September 11, 2004

September 10, 2004

Yesterday I sat in wonder, surfing the net as this amazing story and Blogosphere triumph unfolded. Thank God the NYPost's John Podhoretz recapped the Old Media implosion for us all the morning after, because as a sufferer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, my physical strength fails me and I can't blog. Even if I could, I don't know if I could keep up with the Blogosphere's Woodwards and Bernsteins of Memogate.
Fasten your seatbelt and turn over our your "E" ticket to the attendant, because we're all on quite a ride :
CBS'S BIG BLUNDER?

THE populist revolution against the so-called mainstream media continues. Yesterday, the citizen journalists
[I love this new name for us bloggers!--Jen]
who produce blogs on the Internet — and their engaged readers — engaged in the wholesale exposure of what appears to be a presidential-year dirty trick against George W. Bush.

What the bloggers and their audiences did was call into profound question the authenticity of four documents proudly trumpeted by CBS News in a much-heralded investigative report on Wednesday night's edition of "60 Minutes" about the president's National Guard service in the early 1970s.

These were "previously unseen documents . . . obtained by '60 Minutes,' " the network bragged Wednesday night on its Web site. Their author, supposedly, was Bush's squadron commander, Jerry Killian, who died 20 years ago.
[God rest him.
CBS has no shame...using the dead for their own partisan ends.
Killian's friends and family were so upset yesterday, they contacted the media to assure them that the documents were indeed slanderous forgeries to clear his name and President Bush's, too.
H/T to the inimitable Powerline blog, who's been all over this story like white on rice! They were even linked by Drudge! Yowsa!--Jen]

They "include a memorandum from May 1972," CBS reports, "where Killian writes that Lt. Bush called him to talk about 'how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November.' " A document dated "18 August 1973" complains that Killian is being asked to "sugar coat" Bush's record. "I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job," the document says.

Liberals went wild with glee about the story, especially after the onslaught on John Kerry's Vietnam record by his fellow Swift-boat veterans.
[Sad to say, but the whole media sh*tstorm over these documents almost totally drowned out the press conference of more Vietnam Vets--this time POWs, most of whom spent years in the Hanoi Hilton-- who have some serious issues with John Kerry and his anti-war activities:
they just released a documentary called Stolen Honor in which they call Kerry to account for calling them "war criminals" and they, too, state their firm belief that Kerry is unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.
Also like the Swifties, these fine men aren't going away either.
The big question is when, of even if, Kerry will acknowledge their existence and address their very valid concerns about his bid for the White House--J.T.]

Kevin Drum, the most talented of the left-wing bloggers, wrote: "This story is a perfect demonstration of the difference between the Swift-boat controversy and the National Guard controversy. Both are tales from long ago and both are related to Vietnam, but . . . in the National Guard case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence provides additional confirmation that the charges against Bush are true."
[What Drum refuses to say and what the Dimocrats won't say is that there's a lot more reason to give the 254 Swifties' sworn affidavits about Kerry's Vietnam service and his anti-war activities credence than there ever was any bashing of Bush's NG service, even before the latest documents were proven to be forgeries.]

Drum simply assumed that the documents were above-board. So did The New York Times and The Washington Post, both of which put the story on its front page on Thursday.
[Not coincidentally, these 2 papers have been the top 2 water-carriers for the bash-Bush, Blame-America-first Left and because they hate Bush that much and want to "get him" and get him out of office.]

They were doubtless swayed by the fact that CBS said " '60 Minutes' consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic."
[Ya know, this doesn't pass the "smell test" to me!
If these fine, upstanding Media institutions were so convinced these documents were the real deal, why would they have a handwriting analyst and document expert to verify that?
Doesn't all military paperwork carry its own authenticy on its face (prima facie, if you will)?
The tin-foil-hat-wearing VRWC member part of me thinks they knew all along the docs were fakes!--Jen]

Maybe "60 Minutes" should have tried another expert or two.

CBS made the four documents available in their original form on its Web site Wednesday night.

And by yesterday morning, they were being examined with a fine tooth comb.

The Minneapolis lawyers who run powerlineblog.com were on the case early. Two of the blog's readers directed their attention to a note left on an Internet bulletin board on the freerepublic.com Web site — the 47th posting on the topic there.
[Ah, Free Republic!
I was a Freeper once upon a time...
It's a great bunch of nice people who love their country and their President and some of them are serious political scholars who presaged the political web journalist/blogger movement.
Freep on!--Jen]

Post No. 47 pointed out that there was something off about these documents from the 1970s: The spacing between the letters and the words was proportional, and only a few IBM electric typewriters could achieve that effect back then.

From there it was off to the races. Once anyone who had had experience writing and typing in the 1970s began examining the documents, it was impossible not to see some weird anachronisms that suggested they had been crafted not on a 1970s typewriter, but using Microsoft Word.

Charles Johnson, who runs the wonderful littlegreenfootballs.com and is a friend of mine, simply typed one of the memos over using Microsoft Word's New Times Roman font and, lo and behold, the document came out exactly identical to the one on the CBS site, down to the letter spacing.

The documents contain such features as superscript lettering, which is done automatically by Microsoft Word,
[Apparently, the superscript "th" that is automatically inserted by Word when typing "187th" was the dead giveaway]
and curly quotation marks. A brief glance at a Web site called selectric.org, run by an amateur typewriter fanatic, reveals dozens of IBM electric typefaces — and none of them has curly quotation marks.

By 3 o'clock, the very careful and honest Jim Geraghty, who produces invaluable material every day on nationalreview.com's Kerry Spot,*[*This should be another stop on your daily reads during the rest of the campaign.
There's always lots of great stuff there!--Jen]
was saying flatly, "CBS had better have one heck of a defense for this."
[Of course, they don't, Jim.
They just want their boy Kerry to beat Bush any way he can, including cheating, lying and smearing.]

Yeah, it had better. I thought on Wednesday that it was scandalous for "60 Minutes" to turn over a good deal of its time on Wednesday night to one Ben Barnes, a one-time Texas political powerhouse who now claims he got George W. Bush into the National Guard.
[Ah, yes! Ben Barnes...not exactly one of Texas's better productions, but definitely a "made man" in the Dimocrat party machine.
Tom Daschle has been known to call Barnes "our (the Dimocrats') 51st Senator."
Read all about Barnes here:Ben Barnes: John Kerry’s Unbelievable Last-Ditch Weapon.
Not only were "60 Minutes" documents exposed as forgeries, but their "big get" interview of Barnes shouldn't have happened either!
Barnes is a proven liar with plenty of not-so-hidden ties to the Kerry Campaign.
Shame, shame, shame, CBS!--Jen]

The problem is not, as some would have it, that Barnes has raised half a million dollars for Kerry. The problem is that Barnes has already lied about this on videotape, and I use the word "lied" without difficulty, where he says he pulled strings for Bush when "I was lieutenant governor of Texas."

The thing is that George W. Bush was sworn into the National Guard in May 1968. Ben Barnes didn't become lieutenant governor until 1969.
[Dare I mention that given the state of Texas politics now and then, with the GOP working hard to change Texas politically and ideologically into a "Red State" from its solid Democrat history since Reconstruction, why would the Republican Bushes ask Dim party man Barnes for any favors at all ever?
Inquiring minds wanna know!
President Bush discovered the beauty of bipartisan cooperation as Governor of Texas working with the late, great Bob Bullock.--J.T.]

From the lies of Ben Barnes to the apparent forgeries of who-knows-who-did-it — why has "60 Minutes" exposed itself in this way?

We all know why. Its producers and others in the media think George Bush deserves to be beaten up now because of the beating administered to John Kerry in August. In some weird way, the editors and producers believe this is fairness at work.
[I disagree with Poddy here: First, CBS and Old Media started this onslaught on Bush and the GOP long before this summer, as I don't have to tell you.
Secondly, Kerry is such an awful person and candidate and has run such a terrible campaign, that he's virtually administered that beating to himself without any help from Bush.--J.T.]

Instead, they have unmasked themselves. Or rather, they have been unmasked by ordinary people who can see what they and their hired experts evidently could not.

Old Media, the blatant enablers of the political Left, harbor such hate for
Bush, Conservatives and Conservatism and it is so rabid and vicious that it has literally blinded them to journalistic basics like facts, truth and real sources.
The consequent gains made to reveal truths to the American people, the momentum to re-elect the President that is building and the triumph of Truth over Lies continues apace!
Part of the new war is being fought online and in the blogosphere and I'd say that this is definitely a VICTORY for the Good Guy Coalition mouse warriors of the New Media!
Surely this is what President Bush means when he speaks of the blessings of Liberty...Is this a great country or what?!
(Maybe it's just me, but the burning question now is "From whence did these forged documents come?"
Who gave them to CBS?
The answers to that will tell us even more about this riveting political scandal that has exploded less than 2 months before the "most important election of our lives.")

September 07, 2004

If you're a Vietnam vet or a Vietnamese who settled here in the States after the war and don't care for what Kerry's been saying and doing about Vietnam these last 33 years and you live in the Washington D.C. area, there's a rally you need to be at this Sunday, the 12th of Sept., at the West front of the Capitol building at 2:00 PM (EDT)
Be there to testify and celebrate your honorable service with your band of brothers!
Oh, and the rest of us who didn't serve "in country," but who are friends and supporters of the vets will be welcomed, too.

Go to Vietnam Vets for the Truth and to Kerrylied.com for more details and information.

I'm hoping that there will be an awesome turnout for the vets and the Truth!

Apple - iTunes - Music Store
The iTunes Music Store has FREE downloads of the big speeches from last week's RNC, including President Bush's, Guiliani's, McCain's, Cheney's, Schwartzenhegger's and Zell's Rebel Yell!
(Can you believe the big Liberals at Apple would do this for we eeeeeevillllllllllllllll Republicans?!)
It rulz!

Kerry's attempt at recovery from his disastrous post-RNC convention weekend continued to be a non-event as he got himself into more trouble yesterday on the stump (with apologies to Max Cleland). He changed staff, got bawled out by Clinton in the hospital, changed his position on the Iraq for the seventh time(...so far!) and gratuitously insulted the President some more using a Sesame Street format ("W" is for Winner!):
Kerry campaign denies 'shake-up'

Be sure and read the last paragraphs:

The size and volume of crowds showing up at rallies to protest Mr. Kerry has grown since the Republican convention ended. At a stop in Steubenville, Ohio, on Saturday night, more than one-third of the audience held anti-Kerry signs, mainly placards that condemned the four-term senator, a Roman Catholic, for supporting abortion rights.

This is a problem for all Dimocrats who are Catholics as you must support abortion-on-demand (and at any age without parental consent) if you're in the Democrat Party.
According to this fellow NRO's Corner fan's email, Kerry went to the wrong town looking for support:

"John Kerry came to Steubenville yesterday and quickly realized he was in the wrong city. Steubenville is a city where there are 6 Democrats for every 1 Republican, and the Steelworkers unions are alive and active. You would think this was solid John Kerry territory. The mob used to control Steubenville and now the unions think they do. Well, they are wrong.

The Kerry campaign first scheduled a visit to Steubenville two weeks ago but "scheduling conflicts" came up at the last minute. Oh, and did I mention that Kerry wanted to use a local gun range as a campaign stop, but the owner turned him down? And that the Fire Department Union President told the Kerry campaign that not only would he not organize the union to support Kerry at the rally, but that he was supporting President Bush! The Kerry campaign took for granted that this area was sown up. Mistake number one. So they rescheduled the campaign trip when Franciscan University was back in session. Mistake number two.

Before Kerry arrived there was a huge pro-life march led by Franciscan University students, 500 strong. "You can't be Catholic and pro-abortion", read some of their signs. Students and members of local Catholic parishes were full of energy and FoxNews reported that this was the largest protest against Kerry outside of the Democratic Convention. Just picture 500 pro-lifers marching from their college campus to meet Kerry. Where else but in Steubenville, Ohio! Though the Franciscan University did not organize the event, it is well known for its orthodox Catholic education which encourages students to put their faith into action. These students simply cherish their Catholic faith and could not stand to let Kerry use their faith as a political prop. I am proud of my alma mater.

….The Kerry campaign not only made a mistake in their timing, but they also chose to hold the rally in a public park which should be open to all the public. Mistake number three. The police chief, sheriff, and mayor all agreed with me that protesters and their signs would be allowed inside the Kerry rally site. Freedom of speech is alive and well here in Ohio. The Kerry campaign flipped out!

So, now add another 500 local Bush supporters to the Kerry rally. They tried to turn up the music but they could not drown us out. According to the Herald Star (local press), "The crowd, estimated by officials as 3,500 strong, was almost split in half with people for and against the Massachusetts senator." John Kerry must know he has a problem when over 15% of his audience was booing him. We were respectful and did not heckle him - but upon arrival and when he sought our applause he got something he didn't expect. As the press arrived a feisty nine year old little girl began shouting, "We want Bush!", and we all chanted along. The campaign staff was beside themselves. This is history in the making! Even places like Steubenville are not supporting John Kerry. He is in serious trouble.

My friends, John Kerry will not be coming back to Steubenville. Kerry was visibly shaken when he received boos from the audience.....

 And back to the story on the Kerry stump:

   
Those protesters were mostly silent and allowed Mr. Kerry to get through his 45-minute speech.
    
Yesterday's crowd of detractors in Canonsburg, Pa., however, wasn't so quiet and shouted Mr. Kerry down several times.
    
One heckler — drinking a can of appropriately named Busch beer at 8 a.m. — yelled "flip-flop," "liberal" and "four more years" throughout Mr. Kerry's remarks. Mr. Kerry paused and responded several times. Other protesters held signs such as "Terrorists for Kerry" and "I voted for Kerry before I voted against him."

An NRO reader wrote to the Corner and described the Pennsylvania rally in more detail:

I am a northeast Pennsylvania resident who also happens to work up the road from the stadium where Bush made his first post-convention appearance.

As expected, security was tight, traffic was a nightmare, and those of us who had to work had to find ways to get around it. To make it possible I left for work at 5 am this morning. Since we're a bank operations center, I just didn't have the option of saying "another day, time to play hooky."

Groggy and tired, I arrived at the location at 5:45 and was amazed to see the traffic already backing up. The poor officers who arrived at 4:30 am to handle a Presidential appearance at 9:15 were smiling and waving us on. The organization as they tried to route those of us who had to get to work and at the same time direct those who were determined to get to the stadium was difficult, impossible at times, but well-done and determined.

And I found I was astonished. The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area is a renowned Democratic stronghold, run by a political machine that's been in place for decades. Where did all these Republicans come from? How did they fill every one of the 18,000 seats they could? Why would 18,000 people (and more if they could have) come out in the pre-dawn darkness to hear a speech? Why did students from the University of Scranton arrive at the airport at 12:30 this morning to greet the President and First Lady and show their support? Why did even more crowds see him off at the airport this morning - unable to get to the stadium but needing to cheer him on?

Why did the total number of protestors at the stadium, in this Democratic town, number 3 whole people? Even the newspapers seem incredulous.

And then it occurred to me. There's a base of support that's farther and wider then realized. That people are quietly supporting Bush, keeping to themselves because they're unwilling to find themselves a part of the vitriolic smear and attack debates launched by those who hate him. That they walk away from political argument because you can't talk to someone who rants, but their silence doesn't mean agreement.

Who needs journalists and pundits when we've got the eyewitness reports of ordinary Americans telling us whose campaign is working and whose so clearly isn't?
Looks like a good part of the nation is quickly becoming Bush Country--thank God!
Kerry is the worst candidate; he won't stop talking about Vietnam, yet he won't address the issues surrounding his Vietnam activities raised by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
If he stops talking about Vietnam as Clinton advised him to do, he has to talk about his record in the Senate and on both domestic issues and those of national security and defense, his votes are terrible.
On top of all that, he's boring, arrogant and irritating and not very telegenic.
Yuck!
Praise the Lord I'm a Bush backer and a Republican, because I don't think I could vote for Kerry if I wanted to!

'Innocent religion is now a message of hate'

It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.

The hostage-takers of children in Beslan, North Ossetia, were Muslims. The other hostage-takers and subsequent murderers of the Nepalese chefs and workers in Iraq were also Muslims. Those involved in rape and murder in Darfur, Sudan, are Muslims, with other Muslims chosen to be their victims.
[...because they're black. Yes, Arab Muslims are racist, too.--Jen]

Those responsible for the attacks on residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar were Muslims. The two women who crashed two airliners last week were also Muslims.

Bin Laden is a Muslim. The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim.
[...]
We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women.

We cannot redeem our extremist youths, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the Sheikhs who thought it ennobling to re-invent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems that the author is pointing a finger at the Sheikhs in Soddy Arabia?
And do read the whole piece, as I just quoted some of the best parts.
Notice also who wrote this and where it was first published:

Abdel Rahman al-Rashed is general manager of Al-Arabiya news channel. Yesterday, his article appeared in the pan-Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.

I suppose it took the slaughter of hundreds of children in Beslan, but some Muslims finally are fed up with the heinous deeds of their more radicalized and militarized "brethren."
We know that the majority of Muslims are peaceful and don't wage their own jihad as a violent struggle against "infidels," but the ones that do are making life for the rest of us, including those who practice the religion of "peace," impossible.
Let's hope we hear many more Muslims joining their voices with that of Mr. al-Rashed.

September 05, 2004

Russian school death toll rises above 350 as families curse Putin

The death count in the Russian school massacre rose above 350 yesterday, including 156 children. Officials said that the final figure would be even higher and disclosed that all 35 hostage-takers had been killed.

They continued to claim that 10 of the terrorists were Arabs, although there was little concrete information about any of those involved.
[...]
Last night, 434 wounded hostages were still in hospital, including 247 children and 85 adults in a critical condition.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, declared tomorrow and Tuesday official days of mourning and, pledging to fight back, admitted that his security forces had been unprepared for the terrorists' "full-scale war".
[What he means is that the Civilized world was unprepared for the killers to go after the ultimate "soft target" of a childrens' school.--J.T.]

He denounced gunmen who attacked "defenceless children". But he said in a televised speech: "We are dealing with a direct intervention of international terror against Russia, with a total, cruel and all-powerful war which again and again takes the lives of our fellow countrymen.
[...]
Chechen activists want independence from Russia and most want to make Chechnya a Muslim state ruled by Islamic Sharia law.
[This is the jihadis' M.O. all over the world, which we're all only too familiar with by now from Chechnya to the "Palestinian areas" to Kosovo to Afgahnistan to Iraq to the Philippines.
It begins as a "freedom fight" and devolves into militarized and radicalized Islamic jihad.--Jen]
[...]
Bewildered relatives gathered at Beslan's cinema where officials were due to provide details of the dead and injured. Many were angry at the way the crisis had been handled by security forces.
[I must admit from what I saw on TV, the security was a mess and I read that Russia had 10,000 troops in the city but there was no security cordon around the school and panicked parents rushed in when the shooting started, probably resulting in more deaths.]
[...]
Officials said that most victims died in the school's gymnasium on Friday, either from the explosions that brought down the roof - mined by the hostage-takers - or in the battles between soldiers and captors that followed.

The school will be demolished and replaced by a memorial to the victims. A new school will be built elsewhere.

The storming of the school by Russian forces caused pandemonium. Many of the 1,000 pupils, parents and teachers were carried out, drenched in blood, as bullets flew. The authorities said that they had been forced to send in troops when the gunmen fired on fleeing children.

There were more explosions and shooting as escaped terrorists were hunted down, with one reported to have been dragged from an ambulance and kicked to death.
[We can hardly condemn the people of Beslan for doing this!]

Western governments offered sympathy to Mr Putin and the Archbishop of Canterbury said that the massacre had tested his faith.
[Such as it is, although I think he's more of a Druid than he is an Anglican.
This awful man has almost singlehandedly killed what was left of the Church of England and any moral and religious authority it had. Idiot!]
But the European Union called for an explanation of "how this tragedy could have happened". The Russians described the request as "blasphemous".

The ultimate tragedy--after having hundreds of your children terrorized, murdered and maimed, the ultimate terror has got to be being "terrorized" by the craven EU!
As we know from trying to protect our own "soft targets" and our children and even we adults here in the U.S., there are too many "soft targets" to put tons of security on each and every possible place there might be a terror attack and the terrorists know this.
Furthermore, while this was quite a shock to the EU and certainly to the Russians, child murder at the hands of terrorists has been going on in Israel for years, if not decades.
My prayers are joined with millions of other Americans' for the souls of the victims and for their families.
We grieve with the people of Beslan and I know that President Bush offered any and all help we can give to President Putin.
I hope that it doesn't take another attack within Russia for Putin to fully ally with us in the War on Terror and I must admit, I was suprised that Putin didn't do this after the Moscow theatre siege 2 years ago.
Tragically, Putin has tried to deal with the Al Queda-linked killers as an "internal problem" while he helped arm Saddam in Iraq and the mullahs in Iran and while he entertained Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in Moscow for "talks" almost exactly a year ago, marking the first time a Saudi leader had visited the Kremlin in over 70 years. Just today, Russia issued a statement, in direct opposition to the U.S. at the U.N., pledging their "respect" for Lebanon's "sovereignity," even though Lebanon is the mere client state of terrorist stronghold Syria.

Meanwhile, it's almost certain that the Beslan attack was funded and planned by Al Queda.

The British, like their American cousins, were horrified by this attack, realizing only too well that it was something that could happen just as "easily" with all the attendant mayhem in the UK, but if any of them doubted, one of their leading Islamic clerics made this public statement right after the Beslan attack:
Cleric supports targeting children

An extremist Islamic cleric based in Britain said yesterday that he would support hostage-taking at British schools if carried out by terrorists with a just cause.
[The "just cause" to be defined by the clerics, of course.]

Omar Bakri Mohammed, the spiritual leader of the extremist sect al-Muhajiroun, said that holding women and children hostage would be a reasonable course of action for a Muslim who has suffered under British rule.

It now becomes quite clear that no-one, not even our innocent children, are to be spared by the Enemy, and that even if you're not a little Jewish child in an Israeli school can you take your safety and security for granted.
As Britain's The Sun put it so bluntly and so well,Terror cannot stoop lower:

[...]
There is no lower place for terrorists to stoop. They’ve reached the floor of hell.
[...]
What happened next has far reaching consequences for the world as a whole. From this point on, nothing and no one can be considered untouchable.
[...]
I can’t imagine it. I don’t want to imagine it. And I hope no parent or child ever has to go through it again.

That’s why the major powers in the world must unite and fight global terrorism.

May God rest the souls of those innocent children and their parents and teachers who lost their lives in Beslan.
May He empower us to get the Islamist baby killers before they can murder another human being for "jihad."
On to Victory.