Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill never met, but the two great conservatives have much in common; not the least of which are the vanquishing of the 20th century's two most evil empires.

Steve Hayward looks at the Churchillian roots of Ronald Reagan's philosphy.

(Via Power Line, which was extensive coverage of today's convention events.)

My latest Electronic House newsletter is now online.

Ann Althouse blogs about Dijla, the first all-talk radio in the newly free Iraq and what its callers are saying about its conditions and their concerns.

Think about it for a few minutes: one year and half after Saddam Hussein fell, people feel free enough to call in, go on the air, and not have to worry about ending up here.

That's staggering progress.

Assuming he passes his physical, 37 year old Deion Sanders will be playing safety for the Baltimore Ravens this year, marking his return to football after a three year absence.

Another military man who isn't very enamored with Senator Kerry.

Update: Transcript here.

In his article on Rudy Giuliani, uploaded early--very early--this morning, Richard Brookhiser writes:

Giuliani won a smashing reelection in 1997. Higher things seemed to beckon. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s Senate seat became vacant in 2000, and Giuliani, the most unsenatorial person in the world, sought it.

Suddenly, everything went wrong. Giuliani’s second marriage, to Donna Hanover, an ambitious harridan, blew up. Giuliani paraded his mistress, Judith Nathan (now his third wife). Hillary began her Anschluss. Giuliani got prostate cancer, the disease that felled his father. He pulled the plug on his own race.

If Rudy ran for the presidency, that might come back as an issue. However, Brookhiser is wrong when he writes:

Then there is the personal baggage. The last presidential candidate to have had cancer was Paul Tsongas, who lied about being cancer-free in 1992, and who has since died. We know the worst about Giuliani, but how much better is that?

Tsongas wasn't the last presidential candidate to have had cancer. In 2002, The Washington Post wrote:

On Wednesday, Kerry will undergo elective shoulder surgery for a slight tear, marking the second time the Democratic candidate has missed time on the hustings for an operation. In 2003, shortly after announcing his campaign, Kerry had his prostate removed to cure early-stage cancer.

No wonder he's never released his medical records.

Update: Welcome Kerry Spot readers from National Review Online.

Orrin Judd has a good benchmark for knowing when we're really winning the War on Terror:

You obviously can't end terrorism--it's been around for hundreds--if not thousands--of years and is a useful tactic for folks who can't take on their enemies on the battlefield.

Nor can you wipe out Islamicism any more than winning the Civil War and WWII brought an end to white supremacist ideology and neo-Nazism. You can render it nugatory though, as those other pathologies are today. That will require the radical transformation of the Middle East towards liberal democratic protestant capitalism. There won't be a V-I Day we can celebrate, where Islamicism officially surrenders, but it will be obvious to everyone that those militants who remain represent only a very marginal part of otherwise healthy and decent societies.

Perhaps this is an appropriate measure: we'll have won when they get to the point where when they have an Oklahoma City Bombing of their own--and they will--their populaces hold such an action to be unacceptable and insist that their elected leaders hound the perpetrators and their fellow travelers the same way we did.

Nick Schulz (my editor at Tech Central Station) coins a new word for the media's tendency to writeup a story before it occurs: Laphams:

[Harper's magazine editor Lewis Lapham] wrote about the GOP convention speeches before anyone even stepped to the podium. Lapham has apologized for what he's calling a "rhetorical invention," use of "poetic license," and a "mistake."

But the only "mistake" Lapham made is in revealing for all to see what has long been known by anyone who pays attention to the news: the major media routinely bring to their coverage of significant political events a predetermined storyline -- you might want to call it a "Lapham". Facts that undermine the storyline are ignored or explained away as aberrations to The Truth. For the editor of Harper's and other establishment press figures, it really makes no difference to them what will be said at Madison Square Garden because the Laphams are already set, loaded in the scribblers' word processors and television anchor tele-prompters and ready to go.

We at TCS have seen Laphams at work at a number of gatherings we've covered over the years.

Read the rest for some examples.

A comment posted on the Brothers Judd blog sent me Googling for this item from November of 2002:

The Democratic Party has chosen Boston over New York City for the site of the party's 2004 presidential nominating convention.

"The choice for the Democrats in 2004 is the city of Boston, the shining city on the hill," said Democratic chairman Terry McAuliffe after the Democratic National Committee's site selection committee voted unanimously for Boston after also visiting New York, Detroit and Miami earlier this year.

It will be Boston's first national political convention. The Massachusetts city won because Democrats didn't want to share the same venue with Republicans, who are considering New York.

"New York was the only city that wouldn't sign an exclusivity agreement," McAuliffe said.

"That has been a big stumbling block," said New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton.

So even before the liberation of Iraq, when there were still numerous remnants of the bipartisan feeling of the period after 9/11, rather than a level playing field, the Democrats gave up having Ground Zero in the background, because it would also be there for the Republicans' convention?

What on earth were they thinking?

Richard Brookhiser has nothing but kind words about Rudy Giuliani's knockout speech. But he's got mixed feelings about Rudy in the White House: "On social issues he stands with Barney Frank. On security issues he stands with Douglas MacArthur."

Still, Brookhiser writes, "I owe Giuliani my vote, whenever he asks, for whatever he wants it, including Miss America. We will see how he fares with conservatives and Republicans at large."

We may very well, in the fall of '08.

The convention that Jeff Goldstein and Michael Hendrix are watching sounds like much more fun.

In the past five weeks the New York Times has taken quite a one-two punch. First, its own ombudsman admitted what conservatives have tried and failed for decades for the Times to exclaim: that "of course it is" a liberal paper.

And on Monday, our 41st president, and a pretty moderate guy, just told Paula Zahn of CNN that he's "given up on them":

BUSH: It's consistently liberal. It consistently opposes the president on almost everything editorial. Most of their editorial comment on the op-ed page is extraordinarily liberal.

The thing that troubles me is in my opinion their news columns are getting to show a certain bias. There is a new way you do it now -- Reporter's notebook. And then that gives you a little chance to be an advocate in the news column. Or Washington Whispers or something like that, and that relieves the reporter of objectivity, objective reporting.

And so, you know, I expect we'll get a big argument about this, but I'm absolutely certain of it. I've given up on them.

ZAHN: Has the president given up on them?

BUSH: I don't know. He might be like his mother; she won't read it anymore.

Add to that the current President Bush's admonishment to the press in general, and you'd think the Times might sit up take notice.

They might. But like most newspapers, they won't, of course. Which is why John Podhoretz wrote yesterday that the media is "worried the bell is beginning to toll for them, and they're right."

As a prominent new media guy might say, heh.

Update: Talk about cliched headlines. As Jim Geraghty writes, "Day by day, the New York Times is becoming impossible to parody."

Star Parker notes that this Saturday will mark the 41st anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s landmark "I Have a Dream" speech.

(For earlier in the day, click here.)

I don't agree with several of John McCain's policies, but man, what a great speaker he is. And nice touch opening with a quote from FDR, then taking the mickey out of Michael Moore (who's in the audience, soaking up the boos) in the middle of the speech.

Update (7:45 PM PST): Moving tribute to the Americans killed on 9/11, ending with "Amazing Grace".

Update: Here's a transcript of McCain's speech. And some thoughts on it from Jim Geraghty.

Rudy Giuliani's on now. More in a little while.

Update (7:56 PM): Rudy's talking about terrorism going back to 1972. His line about the Germans releasing the Palestian terrorists from the 1972 Olympics after only serving three months is damning.

Brilliant--he just mentioned Arafat winning the Nobel peace prize.

He just mentioned the Bush Doctrine. Check out Norman Podhoretz's recent article for more--lots and lots more--on that.

Update (12:33 AM): The above were just off the cuff remarks, made as I was watching McCain and Giuliani in realtime. Orrin Judd, James Lileks, and Power Line each have some thoughts about tonight. Meanwhile, Hugh Hewitt makes a key point about Senator Kerry:

[Author Richard Wirthlin] judged "the salute" to have been too obvious and too great a stretch from the reality of Kerry's rather complicated Vietnam story to the picture he was trying to present. The salute remained on the public's mind even as the public was reminded of Kerry's '71 testimony and the truthful charges of exaggeration were surfaced and authenticated. Candidates cannot overreach in that fashion without alienating the electorate, and Kerry has.

Probably The Last Update: the great Roger L. Simon has the last word.

A second toy found packaged with candy appears to depict Osama Bin Laden standing between the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

and I'm sure its design is purely as coincidental as the design of the previous toy that we linked to on Friday.

Hey, I do love rock & roll, but its current state does little to inspire me to buy new music.

This headline tells you all you need to know about it:

"Dave Matthews Band Offers DNA To ID Waste" On the other hand, it's tough to get more counter-countercultural than this, found via the great Jay Nordlinger.

Jonah Goldberg has a few thoughts on the pretzel logic of the far left.

Flashback to the mid-1960s, when LBJ, at liberalism's zenith, escalated the Vietnam conflict into a full-fledged war. In the early 1970s, the new, baby boomer-driven far left declared it an illegitimate, evil war (in large part, thanks to John Kerry's 1971 speech to the Senate). Three decades later, the left is now rehabilitating the Vietnam War as a noble cause, to run a war hero candidate against President Bush.

Back on July 30th, James Lileks quoted a line in Kerry's acceptence speech, and parsed its incredible implications:

"I defended this country as a young man, and I will defend it as President."

This really intrigues me. I agree that Vietnam was a defense of the United States, inasmuch as we were trying to blunt the advance of Communism. So: only Nixon can go to China. (Only Kirk can go to Chronos, for you Star Trek geeks.) Only Kerry can confirm that Vietnam was a just war. This completely upends conventional wisdom about the Vietnamese war, and requires a certain amount of historical amnesia. Why does this get glossed over? The illegitimacy of the Vietnam war (non-UN approved, after all) is a key doctrine of the Church of the Boomers; to say that service in Vietnam was done in defense of the United States is like announcing that Judas Ischariot was the most faithful of the disciples. Imagine if you were a preacher who attempted such a revision. Imagine your private thrill when everyone in the congregation nodded assent.

As Jonah notes:

And forget the fact that if they like war heros so much more than "draft dodgers" they should have supported the first President Bush over Bill Clinton in 1992. But the entire antiwar crowd’s playbook is based upon their view of Vietnam as an evil and corrupt war. How can Kerry’s decorated service in that war – and not his protests of it – be central to any honest leftwinger’s support for Kerry?

Ultimately, the “draft-dodger” stuff is just an insult. But it’s not even an insult these aging hippies would find insulting if directed at them, which just underscores how shabby it is.

Lileks: "The past was more malleable than you had ever expected."

Bill Clinton is lecturing Republicans on the Ten Commandments.

As Paul of Wizbang writes, "Does Bill Clinton really want to get into a debate about breaking any of the Ten Commandments?"

In Europe, ultra-fast broadband is here.

As we've been writing about for the last four or five years, it's coming to the US, as well.

This is an absolutely disgusting image. (Note the photos of additional Bush cabinet mebers in the cockpit CRTs).

I don't recall the Freepers or any other conservative group making similar images of President Clinton being responsible for the WTC bombing in '93 or the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing two years later to protest a Democratic presidential convention.

Meanwhile, as we linked to earlier today, Kerry supporters are slugging Bush supporters.

This isn't how winners act, folks.

Read More »

Senator John McCain says his fellow Senator's anti-war protests are fair game for debate:

Republican U.S. Senator John McCain said Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's anti-war activities after he returned from Vietnam are an appropriate subject for political debate.

McCain, 68, of Arizona, said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation,'' that he disagreed with Kerry throwing his ribbons from his medals on the steps of the U.S. Capitol when he returned from the war.

"Every American is entitled to protest,'' McCain said. "Whether he did that appropriately'' is a legitimate subject for debate, he said.

Whether or not McCain is still bitter about President Bush beating him in the primaries in 2000, he's not enough of a free agent to disrupt the president's reelection chances in 2004. He's also been a staunch supporter of the War on Terror, from what I've read.

And given that McCain is the dino-media's favorite Republican, this may also be the signal that it's OK for them to examine and criticize Navy Reserve Officer Kerry's protests from the early 1970s as well.

Steve Green is writing a possible media mantra for late November.

(Speaking of Steve, Max's Diner is missing a golden marketing opportunity by not opening a branch in Colorado Springs.)

The Internet (or as James Lileks' daughter calls it, "the Intanet"), is celebrating its birthday today.

Michael Graham, the author of the very funny (and very serious) Redneck Nation, is in great form today:

Listening to John Kerry complain about the scrutiny his Vietnam record is getting is like Pamela Anderson complaining about the fact that guys keep staring at her breasts. What the hell did you expect?

David Letterman should pay Graham royalties--that's a great bit of comedy.

There's more:

When you turn the Democratic National Convention into a four-day screening of Apocalypse Now--complete with the candidate's own home movies; when you stride to the podium with a crisp salute and a "reporting for duty"; when your political entourage has more military uniforms in it than the coatroom of a Subic Bay bordello; in short, when you base much of your campaign for president on two tours of duty in 'Nam--you, sir, have no right to complain that your opponents are too obsessed with the past.

If there were ever a candidate who is getting exactly the campaign treatment he deserves, that man is John F. Kerry.

What I, a former GOP political flak and campaign lackey, can't figure out is what genius in the Democratic Party looked at John Kerry and said, "Yeah, Vietnam--that's the ticket!" Why not get Scott Peterson to run for attorney general as the pro-life candidate?

There are people in American public life for whom Vietnam would be a worse campaign issue than it is for John Kerry. Jane Fonda, former members of the Kent State National Guard, Lt. William Calley of My Lai...

That's about it.

No it isn't--click over and read the rest.

(Via Power Line.)

Newsday writes:

"Look, the AFL-CIO and others have been organizing Democrats to go to New York to protest," Karl Rove, the senior White House political tactician, told Fox News last week. "That's their right. If that's the face of their party that they want to portray, that's fine. But look, that's democracy."

The Republican party is taking out ads in New York papers this week in which Republican Party Chairman Ed Gillespie says, "Many of Sen. Kerry's supporters in the government employee unions and radical environmental movement, and abortion activists and anti-war protesters who support him, will be out in full force."

The Democrats are doing their best to fight back. "Ed Gillespie is cynically trying to make the connection, but the fact is we want people to watch the convention so they understand how Bush-Cheney have failed America," said David Chai, a Democratic Party spokesman in New York.

"We can't control thousands of people who want to protest the Bush administration," Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe said last week somewhat plaintively.

Actually, they could have: Senator Kerry missed a perfect "Sista Souljah" moment by not saying something like:

I'd like to say a few words to those planning to protest my distinguished opponent's convention next week in New York.

Many of you going to New York are young and impassioned and eager for change. One thing I learned when I came back from fighting in the jungles of Vietnam and started marching in protests of my own, is that when it comes to protests, violence isn't the answer. So I urge you, if you're planning to visit New York next week, carry a banner if you like, but remain calm. Think of what Gandhi would do, and how much he accomplished without violence.

Now, the hardcore would ignore all that and still go berserk. But Kerry would look great. The press would go crazy over a speech like that, and even if Kerry lost the election, he'd have a terrific speech to put in his archives, or trot out for his senatorial reelection campaign.

Instead though, we get Terry McAuliffe making lame quotes like, "We can't control thousands of people who want to protest the Bush administration".

Nice try. By playing it safe, you missed a golden opportunity here.

Update: On the other hand, with supporters like these, I can see why Kerry would be reluctant to try to keep them under control. (Via Polipundit.)

Another Update: Even the liberal Canadian press is noting that "Lefties' protests may backfire onto Democrats".

Doug Giles says the party's not looking very good at John Kerry's frat house:

Remember, Senator Kerry is their plan B. Plan A was Howard Dean. He was el Salvador right up until his Exorcist, watch-my-head-spin, moment in Iowa and then their party collectively said, “Holy Schnikeys! We’ve got to get someone else!!!”

The problem was when they turned to look to another candidate, the choices were … pretty thin. It must have been like arriving at a party a little late where the only thing left to drink is a hot, half-empty can of Schlitz, the only thing left to eat is a half-chewed pickle, and the only girl left to hit on is Courtney Love who’s passed out in the fireplace.

Why yes, I have been to parties like that. And they're not pretty.

(Warning, badly conceived segue coming. Proceed with caution!)

But there's often a back room poker game going on at a party like that, and Mark Steyn (wow, can he crank out the material or what??) says President Bush holds all the aces:

At the beginning of the year, Thomas Lifson, who was at Harvard Business School with George W Bush, made an interesting observation about the President. He notes that young George "was a very avid and skillful poker player" when he was a Business Administration student and that "one of the secrets of a successful poker player is to encourage your opponent to bet a lot of chips on a losing hand. This is a pattern of behavior one sees repeatedly in George W Bush's political career".

Indeed one does. In the months following Mr Lifson's observation, the President sat back, as John Kerry's consultants, the Iowa caucus voters, the Democratic Party at large, and the media convinced themselves that the one card that trumps Bush's leadership in the war on terror was Kerry's four months in Vietnam, and bet everything on it. They have just lost that hand.

Steyn adds that they've lost a few other hands as well. Bring a six pack of Heineken, a box of Monte Cristos and fresh deck of cards over to read the rest.

Update: Thomas Lifson beat Steyn to the "Bush as poker player" theme back in February. Advantage Lifson!

Jonathan M. Stein explains the New York Times' strong ties to Senator Kerry's campaign. Stein's article certainly lends further creedence to Evan Thomas' statement in July.

The Times is owned by "Pinch" Sulzberger:

Pinch was a political activist in the Sixties, and was twice arrested in anti-Vietnam protests. One day, the elder Sulzberger asked his son what Pinch calls, "the dumbest question I've ever heard in my life." If an American soldier runs into a North Vietnamese soldier, which would you like to see get shot? Young Arthur answered, "I would want to see the American get shot. It's the other guy's country." Some Sixties activists have since thought better of their early enthusiasms. Pinch hasn't.

No wonder he's sympathetic to a guy whom Mark Steyn calls "the first self-confessed war criminal in the history of the Republic to be nominated for president" in tomorrow's Chicago Sun Times.

This is one media-savvy group of sailors. But while they claim that they served on the same boat as Kerry, they may not quite survive the scrutiny of the press as well as the Swift Boat Vets have.

Saul Bellow's son Adam explains how he accidentally joined the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Bellow is far from the only member of the intelligentsia to move from right to left. What's surprising is how fewer migrate in the opposite direction, as Jonah Goldberg noted in 2001.

(Via Betsy Newmark.)

Charles Johnson writes that Kerry's plan to handle the charges of the Swift Boat Vets, was to simply assume:

“the media wouldn’t have the nerve to come at us with this kind of stuff,” says the source. “The senior staff believes the media is committed to seeing us win this thing, and that the convention inoculated us from these kinds of stories. The senior guys really think we don’t have a problem here.”

Ironically though, while the Swift Boat Vets have been fighting Kerry over the events of Vietnam and immediately afterwards, they've demonstrated that they understand how the new media works far better than his campaign does. The anonymous staffer that Charles quotes above is quite right: initially, the dino-media didn't have the nerve to go after their man with these charges. But they've lost their role as information gatekeepers. And the Swift Boat Vets seem to understand that intuitively.

Mark Steyn, that is, who's really been on a roll, on both sides of the pond. In the Chicago Sun Times, he writes:

In his testimony to Congress in 1971, Kerry asserted a scale of routine war crimes unparalleled in American history -- his ''band of brothers'' (as he now calls them) ''personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads . . . razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.'' Almost all these claims were unsupported. Indeed, the only specific example of a U.S. war criminal that Kerry gave was himself. As he said on ''Meet The Press'' in April 1971, ''Yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I used 50-caliber machineguns, which we were granted and ordered to use.''

Really? And when was that? On your top-secret Christmas Eve mission in Cambodia? If they'd taken him at his word, when the senator said ''I'm John Kerry reporting for duty,'' the delegates at the Democratic Convention should have dived for cover.

But they didn't. So Kerry is now the first self-confessed war criminal in the history of the Republic to be nominated for president. Normally this would be considered an electoral plus only in the more cynical banana republics. But the Democrats seemed to think they could run an anti-war anti-hero as a war hero and nobody would mind. As we now know, a lot of people -- a lot of veterans -- do mind, very much. They understand that, whether or not he ever mowed down civilians with his 50-caliber machinegun, Kerry is responsible for a lot of wounds closer to home.

Read the rest.

Captain Ed, linking to a Chicago Sun-Times article notes another Navy man disputing Kerry:

Former Navy Secretary John Lehman has no idea where a Silver Star citation displayed on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's campaign Web site came from, he said Friday. The citation appears over Lehman's signature.

"It is a total mystery to me. I never saw it. I never signed it. I never approved it. And the additional language it contains was not written by me," he said.

That's in addition to the Swift Boat Vets, the anonymous Navy release from yesterday, and the statement by Rear Admiral Schachte.

As Captain Ed writes:

So now we have more than just a few disgruntled Viet Nam veterans disputing Kerry's narrative and records. We've now added a former Secretary of the Navy, a man whose bipartisan credentials were sufficient for Congress to get him named to the 9/11 Commission in disputing Kerry's version of events. How will the Kerry campaign react to this? Can they paint Lehman as a partisan hack after his painfully obsequious behavior towards the Democrats during the commission hearings?

Just when I think this story may lose momentum, it just grows new legs. The Torricelli option continues to beckon the Democrats the longer Kerry refuses to release all the records and put an end to all the speculation -- assuming that the records haven't already been doctored, as Lehman's statement today seems to indicate.

Mark Steyn nails it (as usual):

A few months back, I bought a DVD set of an old TV variety show, black and white but digitally remastered. A bit too digitally remastered, as it turned out. It would be ungallant to name the lady artiste in question, but in several alarming close-ups it's all too clear she's come back from lunch a little the worse for wear, and in one scene she looks as if she's just been woken up after sleeping in the park for a week.

Not her fault. The make-up guy was making her look good enough for 1960 monochrome UHF lines. He couldn't have foreseen that 40 years on they'd have big-screen satellite TVs and DVD players and technology that would make that little facial pimple look like Mount Krakatoa about to blow through your screen.

That's what happened to John Kerry. For 25 years, he told The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, the United States Senate, and all manner of other well-known saps about his covert Yuletide operations inside Cambodia gun-running to anti-communists with his lucky CIA hat. To verify any of this would have required a trip to specialist reference libraries, looking up stuff on eye-straining microfiche, etc. So it was easier to let the old blowhard yak away and just nod occasionally.

Read More »

Andrew E. Busch of the Ashbrook Center has some thoughts on where Senator Kerry's bid for the White House stands.

This may be a first:

The Kerry campaign has repeatedly stated that the official naval records prove the truth of Kerry's assertions about his service.

But the official records on Kerry's Web site only add to the confusion. The DD214 form, an official Defense Department document summarizing Kerry's military career posted on johnkerry.com, includes a "Silver Star with combat V."

But according to a U.S. Navy spokesman, "Kerry's record is incorrect. The Navy has never issued a 'combat V' to anyone for a Silver Star."

Has any branch of the service ever publicly called a presidential candidate a liar before?

On the other hand, has anybody who ever did this while in the service ever run for the White House before?

Update: Speaking of the Navy, retired Rear Admiral William Schachte has released a statement describing the events of December 2-3, 1968, when Kerry received a minor shrapnel wound for which he was awarded the Purple Heart:

In March of this year, I was contacted by one of my former swift boat colleagues concerning Douglas Brinkley¹s book about Senator Kerry, "Tour of Duty." I told him that I had not read it. He faxed me a copy of the pages relating to the action on the night of December 2-3, 1968. I was astonished by Senator Kerry's rendition of the facts of that night. Notably, Lt. (jg) Kerry had himself in charge of the operation, and I was not mentioned at all. He also claimed that he was wounded by hostile fire.

None of this is accurate. I know, because I was not only in the boat, but I was in command of the mission. He was never more than several feet away from me at anytime during the operation that night. It is inconceivable that any commanding officer would put an officer in training, who had been in country only a couple of weeks, in charge of such an ambush operation. Had there been enemy action that night, there would have been an after action report filed, which I would have been responsible for filing.

I have avoided talking to media about this issue for months. But, because of the recent media attention, I felt I had to step up to recount my personal experiences concerning this incident.

Read the rest.

The North American news editor for Reuters, supposedly one of those "non-biased" news organizations, explains where he--and safe to say, the rest of the quotation mark-obsessed "news" organization stand on abortion.

Paging Bernard Goldberg...Mr. Bernard Goldberg to the white courtesy phone.

I'm sure this toy is purely coincidentally reenacting 9/11, right down to the purely coincidental higher roofline of the building on the right, ala the broadcasting antenna atop one of the WTC towers. And the purely coincdental serial number of "9011".

(It's entirely possible that the importer ordered a bunch of candy bags with toys inside not knowing their contents. But wouldn't you check a sample before distributing them?)

Taranto's "Best of the Web Today" is up. Just keep scrolling.

Update: It's especially useful for those who need a fix of poppin' fresh links wile Glenn Reynolds is celebrating his Insta-birthday today. Happy birthday!

Pete Peterson of The American Spectator writes that the Vietnamese enclave in Southern California's Orange County is none-too-thrilled with Senator Kerry.

Gee, I can't imagine why.

Articles like this make me think that the Vietnamese in Northern California can't be too crazy about him, either.

(Via Power Line.)

Update: More here.

Just stunning:

Heinz Kerry said she can't speak directly to the ads because she refuses to watch them. "I'm very proud of his service," she said. "I believe that discussions or attacks on his service undermine the peace of mind not only of Vietnam veterans but of those now fighting for their country. Let us hope that if they volunteer for service their reviews are not going to be so nefarious in the future."

As Jim Gerehty writes:

I do not understand it. I just do not understand it. How can Kerry's testimony in 1971 — "war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command" — how does that not "undermine the peace of mind of Vietnam Veterans", but the Swifties' accusations specifically about Kerry do? How can one, indicting all members of the military except John Kerry, be acceptable, but the other, which focuses specifically on Kerry, be an unacceptable attack on all veterans?

James Lileks' take on how the Kerry camp has responded to the Swift Boat Vets perfectly sums up their tone-deaf tone:

John Kerry wants to be president because he is John Kerry, and John Kerry is supposed to be president. Hence his campaign's flummoxed and tone-deaf response to the swift boat vets. Ban the books, sue the stations, retreat, attack. Underneath it all you can sense the confusion. How dare they attack Kerry? He's supposed to be president. It's almost treason in advance. . . . Inconsistencies are irrelevant, because he's consistently John Kerry. And he's supposed to be president.

Or as the headline in Australia's The Age said when the first Swift Boat Vets' ad aired/went online:

"Anti-Kerry ad mars presidential campaign" Has any previous presidential candidate--especially one with baggage like Kerry's--ever thought he could just walk in without any resistance?

Charles Krauthammer goes apoplectic, so you (hopefully) don't have to.

You know, for a guy who's gone out of his way to portray himself as a great sportsman and all around (to borrow Glenn's phrase) "badass mofo", Kerry's sure had his share of sports-related gaffes:

The "I don't fall, the sonofabitch knocked me over!" skiing gaffe.

The lame hunting photos.

The sure, regular guys blow $250 on plane tickets to go windsurfing all the time! gaffe.

The if it's Tuesday, it must be Ohio--except when it's Michigan gaffe.

And now...The Frozen Tundra of Lambert Field!

I wonder if his handlers have pointed these out to him?

Mark Steyn takes a swift boat upriver into Kerry’s quagmire:

The Kerry campaign’s bumbling ineptness this last month is a bit of a stunner to those of us who followed Bill Clinton for eight years. The Democrats may not know how to run a school district or a highway department, but they’re supposed to be able to run scandals.

Ouch. RTWT, as the man says.

One of the dangers of a president trying to appeal to all people, is that he ends up alienating more than had he stuck to his core beliefs in the first place.

Take these conservative vistors to New York, already encamped at the Plaza Hotel in anticipation of next week's Republican convention. They're clearly concerned that President Bush has gone to far to the left to appeal to undecideds, moderates, and liberals. So they're gently reminding him that the truth is often located in a more conservative destination.

Well, that's the message I got out of it, anyhow....

I missed this episode of Hardball last night. If he's getting guests like this, maybe it's time to start tuning in again on a regular basis!

James Lileks calls Roto-Rooter. Hilarity ensues.

Power Line has an excerpt from Dr. Stanley Renshon's new book, In His Father's Shadow: The Transformations of George W. Bush. Renshon's excerpt makes a nice double feature with Jonathan Rauch's "The Accidental Radical".

The Washington Times notes that the Protest Warriors are fueling rage on left--and are getting ready to join them in Fun City next week.

Will they get the same discounted theater seats and restaurant prices from Mayor Bloomberg that the leftwing protestors are promised?

Rich Lowry writes:

There is now a definitive link between President Bush and the attacks against him. This link is as direct as most of the links that have been highlighted between Bush and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: Bush gave a $136,000 job to one of his attackers and a key member of Kerry's "band of brothers." By the logic of most of the press corps, this means George W. Bush must be responsible for the activities of Kerry campaign's band of brothers.

The man that President Bush gave a $136,000 a year job to: Max Cleland.

Lowry writes, "Who knows what deep game is being played here, but somebody should call the New York Times."

Read the rest, while you can. Karl Rove's evil tentacles are everywhere!

A tale of two presidential endorsements.

Reuters invents its own new name for the Swift Boat Veterans.

Get it while you can: a PDF version of John Kerry's early '70s book, The New Soldier, complete with an upside down flag on the cover.

Good post on Instapundit on Kerry, John O'Neill and Cambodia.

UPI reports that "U.S. prisoners of war and their families...are launching a Web site and documentary that will likely further fuel election campaign rancor":

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Wait a second--this is about a letter from an actual professor at Rutgers?? Get out of here!

Tony Blankley has picked up on something first noted back on August 17th by Hugh Hewitt: that reporters condemned the Swift Boat Vets without actually...reporting on the story:

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Steve Green, writing in Tech Central Station, says get ready for "The Big Angry" from the media, if their main man loses on November 2nd.

(Sorry for the lack of posts today--I only posted the horrible news out of Russia because I didn't see it getting much coverage at the time--but I had an article of my own to rewrite, and polish with whatever the Microsoft Word equivalent of Lemon Pledge is, before sending it off to one of my editors.)

One airliner has crashed, another reported missing, and a bomb exploded in an Russian bus station today.

Charles Johnson has several links to the actual news stories.

Jimmy Page, the guitarist and mastermind behind Led Zeppelin, is the first to have his handprints immortalized in concrete, in London's version of Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

Paul Mirengoff of Power Line writes:

Senator Kerry is basically pleading with President Bush to protect him from attacks by his band of brothers. In a sense, he's running to daddy, who also happens to be his opponent in a race to determine who will be in charge of defending America. (Am I the only who hears echoes of Kerry's approach to the war on terror -- run to the French and Germans for help -- here?)

What's even more damning is Ann Althouse's suggestion that Kerry's people "convinced each other that what they wanted to believe was true, and, as a consequence they never had a plan for how to deal with the attacks that they should have known were there."

Which seems preposterous at first glance: given the senator's background (four months in-country, followed by a decade--much of which was spent as a sailor in the Navy Reserves--of denouncing his fellow servicemen for "killing women and children") that he--or at least his handlers--had to know attacks such as those by the Swift Boat Vets were coming.

And yet, Kerry and his enablers in the press have been so flustered, that Althouse's conclusion has to be true: "they never had a plan to deal with the attacks that they should have known were there".

And this is somebody who wants the nation to believe he's fit to defend the country during a time of war?

George McKelvey, the mayor of Youngstown, located in the key battleground state of Ohio, has endorsed President Bush.

Like former New York City mayor Ed Koch; Randy Kelly, the current mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota; and Senator Zell Miller, each of whom has also endorsed George W. Bush, McKelvey is a Democrat.

(Remember August 11th, when ABC's The Note "reported" that they still can't find "a single American who voted for Al Gore in 2000 who is planning to vote for George Bush in 2004"?)

Did someone from the Democratic Party--the party that gave us a draft dodging "I loathe the military" former president, really just say on Hannity and Colmes that "George Bush betrayed his country by not fighting in Vietnam"?

Apparently.

Nice way to write off the vote of every reservist--and not very smart maneuvering in an election year--but then August can be the cruelest month.

In a post titled, "You Think You're Tired Of Hearing About Vietnam Now--Just Wait", John Hawkins writes that there's a whole lot of 'Nam left in the campaign:

The Republican National Convention will tear the spotlight off of the Swiftees for Truth, but only temporarily.

You know why I say that? Because there's blood in the water...John Kerry's blood.

The SBVFT have already caught Kerry in a lie about Cambodia and that damaged him. Furthermore, the fact that Kerry is refusing to release his military record and is stonewalling the charges made against him, despite all the attention they're getting, is making him look dishonest. On top of that, if the Swift Boat Vets for Truth can convince that public that John Kerry is telling a number of lies about his record or even more importantly, can deliver the coup de grace and show that he lied to get one of his Purple Hearts, this campaign is as good as over.

Personally, I think that there is a lot of "there there" to the charges made by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and unless Kerry can put this whole issue to rest by releasing his records and coming up with plausible answers to some of the tougher questions the SBVFT are putting to him, his run at the presidency is going to be crippled.

It didn't have to be this way, of course.

Jeff Goldstein is tanned, rested and ready for New York. Very hip Medium Cool reference, to boot.

(But he really should watch out for those stoner pea coat-wearing dolphins.)

Bob Dole gentlemanly rebukes (a.k.a. rhetorically sticks a shiv into) John Kerry today. As Glenn Reynolds writes, "Maybe Dole's mad because Democrats sneered that his World War II wounds were self-inflicted back during the 1996 campaign."

Command Post notes "a 20-page batch of documents" was removed from the Kerry campaign's Website yesterday.

Wonder why?

(Via Allah, who has an amusing illustration to accompany his link.)

Lorie Byrd has some thoughts on the current state of the new media.

Update: These posts by Hugh Hewitt and Power Line from late last week dovetail nicely with the above.

Kurt Vonnegut compares President Bush to--well, you know the rest.

Update: Taking a page from Mr. Vonnegut, North Korea also likens Bush to Hitler. I guess they'd prefer he'd be more like their own Kim Jong Il.

...Or, how The Wizard of Oz tormented the Führer of Germany.

I was scrolling through my archives, and came across one of Lileks' Bleats from February. Scroll past the stuff about Patrick Stewart for a Nostrodamus-like sneak preview of where we're at in the election season.

And for a glimpse could have been (had then been a little more--well, it would have taken a lot more, actually--Joementum this winter), click on this Spock's beard-style post from the Blogfather.

Steve Green compares telling anecdotes about two different--very different--Vietnam vets.

Jim Geraghty notes a contradiction in the press's sudden love of Chicago Tribune editor William Rood:

Swift Boat Vets: Kerry was a egomaniacal jerk who turned three minor cuts and abrasions into three Purple Hearts, wasn't trusted by his fellow officers, and stabbed his "band of brothers" in the back by calling them war criminals when he got back.

Kerry defenders: You don't know that! You weren't on the boat with him!

Swift Boat Vets: We were on boats right next to him. And Steven Gardner was.

Kerry defenders: Gardner doesn't count! And you guys don't count! Only the people on the boat really know what Kerry was like in Vietnam!

Chicago Tribune editor William Rood: I was on a boat next to him on one important day, and I say Kerry's story is true.

Kerry defenders: See, the matter is settled!

Swift Boat Vets: Wait, he was on the next boat over. Why is his testimony trustworthy, but not ours?

Kerry defenders: Only Rood's testimony counts! Everybody else who wasn't in the boat with Kerry doesn't count!

Meanwhile, it's game, set and match for the Swift Boat Vets: as Orrin Judd notes, John O'Neill has effectively trumped Kerry's Make. Them. Stop. mantra very simply: don't like it? "Sue me".

Update: More here, here, and here.

Charles Johnson writes, "After inviting George W. Bush to Bring ... It ... On, John F. Kerry is now begging him to Make ... Them ... Stop."

There's just one problem, and Kerry knows it: "according to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, it would be illegal for the Bush campaign to try to influence a 527 group like the Swift Boat Veterans, either to continue or to stop."

Looking at this post though, you have to wonder how close the Kerry campaign is to the 527s on the left.

Meanwhile, Frank Martin wonders what's caused the press to go from treating Kerry as if he's a joke, to carrying his water. They can really turn on a dime, huh?

Update: Speaking of 527s, this graphic puts the funding of the Swift Boat Vets and the 527s on the left into stark perspective.

Mark Steyn notes that one of the delicious ironies located where the Hollywood and the Kerry campaign intersect:

Having the most popular figures in popular culture on your side can seriously damage your popularity.

Two phrases come to mind: Heh, and read the whole thing.

(Indeed.)

Update: That Steyn quote above is especially prescient given the story that Drudge is reporting today: "Janet Jackson: Bush White House used my boob to distract from Iraq".

That's some boob!

Sean Hackbarth, Hugh Hewitt and (not surprisingly) Glenn Reynolds have link-filled round-ups of the what the Kerry camp and the press (but I repeat myself) have been up to this weekend.

"Alright. Here's how it works. It order to be rich enough to dream of fighting the United States, you have to become the United States. Of course, by that time you won't want to fight the United States. You don't want to become the United States? Not to worry: plenty of room on the ash-heap of history."

--Lou Gots, via the Brothers Judd.

John Podhoretz has a few friendly words for those stopping by New York next week to protest the Republican convention, and take advantage of the many discounted shows and dining opportunities offered by Mayor Bloomberg.

Update: Meanwhile, The New Criterion looks at one protestor who can't make up her mind. As Stefan Beck writes, "So is it arson and vandalism you want, or suffocating bureaucracy? Total anarchy . . . or Canada?"

That's what Adlai Stevenson said to explain away his overwelming loss to Ike in '56.

This year, John Sullivan says that "Half of Europe is leaning to Kerry". But as far as most American voters are concerned, it's the wrong half.

(Via Charles Johnson.)

Update: A reader emailed me the electoral college results from the 1950s and writes:

Check out the states that Adlai won in 1952 and 1956.

He wasn't running in the wrong continent, but in the wrong country: the USA instead of the CSA.

This vividly illustrates how, in the 1950s, segregationists were the core constituency of the Democratic Party. Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and the Carolinas voting for the Northern intellectual over the general who won WWII? The mind boggles.

Well, a lot's changed since then.

Meet B.G. "Jug" Burkett, who was presented with the Army's Distinguished Civilian Service Award on Monday by former President George H.W. Bush.

Few--if any--have done more to restore honor to the men who served in Vietnam than Burkett.

"Greyhawk" of Mudville Gazette provides helpful translations for the aging vets with hearing difficulties at the Cincinnati VFW post, who may have misunderstood portions of Senator Kerry's speech to them earlier this week.

Over a year ago, when Kerry was part of a somewhat indistinguishable pack trailing behind Howard Dean in the primaries, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

The one thing that knowledgeable people have told me about John Kerry is that he doesn't know when to stop. He has no controlling mechanism when he goes on the attack.

Watching the Kerry camp go ballistic over the Swift Boat Vets, I can't help but think they're badly overplaying their hand: first the allegations that there are ties to President Bush (gee, ex-military men who are Republicans. There's a shock!), then the attempt to get Unfit For Command banned, and now the latest flash on The Drudge Report: "Kerry Files FEC Complaint Over Swift Boat Vet Ads".

All Kerry's doing is making these guys look all the more credible in the eyes of undecided voters and driving traffic to their ads. Doesn't he know that?

An interesting--and surprisingly sympathetic--post tries to go inside the mind of Senator Kerry.

(Via Roger Simon.)

View it here, then read Glenn Reynolds' take here.

My take? It's laughable to hear Kerry (and the press) claim that the swift boat vets are a Karl Rove operation. When I first heard Hugh Hewitt play Navy Reserve officer Kerry's astonishing Winter Soldier speech back in February, I thought for sure that someone like Rove would save this material for an October surprise. To release it in August, before the Republican convention, should make it pretty obvious that for better or worse, the swift boat vets are running solo.

Well, no. Because there already is a Frank: Frank Martin, who was (and is) one of the most astute commenters on Steve Green's VodkaPundit Weblog. Several of Steve's readers (including myself) suggested that Frank get a blog of his own.

He has. Start here, and just keep reading.

Welcome to the Blogosphere!

Captain Ed seems to think so.

Meanwhile over at CNN, Hugh Hewitt (scroll up from here) writes that Paul Begala isn't exactly promoting an advanced level of discourse, either.

Update (8/20/04): Based on Michelle Malkin's description, it sounds like Matthews ran roughshod over her as well.

My latest Electronic House newsletter is on some of the great recent music-oriented releases on DVD.

I wish I had known about Zladko before I wrote it--it would have made the perfect ending to the piece.

I have no idea who put this together, but it's a dead-on parody of mid-80s electronic new wave/techno/hip hop music. Even I used a few of those orchestra hits and pitch-changed guitar solos back then when I was making demos.

(Is it just me, or does Zlad sound--and look--a bit like Seinfeld's "Soup Nazi"?)

Front Page interviews Scott Swett, the man behind the WinterSoldier.com Website, which has served as a tremendous repostory for information on Senator Kerry's record, including his shameful activities while in the Naval reserves.

In 1969, Tom Wolfe wrote Radical Chic, his classic "new journalism" story of Leonard Bernstein welcoming the radical Black Panthers into his fashionable Park Avenue apartment and listening with glee, along with numerous other members of New York's upper crust, as they announced their plans to Bring Down The Man.

New York's Mayor Bloomberg is going Bernstein one better: he's giving the protestors arriving in New York to riot during the upcoming Republican convention at Madison Square Garden discounted tickets to Broadway shows, museums and restaurants.

“It’s no fun to protest on an empty stomach,” the New York Times quotes the mayor as saying, apparently with a completely straight face.

It's too bad Tom isn't writing many articles these days, because he'd have a field day with this story, which proves that Muggeridge's Law continues to rule the land.

No, that's not the score when the Dallas Cowboys played the Tampa Bay Bucs in 1977. It's the amount of stories that ABC, CBS and NBC have run on the "AWOL" charge against President Bush, compared to number of stories that the charges of the Swift Boat vets against Senator Kerry have warranted.

Guys--what gives?

Update: More here, including a transcript of a press conference where the press hounded the White House over President Bush's Reserve duty.

Senator Tom Harkin, the master of the chickenhawk slur is caught by the Blogfather doing major puffery on his service record.

John Kerry, aka, Colonel Kurtz, could not be reached for comment.

Imagine you're John Kerry's campaign manager. Imagine that your candidate gives an interview to GQ in which the following dialogue occurs:

Kerry tells Hainey that he had a telephone relationship with Marlon Brando in 1985 and 1986, during the contras: "He took a huge interest in it. And he would call me. He was always asking questions. And he'd give me advice. I took his advice on a couple of angles. A couple of points."

This, while the Christmas in Cambodia/ferrying a CIA man/running guns stuff is only just now breaking in the mainstream press.

Meanwhile Rush Limbaugh starts riffing on Kerry as Marlon Brando to his 20 million listeners.

And James Lileks writes:

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That's what Brent Bozell's latest op-ed is titled.

Can't imagine why he'd think that Newsweek is in the tank for the Senator.

Mark Steyn and Lloyd Grove muss up Senator Kerry's $75 $1,525 haircut.

But hey, don't all local guys--plumbers, construction workers--fly their barbers in when they're on the road, just like they blow $250 a pop for plane tickets to windsurf?

Gary Aldrich wants Senator Kerry to release his records--all of them. (Well, I guess he'll let him keep his Trini Lopez and Andy Williams records):

There is no FBI background check conducted on candidates at any level because there is no constitutional requirement for that. So, what you know is either what the candidate tells you or what the mainstream media is able to dig up.

In the case of John Kerry, many issues swirl around his service in Vietnam and his activities after he returned and became engaged with an anti-war, anti-American group known as Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Kerry could make hard evidence available to the general public through the mainstream media by just filling out a few simple forms and submitting them to the federal government. But Senator Kerry refuses to do that.

Kerry will not release his medical records. Kerry will not release his military records. Kerry will not release records of the investigation conducted about his anti-war, anti-American activities, and Kerry will not release his IRS records which would show the source of his wealth, suggested as enormous. In short, Kerry will not produce any real evidence about his true character. He is suggesting, I suppose, that we should take his word for it. Or perhaps we should just guess.

If Judge Judy heard Kerry’s flimsy case, not only would she throw it out, she probably would fine Senator Kerry fifty dollars for annoying the court and wasting its precious time. In view of the absence of any real evidence, I think voters must assume Senator John Kerry’s true character is highly questionable.

Gee, you think?

Even the speed of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy can't compete with the speed of the Blogosphere (or at least its Photoshop artists.)

Hugh Hewitt spoke with Kevin Whitelaw of US News & World Report on the phone:

Hugh: "Did John Kerry tell you that he ran guns into Cambodia?"

Kevin Whitelaw: "That's exactly what he told me."

Mr. Whitelaw declined my invitation to appear on my radio program, explaining that he doesn't report on or comment on the presidential campaign.

Can we now agree that John Kerry has engaged in wild claims about his service? Since he told that tale to Mr. Whitelaw, who else has he told it to?

As Hewitt himself wrote, what's really interesting about these stories is how the press is opining on them--without reporting on them--but asuming (correctly in many cases) that their readers are already familiar with them. As Hugh also wrote:

How odd for papers to carry opinion pieces relating to controversies that their readers have never read about in those papers, but which the opinion pieces presume they have heard or read about elsewhere.

In fact, the secondary nature of the old media is becoming quite obvious. Reporters, pundits, talking heads etc all know about the magic hat and the now discredited claims of Christmas Eve in Cambodia. . . . Other shoes will drop soon, and the papers are fighting the battle of two weeks ago. Very weird, but very revealing of why the papers are dying and why some of them, like the Los Angeles Times, cannot add market share even with a monopoly position in their markets --they have nothing to sell to anyone not part of their ideological world.

The speed of the Internet makes what James Lileks recently dubbed "the dino media" that much slower to react--especially when it's news that they don't want to bother with in the first place. As Lileks wrote:

There are two tales here: the story, and how the story will be played in the dino media. I have nothing to add to the first and it’s too early to comment on the latter. This is not about Vietnam. This is about character, and this is about spin. Over the next week there’s going to be a lot of discussion in newsrooms about what this story means, and how the mainstream media’s handling of the charges will affect their image. They can tear the story down to the foundation and root for the truth, or they can hide behind he-said-they-said reportage. It’s their Waterloo. We’ll see.

So far, the media's not looking good. Especially in comparison to how carefully the swift boat vets planned before kickoff.

Jonah Goldberg writes about how much more successful the Clinton administration was at tarring its enemies than President Bush's administration has been:

One of the things which really frustrated me during the Clinton years was the way the White House was successful in portraying anyone who disliked – AKA “hated” – Bill Clinton as being unreasonable. The moment you described Clinton as a terrible president or a terrible man – or both – you were effectively written-off as “irrational.” Indeed, the phrase “irrational Clinton hater” was bandied around with the clear implication that the “irrational” part was redundant. Opposing Clinton was irrational, period.

Now, one of the reasons this was such a brilliant political strategy was that it effectively bought a big slice of the apolitical middle of this country. I tend to think that big swaths of Americans are simply turned off by overly ideological rhetoric at all. In other words, I think a lot of people disliked Clinton hatred because they disliked hearing about politics in harsh or “extreme” terms, period. In general, I think this is a healthy attitude even though sometimes it’s misguided. But Clinton exploited it brilliantly by making his opponents seem illegitimate simply by virtue of the fact they were his opponents. Of a piece was this was the brilliantly cynical use of the word “partisan.” Bill Clinton pretended that everything he was doing was “working hard” for the American people, “doing the job” etc. Anyone who disagreed with him was being “partisan” as if A) partisanship is bad and B) that only one side was partisan. Also, the whole “move on” schtick – which we now know was a cynical partisan appeal made my hardcore leftwingers – took advantage of this attitude.

It’s not clear to me that Bush has tried hard enough to exploit a similar strategy. The Bush-haters – who are just as extreme and nasty as the Clinton-haters were, and in many ways more so – offer a real opportunity for Bush. I am sure that some of the people who booed Linda Ronstadt or the Dixie Chicks were die-hard Bush supporters. But some of them, I’m sure, were merely people who detested the rudeness and arrogance of performers who thought it was their place to bad-mouth Bush and inject politics into a situation where people had every right to expect a politics-free zone. Obviously this strategy is more difficult for Bush because Clinton had much of the media and almost all of Hollywood on his side. The premise of “The American President,” “West Wing,” and pretty much every political declaration made by the Barbra Streisand crowd popularized the notion that disliking Clinton was an indication you were a weirdo, a crank, an opponent of progress. Bush-haters include many of those same people. With the exception of Fox News there’s really no mainstream outlet available for the White House to get the message out that irrational Bush hatred is not only irrational but annoying. Bush needs a way to tell the Michael Moore fans to “move on.”

It's much easier to attack your enemies when you've got the 8/10ths of the media in your pocket, as Clinton did in the pre-WWW, pre-Fox News, pre-Blogosphere first half of the '90s. Also, when you ran on a policy of changing the tone in Washington as President Bush did, it's darn near impossible to then turn around and smear your enemies six ways to Sunday, just like the last guys did.

And I don't know how the Bush team goes after the fever swamps of the far left with the media in direct--and stated--opposition to him. (Of course, this could be part of a giant rope-a-dope that will unfold starting the GOP convention at the end of the month, but that seems rather far fetched.)

Which means that somebody like James Lileks, who upon writing a column that's he sick of the rampant Bush hatred emanating from the left these days--has to defend himself from being called a hater himself!

On the other hand, in a perverse way, it's fun to watch Floyd R. Turbo now have a D after his name.

Will Collier and the commenters at Vodkapundit have some thoughts on President Bush's decision to pull US troops out of Germany.

The best analogy of Europe that I've seen, was the one that Jonah Goldberg wrote a couple of years ago. After World War II, they collectively went from being world leaders to the equivilent of kids on a college campus. And guess who the headmaster is:

By taking their defense for granted for so long, too many of our allies believe that talk can get them everything they need. Like the kid living off his Chevron card, they've come to believe the world is like a giant college campus, where conflicts may erupt in the form of debates and shouting matches but violence is simply "against the rules," and where being asked to pay your own way in the world seems an absurd injustice.

President Bush's decision and the whining of "Old Europe" only reinforces that.

And of course, the Kerry camp is questioning the timing of the President's decision. But that's been their favorite phrase this year, hasn't it?

The American Spectator examines just how faulty Senator Kerry's memory is:

With rueful admiration, former Senator and Navy Seal Bob Kerrey called the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, "an exceptionally good liar." Unfortunately Senator John Kerry is an exceptionally bad liar. How many lies he has told and how serious they are remains a question that is now under examination. Perhaps no one really cares. These days historians, journalists and the public alike appear to value sheer celebrity more than any standard of truth.

Today's journalists have so little experience with the military they haven't a clue how to evaluate the charges brought by the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth about Kerry's quest for medals. They can't tell the difference between a bronze star and a Boy Scout merit badge, and can't be bothered to learn. What does the press care about cowardice, deceitful conduct, and lying about a mere war record? At least Kerry has one and there is no arguing with that. But it will be very hard for Kerry to swim out of the Cambodian fiasco without getting all wet. For here Kerry was lying directly to the press itself and they know it.

After you're done reading the Spectator piece, stop on by Hugh Hewitt, who's been doing the sort of legwork reporters used to do (and still do, if they're investigating a Republican). Hewitt explains why it's very unlikely that the CIA would use a swiftboat for a mission into Cambodia--and why it's extremely unlikely that they'd use one commanded by a guy who had only been in-country for a total of four months.

James Taranto is back, and he's tanned, rested, ready, loaded for bear, and any other hoary old clichés you can think of to commemorate the return of somebody after a month-long vacation.

This is a fun tidbit:

This column has long argued that even if Kerry's Vietnam record is every bit as heroic as he presents it, the notion that this makes him fit to be president is ludicrous. The man spent four months in combat as a junior officer; he's not exactly Eisenhower. Besides, as a certain senator observed 12 years ago, when candidate Bill Clinton was under attack for having avoided the draft:

The race for the White House should be about leadership, and leadership requires that one help heal the wounds of Vietnam, not reopen them; that one help identify the positive things that we learned about ourselves and about our nation, not play to the divisions and differences of that crucible of our generation.

The man who said that, of course, was John Kerry. He would have better served the country--and he might have better served his own campaign--had he followed his advice this year.

Stop by for lots more.

Has any prior presidential candidate had this happen to him? "Vietnam POWs Say Kerry's Words and Deeds Were Used by Guards to Torture Them".

Kerry had to know that when he spoke to the Senate in '71, that there was a very good chance just such a thing would happen.

As Orrin Judd wrote a few months ago, "Strange that they think there's a way to spin this that doesn't make him unfit to lead our nation".

John Fund spares no prisoners (on either side of the aisle) in his piece on just how corrupt New Jersey's government is.

* Oh yeah? So where are the drive-through daiquiri bars? I never saw them during the 32 years I lived in Jersey!

More crushing of dissent, this time at Colorado State.

I blame John Ashcroft. And Pete Coors. And maybe John Elway.

Hugh Hewitt writes that the pressure is on George Stephanopoulos today, as he interviews John Kerry, as US papers are slowly (ever so slowly) starting to break the story of Kerry's lies about Christmas in Cambodia:

I am guessing that George offers a softball on the motives of the Swifties and avoids the obvious questions: "When were you in Cambodia and who was with you? Who sent you? How many men did you take? And tell us about the magic hat, please?" Watch that space tomorrow [Sunday--Ed]. Not only is Kerry on the spot, so is George. Can you imagine having an interview with Kerry and not asking the hard questions only to then see the story go to high alert on Monday? Every paper in America would be full of accounts of how George S. had let the big on go away.

I certainly hope I'm wrong on this, but I have little doubt that George and Kerry will tap dance around this one like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. And if they haven't broken it yet, why should newspapers be surprised if Stephanopoulos is as timid and gutless on this story as virtually every "objective" journalist in North America. Proper newspapermen only rush in when there are Republican scandals to break.

Update: Sounds like George performed solo. Can't wait to read Hugh's comments!

Stunning essay by Norman Podhoretz on how America went, almost the way a scene in a film dissolves out and a new scene dissolves in to replace it, from World Wars II to III to IV.

World War III? World War IV?

Needless to say, read the whole thing. Maybe even read it again. (If you're a fan of Steven Den Beste's long essays, you'll love this. And I wouldn't be surprised that when Steve gets back from his self-enforced vacation, he might have some thoughts on this piece.)

Here's a headline you don't see every day: "Man Drives Into Lake, Tries to Smoke Crack".

People what's going on out there? Didn't we learn anything from the endless Dave Chappelle parodies of Rick James?

(Note--the above Windows Media file is contains extreme examples of political incorrectness, many bad words, and extreme hair extensions, and should not be opened by anybody under any circumstances. But it's pretty funny.)

Charlie Watts, the engine behind the Rolling Stones, is being treated for throat cancer. This AP article sound very optimistic:

Watts, 63, was diagnosed in June and has completed four weeks of a six-week course of radiotherapy at London's Royal Marsden Hospital.

"He is expecting to make a full recovery and start work with the rest of the band later in the year," the spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

I hope he's right. The Stones wouldn't sound the same without his pulsing drums behind them.

(They wouldn't look the same either--Charlie's by far the best dressed of the four remaining members. He's picked up where sharp dressed jazzers like Miles Davis and Tony Williams left off in the late '60s.)

Back in early July, Jim Geraghty wrote:

One of the best side-effects of the Edwards pick is that it officially ends the chickenhawk argument and the Democrats' sudden insistence that a president needs combat experience. Bush's Air National Guard training, whether you think it's easy or hard work, is more than Edwards did.

Betsy Newmark notes that somebody should tell Frank Lautenberg--that's at least twice now he's tried this sophistic attack.

Given a week of stories about an imaginary Christmas in Cambodia that was seared--SEARED--on the memory of a presidential candidate and a postmodern married-with-two kids-but-bisexual New Jersey governor in New Jersey, you'd think Mark Steyn would have lots of fun writing about such stuff.

And you'd be right on the money:

"My truth is that I am a gay American,'' announced Gov. James McGreevey to the people of New Jersey last Thursday.

That's such an exquisitely contemporary formulation: ''my'' truth. Once upon a time, there was only ''the'' truth. Now everyone gets his own -- or, as the governor put it, ''One has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world.'' For Jim McGreevey, his truth is that he's a gay American; for others in the Garden State, the truth about McGreevey is that he's a corrupt sexual harasser who put his lover on the state payroll in a critical homeland security post, and whose I-am-what-I-am confessional is a tactical feint that distracts the media sob sisters from the fact that, as his final service to the Democratic Party, he's resigned in such a way as to deny the people an early vote on his successor.

We'll see whose truth prevails in the fullness of time.

In politics, it's helpful if whatever ''unique truth'' the consultants have run past the focus groups bears at least a passing relationship to the real, actual truth -- not the whole truth, but at least a grain of it. That was what was so ingenious about Bill Clinton's ''60 Minutes'' appearance in 1992. He didn't come clean -- he was, as usual, full of it -- but he set in motion his designated ''unique truth'' -- flawed but human. It was designed to get him past Gennifer, but it wound up also getting him past Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita. . . . Whatever goods you got on him, it fit ''his truth'' as he sold it to us on CBS that day. As his attorney Cheryl Mills put it during the impeachment trial, Bill Clinton, along with Jefferson, Kennedy and Martin Luther King, ''made human errors, but they struggled to do humanity good . . .''

Which brings us to John Kerry.

(Yes, it's time to read the whole thing.)

By the way, Steyn manages to write a column titled "Democrats peddle their own unique truth" without even mentioning the 800 (or more) pound postmodern gorilla who was in the presidential box at their convention. Amazing!

Update: Speaking of truth, Jeff Jarvis has some thoughts on why McGreevy really resigned.

Chris Matthews, who accused John O'Neill of employing "conservative tricks" last night, but edited that phrase out of his show transcript.

As the Blogfather writes, "Kerry may or may not win the election, but he's going through Big Media credibility like a wrecking ball along the way."

Incidentally, it's pretty funny to hear Matthews use a phrase like "conservative tricks", when he once sat in for Rush Limbaugh, had his speeches run exclusively by National Review Online and was frequently praised, along with Tim Russert, as being a liberal, but straight shooter by conservatives during the Clinton impeachment days.

Update: Click back to the Instapundit link above--the Matthews show has since released a second transcript which now includes the phrase.

When it comes to the Cambodian border, InstaPundit notes that 50 miles covers a lot of territory.

But then, so do the shifting details of Kerry's stories.

Victor Davis Hansen looks at what is it about President Bush that fuels what Charles Krauthammer famously dubbed Bush Derangement Syndrome.

James Lileks, in his syndicated column, looks at the flipside: BHFS, or Bush Hatred Fatigue Syndrome. (For more, see a recent Bleat by Lileks, which reads now as a first draft of that column.)

Update: Power Line has some thoughts on BDS.

Charles Johnson notes that when John Kerry was was Michael Dukakis’ Lieutenant Governor, "Kerry authored an executive order saying the state of Massachussetts would refuse to take part in any civil defense efforts in response to a nuclear attack on America".

Charles describes it as illustrating Kerry's "true radical pacifist nature".

Maybe he'd just seen Fail-Safe one too many times.

The American Thinker reprints an essay it ran in May, long before Christmas in Cambodia became a household phrase in the Blogosphere. This is a riot:

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One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted freelance journalist, I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

(With apologies to Kent Brockman.)

What do you when you've spent the last 25 years with memories Christmas in Cambodia seared--seared!!--into your brain and you're called on making it up?

Well, if you're John Kerry, you apparently get your favorite writer to write a new piece for The New Yorker that airbrushes your history so that you weren't in Cambodia in December--you were there in January!

Despite having written about receiving brownies from home as a Christmas gift and watching the "Stupid Vietnamese [who] were celebrating Christmas by shooting tracers, fifty-caliber, right up into the air".

The once staid New Yorker, a old line literary magazine that Tom Wolfe lampooned in his classic "Tiny Mummies" two parter for The New York Herald Tribune in the mid-'60s, is now being used as a respository for postmodernist spin for a Democratic presidential candidate who's just gotten the wind knocked out of his swift boat's sails (They didn't have sails--Ed I know--but it's a cool mixed metaphor.) by his fellow "band of brothers", who see through Kerry's self-serving BS from a mile up the Mekong Delta.

But it sounds like by moving the date forward, Kerry's just trying to cover up for his gaffe of mentioning Richard Nixon, who wouldn't actually assume office until about three weeks after Christmas. The swift boat vets are playing at larger stakes--their claim is that Kerry wasn't in Cambodia at all.

It will be interesting to see if the combination of Brinkley's spin and the badgerings of Kerry's lawyers and press buddies can make the Cambodia go away. My bet is that it won't.

For more on Brinkley's airbrushing, checkout "Captain Ed", who's all over it.

Reading the description of how James Carville, Lanny Davis, and Chris Matthews badgered swift boat vet John O'Neill (fellow liberal Al Hunt went apoplectic in absentia on Saturday) on PoliPundit, it sounds like a cross between All The President's Men and A Few Good Men. Kerry's handlers sound like there's no way they can actually handle the truth, so they're doing everything they can to prevent it getting out.

...and they're only making the story grow by doing so. What happens when the swift boat vets' book hits the stores?

David Ramsay Steele has an article that reads like it could be an overview of Jonah Goldberg's upcoming book (although without Jonah's signature humor). Ramsay explores the concept that fascism, long thought to be a product of the right--is actually a byproduct of Marxism. Or as Ramsay writes, "Fascism was a movement with its roots primarily in the left."

Indeed, as Jonah himself wrote, "Mussolini's fascism was conceived as an improvement upon socialism, not a departure from it."

If you're interested in exploring the intertwining roots of the other half of the two most murderous ideologies of the 20th century, it's fascinating stuff.

Oh and Ezra Pound, George Bernard Shaw, Sigmund Freud and Cole Porter all show up, to put in a kind word for their buddy--il Duce.

(Via "Hit & Run".)

Update: One of the themes we've explored here in the past, is the love of so many artists for totalitarians: Stalin had glowing--even loving--words written about him by Paul Robeson. Frida Kahlo committed suicide whilst painting a portrait of him. Francis Ford Coppola was photographed with a Warhol painting of Mao in his dining room, and more recently, numerous Hollywood celebrities made trips to visit Castro, and Oliver Stone recently released a glowing documentary about him.

Of course, as for filmmakers, James Lileks said it best: "Maybe directors like dictators because they understand the desire to have final cut."

As for the rest, I'm open to suggestion. But it's definitely a recurring theme throughout the 20th century to the present day.

Phyllis Furman of The New York Daily News says that NBC is rethinking their agreement with Microsoft over the perpetually moribund MSNBC channel.

One option is pulling the plug on the deal. Since we wrote about that topic almost two years ago, I'll believe it when it happens. In the meantime, MSNBC's ratings continue somewhere under the basement.

My latest newsletter for Electronic House magazine is now online. Kitt from Knight Rider makes a guest appearance.

New Jersey's Governor Jim McGreevy--or "McGreedy" to some of my friends in my home state, resigned today.

And for some reason, the press can't figure out which party he belongs to...

Update: Shades of Bob Torricelli! "The Democrat [Hey, it least they got his party in there!--Ed] said his resignation would be effective Nov. 15."

If a scandal is bad enough that he has to resign, shouldn't he resign immediately (say within 24 hours, or maybe a week)?

Zev Chafets of The New York Daily News recently wrote:

In 1972, The New Yorker's movie critic, Pauline Kael, won herself a place in political lore by expressing astonishment at the Republicans' 49-state landslide victory. "How could that be?" she demanded. "I don't know a single person who voted for Nixon."

(To be fair, Kael could be extremely perceptive when she wanted to be--she was among the first to expose Michael Moore's fictions in Roger & Me.)

Flashforward to today, where ABC's The Note political blog--which wisely declared its own bias earlier this year--has this classic:

we still can't find a single American who voted for Al Gore in 2000 who is planning to vote for George Bush in 2004. (If you are that elusive figure, e-mail us and tell us who you are and why: politicalunit@abcnews.com.)

As Will Collier of VodkaPundit writes:

Time to get out of that newsroom, Noters. Does the name Zell Miller ring any bells? How about Roger L. Simon? Ed Koch...James Woods, Gary Oldman, Dennis Miller, and Dennis Hopper; I'd be surprised if Ron Silver didn't vote for Gore as well. But hey, nobody's ever heard of them, right?

NRO's "Kerry Spot" has some thoughts and a stuffed inbox of converted Gore 2000 voters, and another name: Ron Kessler, an author who voted for Gore before writing a recently released analysis of President Bush.

Update: Charles Johnson (whom I wouldn't be at all suprised to hear was a Gore voter himself in 2000) is inviting his nearly one million monthly visitors to email The Note. It will be fun to see if they run any sort of apology or just bury the story.

As Andrew Sullivan wrote in January, somehow, the left seems to think that 9/11 didn't happen--or they think it wasn't that big a deal. And a post like this by The Note just confirms it.

Update (5/05/05): Welcome National Review Online's "TKS" readers! Please look around; there's lots of content here, including offsite links to some of our longer articles and essays.

Brent Bozell asks a good question:

The John Kerry candidacy was built on an audacious rewrite of history. The man who roundly condemned the war effort, accusing his fellow soldiers of unspeakable acts of barbarism, would run as a hero of that war, surrounded by his "Band of Brothers." How could any self-respecting journalist covering this charade remain silent?

Evan Thomas and Tim Graham have good answers.

Graham writes:

It all seems so familiar now. In their overt desire to reject a second term for a President Bush, the liberal media elite allows the Democratic candidate to create a legend around himself and his past. Whatever inconvenient holes or weaknesses there are in his personal history are whitewashed out. When the Democrat's critics challenge these legends, only then is it time to travel beyond the mythology and launch into investigative journalism — but only to expose the cynical conspiracies of the partisan plotters against the Democrat.

This entire cycle, which recalls 1992 and then repeats in every other year of the Clinton era, is now coming around again with the ad and book campaign of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In Clinton-era terms, it could echo the Paula Jones case. Like Jones, the vets held a press conference (at the National Press Club in early May) that most national media outlets strenuously ignored. So months later, they created another splash to draw the media out, only to be sharply criticized.

But the better Clinton-era comparison for the swift-boat veterans are the Arkansas state troopers. Obviously, Vietnam was no walk through a Little Rock nightclub. But these men know Kerry, as the troopers knew Clinton. They say they are eyewitnesses to some moments that do not match the much-seen flattering filmstrips of his wartime experiences. It is the very possibility of their persuasive power that causes Democratic-media apparatchiks to decide they must be discredited. Their motives for lying were the primary focus, and reporters rarely sought to confirm the negative stories, preferring to leave them unsubstantiated and uncirculated.

Fortunately, things have changed a little since 1996.

But you do, since you're reading this. The John Kerry/Martin Sheen connection draws ever closer. And Jeff Taylor is beginning to sound more than a little prescient with his quip.

(God, I just had a terrible thought--is there a brown book with Glenn's name on it??)

Cal Thomas looks at the divergence between reality and rhetoric that is John Kerry, International Man of Mystery.

It's going to be a long season for the Eagles this year?

Remember--you heard it here (almost) first.

John Hawkins has a brief list of his least favorite movies of all time. His readers have added to it in the comments.

Mine's easy: 1998's Buffalo 66.

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Newsday reports that Mike Wallace was arrested by two Taxi & Limousine Commission inspectors when he lunged at one during a parking dispute on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Curious that a guy who thinks the media shouldn't interfere when US soldiers are under fire tries to interfere with the NYC TLC.

The Village Voice has done some corporate downsizing (corporate? The Village Voice?--Ed Well, I guess it's a business!) and cut its longtime editor, Richard Goldstein in the process.

"Allah" has a pretty good replacement for him in mind.

Irwin Savodnik, writing in Tech Central Station has an interesting look at the current state of psychiatry in Russia, and in the US, and finds some interesting parallels.

President Bush has gotten Senator Kerry to publicly state that he'd also have gone into Iraq, even knowing, as do today, that their capacity to produce WMDs was much more limited than we know now.

One of the commenters on the Brothers Judd Blog makes a great point: Kerry is now in a box. This is one opinion that he can't flip-flop on, because if he does, President Bush can call him on it, via the Bully Pulpit--and the press, which has to cover the President of the United States, has to report it, no matter how much they loathe the man. And as Jim Geraghty wrote, "Somewhere, some Republican operative is emailing that statement to every anti-war voter he can find. Or perhaps the Nader campaign is."

The chief reason that so many on the left would vote for Kerry--that he would have avoided Iraq, is now off the table. There's still oodles of Bush hatred and who knows, that may be enough to win in November. But as Steven Den Beste predicted last month, the Republicans are quietly laying the groundwork to take many--perhaps all--of Kerry's issues away from him.

Like tracer fire over the ink black December skies of Cambodia, Mark Steyn takes aim and fires on John Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia story.

(Via Hugh Hewitt, who's been all over this story, since practically breaking it. Also stop by Power Line and Instapundit for lots more on Apocalypse Kerry.)

Update: Break out the brown books! The Clinton-esque smearing of the authors of Unfit For Command has officially begun.

Insta-Update: More dirty tricks here.

A Thought: Assuming the Blogosphere and opinion writers like Steyn keep applying pressure, I'm not sure if the Kerry camp can make the Christmas in Cambodia story go away simply through dirty tricks campaigns. Kerry himself has been quoted too many times--including in Congressional records. And I'm not sure if saying that a sailor has used salty language is going to deter the Swift Boat vets. These men had to know this stuff was coming (just ask Linda Tripp), and if they can survive the Vietcong, they can survive the DNC.

Francis Ford Update: "This is end, beautiful friend, the end..."

James Lileks--happy birthday, by the way!--is suffering from SBHFS: Sudden Bush Hatred Fatigue Syndrome, the flipside to what Charles Krauthammer dubbed earlier this year as "Bush Derangement Syndrome".

And I can't say I blame him:

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Michelle Malkin runs roughshod over "underperformin'" Norman Mineta.

And boy, does he deserve it.

Betsy Newmark writes, "USA Today allows Kerry to write an editorial pretending to have a plan in Iraq and then they write an editorial saying how empty his plan is. Shazam."

On the other hand, this could explain Kerry's love of Nixonian Secret Plans.

Scott W. Johnson of Power Line looks at "the honor accorded Al Sharpton and other notorious anti-Semites" in the modern Democratic Party:

The Democratic Party has long foregone the reckoning that it is due with [Jesse] Jackson. But Jackson is ancient history; Sharpton and [Cynthia] McKinney are the future of the party. Since her triumph in the recent Democratic primary, McKinney now stands poised to retake her congressional seat.

Read the whole thing, and the article that Scott links to, which makes this important point:

Outside of the Islamic world, the anti-Semitic upsurge of recent years is mainly a left-wing phenomenon. It is therefore not surprising that it should have brought the Democratic Party, more swiftly than the Republicans, to that dark and bloody crossroads where politics and conscience collide.

(Emphasis mine.)

The "dark and bloody crossroads where politics and conscience collide" is getting even darker in Europe, where 50 Jewish university students from Israel, the U.S. and Poland were recently attacked--at Auschwitz.

Update: I've been meaning to post Suzanne Fields' essay on Senator Kerry's flip-flops on Israel, and this seems like a good place to do it, along with devastating contrast to the senator from a follow-up post at Power Line. In September of last year, President Bush spoke to Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg and select members of St. Paul, Minnesota's Temple of Aaron. Rabbi Ginsburg is quoted as saying:

I told [President Bush] a story that I told over Rosh Hashanah about an elderly volunteer for an Israel organization who said that his passion for volunteering for Israel was driven by the fact that he had been part of a l iberating group at at one of the concentration camps. An inmate came up to him and saw his name tag and saw that he was Jewish, and said, 'Are you Jewish?' in Yiddish. Expecting a hug from this recently freed inmate, the soldier said, 'Yes.' Instead of a hug, he got a slap, and the former inmate said 'You're too late.'

"The President looked at me in the eye and said, 'Part of my job is to make sure we'll never be too late.'

Obviously, read the whole thing.

John Hinderaker of Power Line has a brief post tonight:

This headline from Australia's The Age exemplifies the uphill battle the Swift Boat Vets are fighting against the home team, as viewed by the foreign press and, to only a slightly lesser degree, the American press:

Anti-Kerry ad mars presidential campaign

Michael Kinsley once famously said that the definition of a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth--more and more, the same can be said of what James Lileks recently dubbed the dinosaur media.

Considering what happened today with the Boston Globe and the swift boat vets, and the response President Bush received from the "objective" journalists at the Unity Conference, I'd say both foreign and domestic media are in a tie this year to demonstrate how deeply in the tank they are for the left.

Louisiana Congressman Rodney Alexander decided to run as a Republican this fall.

Stories like this make it obvious why Nancy Pelosi introduced a House minority "Bill of Rights" back in June: she expects to be in that position for a while.

Teresa Heinz Kerry told Chris Matthews on July 25th her opinion of how the president handled being informed that a plane had crashed into 9/11:

I think the president behaved correctly in terms of being quiet amidst stunning news like that in a classroom of kids. You know, what can you do? It takes you a couple of minutes to digest what you have just heard. And then he was not not his—not in his White House and in his office with all of his people. He was in the school in Florida.

I guess Teresa didn't know what the party line was when she said that. It's a strange world when Teresa and Rudy Giuliani are on the same page--disagreeing with Michael Moore...and John Kerry.

In a post very approiately titled "Dirty Pool At The Boston Globe", Will Collier of Vodkapundit looks at Mike Kranish, the Boston Globe journalist who's simultaneously written the introduction to the official Kerry-Edwards campaign book and written a hit piece for the Globe stating that one of the Swift Boat vets has recanted his attack on John Kerry.

Only...he hasn't.

Oh, and as Will notes, the Globe is owned by the New York Times. Say, is the The Times a liberal newspaper? Let's ask its ombudsman!

If this story pans out, it has the potential to be damning for the Globe, the Times, and much of what up to recently was called "the mainstream media" as well. (Not to mention Kerry himself.)

Update: Hugh Hewitt has a different take.

Advantage Ed! Yesterday, we wrote about the Swift Boat vets and their book, Unfit For Command:

So if these guys are lying about what Kerry did in Vietnam, then Kerry himself had to have lied to Meet the Press and in his speech as a Naval Reserve officer to the Senate on April 22, 1971.

Otherwise, Kerry's own testimony tacitly backs them up. So either Kerry's a self-professed war criminal, or someone who lied to puff up his own radical chic credentials in the early 1970s and smear his fellow soldiers. In either case, what makes him think either of those make him electable?

Today, George Neumayr of The American Spectator echoes my point:

John Kerry faces a basic problem in rebutting the new ads that question his Vietnam war record: the criticism in the ads sounds exactly like his own criticism from the 1970s, both his criticism of others (he had no problem smearing Vietnam veterans for political purposes in the 1970s) and the criticism he leveled at himself when asked in 1971 on Meet the Press if he had committed war atrocities.

"There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used .50 caliber machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against the people," Kerry said. "I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages…"

What do the new ads say that Kerry didn't say or imply in this statement?

Read the whole thing.

Just listening to Hugh Hewitt's radio show. He's quoting items from Unfit For Command, including one that I hadn't heard before: that Kerry claimed he served in Cambodia, during Christmas of 1968 (remember that date):

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If you read the material that Drudge is quoting from Unfit For Command and you compare it with Kerry's own quotes from shortly after he returned from Vietnam, then either both the Swift Boat vets and Kerry are telling the truth, or they're both lying about Vietnam.

First, one of the excerpts on Drudge:

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Speaking of Michael Moore, Glenn Reynolds writes, "Kerry's campaign is threatening to sue stations that air the Swiftboat Vets ad... if Bush had threatened legal action to block Michael Moore's film from showing, I know what people would say."

No wonder the Nixon comparisons continue for Senator Kerry.

Betsy Newmark thinks Kerry has made a mistake "by criticizing Bush for staying for seven minutes to read with the children when he got the news of the planes hitting the towers".

Kerry's making an obvious reference to Fahrenheit 9/11, and it's at least his second tacit endorsement of Michael Moore. But as with much of Moore's moviemaking, isn't this a distortion of what actually happened?

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Myrna Blyth looks at "Ma and Pa Botox":

Drs. Jean and Alistair are the couple who say they figured out the beautifying potential of Botox, the trade name for the Botulinum Toxin Type A. That's the toxin secreted by the bacteria that causes botulism, the deadly paralytic illness. Injecting Botox in teeny, tiny doses to smooth wrinkles and unfurrow brows became the number-one non-surgical cosmetic procedure in the United States in 2003.

John Kerry's mentioned in the article, but he doesn't appear to be worried about it.

Remember Live Aid--the 1985 all day concert to feed the starving in Africa? Sure you do--Phil Collins playing in England and then hopping on the Concorde to fly to Philadelphia the same day? Great performances by Queen, Bryan Ferry, Mick Jagger and Tina Turner? A really pitiful performance by Bob Dylan, backed by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood? A DVD of the show, which seemed to run for about 96 hours on a single Saturday is coming to DVD in time for Christmas, to raise money for Sudan.

Well, more or less. Paul McCartney is redubbing his version of "Let It Be", because of a microphone failure during the original performance.

Meanwhile, the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin are ixnaying releasing their contribution to the event on DVD, because their performance was bad--very, very, very bad. (They're contributing proceeds from an upcoming Page & Plant DVD and John Paul Jones' live shows instead.)

The great Milton Friedman turns 92 today.

(HO CHI MIN CITY--AP): Seemingly on a whim, Senator Kerry, having only recently started reading a "Web log" apparently called AllahPundit, decides to recreate one of the "blogger's" Photoshopped parodies of the Senator's campaign posters.

More on this as it develops.

(Yes, the description I wrote is satire--but the photo's real (here's a version taken from a slightly different angle), and was found via Little Green Footballs.)

This "band of brothers" come not to praise Kerry, but to bury him--or at least his campaign.

Glenn Reynolds adds, "And Kerry played right into this with all the stuff about Vietnam and medals".

Given that the mainstream media will probably give this skant attention, it will be interesting to see how quickly this ad, and its message, disseminates.

Ace of Spades writes, "We knew Al Gore's and George Bush's grades and SAT scores more than a year before the election last time around. Why is the media embargoing John Kerry's academic indicators?"

Maybe somebody should ask Evan Thomas or Daniel Okrent.

Question: What do you think of how the U.N. handles anti-Semitism?

Answer: "It handles it quite nicely, encouraging and rewarding it at every opportunity".

--Jed Babbin, the former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of President George H. W. Bush, speaking about his new book on the U.N., Inside the Asylum.

Read the whole thing.

Quincy Carter, the Dallas Cowboys' starting quarterback last year, was apparently released today in a very surprising move.

While Parcells had brought in 40 year old veteran Vinny Testaverde, all reports indicated that he would be backing up Carter. There had been no news that either head coach Bill Parcells or Cowboys owner Jerry Jones had been upset with Carter during the offseason.

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In a show of gratitude to USAF Sgt. John Stryker to the many planes he's kept flying, the Department of Defense has commissioned IBM to build...The Stryker Computer!

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Matt Drudge has a page on the new book written by Kerry's band of brothers who aren't buying his schtick.

This quote from a Kerry advisor is rich:

"They hired a goddamn private investigator to dig up trash!" charged a top Kerry adviser traveling with the senator late Tuesday. "This is pay for play, and the dirtiest of all dirty tricks ever played on a candidate for the presidency. How low can they go?"

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My latest newsletter for Electronic House magazine looks at the late Jerry Goldsmith's classic film scores.

Bad and good news on the education front. First the good news: Duncan Currie looks at a right turn by Harvard's students, which is starting to have a positive influence on its faculty.

For the bad news, Michelle Malkin notes that the National Association for the Education of Young Children, which oversees preschool teacher training, curriculum standards and daycare accreditation, is promoting a book written by a woman who wants to install an anti-American, anti-war bias in her students...her preschool students.

Update: Not surprisingly, England isn't immune to similar kinds of nonsense, either.

Michelle Malkin's going to need some, with a new book titled, In Defense of Internment. After being fascinated by this revisionist post on the Sarge's Website last year, I'm looking forward to reading Malkin's new book on the topic. (Doesn't mean I automatically agree with her thesis, but I'm certainly willing to read it with an open mind.)

Update: Paul Mirengoff of Power Line, along with one of his readers, have some thoughts on Malkin's book, and WWII internment in general.

Last month, we quoted Dennis Prager, who said:

As a famous Soviet dissident joke put it: "In the Soviet Union, the future is known; it's the past which is always changing."

Melik Kaylan of The Wall Street Journal says the same can be said for the Wahhabi sect of Islam and their disrespect of the Islamic monuments of the past:

In Mecca, in the 1970s, they even tore down the dwelling of Mohammed's mother. A McDonald's has replaced it. To many eyes, even the Kaaba's Great Mosque of Mohammed has been utterly destroyed by total renovation.

Few Muslims dare to say such things publicly, of course, least of all Al-Jazeera correspondents. The monuments, though, or what remains of them, speak volumes.

Read the whole thing.

There's a story in Ray Coleman's biography of Eric Clapton that goes something like this: One evening in the 1970s, when Clapton was on tour, and piss-drunk, he asked his chief roadie what city he was in. "Cleveland", the roadie replied. Clapton went on stage, and dutifully shouted the standard clichéd, "GOOD EVENING, CLEVELAND!!!!!!!!" opening. Dead silence. He was in Detroit, but his roadie had decided to play a little joke on his employer.

Apparently, it isn't that hard to do, as John Kerry just made the same mistake, but compounded it, by confusing Ohio and Michigan's collegiate football rivals.

I just caught Cheryl Lemke, the fetching Weather Channel anchorwoman, reporting that the temperature of Hell has suddenly, and dramatically dropped to 32 degrees Fahrenheit/zero degrees centigrade.

The news comes as AP runs an article which compares John Kerry's "secret plans" for Iraq to Richard Nixon's to end the Vietnam war.

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Dennis Prager has some interesting thoughts on why the Democrats prominently featured a speech by a 12 year old girl from San Francisco at their convention last week.

Star Parker: "It was entertaining to hear the man who achieved fame with the Tawana Brawley charade attack the president for supposedly misleading the nation".

Heh, as the Blogfather would say.

Michelle Malkin drops a quarter in The New York Times' spin machine and finds that buried under a headline that reads "Reports That Led to Terror Alert Were Years Old", is lots of data that's minty fresh.

And The Washington Post concurs.

Say, what was ombudsman Daniel Okrent saying about the Times, just last week?

Update: Be sure to read Hugh Hewitt's thoughts as well.

Mark Steyn slices and dices Kerry and company's trip to Wendy's like the head chef at the the Newburgh Yacht Club--and for much less than they charge per plate. Just keep reading.

Charles Johnson writes, "It’s completely obvious to everyone, as police check for truck bombs, that Howard Dean is the Kerry Campaign Attack Dog, right? Just checking."

Of course. And it allows Kerry complete deniability even as Dean pours it on.

Beavis and Butt-Head are not role models. They're not even human; they're cartoons. Some of the things they do would cause a person to get hurt, expelled, arrested, possibly deported. To put it another way, don't try this at home.

(The staff and management of Ed Driscoll.com, who incidentally found this link via Will Collier of VodkaPundit, cannot be held responsible for the amount of time you will consume endlessly clicking on it.)

Besides Kerry having to be reminded--by a reporter--that there's a war on, two new articles shed some light on he'd handle--apparently very much like how he handled Vietnam after he returned to the States and was still in the Navy Reserves; and Central America as a Senator--by selling out American allies and supporting our enemies.

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Fellow Democrat Zell Miller gets a great zinger against Kerry in, and Tim Russert reacts in mock horror:

“Senator, how can you say that!?!” Tim Russert reacted with horror when Senator Zell Miller, a Democrat who has endorsed President Bush’s re-election, raised Senator John Kerry’s liberal record of opposing weapons systems and working to reduce intelligence funding: “If he had had his policies adopted in the Senate instead of the Ronald Reagan policies being adopted, we would still be in the Cold War. We'd still have a Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall would still be up.”

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Obviously, John F. Kerry hopes that his initials, his thick shock of hair and his New England accent remind you of an earlier (and ironically far more conservative--in oh so many ways) JFK. But his style so far is much more reminiscent of the fellow JFK campaigned against in '60, and who would assume the Oval Office himself eight years later.

Just as Richard Nixon had a "secret plan" to end Vietnam, Kerry has his own secret plans--one for Iraq, another for taxes, and another for the economy. And none of them can be disclosed until he's elected!

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One of my favorite Tom Wolfe essays from the early 1960s, in which Tom first outed himself as a dandy who took clothes seriously is on the Web, along with an essay on the same subject from 1960 by the late George Frazier.

This is wonderful stuff--four decades before the birth of that ridiculous word, "metrosexual".

Closet dandies of the world enjoy--you have much to learn from these two masters of a lost art.

As I said in the post below, "'conservative' Republicans, beginning with the Gipper in 1980, and continuing with George W. Bush became the party of dynamic change, and 'liberal' Democrats the keepers of the old order.

No better highlight of this is in the latest Drudge flash, which highlights Speaker of the House Denny Hastert's new book, and his push for the elimination of IRS".

President Bush is going to have lots of fun campaigning in the fall--and it will be equally fun watching Kerry trying to defend the IRS--or adopt a "me too" position--"I'd do it, but I'd do it this way".

In many TV sit-coms and comedy movies from the 1960s through the early 1980s, you'll see the cliché of the wealthy country club Republican, ala Nelson Rockefeller. Jim Backus' blue double-breasted blazer-wearing Thurston Howell III character was an example of this; David Ogden Stiers' Major Charles Emerson Winchester on M*A*S*H (ironically, Winchester was a Boston Brahmin, like Senator Kerry) was another.

George H.W. Bush's image was very much in that mold. But he interrupted a flip-over that began with President Reagan's self-made aw-shucks folksy style and continued with George W. Bush's cowboy boots-wearing, BBQ-loving manner and the Texas twang of his voice.

It highlights an interesting trend in politics over the last 25 years:

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Democrats in Colorado have gathered enough signatures for a ballot initiative making Colorado's electoral votes proportional, rather than winner-take-all. View From a Height has the details.

It may not be obvious on the blog's homepage, but I have updates to the "Smallest Bounce Ever" and "Semper Fi!" posts from yesterday.