressing concern about an FBI plan to interview 44 Pittsburgh area residents who might have information about a possible pre-election terrorist attack at the same time immigration officials are cracking down on immigration violators.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:49 AM | Comments (0) |
Voter Intimidation Continues
They hit Spokane this time:
The Republican Party campaign office in downtown Spokane was broken into and vandalized by perpetrators who tried to steal a computer, party officials said Monday.This is becoming a habit.State Republican Chairman Chris Vance immediately said the attack on the Victory 2004 office appeared to be politically motivated, coming on the heels of last week's vandalism of the party's office in Bellevue.
"One more time, I call on the Democratic Party and the Kerry campaign to urge their supporters to stop," Vance said, although he offered no proof that Democrats were involved.
"It is time for the leadership of the Democratic Party to issue a public statement condemning these break-ins," Vance added.
Update: They hit the Republican offices in Canton, Ohio as well.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:00 AM | Comments (0) |
Gilligan's Revenge
MChester makes fun of the Canadian Navy.
Insensitive? Maybe. Appropriate? Undoubtably. (snicker)
Posted by bubba138 at 07:36 AM | Comments (0) |
October 11, 2004
It Is Sad, Really
These days, Nader's rallies tend to draw dozens or maybe hundreds rather than thousands. And his standing in the polls is on the wane -- trailing even the margin of sampling error, as Jay Leno likes to joke. Nader is drawing 1 or 2 percent support in national polls, although registering as high as 4 to 6 percent in some recent surveys in Maine, New York, Minnesota and Wisconsin.Make no mistake, he still has his followers.
Lee Christopher, a 66-year-old retiree who turned out to see Nader speak at Yale last week, dismissed the idea that her vote for Nader would be a "spoiler" ballot that hurts Kerry.
"If you love somebody and you want him to be president, it's never a vote for somebody else," she said. "It's a vote for him."
Posted by bubba138 at 03:04 PM | Comments (0) |
New Political Term
A supporter and an opponent of a ballot proposal to change the Electoral College voting system in Colorado agreed on one thing during a debate Monday:Amendment 36 would give a lot more clout to - well, let's call them nontraditional candidates.
Former Denver City Councilwoman Susan Barnes-Gelt, a Democrat, preferred the term wackadoos. As in, Amendment 36 would "empower the third-party wackadoos."
"Wackadoos." I like it. That is most definately going into the blog lexicon.
Just as good is the name of the 527 group opposing the amendment: "Coloradans Against a Really Stupid Idea."
Man I love politics.
As an aside, some polls have Amendment 36 very close (45%-44%), while others are showing it on the fast-track to doom (44%-35%).
(Hat tip)
Posted by bubba138 at 02:46 PM | Comments (0) |
Perish the Thought
The headline reads, "Moore likely won't face charges in underwear"
Now that is a mental picture I could have done without.
Posted by bubba138 at 01:37 PM | Comments (0) |
Kerry the Planner
We found out last Friday that Kerry has plans, twenty-nine of them to be exact. At least they aren't secret.
Posted by bubba138 at 12:39 PM | Comments (0) |
Good News
The latest installment of Chrenkoff's "Good News from Iraq" is up.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:17 AM | Comments (0) |
Friday's Debate Fact Checked
FactCheck.org has examined overzealous claims from the debate last Friday. It is worth checking out.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:01 AM | Comments (0) |
Voter Intimidation
Voter intimidation this year is greater than in any other election that I have seen in my twenty plus years as a voter. Contrary to the hype from Black and leftist groups, it is mostly coming from Democrats:
The AFL-CIO took credit on its Web site for similar demonstrations--apparently all coordinated--in Independence, Mo., Kansas City, Mo., Dearborn, Mich., St. Paul, Minn., and West Allis, Wis. In what could be a related incident, the Bush-Cheney office in Knoxville, Tenn., had its plate-glass windows shattered by gunfire on Tuesday morning before volunteers showed up for work. Another Republican office, in Seattle, was broken into and had computer files stolen.What is ludicrous about this is that AFL-CIO will be fanning out over the nation on November 2nd as "election observers" to ensure fair ballot practices. Such observers can hardly be viewed as impartial.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:54 AM | Comments (0) |
Tinfoil Hat Alert
Check this quote:
"Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys (since) time immemorial, others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that.Who said it? None other than the latest winner of the Nobel prize, Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai. Of course she has no evidence to back up or even remotely support her claim, but who needs evidence in the world community?"Us black people are dying more than any other people in this planet. It’s true that there are some people who create agents to wipe out other people. If there were no such people, we could have not have invaded Iraq. We invaded Iraq because we believed that Saddam Hussein had made, or was in the process of creating agents of biological warfare."
"In fact it (the HIV virus) is created by a scientist for biological warfare. Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious."
Posted by bubba138 at 09:45 AM | Comments (0) |
Kerry's Surgical Strike
Posted by bubba138 at 09:35 AM | Comments (0) |
Yet Another Reason to Sue
This year, it really does not matter what election officials do, people will find a reason to scream about disenfranchisement, voter intimidation and inaccuracy. "Standby ballots" are the latest item up for debate:
Under the 2002 Help America Vote Act, each state must provide standby ballots to voters if they cannot be found on registration lists, are in the wrong polling place or don't have proper identification but insist they are eligible to vote. Those people will be given “provisional” ballots that will be kept separate from others until their eligibility can be confirmed.The problem with last election and this upcoming one is exactly the same, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the technology used to cast and count votes. Punch cards, computers, standby ballots, butterfly ballots all have advantages and flaws and no system we develop will be perfect. The truth is no matter what technology or system we use, the most flawed component in the voting process remains, that is human beings.“Provisional ballots could be the hanging chads of 2004,” says Tony Sirvello, director of an association of local election administrators. “If there's a state as close as Florida was in 2000, this could have a major effect.”
The partisans who lose this election will fight tooth and nail in the legal system to challenge the results. That is why it is imperative that Bush win this by a wide margin because If It's Not Close They Can't Cheat.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:46 AM | Comments (0) |
Florida
Florida has been polling increasingly in favor of Bush, showing significant gains over last election. The Democrats are afraid they know from just where Bush is getting the extra strength:
With 22 days until Election Day, Democrats are scrambling to undo gains Republicans have made among Jews.True with a war on and all, prescription drugs do not hold the importance they once did, but is it possible that many Jewish voters are tired of voting for the party that upholds anti-semitism?"It's a very big problem," said Sylvia Wolfe-Herman, a vice president of the United South County Democratic Club. "We no longer have the bloc vote."
"The Republicans have made major inroads with respect to Jewish voters," he told Democrats at a Palm Beach County party meeting last week. "If they get 40 percent, it would be devastating. If they get 30 percent they could win the election. We need to keep them under 20 percent."
"They're scared to death," [Republican Party county chairman] Dinerstein said. "From their perspective they should be scared because enough Jewish people have finally said, `You know what? This is serious. This isn't about who's paying for your prescription drugs.'"
Posted by bubba138 at 08:27 AM | Comments (0) |
Afghan Election Turmoil Avoided
Some of the major challengers to the Afghan elections are stepping back from earlier statements that they would boycott the results:
The chief rival to Afghan President Hamid Karzai in last week's historic presidential election said on Monday he and several other candidates had dropped a plan to boycott the election process.The good news keeps on coming.
"We want unity in this election, not a boycott. The people want it and we appreciate their feelings," ethnic Tajik commander Yunus Qanuni told reporters, adding he was speaking for many of the 15 candidates who had called for the boycott.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:00 AM | Comments (0) |
$1.99 A Gallon? I Wish
CNN:
U.S. average retail gasoline prices are again approaching $2 a gallon, reaching a four-month high amid record high crude oil prices and the effects of Hurricane Ivan, a leading industry analyst said on Sunday.Wah.The national average price for self-serve regular unleaded gasoline was $1.989 per gallon in the two weeks ended Oct. 8, up 7.8 cents from Sept. 24, and up 13.2 cents in the past month, according to the twice-a-month Lundberg survey of about 7,000 U.S. gas stations.
San Diegans would kill to pay $1.99 a gallon. That's a price we haven't seen since the beginning of the year.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:48 AM | Comments (0) |
Making Progress
Life just got a little bit easier in Iraq...or not:
Militia fighters loyal to a defiant Shiite cleric promised Saturday to lay down their heavy weapons in the Sadr City area of Baghdad, a potential victory for Iraqi officials eager to impose stability ahead of national elections.I hope there is some "secret plan" to deal with al-Sadr because his past promises and actions have proven he is completely untrustworthy.
The agreement, due to go into effect Monday, could set the stage for Muqtada al-Sadr to disband his al-Mahdi Army and turn it into a political organization. Aides to the Shiite cleric have been discussing the political path with Iraqi authorities. But al-Sadr remains an unpredictable figure and, to American officials, an untrustworthy one.
Though large chunks of Iraq are calm, several towns and large parts of some cities are under insurgent control or home to frequent guerrilla attacks, ambushes, car-bombings and kidnappings.My Marine friend, just back from Iraq told me just the other day that what the press is not reporting hard enough is that the resistance in Iraq is not comprised of Iraqis, but are truly insurgents. Although al-Sadr is Iraqi, his little band of ruffians are puppets of the Iranian mullahs who fear nothing more than democracy on two of their major borders.
Update: Here is good news: the hand-over has begun.
Posted by bubba138 at 05:40 AM | Comments (0) |
October 09, 2004
Australia Affirms Support of Hawks
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has more than retained his seat and his party has even more control, gaining more legislative seats than they had before the election.
Over the last twelve months the press has done its best to paint Australia as a divided country whose anti-war majority was ruled by hawks who cared little for popular sentiment. Report after report told us that the country was in protest over Iraq. Like George Bush, John Howard's government was even accused of falsely trumping up Iraq intellegence. That the government has so soundly prevailed shows the press spin out of Australia has not come close to accurately measured the attidtudes of its people.
This election was nothing less than a referendum on John Howard's Iraq policy, and the Australian people have resoundingly affirmed they are doing the right thing. May it be so in the U.S. as well.
Posted by bubba138 at 11:44 AM | Comments (0) |
Afghan Elections in Turmoil
The good news: the Afghan vote went off without the slightest bit of violence. The bad news: a glitch with the ink has thrown the entire election into turmoil:
Ink that does not stain spurred 15 challengers to Afghan President Hamid Karzai to unite in a boycott of Saturday's election, charging that it was open to fraud because citizens could possibly vote several times.It looks as if the Afghans have learned American politics quite well. The opposition parties take a simple mistake and turn it into a huge conspiracy designed to throw the election and now they say the entire election cannot be trusted. No matter this did not occur in every polling place. No matter the election was stopped until the situation was fixed. No matter the lines were so long that even if some did vote again after cleaning their thumbs it would have hardly affected the final outcome.Voting almost three years after the hard-line Taliban regime was ousted by a U.S.-led military campaign stalled at several polling stations when election officials realized ink used to mark voters' fingers could be washed off.
After about two hours of confusion, a new supply of ink was delivered to some polling stations and voting resumed.
This is unfortunate and it is, quite simply, a victory for the enemy. Expect the U.N. to soon declare the election a fraud and refuse to recognize the outcome.
Posted by bubba138 at 11:14 AM | Comments (0) |
October 08, 2004
Overly Aggressive?
One of the points of discussion tonight has been about the episode when Bush interrupted the moderator.
I just watched that for the first time, here's what I saw: the Commander in Chief took command. As He Should.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:11 PM | Comments (0) |
Debate Reaction
I took my youngest daughter on "Date Night with Daddy" tonight so I have absolutely no debate reaction. I took her out to dinner and we went to see "A Shark's Tale," which was much more enjoyable than I expected.
I am watching Susan Estrich on Fox News right now and she is positively gushing over their online poll that shows Kerry winning the debate 62% to 27%. She's excited about all the energy and interest (176,000 votes) that keeps these Democrats up past midnight to vote. News flash for Susan, its only 9ish on the West coast, and California is not exactly known as a conservative state. Heck, we have debate parties as big as 176,000.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:02 PM | Comments (0) |
Hope for the Future
Whether our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq pay off will not really be known for a generation, but hope can be found today:
Sonam Hashemi was considered something of a rank outsider when she started campaigning to be elected president in Afghanistan.The only female candidate in a male dominated society, her campaign speeches of sexual equality and other lofty goals had not been a great success.
So no one was more surprised than Sonam when the votes were tallied and she discovered she had been elected president. Her supporters cheered wildly. Her two male vice-presidents threw their arms in the air in triumph.
And then the bell rang for the end of school. Sonam was a participant in a day long "lessons in democracy" course organised by a Danish-Afghan non-governmental organisation called the Mobile Mini Circus for Children.
That is not to say that the current generation is not heading in the right direction:
More than 1,000 leathery, turbaned men gathered in a cavernous village mosque Friday for a presidential campaign rally. They no longer carried rifles, and some had even brought their small sons. But the assembly of mujaheddin, or former anti-Soviet fighters, crackled with esprit de corps.
The veterans were all ethnic Pashtuns, and the rally was held in Kandahar province, the heartland of Afghan Pashtun culture and the birthplace of President Hamid Karzai, who comes from a prominent Pashtun tribe and has courted Pashtun votes in his bid to be elected president this Saturday.But these tough ex-fighters had come to show their support for someone else: Yonus Qanooni, the former interior and education minister and an ethnic Tajik, who is Karzai's major challenger. To them, the candidate's ethnicity mattered far less than his credentials as a fellow mujahid and defender of Islam...
The local military commander, who goes by the single name Habibullah, was busy preparing the rally and ticking off lists of tribes that had sent representatives. He said he had a good official relationship with the central government, but his Pashtun heart was clearly with Qanooni, the Tajik mujahid from Panjshir.
"When I was a boy, I carried a Kalashnikov on my shoulder. I do not want my children to carry a gun," he said, adding that he supported militia disarmament.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:27 PM | Comments (0) |
Just Plain Wierd
An ex-football player arrested for a drive-by shooting at the home of gay tiger-trainers. You just cannot make this stuff up:
Cole Murdoch Ford, 31, whose three-year NFL career ended after he missed crucial kicks during the 1997 season, was named in a felony warrant stemming from the September 21 shooting, Sgt. Chris Jones said.Unsurprisingly, Cole was an Oakland Raider.Police identified Ford as the owner of a white minivan from which shots were fired at the compound owned by the illusionists known as Siegfried & Roy. No one was hurt, but police said shotgun pellets shattered windows and left a hole in a wall.
Police have not said if the two men were home at the time.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:15 PM | Comments (0) |
Voter Fraud in Florida
Elections officials asked prosecutors Thursday to investigate possible voter fraud involving 25 registration forms with apparently bogus addresses, including some that match a public park, a parking lot and a utilities building.Quick, Someone call Jessee Jackson!Duval County had already registered the 25 voters before someone whom election officials declined to identify tipped them to the suspicious information. All but three of the individuals registered as Democrats. Two chose no party and one checked Republican.
(Hat tip)
Posted by bubba138 at 04:05 PM | Comments (0) |
Check References
Note to self -- Before plasticc surgery, check references:
Investigators say Silvestre performed operations on champion bodybuilder and former Mr. Mexico Alexander Baez and at least two women...DOH!Police say Baez went to Silvestre's Ocean Health Center in Miami Beach to have his pectoral muscles enhanced. But he woke up to find he had been given female breast implants.
Posted by bubba138 at 01:29 PM | Comments (0) |
The Guillotine Bug
This bugs the crud out of me, too.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:46 AM | Comments (0) |
Bush Wins!
Posted by bubba138 at 10:03 AM | Comments (0) |
Afghan Election Round Up
The elections in Afghanistan are more than a landmark event for the country, it is a landmark event for the entire world. Needless to say, not everyone is behind them:doubt and intimidation:
Abdul Razzik learned of the Taleban's intention to kill him at the end of this week when he read the letter pinned to his village mosque. The Shubnama - night letter - wasn't the usual half-literate scrawl but composed and printed out by computer, with Mr Razzik's name highlighted in red.No one can discount that the risk to life and limb are real:Normally, the grandfather, who works for an American-owned agricultural company, would shrug off such threats. In Helmand Province, though, these are not normal times.
In the past few days, Taleban killing squads have fanned out across the province looking for soft targets. If they kill enough people between now and Saturday, the voters may be too scared to vote in the presidential election.
A fuel tanker rigged as a huge truck bomb was seized on the ouskirts of Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar Friday on the eve of landmark elections, a spokesman for NATO peacekeepers said Friday.The tanker was carrying 40,000 litres of fuel and packed with explosives, including several rocket rounds and anti-tank mines, Lieutenant Commander Ken McKillop told AFP.
Three Pakistanis were arrested and Afghan security forces had called for assistance in dealing with the truck, he said.
One of the hardest obstacles to overcome is building confidence in the validity of the election:
About 10.5 million voter cards have been issued in Afghanistan and in Thursday's U.S. campaign debate, President Bush praised the upcoming election and the 10 million registrations. But Human Rights Watch in a report last week said that number was inaccurate because of many multiple registrations.Human Rights Watch also documented continuing human rights abuses, and said the overall political process in Afghanistan has been severely affected by an overriding atmosphere of threats, harassment and fear.
No doubt the risk to every candidate and the voters at the polls is great, and the confidence in the election varies from person to person. Even so, in Kabul the air is charged with excitement and determination:
They seem genuinely excited. Almost everyone does. In the markets, people are actually talking about the vote. Some are driving around with pictures of candidates in their car windows. Posters of every hue cover the walls of central Kabul. Even one of the much-maligned warlords -- men more inclined to saber-rattling than campaign rallies -- jumped into the fray.A Canadian political operative with years of grassroots experience was far more realistic about this whole exercise than the people complaining about it from afar. He's been here six months teaching democratic concepts to a citizenry that barely knows what the word means, and knows that applying western standards of acceptability in a place like Afghanistan is an exercise in lunacy.
Will this vote be perfect? Of course not, he said. Will there be problems? Of course there will be. But it's a damn sight better than anything they've ever had, and baby steps are better than no steps at all.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:31 AM | Comments (0) |
October 07, 2004
Elections that Matter
Ours is not the only election that matters this year. In less than forty-eight hours Afghanis will line up to vote in their first ever free democratic contest. This of course makes the administration look both effective and wise, so it must be derided immediately:
Already the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe - more insecure and uncooperative than usual - has announced that it will refuse to declare this coming election to be free and fair. European nit-picking about "irregularities" will be fierce from high-minded bureaucrats who do not realize that the most irregular thing in that part of the world is anything approximating a free election.Even imperfect elections are a far sight better than the oppressive regime that allowed Osama bin Laden free reign and encouraged world-wide violence in the name of their blood-thirsty diety. That blatant anti-US hostility causes some to so completely condemn the upcoming elections speaks volumes.Too much world media coverage will focus on pictures of violence at polling places, not on the big news: lines of courageous Afghans patiently waiting to vote. Tinhorn despots are passing out leaflets in refugee camps promising divine rewards to anyone who kills a poll worker.
Posted by bubba138 at 11:15 AM | Comments (0) |
Coalition of the Bribed and Coerced
The Iraqis believe that coalition did exist:
Iraqi oil officials have accused a United Nations inspector of taking almost £60,000 in bribes from Saddam Hussein's regime as his henchmen and foreign business partners siphoned millions from the UN's oil-for-food programme, it was reported yesterday.An inquiry by officials in the State Oil Marketing Organisation - a body which, under Saddam, was a key player in schemes that allegedly diverted billions in oil revenues from the UN-run programme - accused an inspector contracted through the Dutch company Saybolt of falsifying documents in return for bribes, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Posted by bubba138 at 11:07 AM | Comments (0) |
Jobs Report
September's monthly jobs report is due out tomorrow and forecasters are expecting a signficant increase in employment. These expectations are buoyed by improved jobless claims numbers:
The Labor Department reported today that the number of new people signing up for unemployment insurance benefits dropped by a seasonally adjusted 37,000 to 335,000, the lowest level since the beginning of September. In the prior three weeks, claims had gone up.One year ago today, USA Today reported that 3 million jobs had been lost since George Bush had taken office. Shortly before that report the Bush administration had its tax cuts passed in the legislature and the effect was that three million has been reduced to nine hundred thousand. Even if one ignores the fact that the lost jobs had nothing to do with Bush administration policies, the recovery of more than two million jobs in a twelve month period is nothing to sneeze at.The more stable, four-week moving average of claims, which smooths out week-to-week fluctuations, rose by 4,250 last week to 348,500. That compares with 394,250 a year ago -- showing improvement has been seen over the past year.
The number of people continuing to draw unemployment benefits declined by 1,000 to 2.86 million for the week ending Sept. 25, the most recent period for which that information is available. A year ago, the number stood at 3.57 million.
Many economists are forecasting a net gain of around 150,000 jobs for September, which would mark a bit of an improvement over the 144,000 jobs added in August. The nation's unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 5.4 percent.
Even though payrolls have grown by 1.7 million in the last 12 months, the economy is still down by a net 913,000 jobs since Bush took office.
So the question here is do keep the leadership that put the working strategies into place, or do we switch to someone who believes we need to put an end to the policies that have restored two million jobs and counting?
Update: It looks like voters are beginning to understand we need to stick with what is working:
But while Kerry once hoped the economy would give him a vital advantage, he has not been able to break away from Bush among voters worried about the topic."Kerry's edge on the economy is gone," pollster John Zogby said. "Among those who cite the economy as the top issue, the candidates are in a dead heat -- Bush holding a slight edge" at 46-44 percent.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:32 AM | Comments (0) |
Spain Gives U.S. the Finger Again
AP:
In another dig at the United States, the Socialist government has dropped plans for U.S. Marines to march in a high-profile parade commemorating Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World.(Hat tip)U.S. Marines have taken part since 2001 in the procession marking the Dia de la Hispanidad, which is celebrated each year on Oct. 12.
The Spanish invitation was first issued when fervently pro-U.S. conservatives ruled in Spain and was meant to show solidarity with the United States after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But the new Socialist government, which withdrew Spain's troops from Iraq (news - web sites) right after taking power in April and realigned the country's foreign policy away from its predecessor's focus on ties with Washington, has ended the tradition.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:44 AM | Comments (0) |
YANWMDR
Or, in full, Yet Another No WMD Report. But wait, lets examine the whole report, not just the parts that look bad for the Bush administration:
In his report, Duelfer concluded that Saddam's Iraq had no stockpiles of the banned weapons, but he said he found signs of idle programs that Saddam could have revived once international attention waned.And then there is this:Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining industrial capability that could be converted to produce weapons, officials have said. Duelfer also describes Saddam's Iraq as having had limited research efforts into chemical and biological weapons.
The report by CIA consultant and weapons inspector Charles Duelfer (search) is expected to reveal how Saddam turned the humanitarian program into a cash cow for himself and his cronies. U.S. officials said that in the report, Duelfer asserts that Iraq readily accepted the 1996 program because he knew it would give his government a steady flow of cash, much of which he could toss into his military-industrial complex.Is my math wrong or is that a FOUR-THOUSAND PERCENT increase in the military budget? You can bet the increase was not to provide tiddly-winks and spit-balls to his soldiers. Saddam was prepared to wait out the sanctions, fully believing that time was on his side. Once his patience had paid off, he would have gone full steam into weapons production.The Duelfer report estimates that Saddam's military-industrial budget was $8 million per year in 1996. By 2001, prior to the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the figure had ballooned to $350 million per year. The report credits the Oil-for-Food program for the jump, said the U.S. officials.
Without the resolve of the current administration, Saddam would have surely won out, too:
One European contractor hired by the United Nations to make sure the program was legitimately operating said he also complained that when he brought up allegations of corruption to Sevan, the United Nations did little or nothing to investigate.Investigators are probing whether Saddam bought off the U.N. Security Council by giving billions in contracts to France, Russia and China, three of the five permanent members on the council. At congressional hearings on Tuesday, House Government Reform subcommittee Chairman Chris Shays, R-Conn., charged that the United Nations turned a blind eye to the corruption.
Update: This is on target:
Because Mr. Bush chose to act, we know what capabilities Iraq did -- and did not -- possess, and we've learned how difficult it is to occupy and attempt to reconstruct that country. What can't be known is what would have happened had Mr. Bush chosen not to invade. Here the new report suggests some answers. Saddam Hussein, it says, was focused on ending international sanctions, which were crumbling before the crisis began. Had he succeeded, he would have resumed production of chemical weapons and probably a nuclear program as well. Mr. Kerry suggested recently that Saddam Hussein's regime would have collapsed under the inspectors' pressure. That is one possibility; another is that it would have reemerged as a significant power in the Middle East, and as a de facto or real ally of the Islamic extremist forces with which the United States is at war
Posted by bubba138 at 08:31 AM | Comments (0) |
House Ethics Panel Rebukes Delay
Its about time they stop wasting time.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:37 AM | Comments (0) |
October 06, 2004
More Draft Analysis
Hugh says the utter destruction of New York Democrat Charles Rangle's draft bill may have longer term effects:
This may cause lasting damage to Democrats on the social security scare campaign as well. Smart GOPers will point to draftmongering and its repudiation whenever any Democrat tries to again scare granny about her social security check: "They are using the same old tired tactics of fear, just like they did with the draft. They wanted to scare some people about a draft coming back, just like they want to scare old folks into thinking their social security check isn't coming. But Democrats got exposed on the draft because we called up their fake bill to reinstate the draft and beat it 402 to 2. We weren't going to bring back the draft and we aren't cutting your social security benefits. The Democrats lied about the draft and now they are lying about social security.One can hope.
Posted by bubba138 at 01:37 PM | Comments (0) |
These Don't Count
Iraqi Guardsmen have once again taken the brunt of the violence in Iraq:
A suicide car bomb attack near the Iraq-Syria border killed 12 Iraqi national guard members and wounded 25 others Wednesday, Iraqi authorities said.John Edwards says we shouldn't count these, though, because they aren't "coalition" troops.The lethal blast occurred at a national guard camp in Anah, 160 miles (258 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad along the Euphrates River.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:18 AM | Comments (0) |
Soros Hijacks FactCheck.Com
Last night Cheney meant to send viewers to FactCheck.Org so they can see how flimsy the Democrat's Cheney/Halliburton fantasy is.
Unfortunately he instead sent people to FactCheck.Com. Well, money gets you anything you want, so in a matter of hours that web address now directs people to George Soros' anti-Bush rants.
Update: According to Google, FactCheck.com was an educational site. No page is cached, however, so we cannot see what it looked like before.
Correction: It turns out the website owners redirected the address themselves:
But Cheney cited FactCheck.com, a for-profit advertising site based in the Cayman Islands.The company decided to redirect traffic to the Soros site after it became inundated with hits - about 100 a second after the debate, John Berryhill, a Philadelphia attorney for FactCheck.com, said Wednesday.
"This was to relieve stress on the service and to express a political point of view," said Berryhill, who spoke with the site's administrators shortly after the debate ended.
They picked Soros not only for his political views, Berryhill said, but because the billionaire could afford the costly deluge of hits the site would receive in the wake of the debate. Plus, the site administrators didn't want to point surfers to a candidate's site that was asking for money.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:51 AM | Comments (0) |
More Action In Iraq
Samarra. Check.
Hilla. Check:
More than 3,000 US and Iraqi troops have launched a major offensive on a rebel stronghold south of the capital, Baghdad, the US Central Command says.Next: Fallujah.Its press release said more than 30 suspected insurgents were seized in the sweep in the Babil province.
The operation in the Babil region - which centres on the town of Hilla - follows a US-led blitz at the weekend on another rebel stronghold, Samarra, to the north of Baghdad.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:03 AM | Comments (0) |
UN to Sudan: "Bad, Naughty Country"
The UN is really coming down hard on Sudan:
Sudan's government has failed to keep its promise to end violence in its western Darfur region over the past month, a UN special envoy says.People are dying by the thousands and the UN is going to hold a mini-summit in Libya. That'll scare the Islamic crusaders off.
Jan Pronk told the UN Security Council that attacks on civilians continued and that both pro-government forces and rebel groups had broken a truce.His comments came amid reports that Libya planned to host a mini-summit on the Darfur crisis later in October.
Posted by bubba138 at 06:59 AM | Comments (0) |
How About that Foreign Support
Kerry knows he cannot get Germany and France on board in Iraq:
"Does that mean allies are going to trade their young for our young in body bags? I know they are not. I know that," he said.If Kerry has not been talking about France and Germany all these months, which other countries has he been talking about then?Asked about that statement later, Mr. Kerry said, "When I was referring to that, I was really talking about Germany and France and some of the countries that had been most restrained."
"Other countries are obviously more willing to accept responsibilities," he added, as he took questions from reporters in a school yard in Tipton, Iowa.
Posted by bubba138 at 06:53 AM | Comments (0) |
I Told You That Was Going To Hurt
Posted by bubba138 at 06:30 AM | Comments (0) |
Draft Bill Defeated
Yesterday the House soundly defeated (2 Yeas, 402 Nays) the "Universal National Service Act Of 2003."
The Universal National Service Act Of 2003 was introduced and sponsored by New York Democrat Charles Rangel. He calls it:
A BILL To provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposesThat description was less than honest. A more accurate one would be "a bill to raise the issue of the draft in an election year in an effort to spread fear and distrust for the President." That Rangle himself voted against the bill only serves to prove this was his original intent.
John Kerry has hinted that the draft may return under a re-elected Bush administration:
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, citing the war in Iraq and other trouble spots in the world, raised the possibility Wednesday that a military draft could be reinstated if voters re-elect President Bush. ... Answering a question about the draft that had been posed at a forum with voters, Kerry said: "If George Bush were to be re-elected, given the way he has gone about this war and given his avoidance of responsibility in North Korea and Iran and other places, is it possible? I can't tell you."John Edwards joined in with similar rhetoric:
Edwards drew his biggest applause from the audience, which was heavy on union members and laid-off workers, when he responded to a question from a woman who said that her 23-year-old son recently graduated from college, and that she is worried about a draft being instituted for the war in Iraq. "There will be no draft when John Kerry is president," Edwards said, to applause and a standing ovationYet John Kerry himself raised the possibility in an interview on "Keller at Large:"
REPORTER: "Senator, some in your party have called for reinstating the draft. Do you think that is a good idea?" KERRY: "Not at this moment. I don't. If we had a need for a general mobilization at some time in the future, then I think that's the only fair way to do it."By contrast, the Bush administration has been clear in its rejection of a draft:
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld heatedly denied yesterday that the military plans to bring back the draft and boost reserves and National Guard callups after the November election. "That is absolute nonsense," Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "It's absolutely false that anyone in this administration is considering reinstituting the draft."Cheney had this to say:
"The notion that somebody's peddling out there that there is a secret plan to reinstitute the draft — it's hogwash, not true," Cheney said on the campaign trail.The President has also been more than clear:
"We don't need the draft," Bush told a campaign audience in Florida last month. "I'll tell you one way you make (the all-volunteer Army) work. I just signed a defense appropriations bill, which is the fourth year in a row in which we've raised the pay of those who wear our uniform, and the pay's getting better. And the housing is getting better."Hopefully now that this bill has been destroyed, we can put this issue to bed.
By the way, the two who did vote for this bill were John Murtha of Pennsylvania, and Pete Stark of California. Both are Democrats, of course.
Posted by bubba138 at 06:28 AM | Comments (0) |
October 05, 2004
Oh, Puh-leeze
And the award for absolute lamest lede in a post debate article goes to...the Washington Post:
Dick Cheney might have said to John Edwards, "I've met Dan Quayle, I know Dan Quayle, and Senator, you are no Dan Quayle."Ugh.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:33 PM | Comments (0) |
Democrat Rage
A pattern is developing:
- Shots fired into Republican headquarters in Tennessee
- Break-in at Republican headquarters in Washington
- Shots fired into Republican headquarters in West Virginia
- And in the latest incident, the Republican headquarters in Orlando is stormed and ransacked by protesters
Posted by bubba138 at 10:20 PM | Comments (0) |
Dumb and Dumber
Dumb: Michael Moore offers clean underwear and other gag items to college students that pledge to vote for Kerry.
Dumber: The Michigan GOP sues Michael Moore for election fraud:
The GOP said it asked prosecutors in Wayne, Ingham, Antrim and Isabella counties to charge Moore with violating Michigan's election law. The law prohibits a person from contracting with another for something of value in exchange for agreeing to vote.Really, doesn't anyone ever stand up and ask how such a stupid lawsuit is going to make the party look?Moore, a native of Flint, is touring the country and imploring "slackers" who usually don't vote to head to the polls this year, saying they could make the difference in the presidential race.
During each program, habitual nonvoters are invited on stage to pledge to vote for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. First-time student voters are offered gag prizes such as clean underwear.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:18 PM | Comments (0) |
Quick Takes
Debate Transcript here
1. Both sides did well. Cheney was pleasant and gracious. Edwards was just sooo cute. Someone call GQ. Quick.
2. Cheney did a much better job zinging Edwards than the reverse, but still missed opportunities. Edwards repeated charges about funding No Child Left Behind. Cheney should have at least mentioned funding is up to the Congress, not the administration. Further, Cheney several times waved his right to 30 second rebuttal time. This was stupid. If he did not have a rebuttal he should have used the time given to pump up some other positive point about the President. Doing so minimizes the opponent's talk time.
3. Edwards blew it, and big time, when he insisted the US had taken 90% of the coalition casualties. Doing so insinuated the Iraqi sacrafice is worth less, and Cheney rightfully hammered him on it. It was a trap from the beginning and Edwards fell right into it. The Kerry campaign is going to feel that one tomorrow.
4. Cheney blew it on the jobs question. I have no idea why he answered it with education, but he did. Edwards rightfully hammered him on it. The Bush campaign is going to feel that one tomorrow.
5. Edwards used recent news very well. Examples are the Bremer statement about needing more troops and the Republican legislators who say Iraq is a mess. This helped butress his case. I am not so sure it helped win any votes, however.
6. Both candidates accused the other of distorting the record. It seemed as if Edwards, however, started several consecutive statements with that accusation. Doing so made him look like a schoolyard kid whining "liar, liar, pants on fire."
America may believe the administration has been less than forthright on some issues, but they are not going to believe they have lied on everything.
7. Edwards spent too much time trying to defend John Kerry's "global test." Again here he accused the VP of distorting the record. His argument was weak, however, stating that Kerry had said, "We will find terrorists where they are and kill them before they ever do harm to the American people, first. We will keep this country safe. He defended this country as a young man, he will defend this country as president of the United States. He also said very clearly that he will never give any country veto power over the security of the United States of America." That is all fine and dandy but anyone listening can easily see that those statements cannot be reconciled with having a "global test." Either there is a global test or no international veto, not both.
8. Cheney hit a home run by bringing in El Salvador into the debate. Many watching the debate probably did not make the connection but this is another example of Kerry being on the wrong side of history. Tossing it out puts it into the media mix over the next week. This silent strike won't hurt much tomorrow, but the bruise will show up on Friday and be tender for some time.
All in all I give Cheney the edge on this one. Edwards held his own, but in the end he was a middle-weight in a heavy-weight fight.
Update: In the Bullpen has an extensive round-up of debate blogging.
Update II: I can't believe I forgot this one. The best zing of the night, in both immediate and lasting impact was Cheney's:
Now if they couldn't stand up to the pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to stand up to Al Qaida?It is a valid question with no good answer.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:54 PM | Comments (0) |
VEEP Battle
It begins...both are frantically scribbling notes...Cheney is looking up and smiling (I wonder if that hurts his face?)
Edwards is still scribbling...
Edwards smiles...boy isn't he pretty?
Q1: Bremer said we needed more troops on the ground, Rumsfield says there is no connection to al Qa'eda
Cheney: We need to look at all the developments in the context of the global war on terror. I would recommend it exactly the way I did.
Edwards: Troop casualty counts. "Our men and women have been heroic." Refers to Republicans who say Iraq was done wrong. Parrots Kerry's four point plan.
Cheney rebut: List achievements in Iraq and
Edwards: No connection between Iraq and 9/11...[Did I miss something, I did not hear the VP try to make a connection.]
Edwards: Basically just said we missed capturing Osama because we diverted forces from Afghanistan for Iraq. Also difinitively stated that going into Iraq was the right thing to do.
Q2: What is your plan to capture Osama
Cheney: We have never let up on Osama. We will continue to pursue him. Points out John Edwards' doomsaying two years ago was wrong. Elections in four days, ten million registered to vote, constitution written. Freedom is the best antidote to terror.
Edwards: Clarifies the "global test" quote. Lists out Kerry's statements that contradict the "global test" statement.
Cheney rebut: Freedom won out over El Salvador.
Edwards: Brings up Iran. Says this administration supports lifint sanctions on Iran.
Q3: What is a global test if not a global veto?
Edwards: We are going back to the proud tradition, tell the truth, we tell the world the truth. It is critical that we be credible. Brings up the cost of the war again. We will not "outsource" keeping America safe.
Cheney: It wasn't 200 billion, You probably weren't there to vote for that. [OUCH]
Edwards: The VP was lying. John Kerry was strong in the debate. [Ignore the fact what he said contradicted what he had said before]
Q3: Would it be dangerous to have Kerry as President?
Cheney: I am not challenging his patriotism, what we question is his judgement. He opposed weapons systems, he voted against pushing Saddam out of Kuwait. If they couldn't stand up to the pressure that Dean gave them how can they stand up to al Qa'eda? [OUCH]
Edwards: The VP voted to remove many of the same weapons systems after the cold war. [after cold war vs. before cold war -- that should have some bearing] HALLIBURTON ALERT
Q2: How are you going to get international support when France and Germany say no way.
Edwards: Making sure the elections take place in time. [If the elections happen in January and the President does not get sworn in until late January. How can Kerry ensure this before he takes office?] Edwards spins so many tales in this answer I can't keep up.
Edwards just blew it, impying coalitions casualties are more important than Iraqi casualties.
Cheney: Hammers Edwards on the Iraqi casualties.
Edwards: Doesn't answer the question. Cheney is lying again. Edwards again complains about Cheney's assertions about connections. [Edwards is out of material]
Q: Should we lift sanctions on Iran?
Cheney: No we should not. We may want to ask for tougher sanctions. Iran is different than Iraq because they have not yet violated twelve years of sanctions. The action in Iraq has resulted in Libya disarmorment.
Edwards: How many countries with al Qa'eda members are we going to invade? We want to prevent HALLIBURTON ALERT businesses from doing business with Iran. [Kerry's plan is to let the government give them nuclear fuel instead]
Q: What to do in Israel
Edwards: We have been largely absent in Isreal. Israeli people have an obligation to defend themselves. Nice "I was almost there" story. Calls bombers terrorists. Arafat is not a partner for peace.
Almost every answer Edwards rebuts he begins with "That was a complete distortion"
Q: What to do about jobs?
Cheney: Have an excellent public school system. [Bad answer. Improving schools won't gain jobs today]
Edwards: Rightly hammers VP on talking about schools. Still does not talk about how they will do better. Instead talks about administration's failure. Now says eliminate tax cuts for companies that outsource jobs.
Cheney: Edwards is using old data.
Q: Gay question
Edwards: Affirms traditional marriage. G/L couples deserve benefits, hospital visits, funerals, etc... Keep the courts out of it.
Amendment is not needed. History of the US is that no state has been required to recognize the marriage of another state.
Cheney: Gracious thanks for Senator's words about his family. That's all. Nice move.
Q: Has Edwards been part of the problem in health care costs?
Cheney: Rates have risen so much that doctors are screening out high-risk patients. this has a devastating impact on health care. We need to cap non-economic damages and awards that attorneys receive. Kerry has blocked legislation 10 times.
Edwards: We do have too many lawsuits. More responsibility on the lawyers. Hold the lawyers responsible. Three strikes and you're out. He is I am proud of fighting against big companies.
Q: Do you feel attacked when Cheney talks about tort reform?
Edwards: Tort reform has little to do with medical costs in this country. Tort reform represents about half of one percent of health care costs.
Cheney: Liability insurance prevents hiring of two hundred more people in a plant he recently visited. Slams Edwards on S-chapter tax loophole.
Edwards: Halliburton did the same thing. These ought to be closed.
Q: Aids and American black women
Cheney: Terrible epidemic. [tell me something we don't know] Money set aside for international effort [moderator specifically mentioned domestic] We need to do more here.
Edwards: We need to double the amount of international aid. Talks about Africa. Mentions Sudan genocide. We need to do much more here at home. Moves it to health care in general. Plays the kids cards.
Q: To Edwards, you have the least experience of any recent VP candidate. What qualifies you to be VP?
Edwards: uhhhhh...I have a clear idea of what has to be done to keep this country safe. [Don't we all?] I don't claim to have the long political record that Cheney has. [He keeps waving his his hand like Clinton, loose fist, thumb up!] A long resume does not equal wise choices.
Cheney: I have no further political aspirations myself.
Edwards: Uses re-rebut time to pump up Kerry
Cheney: Uses re-re-rebut time to pump up Bush
I missed the last part of the debate to pick up one of the kidlings. Quick debate analysis to follow.
As an aside: I just heard Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill say Cheney looked angry and mean. He looked nothing of the sort. She obviously had planned to say this before the debate.
Posted by bubba138 at 05:57 PM | Comments (0) |
The Incredible Story
...a fascinating tale of adventure and intrigue:
I'm getting to the point that the election is going to be completely irrelevant when John Kerry ends up writing his memoirs. This guy has evidently packed so much into his life, that by the time the book rolls off the presses, they're going to have to sell it at bookstores by the pound. It also would make Kitty Kelley's books look accurate by comparison.The difference between Al Gore and John Kerry in ten years? Gore will think he won the election and it was stolen by Antonin Scalia, and John Kerry will be out raising money for the first presidential library in America dedicated to the legacy of a man who was never president.
Posted by bubba138 at 05:20 PM | Comments (0) |
Oh, THAT Liberal Media II
The ABC News headline: GOP Campaign Urges Post-Debate Spin
The text:
The assignment: go forth and spin. The objective: win the battle of the post-debate polls.Both partys are doing the same thing but the headline only identifies one. And, of course, we saw no such headline last week when only the DNC was enlisting internet supporters to spin the debate results.Both presidential campaigns are urging supporters to go online after Tuesday's debate between Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John Edwards in the hopes of spinning the outcome in their favor.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:05 PM | Comments (0) |
Slings & Arrows: A Liberal Blog
Every once in a while Slings & Arrows gets a hit from Technorati's roundup of political blogs. It always gives me a kick because they have S&A listed as one of the liberal blogs.
The thought of the left leaning happening upon this site and reading a bit of common sense warms my heart.
Posted by bubba138 at 02:43 PM | Comments (0) |
Oh, THAT Liberal Media
Do you notice anything interesting about the graphic NBC Nightly News used in this shot?
Is it any surprise that this would appear on the show hosted by Tom Brokaw, who defended Dan Rather accusing bloggers of being political jihadists?
Obviously, these letters appeared behind Bush at the venue in which he was speaking, so what's the big deal, really? Bias, that's what. When the Bush campaign did something similar in 2000, NBC was all over it:
NBC's "RATS"? Four years ago, the NBC Nightly News took seriously the appearance of the letters "RATS," in a single frame of an enlargement of part of the word "BUREAUCRATS," in an anti-Gore ad from the Bush campaign. The September 12, 2000 NBC Nightly News carried two full stories on the controversy. Jump ahead four years, and on Monday night the NBC Nightly News displayed the letters "ILIE" for 16 seconds next to President George W. Bush's face in a "Decision 2004" graphic beside anchor Tom Brokaw as he introduced a story by David Gregory.Update: Here is the CNN article about the RATS incident. Download Quicktime video of the Bush ad here (you will have to unzip it to view).The letters came from the word "FAMILIES" in a sign on the far side of Bush, which read: "TAX RELIEF FOR AMERICAN WORKING FAMILIES"
At the Iowa event, Bush signed bills to extend some provisions of his tax cuts which otherwise would have expired next year.
Posted by bubba138 at 02:13 PM | Comments (0) |
Fingerprinting
Yesterday I went to get my California State driver's license. Before they would allow me to have it, however, I was required to give a scan of my thumbprint. It brought to mind all the paranoid screaming we have heard over the past months about the US-VISIT program.
It is funny how invasion of privacy is a-ok for getting a driver's license but not for foreigners.
Posted by bubba138 at 01:51 PM | Comments (0) |
Virgin Galactic
What SpaceShipOne hath wrought:
Virgin Galactic is a company established by Richard Branson's Virgin Group to undertake the challenge of developing space tourism for everybody.One question: Where do I sign up?Virgin Galactic will own and operate privately built spaceships, modelled on the history-making SpaceShipOne craft. These spaceships will allow affordable sub-orbital space tourism for the first time in our history.
We believe that it is in mankind's interest to develop our knowledge and understanding as well as access to space. Every customer of Virgin Galactic will be helping the development of a new generation of space craft.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:38 AM | Comments (0) |
The Epic History of American Economic Power
John Steele Gordon's new book is out today. Buy it.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:15 AM | Comments (0) |
Examining the Shift
LaShawn Barber has recently become a daily read. This post is one example why:
As I matured it dawned on me that I had only one life to live. Something so obvious hit me full on. I was still light-years away from becoming a Christian or a conservative, but I'd developed a distaste for Jesse Jackson and his band of merry men. The emotions their rhetoric evoked were anger, fear and helplessness, and I wanted to be a dignified young woman. Black liberal politics seemed utterly devoid of dignity.Much of liberal, and especially black liberal politics is based upon plucking the heart strings of inferiority. "You need help because society says you are worth less" (concatinate those last two words if you like). Further because of the oppression of the system, "you do not have the ability in and of yourself to achieve." This is exhibited in the rhetoric of Jesse Jackson, al Sharpton and others. It is reinforced in the rap lyrics and on the street as blacks denigrate themselves, 'affectionately' calling each other n---ers, and their women "hoes" and "bi-atch."My mind began to evolve away from they-owe-me to I-owe-myself. I slowly tuned out angry, disingenuous and disrespectful loudmouths and turned inward. What do I want out of life? To convince white people that because I'm black, they should treat me a certain way, or because I'm a human being they should treat me a certain way?
LaShawn's declaration marks a shift in her identity from being a black woman to being a "human being." Her reasoning about how she adopted her current views eventually touches on who she is as a Christian. Having that identity changes everything, regardless of race, color, creed, ethnicity, political leaning. The Bible says that "...as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" When one apprehends the depth of this statement, one never again has to deal with feelings of inferiority. LaShawn's statement, "I’m a human being they should treat me a certain way," is transformed into "I am the child of the King of Kings."
Who are you to say I am worthless? The King of the universe says I am His child. Who are you to say I am incompetent? The Lord of Lords says I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Who are you to say I am weak. The Almighty says I am strong when I am weak, and He has given me armor that withstands the most brutal attacks.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:56 AM | Comments (0) |
Divisive Politics
John Kerry: "After four nights of attacks out of New York and four years of a failed, divisive Bush presidency..."
John Edwards: "Dick Cheney’s statement yesterday was calculated to divide us on the issues of safety and security for the American people. It was wrong and it’s un-American."
Mary Beth Cahill: "Tonight George Bush will tell us that this is a moment in history that will be remembered. But it will be remembered for the failures and divisiveness of his leadership."
One would think the Kerry campaign has been trying to paint the Bush administration as divisive. No serious politician would be so divisive as George Bush, except for maybe...
John Kerry: The effort in Iraq represents a "trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought, and the extorted."
John Edwards: "I'd say if you live in the United States of America and you vote for George Bush, you've lost your mind."
Teresa Heinz Kerry (in reference to her husband's health plan): "Only an idiot wouldn't like this. Of course, there are idiots.."
Posted by bubba138 at 08:13 AM | Comments (0) |
Bring the Allies Back
The key to winning Iraq, according to John Kerry, is to "bring the allies back." Can he really make it happen? Joe Carter has a detailed analysis that is a must read.
(Hat tip)
Posted by bubba138 at 07:50 AM | Comments (0) |
Wrong War? Wrong Time? Wrong Place?
A report to be made public on Wednesday by the top American weapons inspector in Iraq will outline new details of attempts by Saddam Hussein's government to undermine United Nations sanctions as part of a plan to produce illicit weapons if those sanctions were lifted, Bush administration officials said Monday.The Bush definition of preemption: "Remove the threat before it materializes."Mr. Duelfer's conclusion that Iraq clearly intended to produce illicit weapons if the sanctions were lifted had also been previously reported. But the final version of the document, in making that case, describes new evidence of concerted Iraqi efforts to bypass the sanctions while they were still in place and to undermine international support for them, the administration officials said.
The Kerry definition: "Encourage the threat and see if it does materialize."
A clear contrast.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:39 AM | Comments (0) |
Post Debate Polls
The early post-debate polls have found Kerry benefitted from his performance and that has caused quite the stir in the blogosphere. However, recent polls (Pew and ABC News) show Bush still in the lead.
More disturbing for Kerry are the internals of the polls, especially those that are most favorable to him:
Senator John Kerry came out of the first presidential debate having reassured many Americans of his ability to handle an international crisis or a terrorist attack and with a generally more favorable image, but he failed to shake the perception that he panders to voters in search of support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.In other words, we like what Kerry said at the debate but 6 out of 10 of us do not believe it. Further, as the debate was on foriegn policy, that Kerry is behind Bush by double digits on both his ability to handle an international crisis and to protect the country from terrorist attack indicates he may have won this battle but has far from won the war.Forty-one percent of registered voters said they had confidence in Mr. Kerry's ability to deal wisely with an international crisis, up from 32 percent before the debate. Thirty-nine percent said they had a lot of confidence that Mr. Kerry would make the right decisions when it came to protecting against a terrorist attack, up 13 percentage points.
On both scores, however, Mr. Kerry still trailed Mr. Bush. Fifty-one percent of voters said they had confidence in Mr. Bush's ability to deal with an international crisis, unchanged from before the debate, and 52 percent said they had a lot of confidence in his ability to protect against a terrorist attack, up slightly from 50 percent last month.
Sixty percent of registered voters said Mr. Kerry told people what they wanted to hear rather than what he really believed, about the same level as throughout the spring and summer. The corresponding figure for Mr. Bush was 38 percent.
Update: Kerry actually won the debate before he lost it.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:24 AM | Comments (0) |
The Iran Threat
Iran has become quite productive with their destuctive capabilities:
Iran can launch a missile as far as 2,000 km (1,250 miles), a senior official was quoted as saying Tuesday, substantially increasing the announced range of the Islamic state's military capabilities.Here is how John Kerry wants to deal with them:Such a missile would be capable of hitting Israel or parts of southeastern Europe. Iran says its missiles are for purely defensive purposes and would be used to counter a possible Israeli strike against its nuclear facilities.
With respect to Iran, the British, French, and Germans were the ones who initiated an effort without the United States, regrettably, to begin to try to move to curb the nuclear possibilities in Iran. I believe we could have done better.Iran, desperately trying to achieve nuclear power status, has now developed a missle capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to Israel, and John Kerry's proposal is to help them along down that path just to "test them, [to] see whether or not they were actually looking for it for peaceful purposes"I think the United States should have offered the opportunity to provide the nuclear fuel, test them, see whether or not they were actually looking for it for peaceful purposes. If they weren't willing to work a deal, then we could have put sanctions together. The president did nothing.
Is this really the man we want to be in charge of ensuring this country's security?
Posted by bubba138 at 07:03 AM | Comments (0) |
Endorsement: George Bush for President
Remember how the media trumpeted the endorsement of John Kerry by the main newspaper in Bush's hometown of Crawford Texas? Well, turnabout is fair play I guess.
Posted by bubba138 at 05:52 AM | Comments (0) |
The Black Vote
Here is good news:
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry has seen a 10 percent decline in his support among black voters in the past month that has forced him to devote more campaign resources to energize one of his party's most loyal constituencies.I wonder if this is partly driven by the Democrats penchant for believing black voters are backward and unteachable."Kerry continues to hold a big lead among African-Americans," but his "advantage is narrower than it was last month," Pew Research Center said in a national poll.
Pew said that in a head-to-head matchup with President Bush, Mr. Kerry's support among black voters has fallen from 83 percent in August to 73 percent now, while Mr. Bush's black support has doubled, from 6 percent to 12 percent.
Posted by bubba138 at 05:45 AM | Comments (0) |
October 04, 2004
Kerry's Deepest Passion
Greg Ransom hits it square on:
ADMIT IT. You weren't focusing close attention on what John Kerry really said about himself the other night. All the while you were distracted by George Bush's childish face making...Yep....that precise moment was the moment when John Kerry passionately discussed the what the senator called the single-most serious threat to the national security of the United States. And this wasn't the killing by terrorists of American soldiers and civilians. It was...nuclear proliferation. But look more closely. What really made John Kerry angry, what really brought out the raw human passion of the man was not what others might be doing at this very moment to destroy America -- but what America was doing at the present moment to defend itself...
That's right. America is the problem. America is to blame. America is guilty and John Kerry is white hot mad about it.
Do I need to spell it out for you?
It's right there in your face folks, so say it. At the core of John Kerry -- when touch something genuinely angry, true and real, something that really fires his soul -- is a deep running BLAME AMERICA FIRST anger.
Posted by bubba138 at 06:04 PM | Comments (0) |
The Lesson of Vietnam
Fine, let's talk. Kerry believes that Iraq is turning into a Vietnam-like "quagmire"; the assertion is false, and it's important that voters know why it is false. But there is a more important, deeper-lying disagreement under the surface. Bush obviously stands with the large contingent of Americans who are determined that, if we ever did face another Vietnam, never again would we pull out in a headlong rush and leave our allies sinking in the mud, clutching at our helicopter skids as we fly away, with the wreck of the new and better nation we had tried to build collapsing around their heads. Never again will we treat America's trustworthiness and honor, and the hopes of our friends, and the blood-sacrifices of our soldiers, like bad debts to be written off with a shudder.I cannot wait for the day when we can finally conclude that the lesson of Vietnam is that only Vietnam was Vietnam and no other conflict ever will be.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:49 AM | Comments (0) |
When Is Wrong Right?
Worldwide, Muslims are having a family argument about when kidnappings and beheadings are inline with Islam.
Who are we allowed to seize as hostage? Who are we allowed to kill?That they actually have to have this discussion should tell us something. Instead we as a nation continue to insist on referring to Islam as something that it has historically never been: a religion of peace.For the past few weeks these questions have prompted much debate throughout the Muslim world. The emerging answer to both questions is: Anyone you like!
In the Arabia of the seventh century, where Islam was born, seizing hostages was practiced by rival tribes, and "exhibition killing" was a weapon of psychological war. The Prophet codified those practices, ending freelance kidnappings and head-chopping. One principle of the new code was that Muslims could not be held hostage by Muslims. Nor could Muslims be subjected to "exhibition killing." Such methods were to be used solely against non-Muslims, and then only in the context of armed conflict.
More:
Cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who Washington says is a terror mastermind in Southeast Asia, has been in prison since 2002, accused of heading an al Qaeda-linked group. He was arrested three weeks after the Bali bombings killed 202 persons that year.In Iraq, an Islamic militant group claiming to have kidnapped two Indonesian women in Iraq had demanded Bashir's release in exchange for the hostages.
But yesterday, the slender, white-bearded preacher — an admirer of Osama bin Laden — castigated the captors as un-Islamic and said he would not be part of any exchange.
"I cannot justify this kidnapping. I demand that they be freed as Islam does not condone taking hostages of Muslim sisters and brothers," Bashir said in response to questions by the Associated Press. "If the captors are Muslim, they truly do not understand Islam."
Posted by bubba138 at 10:45 AM | Comments (0) |
Who Is Teaching Your Children?
Update: Not all is as it seems:
Students reported that she had made statements which denigrated one party over the other. The conversations included Ms. Pillai-Diaz telling some students who offered opinions contrary to her statements, that she was “glad they were not old enough to vote.” Other comments to students, including such statements as, “you should be ashamed to be a Democrat” have been verified through student interviews.A classroom bulletin board, normally intended for curriculum-related matters, was set up as what she herself described as a “personal bulletin board.” On the bulletin board she placed a picture of the President, the President's dog, the Oval Office and several other Presidential artifacts. In addition, she placed a stuffed elephant on a classroom cabinet, which generated student reaction and discussion about partisan politics.
At no time was she told to leave, asked to leave or given authorization to leave. School was still in session. At no time was she told she was suspended or fired. With professional responsibilities of a classroom teacher waiting, Ms. Pillai-Diaz chose, of her own volition, to walk out of the school, contact various media sources and claim she had been fired.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:24 AM | Comments (0) |
Politics of Inuendo
Nevermind the break-ins and theft of crucial data at Republican offices. Nevermind that it was the Democrats in 2000 that tried to suppress the military vote. Nevermind the whole voter suppression debacle in Florida has been completely debunked. Nevermind that there has been absolutely no evidence any Republican organization anywhere in the country has actively tried to suppress the vote of any population group. Nevermind that separation of church and state seems to only apply to Republicans.
Republicans have been trying to suppress voting in states where the presidential race is too close to call, Democratic nominee John Kerry said Sunday at one of the city's largest predominantly black churches."In battleground states across the country, we're hearing stories of how people are trying to make it harder to file for additional time, or how they're making it harder to even register," Kerry told an enthusiastic congregation at East Mt. Zion Baptist Church.
"We're not going to let that happen because the memories of 2000 are too strong. We're not going to allow 1 million African Americans to be disenfranchised."
At a stop in Ohio earlier Sunday, Kerry told a voter concerned about ballots cast by military personnel overseas that Democrats are aware of voting problems and are concerned."We're seeing efforts by the Republicans, unfortunately, in various parts of the country to suppress votes and intimidate people, to do things that bring back memories that are pretty bitter in the American mind from the year 2000."
Nevermind all that because the only important thing is that we get these evil Republicans out of office. If in the process we have to sacrifice truth and integrity as well as encourage racial tensions, so be it.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:11 AM | Comments (0) |
Right Stuff, Wrong Stuff
A picture is worth a thousand words.
One thousand.
Two thousand.
Three thousand.
Four thousand.
Five thousand.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:47 AM | Comments (0) |
Saddam and al Qa'eda
Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.Unlike NewsMax, I have found rightward leaning CNS News to be fairly reliable. Until confirmed by another source, I'll treat this more like a rumor.One of the Iraqi memos contains an order from Saddam for his intelligence service to support terrorist attacks against Americans in Somalia. The memo was written nine months before U.S. Army Rangers were ambushed in Mogadishu by forces loyal to a warlord with alleged ties to al Qaeda.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:23 AM | Comments (0) |
Did He Cheat?
It is plain Kerry took something out of his jacket and that was plainly against the rules. Will it matter? I doubt it.
Only those who have already decided to vote for Bush think it makes any differnce. Those who are ardent Kerry supporters will think this is no big deal. Those inbetween will never hear about it because the media won't ever cover it.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:25 AM | Comments (0) |
October 02, 2004
Notable Quotes
Darth Vader: "Thill will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of Kenobi, and will soon see the end of the Rebellion. "
Bush campaign communications director Nicolle Devenish: "I think the first debate will be long remembered for the night when Kerry made some really serious tactical mistakes."
[Sorry, that's just how my brain works sometimes.]
Posted by bubba138 at 09:18 AM | Comments (0) |
With Friends Like These...
John Kerry absolutely won the debate this week on style and presentation. Upon reflection however, he was a "miserable failure" on substance. Case in point:
Congressional investigators say that France, Russia and China systematically sabotaged the former United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq by preventing the United States and Britain from investigating whether Saddam Hussein was diverting billions of dollars.These are the countries by which Kerry says we need to pass the "global test" before taking military action abroad. Raise your hand if you think this is not such a good idea.The paper suggests that France, Russia and China blocked inquiries into Iraq's manipulation of the program because their companies "had much to gain from maintaining'' the status quo. "Their businesses made billions of dollars through their involvement with the Hussein regime and O.F.F.P.," the document states, using the initials for the program. No officials of the three governments could be reached for comment.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:08 AM | Comments (0) |
October 01, 2004
Watergate 2004?
The Washington state headquarters for the president's re-election campaign was broken into last night, and police are investigating the theft of three computers from the Bellevue office. Missing are laptop computers used by the campaign's executive director, the head of the get-out-the-vote effort and one that had been set for delivery to the campaign's Southwest Washington field director, said Jon Seaton, executive director of the state's George W. Bush campaign.Seaton said data on the computers was backed up and available elsewhere. But, he said, the loss creates a potential security breach about the campaign's so-called 72-hour plan, the Bush get-out-the-vote effort.
Posted by bubba138 at 04:06 PM | Comments (0) |
Post Debate Analysis
I did not get to watch the whole debate live, but I was able to listen to about twenty minutes of it and I caught the balance of it later last night. As I was listening in the car, my immediate impression was that Kerry was holding his own.
General consensus around the blogosphere and newspapers is that is was a draw or that Kerry had a slight edge. To my eyes and ears, Bush just plain lost this round. He had chance after chance to put Kerry away, but instead he looked and sounded unsure, unprepared, and on the defense.
When speaking of the war, the President focused too much on Kerry's "wrong war at the wrong time." In contrast to Kerry's position, Bush should have confidently stated the moral rightness of the mission. He failed to do so. Here is an example of what I am talking about:
KERRY: Now I believe there's a better way to do this. You know, the president's father did not go into Iraq, into Baghdad, beyond Basra. And the reason he didn't is, he said -- he wrote in his book -- because there was no viable exit strategy. And he said our troops would be occupiers in a bitterly hostile land.That's exactly where we find ourselves today. There's a sense of American occupation. The only building that was guarded when the troops when into Baghdad was the oil ministry. We didn't guard the nuclear facilities.
BUSH: My opponent says help is on the way, but what kind of message does it say to our troops in harm's way, wrong war, wrong place, wrong time? Not a message a commander in chief gives, or this is a great diversion.
As well, help is on the way, but it's certainly hard to tell it when he voted against the $87-billion supplemental to provide equipment for our troops, and then said he actually did vote for it before he voted against it.
Not what a commander in chief does when you're trying to lead troops.
Kerry's statement about George Bush's father is rife with foolishness because Bush 41's decision was made in a different time under different circumstances. The President could have buried Kerry if he had said something more along the lines of:
My father made the decision he had to make. But keep in mind the objective of that mission was to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. That mission was before the World Trade Center had been bombed. It was before the Cole. It was before the Trade Tower fell and the Pentagon was attacked. We are no longer living in the times in which my father made that call, and to do so, as my opponent suggests, would be disasterous. Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security and lives of Americans and others. We removed that threat.Because of these missed opportunities, Kerry's message came out clearer. I do not think this was a draw. Kerry did not win this debate, Bush lost it.
Update: A key observation:
However...Kerry's base will be enegized by the debate--and he needed that. I would say Kerry needs a touchdown to win this election and he only got a first down on third and long.Before last night, Kerry's base had been all but defeated. Now they have a fresh new wind, restored confidence, and a renewed optimism -- all of which the Bush campaign could have done without.
Posted by bubba138 at 06:37 AM | Comments (0) |