Big Tactical Error
Based on how Ben Ginsburg's resignation is playing on the cable news networks, it was a mistake for him to have resigned so quickly. Yes, he said everything he needed to about the hypocrisy of the Kerrion's use of 527s, but that's not what's getting the attention. The only impression being left is that he did something wrong, but he did not.

Look at someone like the execrable Harold Ickes. This tool is the founder and president of the Media Fund, as well as a major player with America Coming Together ---a couple of pro-Kerry 527s that are pumping huge amounts of money into creating and airing TV spots slamming the President. Do you have any doubt that a sleaze artist like Ickes is working with the Kerrion? Well, you don't need to because according to BusinessWeek Online,

Ickes admits that he occasionally tells the Kerry camp what he's up to, and he insists it's perfectly legal.

Yeah? Well, it sounds like illegality to me. But what does Ickes care? He is one of the crooked masterminds of the 1996 Democratic Party campaign finance monster that inspired McCain-Feingold.

If Big Media wanted to raise some questions about how the Democrats are gaming the system, they could. But that would expose their confederates in this sham (emphases mine):

If Mr. Kerry is really looking for a smoking gun, he ought to examine the Media Fund (total receipts: $27.2 million), which is run by former Clinton Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, and America Coming Together (total receipts: $26.9 million). The chief spokesman for both of these Democratic 527s is Jim Jordan, who happens to be Mr. Kerry's former campaign manager. Not surprising, a separate article appearing in Friday's New York Times regarding Federal Elections regulation of 527s mentioned Mr. Jordan in his capacity as spokesman for the Media Fund and ACT, but neglected to mention his Kerry connection.

No fooling?

Ginsburg should've waited another day or two to resign so that he could get in some more licks at these Dhimicratic craphounds for abusing the campaign finance laws in far more egregious ways than the GOP are supposed to be doing. But will you see any questions about Bob Bauer's ties to the DNC and the Kerry campaign, as well as to ACT asked by Big Media? Only on the back pages, if there.

The Democratic Party's hypocrisy on this issue of 527 advocacy groups is truly astonishing. But if their defenders on the evening news aren't going to ask the questions, the average voter will only know that those evil Republicans must be doing something bad. Ridiculous.

Out of Control
Oh, man! I'm watching Stephanie Cutter on FNC and she's just freaking the fuck out. I mean, the Kerry-Edwards campaign is just amateur hour.

Listen up, little girl: you can throw red herrings out all day long, but it's not going to fool anybody who actually knows the facts. Your boss has been using the 527s like the $63 million whores they are for months on end. In fact, this month, he had hoped to not have to spend any of his own ad-buy money at all. Why? Because he wanted all of these Totally Unaffiliated 527 Groups Who Have Never Worked at All with the Kerry Campaign to do all of the dirty work for him. And now that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have bought some time in a few states, your people are losing their fucking minds. It's an absolute joke. You people are utter fucking hypocrites, hardly worth wasting the time on to note the very obvious fact that your friends have been slandering the President for months with impunity. Exactly as John Kerry had instructed them to, whether he ever put a pen to paper or a phone to his ear to do so.

Just get the fuck out of here. You're embarrassing. And tell Dean to fuck off, too. He thinks Bush has broken some finance law ---committed some felony!--- because there are actual Republicans whom the President knows also working with the SBVT? Who would've guessed? Ha, ha, ha!!!

"I wish you good luck...up to a point."
So after Bob Dole put a boot in the ass of Lurch's candidacy, the Most Liberal Member of the United States Senate gave Dole a call (with my emphasis):

"He said he was very disappointed, we'd been friends. I said John, we're still friends, but [the Swiftvets] have First Amendment rights, just as your people have First Amendment rights.

Dole told Kerry, "I'm not trying to stir anything up, but I don't believe every one of these people who have talked about what happened are Republican liars.

"And very frankly, Bush is my guy, and I'm tired of people on your side calling him everything from a coward to a traitor to everything - a deserter."

Dole said he urged Kerry, "Why don't you call George Bush today and say, 'Mr. President, let's stop all this stuff about the National Guard and Vietnam - and let's talk about the issues."

Dole said Kerry responded, "I haven't spent one dime attacking President Bush."

Ha, ha, ha!!! Is he fucking serious?

Entering the Lists
Incredibly, the cowards at Indymedia have published online the personal information of some 1,600 delegates to next week's Republican National Convention. Here's their rationale (with my emphases):

As a small contribution to the anti-RNC efforts, today we are releasing a list of delegates to the 2004 Republican National Convention. This list includes the names, address, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of RNC delegates in addition to what hotel each one is staying at during their invasion of New York City.

There's no question that these fucking pricks are doing what they can to intimidate the GOP's delegates and cause them to worry for their own safety. Doubt it? They say that one of their objectives is to:

Supply anti-RNC groups with data on the delegates to use in whatever way they see fit.

We know that these pussies like to go around in packs of four: one to wear a bandana over his face and provoke a cop or some other actual American ---and the other three to memorialize their collective bravery with a camcorder.

How very desperately these sad fucks wish they had been around to take on Mayor Daley's "pigs" when the whole world was watching.

Remember, ladies: every flattened tire or broken window is a hundred votes for the Cowboy from Crawford.

(Hat tip to Ramblings' Journal.)

Clueless Hacks
I was just watching David Gergen and Kathleen Hall Jamieson on NewsHour talk about the "controversial" Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad. It's amazing how clueless these hacks can be. See, mainstream media (translation: the New York Times and ABC/CBS/NBC et al) held back from commenting on the substance of the SBVT claims while cable news and talk radio (translation: FOX and Rush Limbaugh) were busying themselves talking up such "smears." That was the responsible thing to do ---and it paid off because the claims were false. Oh, and the Bush campaign is behind all of it. And it's gonna backfire. Blah, blah, blah.

What's bothering the shills for Big Media is that their monopoly on The Truth is disintegrating. Sales of the major dailies are declining, but not as fast as the viewership of the network evening news broadcasts. That's because there are many other choices now for our information. The blogosphere is now the place where much of my own news consumption begins. And people who follow the news online are often days ahead of those who only hear national news from Peter Jennings and Katie Couric. Call it pre-emptive news-gathering. Call it the ombudsman culture.

John Kerry is getting pounded on his war (and anti-war) record a hundred different ways. The fact ---the fact--- that the New York Times had an embargo on Kerry's now-discredited Christmas in Cambodia bullshit for more than a week doesn't make it any less of a lie. That any of the major media outlets wants to ignore these daily blows against Kerry's credibility only reflects discredit on them and, by extension, their candidate.

But it gets better, folks. Tomorrow, the second SBVT ad officially comes out and is going to do fantastic business. All the Gergens and Jamiesons in the world couldn't stop the devastation being done to Kerry's credibility by his own words. Just don't expect to learn about it from the [respectable] mainstream media.

The Essence of Kerry's Problem
This past weekend, Bob Dole described Kerry's Viet Nam problem as succinctly as it can be:

"One day he's saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting off their ears, cutting off their heads, throwing away his medals or his ribbons[...] The next day he's standing there, 'I want to be president because I'm a Vietnam veteran.'"

On its very face, Kerry's justification for using his wartime experience as the ultimate qualification for his candidacy is absurd. He called the American military a bunch of murderers in Viet Nam and accused his fellow veterans of being war criminals. He did this early and often ---and rode the anti-war sentiment of liberal Massachusetts all the way to the state house and beyond. He even claimed to be a war criminal himself.

So how does it work that a man can denounce and renounce his country's military and his own involvement in a war and yet expect this country to feel comfortable making him its Commander-in-Chief? It is absurd.

Did veterans of America's other wars rise to prominence by such reasoning? I cannot think of any examples. Lincoln, who had served in his state militia during the Black Hawk War as a young man, was opposed to the Mexican-American War, but emerged a decade later as a powerful voice against slavery ---a consistent position, actually, that was ultimately vindicated in the triumph of the Union.

But in the latter half of the Twentieth Century ---in the fight against Communism--- it was our system of democratic capitalism that finally won. Which is why I reject the notion that our sacrifices in Asia were for nought. We preserved Japan and South Korea against Communism. We largely contained Red China and the Soviet Union, and demonstrated to them our commitment to Asia, both economically and militarily. And even where we failed (most importantly in Viet Nam), we permanently subdued and transformed the Communist impulse. America's involvement in Asia has served a great purpose in the projection of our power against Communism, whether one sees that positively or not.

So where does John Kerry figure into that purpose? He has succeeded politically despite our triumph against Communism. Because, in the end, the Most Liberal Member of the United States Senate has not been on the right side of too many important questions of America's foreign policy. He was wrong to have given his support to the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, which he unquestionably did. He was wrong about Communism in Latin America when he attacked Reagan for supporting the Contras. He continues to be wrong about intelligence and military funding.

Kerry's distrust of American power is a dangerous trait to want in a Commander-in-Chief at any time, but especially now. He has obviously made a fetish of "internationalizing" his foreign policy views, but this is just code for French and UN approval, which is a joke.

No one needs this man in power while we face a borderless and psychopathic enemy. He may have gotten over on the liberals in Massachusetts and played to their brahmin sense of superiority to things that come "out of Texas," but his anti-war candidacy is a fraud based on nothing more than opportunism. That was true in 1970 and it's true today.

What the Hell?
Mood:  incredulous
I was just flipping through a 16 year-old copy of Rolling Stone magazine (don't ask) and I come to a pop-up Camel cigarette ad. And it starts playing "Happy Birthday." Is that possible? I don't want to tear it apart, but there's got to be some sort of battery in there, right? And it still works after 16 years? Dang. That's pretty weird.

Getting Serious
The Kerry campaign is getting shrill and desperate. They don't want other veterans who oppose Senator Flipper to have their say. They have put pressure on book stores to pull John O'Neill's book Unfit for Command because they think it is a hoax. They have also tried to intimidate the book's publisher with intimations of a lawsuit. Say, who needs the Patriot Act to crush dissent when you can just lawyer up?

And now they've filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission to get the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth's ads pulled. Maybe it wasn't enough for the DNC to write letters to television stations, urging them not to air the ads. Don't doubt for a moment that the hint of libel was in the air.

The Kerrion are responding to the charges of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth like a bunch of book-burners. But what else do you expect from hypocrites? The Democratic Party are absolutely abusing the 527 loophole in McCain-Feingold. They've got many tens of millions of dollars pumped into shit-shovelers like MoveOn.org and Media Fund ---all with the intent of bashing the President and giving Kerry a free pass.

Judging from Kerry's blustering bullshit from yesterday, it looks like total meltdown is only a few more days away. Enjoy.

(Is that enough linkage for you Slanderous Dickheads Who Know Who You Are?)

It's Good to Be the Birthday Boy
Yesterday was my birthday and I had a great time. Had a fantastic dinner of catfish and shrimp with my Momma, all of my brothers, my sister-in-law, my Auntie Lou, two of her children, and one of their girlfriends. And I made out like a bandit with the loot: a beautiful rug, two very comfortable polo shirts, a copy of the 9/11 Report, a delicious chocolate and raspberry cake, several small portraits of Andrew Jackson, and much love.

Afterwards, I spent a few hours at the home of some dear old friends and received the very precious gift from their baby girl of hearing her say my name, each variation more delightful than the last.

And to top it off, it rained. Very hard. I loved it.

All in all, a memorable day.

Statement of Larry Thurlow, Recipient of the Bronze Star
I don't know where he got it just now, but Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review Online, has published a statement by Larry Thurlow, the only other person besides John Kerry to receive the Bronze Star for actions performed in the aftermath of a mine explosion that damaged Swift Boat No. 3 on the Bay Hap River in early 1969. You need to read the whole thing, but here's the start:

I am convinced that the language used in my citation for a Bronze Star was language taken directly from John Kerry's report which falsely described the action on the Bay Hap River as action that saw small arms fire and automatic weapons fire from both banks of the river.

To this day, I can say without a doubt in my mind, along with other accounts from my shipmates--there was no hostile enemy fire directed at my boat or at any of the five boats operating on the river that day.

I submitted no paperwork for a medal nor did I file an after action report describing the incident. To my knowledge, John Kerry was the only officer who filed a report describing his version of the incidents that occurred on the river that day.

It was not until I had left the Navy--approximately three months after I left the service--that I was notified that I was to receive a citation for my actions on that day.

What's Past Is Prologue
Did John Kerry commit treason in 1971 when he went to Paris and met with delegations from the Viet Cong and the Communist government of North Viet Nam? The young Navy lieutenant appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Commitee on 22 April 1971 and spoke with some authority ---even if it wasn't on his own.

Kerry said Nixon should declare a cease-fire and "accept a coalition regime which would represent all the political forces of the country which is in fact what a representative government is supposed to do and which is in fact what this government here in this country purports to do, and pull the troops out without losing one more American, and still further without losing the South Vietnamese."

Kerry then suggested that Congress should permit a special national referendum on ending the Vietnam War, leading Fulbright to remind Kerry that Congress "cannot directly under our system negotiate a cease-fire or anything of this kind. Under our constitutional system, we can advise the president." Kerry responded that, "I realize that full well as a study of political science. I realize that we cannot negotiate treaties, and I realize that even my visits in Paris, precedents had been set by Senator [Eugene] McCarthy and others, in a sense are on the borderline of private individuals negotiating, et cetera." (Emphases added here and below.)

Even by Kerry's own admission, his meeting with the Communists and the VC was potentially a matter of treason. But, as with much else he did in those years, Kerry has since then dismissed his language and actions as those of a headstrong youth who was caught up in the emotions of the time. But that doesn't wash with me. He condemned the great majority of his fellow veterans in Viet Nam to reputations as drug addicts, rapists, and war criminals. Specifically, Kerry said that the United States was "murdering" 200,000 Vietnamese a year.

Kerry's suggestion before the Senate committee that there be an immediate pullout led to questions about whether such a move would endanger the lives of South Vietnamese allies.

Kerry responded that "this obviously is the most difficult question of all, but I think that at this point the United States is not really in a position to consider the happiness of those people as pertains to the army in our withdrawal." If the United States did not withdraw, Kerry said, then US bombing would continue, and "the war will continue. So what I am saying is that yes, there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America...."

But Kerry, who claimed that he himself was a war criminal, apparently continued on a quest for his own morality after he had come home from Viet Nam. He was a leader of the Viet Nam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), a super-radical outfit full of cranks, impostors, and even would-be assassins.

At a meeting of the VVAW in Kansas City in November 1971, a proposal was made to assassinate several pro-war United States Senators, including John Tower and Strom Thurmond. Kerry denies being there, claiming that he had quit the organization months before. But that simply can't be because he continued to represent the VVAW for at least another year.

Kerry has long been portrayed as not being at the Kansas City, Mo., meeting because Kerry recalled quitting the organization at an acrimonious July 1971 session, four months before the November meeting at which the assassination plot was discussed.

But last week [March 2004], the Kerry campaign seemed to leave open the possibility that he had attended the November session, after historian Gerald Nicosia said he had found an FBI document that he said indicated that Kerry was there. As a result of Nicosia's assertion, Kerry's campaign said in a statement that while Kerry did not remember being at the meeting, "If there are valid FBI surveillance reports from credible sources that place some of those disagreements in Kansas City, we accept that historical footnote in the account of his work to end the difficult and divisive war."

It brings a tear to my eye. But here's what The American Spectator has to say:

The senator likes to bluster about President Bush's supposed failures on homeland security, and perhaps he is worth heeding on that score. After all he, not our hopelessly provincial president, has real-world experience with groups threatening violent action. He should make the most of it. Perhaps a line can be worked into his stump speeches, right after the line about aircraft carriers: "I know something about assassination plots, too."

John Kerry has already made it clear that war is a political tool for him in achieving his ambitions. If we allow him to reach the highest rung of political power, we cannot be sure that he will pass the necessary judgements in the war against Islamofascism. Instead, he will do the "popular" thing to curry favor with "right-thinking" sell-outs. It is too high a risk. He must not be elected.

Diddling Madame Binh
I want to know more about John Kerry's meetings with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese delegations at the Paris Peace Talks in 1971. And so does Judicial Watch, who are now formally requesting an investigation of Kerry's possibly treasonous activities there.

According to publicly available records, Senator Kerry was released from Active Duty and transferred to the Naval Reserve (inactive) on 3 January 1970. On 1 July 1972 he was transferred to the Standby Reserve (inactive). While a commissioned officer in the inactive Naval Reserve, Senator Kerry traveled to Paris, France and met with official delegations from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the Provisional Revolutionary Government (the Viet Cong). The Vietnamese Communists eagerly met Senator Kerry and benefited directly from the obvious propaganda victory (See Exhibit 2, page 126 - 129).

These acts are clear violations of the legal prohibitions on individual citizens negotiating with foreign powers (18 U.S.C. ' 953) and the constitutional prohibition against giving support to our nation's enemies in wartime (Article III, Section 3). Additionally, as a commissioned officer of the Naval Reserve, Senator Kerry was subject to the UCMJ, and likely violated Article 104 ("Aiding the Enemy") through his actions with the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong delegation.

Senator Kerry returned from his private negotiations with the Vietnamese Communists to Washington, DC and held a press conference. At that press event, Senator Kerry advocated a Vietnamese Communist "peace proposal" calling for a U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and payment of war damage reparations to the Communist government. Senator Kerry engaged in this advocacy on behalf of a foreign power with who we were at war while continuing to hold a commission as an officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve.

Yeah, John. You may as well have brought Viet Nam up. It was going to come back on you, anyway.

The Idiocy of Their Opposition, Part Two
And then, right on cue, I catch a few minutes of Howard Dean, an unstable conspiracist, clucking and moaning right along with Chris Matthews, a partisan blowhard, about the "mistake" of withdrawing troops from South Korea. Just what in the fuck are they talking about?

One of the "arguments" advanced by the Bush-hating Left in the months leading up to the War for Iraq was that North Korea presented a bigger threat to us than did Saddam. Therefore, they seemed to say, if Bush was going to go to war, why wasn't he doing so against Kim?

That would be because there is no conventional response to the danger of a nuclearized North Korea. How many different ways can that be emphasized to these fucking morons on the Left? Do they actually think that the approximately 37,000 troops we have in South Korea have ever been considered as part of our response to a potential nuclear missile attack? How would that even work? Yes, when Kim didn't have nuclear capabilities (that is, before the Clinton-Albright crowd gave away the store to this fucking misshapen troll), there was a logic to maintaining our conventional forces there because they could provide a defense against a North Korean onslaught on the ground.

But now? Our men and women in and around the DMZ are little more than cannon fodder. Did the fools on the anti-Bush Left ever stop to consider that our troops would be defenseless against a nuclear attack? Why do they have to be told such an obvious thing? Their counter-proposal of dealing with the North Korean problem instead of Saddam was never any such thing. It was an ignorant objection thrown out for the sake of appearing "serious" about the military threats facing us. The Left could say, "We're the ones who are serious about dealing with real threats, not made-up ones in Iraq that only serve the interests of Halliburton or the Neocon cabal or the Illuminati or blah, blah, blah...."

There are only two possible solutions to the threat of a nuclearized North Korea: diplomacy (which really means bribery on a scale far greater than anything even Clinton and Albright imagined) or a devastating and simultaneous pre-emptive strike against every one of Kim's installations. Neither of these solutions can make any use of our ground forces there.

Why is that not understood? How can our withdrawal of troops from a literally untenable situation be anything but right?

The Idiocy of Their Opposition
There has been such a sharp and outraged reaction to the objections of the Kerry camp to President Bush's call for troop redeployments from Germany and Asia that it should be a wake-up call to the Democratic faithful. What else could Kerry's complaint be but partisanship for its own sake? He and Dick Holbrook and Wesley Clark are absolutely full of shit. They are demonstrating their collective incompetence in dealing with the reality of our present situation.

Courtesy of the Kerry Spot at NRO, read what Gen. P.X. Kelley (Ret.), former commandant of the United States Marine Corps, has to say about this:

"John Kerry's opposition to troop realignment demonstrates a backward looking view that blindly embraces the status quo and ignores the realities of the post-9/11 world. The threat America faces today is fundamentally different than the threats America's military was configured to face during the Cold War. I should know, I was commandant of the Marine Corps during the Cold War.

"Modern military capabilities make force deployment and the projection of power more important than the location of standing armies. The world has changed since the Cold War, and President Bush justifiably recognizes that our Armed Forces must also change if we are to effectively fight and win the War on Terror.

"Senator Kerry's political attack is an insult to the hundreds of people who have been working on this proposal for years."

There are many more responses just like this at the link provided. Go there and scroll down to today's entry at 12:31 PM.

We can't have these people in charge. They know that Bush's decision is the proper one, but want to piss all over it, anyway. Ridiculous.

None Too Swift
The Kerrion do not realize it yet, but their man's war record has been dealt some serious blows. Actually, I think they may know it's true, but are not yet ready to confess.

It wouldn't matter but for the fact that Kerry has made his experience in Viet Nam the core of his qualification to be Commander-in-Chief. (Is that not so?) But he has pursued this line because it is what his party expected. They purposefully sought out a candidate whose military experience could be favorably compared to George W. Bush's more modest record. (How else can Wesley Clark's ridiculous bid be understood?) So the party exploited Kerry and Kerry was willing to exploit the party.

Now, the price of Kerry's nomination ---the kickback to the anti-war Dean crowd--- was to reverse himself on the issue of the War for Iraq. It is this that infuriates me more than any lies about his military experience. (These lies are of interest to me only because they damage the credibility of his predicate qualification.) But the absurd and hypocritical positions Kerry has taken on the strategic importance of a Saddam-free Iraq ---clearly contradicting those he had embraced for the past six or seven years--- are what should concern every one now. That is, he has much to explain from his early political career, but the utter stupidity of his position on Iraq now ---with its tortured objections of "processes" not observed and failures to gain "consensus"--- is intolerable. It is only willful ignorance of his rhetorical support ---often eloquent and far-reaching--- for regime change in Iraq because of the dangers posed by Saddam and his weapons of mass murder that will keep the anti-war Left happy with their nominee.

But I cannot forget the most basic guiding principle of the Democratic Party in 2004. It is the only thing that matters ---and it trumps any and all other ideological concerns: Anybody But Bush. We will see again, as we did in the days of Clinton's impeachment, the Democratic Party bury its ethical misgivings and make its bid for the preservation of the power they need. No holds are barred, no prick of conscience remains unblunted.

Another Lying [War Hero]
Did anyone catch that lying sack of commie shit Tom Harkin call the Vice President a coward? I thought it was extreme. But not to worry. Bitches get slapped when they get out of line.



(Bitch-slapping and graphic courtesy of the InstaPundit.)

Oh, and get some more:

When it comes to lying about his service, Kerry's whoppers about infiltrating Special Ops guys into Cambodia don't hold a candle to what Harkin said, though. Harkin himself claimed to have battled Mig fighters over North Vietnam while a Navy pilot. He was a pilot, but never went to Vietnam.

How did a political party that last held the White House with a man who admitted he dodged the draft and said he loathed the military, who demonstrated against his own country while living overseas, come to be the party that now trumpets more militarism than any other?

A Lie? No, Just Incompetence
As the helpful bloggers at GOP.com noted:

The John Kerry campaign, in an effort to burnish the nominee's image on intelligence matters and spin their way out of his lousy committee attendance record, claimed on its website Monday, "John Kerry served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for 8 years and is the former Vice Chairman of the Committee." Fact is John Kerry has never - ever! - served as vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Turns out, there was a senator named Bob Kerrey from Nebraska who was vice chairman for a while. Kerry's website later pulled the plug on the page, which might be construed as a metaphor for the whole campaign.

It's true. I clicked on the link and all I got told was that I had no rights to visit that page. Sounds suspicious. Like clicking on Joe Wilson's Kerry-funded restorehonesty.com. You get nothing either way.

You know, all Kerry has to do is authorize the intelligence committee to release his attendance records from the executive sessions ---and then we'll know how much of a bum he is on the whole issue of intelligence. As you can see for yourself, Bob Kerrey ---the actual former vice chairman of the SSCI--- had an excellent record of involvement, whereas the Frenchman was probably off somewhere not reading important intelligence reports ---although he's perfectly comfortable accusing others of not doing so, either.

This guy is a hypocrite and a phoney.

Rock Stars
The Cassini orbiter has found two new moons around Saturn. For now, they're just calling them S/2004 S1 and S/2004 S2, but they'll probably find something more romantic later.

However, I do question the timing of this discovery.

Krugman, Pre-Emptor
Although I have misgivings about computer-based voting, it wouldn't occur to me to lay a predicate foundation for a charge of malfeasance by Republicans in Florida and elsewhere in this upcoming election. But that is what Paul Krugman has done in his latest outburst of insinuations. He, like the Democratic Party as a whole, is almost wanting there to be another chance at declaring fraud in Florida. That way, they can feel vindicated in the event that they lose the state again. But Tom Bevan at RealClearPolitics has got Krugman's number, demonstrating that all Krugman is doing is

Sowing seeds of fear, doubt and illegitimacy in advance of a possible Bush victory in Florida.

Too bad for Krugman the facts don't support such lunacy. A recently completed study of the 2002 Florida elections showed that while touch-screen machines produce a higher rate of undervotes than optical-scanning machines, both are dramatically more accurate than the punch card ballots used in 2000 - with paper trail and all:

The report is required of the division following every general election as a result of the 2001 elections reform law passed after the contentious 2000 presidential election.

It concluded that the use of both systems helped reduce the error rate from the 2000 election.

"Overall, the percentage of uncounted ballots decreased from 2.93 percent in the 2000 election presidential election to 0.86 in the 2002 gubernatorial election," the report stated, adding that the error for the now-infamous punch-card machines in 2000 was 3.93 percent.

Well, if the Dhimms can't blame touch-screen voting machines, maybe they can go back to such bullshit charges as black disenfranchisement through police checkpoints.

Chris Matthews: Self-Righteous Defender of Flippers
Chris Matthews, who would probably interrupt a dying man's last words, "interviewed" the spokesmen from the Bush and Kerry campaigns last night on Hardball ---and made a very big deal of a supposed distortion made in a Bush campaign web ad of a response he elicited from John Kerry on 6 January 2004. The original exchange went thusly:

MATTHEWS: Do you think you belong to that category of candidates who more or less are unhappy with this war, the way it's been fought...Are you one of the anti-war candidates?

KERRY: I am -- Yes, in the sense that I don't believe the president took us to war as he should have, yes, absolutely.

Matthews' self-righteous objection to Bush's man, Matt Dowd, was that, in the web ad, only the first three words out of Kerry's pie hole were used ---before it cuts away to the very gay-sounding theme song from the 1960s TV show Flipper.

I noticed this, too, when I watched the ad the other night. But if that's all they got, then they got nothing.

Matthews asked Kerry if he was an anti-war candidate ---and Kerry said YES. That is the operative word, comrades: YES. Now, Kerry can leave all of the lawyerly wiggle room in that enunciation he wants and backfill it with "in the sense that" and blah, blah, blah ---but he answered in the affirmative and what he added to it in qualification does not negate what the answer is in its essence.

So what's the consequence? John Kerry voted to authorize the President's use of our military to enforce the UN resolutions and to provide for our defense against Saddamite Iraq. That's the bottom line.

Never mind the fact that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, does not actually require such an authorization except on political grounds. Never mind that Kerry's vote, as he himself knew when he cast it, was not subject to revision or extension, except rhetorically (which he has certainly since demonstrated). And never mind that in the sequel to that vote, Kerry decided against the $87 billion supplemental as a protest. Seems to me that the time to have lodged a protest would have been on the first vote. Of course, at that point, Kerry was not staring down the barrel of Howard Dean's pop-gun.

In the clearest, most damning way possible ---to a nation of TV-watchers and movie-goers--- this video I'm talking about is unanswerable. Kerry hangs himself over and over in a thoroughly documented slew of TV and print appearances that can leave no doubt that his position on Saddam has changed fundamentally in a very short period of time. And it was prompted by his own political opportunism.

Again, I strongly encourage you to go to KerryOnIraq.com and look at the video yourself.