Invidious Comparison

James Taranto

There seems to be an effort afoot to smear John McCain by likening him to John Kerry, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam. This is from MSNBC.com's First Read blog:

The comparisons between McCain's '08 bid and Kerry's in '04 have been unmistakable: Both men, early on, were their party's overwhelming favorites to win the nomination; then they encountered trouble and got overshadowed by other candidates; and then--almost out of nowhere--they locked up the nomination. Now, as McCain today embarks on his "Service to America" tour across the country, there's another comparison between the two men: the emphasis of their military experience. . . .

But biography isn't everything: McCain's military service--including his five years as a POW in Vietnam--is without a doubt one of the central narratives of his life and his political career. It is also something that clearly distinguishes him from both Obama and [Mrs.] Clinton. But as Bill Kristol writes in today's New York Times, you can't win presidential on biography alone. "If voters had simply looked at the biographies of the major-party candidates, they would have chosen George H.W. Bush in 1992, Bob Dole in 1996, Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. Instead, they rejected four veterans who served in wartime (and who also had considerable experience in public life) for Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who had lesser résumés, both civilian and military."

We agree with Kristol: McCain's service in Vietnam is far from sufficient reason to elect him president. But Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean went further, issuing a statement disparaging McCain:

While we honor McCain's military service, the fact is Americans want a real leader who offers real solutions, not a blatant opportunist who doesn't understand the economy and is promising to keep our troops in Iraq for 100 years.

ABC's Jake Tapper notes that Dean sang quite a different tune four years ago:

"The real issue is this," Dean said in March 2004, when endorsing formal rival Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., "Who would you rather have in charge of the defense of the United States of America, a group of people who never served a day overseas in their life, or a guy who served his country honorably and has three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star on the battlefields of Vietnam?"

It almost seems unsporting to call attention to this inconsistency. After all, does anyone think Dean, who himself never joined the service, really believed what he was saying about the importance of military experience back then? Then again, when he and many other Democrats made this argument on Kerry's behalf, they insulted the voters' intelligence. We think they owe the voters an apology.

The description "blatant opportunist" really did fit Kerry in 2004. When he returned from Vietnam, he slandered his fellow veterans as vicious murderers and rapists. Decades later, when he thought it would be to his political advantage, he tried to hype himself as a hero, and then slandered the veterans who called attention to this inconsistency.

By contrast, so far as we know, McCain is uncomplicatedly a war hero, and being a war hero is certainly a point in his favor. Still, we hope he will not follow Kerry's lead and base his whole campaign on his service to the country 40 years ago. We suspect he knows better. And if John McCain opens his convention speech by saluting and saying "reporting for duty," we'll eat our hat.

We have the hat to this day. We have the hat.

Kerry Goes Down with His Swift Boat, Again

RealClearPolitics

Dennis Byrne
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) now has accused Hillary Clinton's campaign of the worst possible--in his mind--evil: "Swiftboating" his choice for president, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL).

Kerry, demonstrating a child-like inability to let go, on Tuesday dragged out the swiftboating analogy in an e-mail responding to what he called "disgusting lies" that "they" are floating that Obama is a secret Muslim and refuses to observe the Pledge of Alliance.

Kerry doesn't say who "they" are, but it's clear, considering the deteriorating civility of the two campaigns that he was referring to the Clinton camp. Kerry equates the "disgusting lies" told about Obama with what happened to him when the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth challenged Kerry's claims, made during his presidential campaign, of bravery and heroism in the Vietnam War.

"As a veteran, it disgusts me that the Swift Boats we [presumably the editorial "we"] loved while we were in uniform on the Mekong Delta have been rendered, in Karl Rove's twisted politics, an ugly verb meaning to lie about someone's character just to win an election," Kerry said in the email, supposedly emailed to 3 million "supporters." (I'm not a supporter, but it also showed up in my email.)

"But as someone who cares about winning this election and changing the country I love, I know it's not enough to complain about a past we can't change when our challenge is to win the future--which is why we must stop the Swiftboating, stop the push-polling, stop the front groups, and stop the email chain smears."

Can we, Sen. Kerry, also stop this lame wallowing in self-pity over the campaign blunder you made? And unlike the anonymous attacks you claim are being made against Obama, these responses to your heroic assertions were made by identified people in the light of day.

Moreover, you brought up your Swift Boat record, not the Swift Boat veterans. You made the unabashed claim that you were some kind of hero. You attacked folks who dared challenge your assertions. You and your ilk were the ones who muddied up the reputations of people who exercised their right to free expression. Your folks coined the term Swiftboating and your ideological bedfellows are the ones who keep it alive. You are the one who continues to engage in a smear of naval veterans who served honorably.

Does Kerry really believe that he can bring up these bogus claims again without response? I was a naval officer at the same time as was Kerry, and when I read his book of his supposed Navy exploits, something immediately struck me as kinky, even before the Swift Boat group was formed. (For example, he asserted that officers in training at the Officer Candidate School in Newport, R.I. were routinely ordered to hit the deck and "do 50." This is bull, and Kerry knows it. No one I knew there ever was subjected to such punishment. Instead, they were issued "red gigs," which, if you gathered enough, cut into your liberty.)

But I wasn't in the Mekong Delta, and in honesty, I have to say that I find credible assertions on both sides. A good idea might have been for Kerry to let it all rest, but he can't stop himself. Witness this recent episode, related here by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., editor in chief of The American Spectator:

Just a few weeks ago Kerry blundered into buffoonery once again. Impatient with unsubstantiated claims that the 2004 Swift Boat advertisements lied about Kerry's hoked-up military record, Boone Pickens, one of the funders of those ads, publicly challenged the critics to demonstrate the ads' inaccuracies. He promised to provide $1 million to anyone who succeeded. Astonishingly, Kerry took the bait. With the consummate presumption that makes him the "comic perpetual motion machine" that he is, Kerry wrote Pickens: "While I am prepared to show they [the Swift Boat Veterans, often his fellow officers] lied on allegation after allegation, you have generously offered to pay one million dollars for just one thing that can be proven false, I am prepared to prove the lie beyond any reasonable doubt." That said -- and only that said -- Kerry asked for his cool million.
Pickens's perfectly reasonable response was to ask for Kerry's proof. As of today, no proof has been tendered by the Massachusetts Braggart. Pickens also cleverly asked for the journal that Kerry allegedly maintained in Vietnam and "Your military record, specifically your service records for the years 1971-1978, and copies of all movies and tapes made during your service." Megalomaniac that he is, Kerry filmed himself in Vietnam. Some of his fellow servicemen thought the films faked injuries and actions....

As retired Marine Corps Major Michael E. McBride wrote in Townhall.com, Kerry "has always had the power to clear up any of the Swiftboater challenges; all he had to do is allow the Navy to distribute unaltered copies of his service record, medical records, and DD214. It is essential that these records come from DOD, so that they cannot be tampered with by Kerry or his supporters. The DOD copies are the true copies of record and the only viable evidence for these maters." McBride, citing Kerry's long reluctance to do, so goes on to write, "it is unlikely that any credible evidence exists to refute the base charges of the Swiftboaters." He concludes, "If any of my ex-squadron mates dumped on me like the Swift boat vets are dumping on Kerry, my records would have been available the next day...."

I suppose it is "divisive" of us to try to rebut any of Kerry's charges, which now are taken as the given truth by the Left. But, again, folks who challenge Kerry's account of his heroics aren't the ones who brought this up. Kerry brings this on by himself, this time in the wearisome belief that this presidential election is about him.

'It Didn't Happen'

James Taranto - OpinionJournal.com

We suppose it was inevitable: Four and a half years after Congress authorized the liberation of Iraq, some observers are comparing the situation there to Vietnam, where America lost a war after its will faltered. It turns out at least one congressman actually served in Vietnam, so he ought to be particularly qualified to help us determine the lessons of that conflict for this one.

Meet John Kerry, junior senator from Massachusetts. Some say he looks French, others call him haughty. But everyone agrees on one thing: He served in Vietnam.

After returning from a tour of duty that lasted an astonishing four months, Kerry also became an antiwar activist. In 1971 Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Vietnamese were a simple people, too simple to care about freedom or oppression:

We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart.

Kerry's side prevailed. In 1973 the U.S. withdrew its troops from Vietnam, and in 1975 Congress, its Democratic majority expanded by the post-Watergate election of 1974, voted to cut off aid to the South Vietnamese government. That year Saigon fell to the communists.

What happened then? Not much, according to Kerry, quoted in the Chicago Tribune:

"We heard that argument over and over again about the bloodbath that would engulf the entire Southeast Asia, and it didn't happen," Kerry said, dismissing the charge out of hand as he argued that the American presence only makes the situation worse every day.

In 2001, California's Orange County Register published an investigation of communist re-education camps in postwar Vietnam:

To corroborate the experiences of refugees now living in Orange County, the Register interviewed dozens of former inmates and their families, both in the United States and Vietnam; analyzed hundreds of pages of documents, including testimony from more than 800 individuals sent to jail; and interviewed Southeast Asian scholars. The review found:

• An estimated 1 million people were imprisoned without formal charges or trials.
  
  
• 165,000 people died in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's re-education camps, according to published academic studies in the United States and Europe.
  
  
• Thousands were abused or tortured: their hands and legs shackled in painful positions for months, their skin slashed by bamboo canes studded with thorns, their veins injected with poisonous chemicals, their spirits broken with stories about relatives being killed.
  
  
• Prisoners were incarcerated for as long as 17 years, according to the U.S. Department of State, with most terms ranging from three to 10 years.
  
  
• At least 150 re-education prisons were built after Saigon fell 26 years ago.
  
  
• One in three South Vietnamese families had a relative in a re-education camp.

According to John Kerry, "it didn't happen."

Things were even worse in Cambodia, as the Christian Science Monitor reported in 2005:

When the Khmer Rouge victoriously entered Phnom Penh 30 years ago, many people greeted the rebels with a cautious optimism, weary from five years of civil war that had torn apart their lives and killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians. . . .

During the nearly four years following that day--April 17, 1975--Cambodia was radically transformed. . . .

Everyday freedoms were abolished. Buddhism and other forms of religious worship were banned. Money, markets, and media disappeared. Travel, public gatherings, and communication were restricted. Contact with the outside world vanished. And the state set out to control what people ate and did each day, whom they married, how they spoke, what they thought, and who would live and die. "To keep you is no gain," the Khmer Rouge warned, "To destroy you is no loss."

In the end, more than 1.7 million of Cambodia's 8 million inhabitants perished from disease, starvation, overwork, or outright execution in a notorious genocide.

But don't worry. According to John Kerry, "it didn't happen."

Last week, as we noted, Kerry's colleague Barack Obama opined that genocide in Iraq would be preferable to America's continued presence there. But John Kerry has shown the way. If genocide, or some lesser horror, does occur in the wake of a U.S. retreat, Obama can simply assert: "It didn't happen."

Prominent Democratic officeholders are willing to deny or countenance crimes against humanity in order to justify a popular political position. Doesn't this shock the conscience of Democrats?

The Ugly American

By Victor Davis Hanson

Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic candidate for president, is at it again with another rude gaffe, this one providing an unintended glimpse of the way many contemporary cosmopolitan elites characterize their homeland when abroad.

In the past, Kerry has said that our soldiers were "terrorizing" Iraqi civilians in their homes. He has also warned that uneducated Americans "get stuck in Iraq" -- a supposedly botched joke. Now, he assures an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the United States is a "sort of international pariah."

Kerry, who appeared on stage in Davos this past weekend with former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, also proclaimed, "When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don't advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy."

Kerry could learn a few simple rules of etiquette that should guide the "message" of all high American officials when abroad:

Tell the Whole Truth Without Posturing or Spinning

Kerry was clearly directing his criticism at the Bush administration, but the Kyoto Protocol, the international climate treaty, was first rejected by the U.S. in 1997. Ten years ago, President Clinton wisely chose not to refer the treaty to the Senate. Even that was not enough for outraged senators, who went ahead anyway to vote 95-0 to oppose any international agreement on climate control like Kyoto in which China, India and other developing countries would remain exempt. Kerry himself cast one of these votes -- an ironic example of what Kerry now calls "duplicity and hypocrisy."

Nor was the United States "irresponsibly slow" in regard to African AIDS relief. In fact, the Bush administration has devoted $4 billion annually to combat AIDS in Africa. That's triple what the Clinton administration budgeted. That generosity deserves praise, not scorn.

Remember we are war.

Kerry's criticisms are hauntingly similar to al-Qaida's own talking points. Both Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have preposterously claimed that America's past inaction on Kyoto was a good excuse for going to war. In various ways, they have long blamed America for the spread of AIDS, and insisted that the United States is an international outlaw. When Kerry makes similar charges, it only enhances the jihadist propaganda, and weakens the United States in a war that is largely to be decided by relative resolve.

Don't single out the United States.

Kerry said nothing publicly critical to former President Khatami about his own theocracy's violation of United Nations non-proliferation accords. He could have lamented Tehran's support for the terrorists of Hezbollah who are undermining democracy in Lebanon. And he might have deplored the infiltration of Iranian jihadists into Iraq.

"Pariah" status is instead given only to Kerry's own homeland. Yet, the United States is currently working with the European Union and the United Nations to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. With NATO, we fight to save Afghan democracy. And we spend blood and treasure alongside an international coalition to offer Iraqis something far better than either dictatorship or theocracy. Some pariah.

Avoid partisanship.

For all his anger at the current administration, Kerry conveniently doesn't tell his audience that the United States Congress voiced overwhelming bipartisan distrust of Kyoto. He forgets that he and other Democrats in the House and Senate, in traditional bipartisan fashion, authorized wars against Afghanistan and Iraqi by large pluralities that are now so controversial.

What then drives John Kerry to say such ugly things?

Kerry must still hurt over his recent loss to the supposedly less sophisticated George Bush. And he and other leftist elites apparently must remind their kindred European counterparts that there are still refined Americans like themselves who are not flag-waving Christians from Texas.

But, mostly, it is intellectual laziness. It is always easier to cite America's flaws to applause than to take the time to explain the nature of its rare morality to catcalls. In truth, the United States has never been richer or more generous. Its military is preeminent, protects vulnerable allies and fights extremism worldwide. Immigrants risk their lives to reach our shores.

But we are in a deep spiritual crisis when a recent candidate for our presidency either cannot, or will not, patiently explain that to the world. Instead, Sen. Kerry, the new ugly American abroad, glibly misleads a global audience that his own America is a "pariah" -- a verdict that is as embarrassing to us as it is stupid for him.

Goldberg: Kerry, Kerry, Quite Contrary

Jonah Goldberg

Well, Sen. John Kerry certainly did his best to offer an October surprise for Republicans at the last minute.

On Monday, Kerry was in California, stumping for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides. At an event at Pasadena City College intended to highlight Democratic education policies, Kerry told students, "You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well." But, he added, "If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

The Internet lit up like a pinball machine. Sen. John McCain called on Kerry to apologize. Shortly thereafter the grand whirligig of the GOP message machine started churning, with denunciatory press releases from the usual suspects. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow asked the press to ask Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jim Webb of Virginia - a veteran and the father of a soldier in Iraq - if he agreed with Kerry's comments.

In response, Kerry issued a splenetic statement: "I'm not going to be lectured by a stuffed-suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium. ... It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country, lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have. ... Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they're afraid to debate real men."

This raises an interesting question: Can a typed diatribe still be spittle-flecked?

Later, Kerry did find a podium in Seattle and more or less read the same statement for the cameras.

Presumably, Kerry doesn't believe that McCain is either a stuffed-suit Republican hack or a cowardly service-slacking liar. Nor should it matter. Either what Kerry said was wrong or it wasn't. Neither his service nor his critics' lack thereof changes the meaning of what Kerry said.

But what did he say? Kerry insists he was making a joke about President Bush, not a joke about students who aren't smart enough to do better than the military. While there's virtually nothing in the text or video of his remarks to lend support for this, save for a wan smile he offered to the mute audience, it's possible that was his intent. After all, Kerry is an awful politician, a human toothache with the charisma of a 19th-century Oxford Latin tutor. One can't rule out the possibility that he simply botched a joke.

If it was a joke, it was a pretty bad one, even for him. First, Bush got better grades than Kerry at Yale. More relevant, if launching the Iraq war is a sign of stupidity and a failure to do one's homework, Kerry should avoid calling attention to the fact that he voted to approve it and defended that vote throughout his 2004 presidential campaign.

But whether or not it was a joke, it certainly sounded like Kerry was talking about the troops, because that's the way Kerry talks about everything. Kerry's a bit like one of those cavemen from the Geico commercials, only he's a throwback to a slightly more recent era: Vietnam. All of his ideas were formed from his experience as an anti-Vietnam crusader. He may have run as a born-again war hero in 2004, but his political career was founded on his activism against a war he repeatedly labeled a crime.

That's why few gave Kerry the benefit of the doubt. The idea that the military is the last refuge for the lumpen-proletariat is a Vietnam-era chestnut that continues to pop up in liberal talking points. It wasn't very accurate during Vietnam, and it's even less so now. A timely study of the demographics of enlistees in our all-volunteer military found that the share of recruits from the poorest American neighborhoods has declined steadily since 1999 and throughout the war. Moreover, "U.S. military enlistees are better educated, wealthier, and more rural on average than their civilian peers."

Kerry thinks it's unfair for Republicans to seize on his comments, and to an extent he's right. He obviously didn't intend to insult America's servicemen and women. But Kerry fails to understand that he -- like so many fossils of his generation in the Democratic Party -- sounds like he's frozen in the past. The Democratic position on Iraq is that it's Vietnam all over again, and the only time Kerry ever seems sure of himself is when he's reprising his anti-Vietnam schtick.

Sure, Republicans are seizing on his comments with the same opportunistic zeal Democrats displayed when they recently tried to paint the GOP as soft on sexual predation on congressional pages. But Kerry -- like much of his party -- seems determined to lend plausibility to such criticisms.

VDH in the Corner: Kerryism

National Review Online

Victor Davis Hanson

Kerry surely must be one of the saddest Democratic liabilities around. Some afterthoughts about his latest gaffe, which is one of those rare glimpses into an entire troubled ideology:

(1) How could John Kerry, born into privilege, and then marrying and divorcing and marrying out of and back into greater inherited wealth, lecture anyone at a city college about the ingredients for success in America? If he were to give personal advice about making it, it would have to be to marry rich women. Nothing he has accomplished as a senator or candidate reveals either much natural intelligence or singular education. Today, Democrats must be wondering why they have embraced an overrated empty suit, and ostracized a real talent like Joe Lieberman.

(2) How could Kerry possibly claim that he was thinking of the uneducated in the context of George Bush, who, after all, went to Harvard and Yale?

(3) Some of the brightest and most educated Americans are not only in the military, but veterans of Iraq. Two of the best educated minds I have met-Col. Bill Hix and Lt. Col. Chris Gibson, both Hoover Security Fellows-were both Iraqi veterans. What is striking about visiting Iraq is the wealth of talent there, from privates to generals. Without being gratuitously cruel, the problem of mediocrity is not in the ranks of the military, but on our university campuses, where half-educated professors and non-serious students killing time are ubiquitous. Personally, I'd wager the intelligence of a Marine Corps private any day over the average D.C. journalist. Every naval officer I met at the USNA, without exception, seemed brighter than John Kerry, whose "brilliance", after all, has managed to offend millions of voters on the eve of a pivotal election. If the Democrats lose, it will be almost painful to watch the recriminations against Kerry fly.

(4) This is not the first, but third, time he has denigrated soldiers in the middle of a war-and there is a systematic theme: John Kerry's assumed superior morality allows him to pass judgment from on high about supposedly lesser folk who become tools of a suspect military: thus we go from limb-loppers and Genghis' hordes to terrorists to dead-beats. The only constant is that the haughtiness is always delivered in the same sanctimonious, self-righteous, and patronizing tone.

(5) The mea culpa that Democrats are blaming the war and not the warriors is laughable after Sens. Durbin, Kennedy, and Kerry have collectively compared American soldiers to Nazis, Pol Pot's killers, Stalinists, terrorists, and Baathists.

(6) The problem is that Kerry is not just a senator, but the most recent presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, and thus in some sense, especially given the diminution of Howard Dean, the megaphone of the entire party.

(7) His pathetic clarification, as he blamed everyone from Tony Snow to Rush Limbaugh, displayed the same Al Gore derangement syndrome, and thus raises a larger question: what is it about George Bush that seems to reduce once sober and experienced liberal pros to infantile ranting?

(8) And why is the supposedly lame Bush so careful in speech, and the self-acclaimed geniuses like a Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, or Howard Dean serially spouting ever more stupidities? For all the Democrats' criticism of George Bush, I can't think of a modern President who has so infrequently put his foot in his public mouth, and, by the same token, can't think of any opposition that on the eve of elections seems to have an almost pathological death wish.

The Democrats should use this occasion to have an autopsy of Kerryism, or this strange new tony liberalism, that has turned noblisse oblige on its head. It used to be that millionaire FDRs and JFKs felt sympathy for those of the lower classes and wished to ensure that the hoi polloi had some shot at the American dream. But today's elite liberals-a Howard Dean, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, George Soros, Ted Turner-love the high life and playact at being leftists simply because they are already insulated from the effects of their own nostrums that always come at someone poorer's expense while providing them some sort of psychological relief from guilt. Poor Harry Truman must be turning over in his grave-from bourbon, cigars, and poker to wind-surfing and L.L. Bean costume of the day says it all.

"He wants to blow 2006, too"

Kerry Belittles U.S. Troops



For weeks, Republicans on the campaign trail have been looking for something — anything — to talk about other than the record of the Republican Congress and the way the Bush administration has conducted the war in Iraq.

Monday, they got their wish. While stumping for local Democrats in California, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., addressed students at Pasadena City College and made a comment about education and the war in Iraq that lent itself to much controversy.

"You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq," he said.

It was a rhetorical gift for the embattled Republican Party which is eager to run against Kerry again. The White House unusually notified the media ahead of time that the president would address the issue in remarks at today's campaign rally in Georgia.

After Kerry's remarks were mentioned on the Web sites of local newspapers, including the Whittier Daily News, the video popped up on YouTube and conservative blogs like Newsbusters.org, and then talk radio seized on them.

"I believe Sen. Kerry owes an apology to many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country's call," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., campaigning in Indiana.

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said, "It tells us what John Kerry himself and the Democratic Party think about the troops and the U.S. military."

By the time Kerry got to a microphone in Seattle this afternoon to explain what he called a botched joke about the president, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans, had already heard about this new issue and Republican candidates were talking about it.

What's unclear is if Kerry's comments will help rally Republican voters or help their party portray Democrats as against the troops to score victories next Tuesday. A Democratic congressman told ABC News, Tuesday, "I guess Kerry wasn't content blowing 2004, now he wants to blow 2006, too."

By the way -- that's the embattled Phil Angelides looking uncomfortable for a split-second at the end of the clip. He knew Kerry blew it right away. . .

VDH: Why the Democrats Won't Win

RealClearPolitics

By Victor Davis Hanson

Will President Bush's current unpopularity translate into a Democratic recapture of either the House or Senate this fall - or a victory in the 2008 presidential election?

Probably not.

Despite widespread unhappiness with the Republicans, it is hard to envision a majority party run by Howard Dean, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Why?

All sorts of apparent and not-so-apparent reasons. First, recent events and trends have complicated Democrats' talking points about George W. Bush's purported failings.

The so-called "jobless" recovery has seen low unemployment rates comparable to the Clinton boom years.

Last September, many people blamed what they viewed as a stingy federal government for the chaos following Hurricane Katrina. But now we learn individuals' fraudulent claims and spending accounted for $1.4 billion in federal largess. Too much was apparently thrown around from big government too generously, rather than too little, too slowly.

Karl Rove was supposedly going to be "frog-marched" out of the White House in cuffs for a role in outing CIA agent Valerie Plame. Instead, the special prosecutor recently found no evidence that he was involved in any wrongdoing.

And then there's Iraq. The recent killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the establishment of a complete Iraqi democratic Cabinet will not ensure a quick victory, as we see from the recent slaughter of American captive soldiers. But both events still weaken the liberal clamor that the American effort at birthing democracy is doomed in Iraq. Calling for a deadline to leave, as Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Ma., advocate, is not so compelling when the current policy is based on training the growing Iraqi security forces so that American troops can come home as soon as possible.

Thus, looking ahead to the elections, there is little that the Democrats will be able to capitalize on.

Take the budget deficit. Total federal annual revenues have increased despite, or because of, the tax cuts. Yet at the same time budget expenditures in the first Bush term grew at a much faster annual rate than during Bill Clinton's administration. So the time-honored remedy for the shortfall calls for cuts and a more conservative budget cruncher, hardly a liberal forte.

Even in an area like illegal immigration where Bush is getting hammered by his own party, the Democrats aren't in good shape. Their similar support for amnesty and guest workers gives them the same Bush negatives on those issues. But they suffer the additional burden of apparent laxity on open borders.

Meanwhile, the Democrats face a more fundamental, existential problem. The addition of China and India to the world capitalist system has brought well over a billion workers into the global marketplace. The planet is now flooded with cheap consumer goods - at precisely the time the U.S. economy keeps creating national wealth at a rapid clip.

The result is that while there may be more inequality than ever before in the no-holds-barred world mart, the middle class and poor in the U.S. have access to "things" - TVs, sound systems, clothes, cars - undreamed of in the past. We are now in the age of MTV and mass conspicuous consumption, not of the grapes of wrath. American class warfare can no longer be defined by the Democratic Party as an elemental need for a 40-hour workweek, unemployment and disability insurance, or Social Security.

Unfortunately, the liberal debate has devolved to why one person has more opportunity for leisure and even nicer things than others do. A sort of envy rather than hunger more often fuels the gripe - and that should require a subtle Democratic acknowledgment that things continue to improve for everyone.

Finally, in the past, savvy Democrats understood the need for a conservative package for such liberal contents. To win the popular vote in presidential races, the formula was to nominate a Southern governor or senator - as in 1964, 1976, 1992, 1996 and 2000 - and then hope either for a Republican scandal such as Watergate or Iran-Contra, or a populist third-party conservative like Ross Perot.

In contrast, recently any time the liberal base got its wish and nominated a Northern progressive - 1968, 1972, 1984, 1988 or 2004 - the party lost the presidency. So far even Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Katrina and Haditha have not equated to past national scandals; nor will there likely be a prairie-fire independent to draw votes away from the Republicans.

Yes, much of the public is grumpy at high gas prices. It does not like the costs in Iraq and continuing budget deficits. And people worry about unchecked illegal immigration and dangers on the horizon, from Iran to North Korea. But when Americans get inside the voting booth, they probably will think the envisioned Democratic remedy is worse than the current perceived Republican disease.

Kerry stops flip-flopping: Abandon Iraq

Editorial Commentary from BostonHerald.com



Call it Sen. John Kerry’s coming out party. At long last Kerry has adopted a coherent position on the war in Iraq - and thrown in his lot with the Howard Dean/bring the troops home now wing of his party.

“It is essential to acknowledge that the war itself was a mistake,” Kerry told some 2,000 liberals assembled for the “Take Back America” conference in Washington, D.C. “It was wrong and I was wrong to vote for that Iraq war resolution.”

Kerry is nothing if not brilliant at telling people what he thinks they want to hear. And if that means pandering to a group so to the left of the mainstream that they would boo and attempt to shout down Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), then so be it.

“I have to just say it: I do not think it is a smart strategy either for the president to continue with his open-ended commitment,” Clinton said, “nor do I think it is smart strategy to set a date certain. I do not agree that that is in the best interest of our troops or our country.”

It was then that many in the crowd chanted, “Bring the troops home, now.”

Yep, they’re now John Kerry’s people. And we truly hope they’ll all be very happy together.

Kerry has launched his back to the future-style campaign, drawing parallels between Vietnam, which he protested after returning from service there, and Iraq.

“And as in Vietnam, we have stayed and fought and died even though it is time for us to go,” Kerry said. “It was right to dissent from a war in 1971 that was wrong and could not be won. And now, in 2006, it is both a right and an obligation for Americans to stand up to a president who is wrong today.”

Kerry spoke those words even as President Bush was looking Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the eye and promising “when America gives its word, America keeps its word.”

Kerry insists he wants a “hard and fast deadline” for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. He is sponsoring a resolution proposing that nearly all of those troops be withdrawn by the end of this year.

Such a resolution would be a betrayal of all this nation has ever stood for, of all our troops have fought and died for. But most of all it would be a clear signal to insurgents, terrorists and the enemies of freedom everywhere that when the going gets tough there will always be an American politician advocating abandonment of this nation’s commitment. This time around it’s John Kerry.

The Truth, John Kerry, and The New York Times

RealClearPolitics

The Truth, John Kerry, and The New York Times

By Thomas Lipscomb

Kate Zernike's story on the front page of the Memorial Day Sunday New York Times, "Kerry Pressing Swift Boat Case Long After Loss," is an unfortunate reminder of the Times's embarrassingly poor coverage of Kerry in the face of the Swift Boat Veterans' for Truth charges in the 2004 election. Now as then, the Times acts as if the issues involved were between Kerry's latest representations of his record and the "unsubstantiated" charges of the Swift Boat group. The Times used the term "unsubstantiated" more than twenty times during its election coverage and continues to make no discernable effort to examine any of the charges in detail.

But there was plenty of evidence in the work of other news organizations that some of the charges, and the Kerry military records themselves, were worth examining seriously. I found numerous problems with Kerry's records on his website in my own reporting for the Chicago Sun-Times: a Silver Star with a V for valor listed that the Navy stated it had never awarded in the history of the US Navy, three separate medal citations with some heavy revisions in Kerry's favor signed by former Navy Secretary John Lehman who denied ever signing them, to name two.

Additionally I found by examining the message traffic with experts that when the Swift Boat Vets charged that Kerry had written the Bay Hap after action report, by which he received his bronze star and the third purple heart that was his ticket out of Vietnam, the evidence showed that it was indeed probably written by Kerry himself. Zernike seems to have totally missed this in her reporting. Zernike is content to refer to Kerry's claim that "original reports pulled from the naval archives contradict the charge that he drafted his own accounts of various incidents," none of which she cites, provides, or analyzes.

Zernike appears to have made no effort to look at any record besides listing Kerry's latest assertions with obligatory quotes from the usual Swiftie suspects to provide "balance." She doesn't appear to be aware of the hilarious inconsistency of the Kerry hat story she recites dutifully as if this was the very first time the hat had appeared in print. As the clips should have shown her, Kerry first pulled the famous hat out of a "secret compartment" for Washington Post reporter Laura Blumenfeld's feature story in 2003. "My good luck hat," Kerry told Blumenfeld, "given to me by a CIA guy." Now he tells Zernike a "special operations team" member gave it to him on a secret "mission that records say was to insert Navy Seals" in February.

Once again Zernike cites a Kerry claim as fact, this time directly conflicting with the Washington Post account on the record. But the facts on this are already on the record and no matter what Kerry "researchers" may come up with they should be addressed by any reporter attempting a review of the dispute. Admiral Roy Hoffman may have been head of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, but he was also in command of all the Swift Boat operations in Vietnam, directly under the commander of all sea operations in Vietnam, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt.

Any tasking for insertions of special operations troops across borders by sea, whether Seals, CIA, Army Special Forces or Vietnamese troops like CIDG had to come through his command. Hoffman stated he was never asked to handle missions for the CIA. "They had their own teams for that. And none of my Coastal Commands ever inserted any troops of this kind into Cambodia. We had some operations we ran north that I am not at liberty to discuss."

Orders for sensitive incursion operations like this don't appear by magic. And an individual boat commander, whether it is Kerry or anyone else, doesn't simply head across a border with a boatful of Seals on his own. Kerry's direct commander at An Thoi, George Elliott, has denied ever being asked to run such a mission out of his base and three of Kerry's PCF 44 crewmen have denied ever being in Cambodia with Kerry.

Tedd Peck, accompanied Kerry's PCF 44 on his PCF 57 from Cam Ranh down to their new assignment at An Thoi where they arrived on December 8, 1968. Peck served there with Kerry until he was wounded and med-evaced out on January 29, 1969. Douglas Brinkley states that "Kerry liked Peck." So what does Peck have to say about secret missions out of An Thoi to Cambodia? "There never was one. And I never saw a Navy Seal at An Thoi the whole time I served there with Kerry"

What does it take to wake up a good reporter that there are some issues here besides one junior lieutenant's latest assertions on the basis, once again, of totally undisclosed records? It isn't simply a matter of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth "lies." The facts recited by Kerry make no military sense, fly in direct opposition to authoritative testimony, and are yet to be backed by any records anyone has seen. And Kerry keeps changing his story.

The mission Kerry described to Laura Blumenfeld was the famous "Christmas in Cambodia" trip since disproved by Kerry's own log. Zernike ledes with "showing the entry in a log he kept from 1969: 'Feb 12: 0800 run to Cambodia'" and swallows it unquestioningly. The only authority that "Kerry log" has ever had is that it has been in the sole possession of John Kerry and carefully kept away from objective research that may or not have disclosed changes or heavy editing over time.

Zernike should remember what happened to historian Douglas Brinkley who accepted Kerry's word in his best-selling TOUR OF DUTY. Kerry told Brinkley personally that he was a "no-show" at a national meeting of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War in Kansas City which voted on a resolution to assassinate six US Senators supporting the Vietnam War in 1971.

One can understand why Brinkley would naturally have assumed that as a sitting US Senator himself, Kerry would have vividly recalled the occasion if he had been there. My reporting and Josh Gerstein's in The New York Sun and Scott Canon's at The Kansas City Star found quite a few witnesses, most of whom were working for Kerry's presidential campaign, who saw Kerry at the meeting and some saw him vote and his presence was confirmed by FBI taps as well. The FBI taps were surfaced by a left wing writer, Gerald Nicosia, for whom Kerry had hosted a book party at his Senate office.

Kerry flatly lied to Brinkley and continued to lie to the press until the story got so strong he finally had a sudden attack of minimal memory recovery. Brinkley had to print a correction, but not before Kerry showed another unattractive side to his approach to historical revisionism. He pressured several of the witnesses who confirmed his presence at Kansas City to change their stories. I reported it, and The New York Times confirmed my story in a front page story by Adam Nagourney and David Halbfinger.

One of those witnesses was a Marine who had been totally disabled in the fighting in Viet Nam and had been a Kerry supporter. When Kerry suddenly discovers a witness who has changed his mind in his favor, the circumstances might merit more than one grain of salt. And all this happened well before the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ever appeared on the scene.

Zernike makes much of the support of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth "backed by Republican donors and consultants," which indeed it was. But she shows no interest in who is backing "the Patriot Project" challenging the Swift Vets claims "formed by Kerry supporters" since February 2005 that is the occasion for her story. She even passes on the following at face value: "Kerry portrays himself as a wary participant in his own defense, insisting in the two-hour interview that he does not want to dwell on the accusations or the mistakes of his 2004 campaign. 'I'm moving on,' he says several times."

That will certainly come as a surprise to anyone reading this story which lays down a lot of unproven statements as fact, unproven and unconfirmed by Kate Zernike, such as: "Naval records and accounts from other sailors contradicted almost every claim they made, and some members of the group who had earlier praised Mr. Kerry's heroism contradicted themselves." Please note this is not a statement of position from a Kerry advocate being quoted. This is a flat statement of fact by Zernike on behalf of "the newspaper of record."


Kerry on Dick Cavitt Show, 1971

Zernike wastes most of her story simply repeating rather than weighing Kerry talking points: She defines John O'Neill as "a former Swift boat commander who was recruited by the Nixon administration to debate Mr. Kerry on "The Dick Cavett Show." That is a pretty dramatic charge by The New York Times. But the extensive record Zernike apparently missed, including the Times's own archives, shows it is totally untrue. If O'Neill was recruited by anyone for the Cavett Show, it was Bruce Kesler, a Marine veteran whose op-ed O'Neill had come across in the Times and whose "Vietnam Veterans for A Just Peace" O'Neill quickly joined.

Kesler nominated O'Neill for the show. In the CSPAN rebroadcast of the original 1971 Cavett debate during the 2004 campaign, Dick Cavett, who had been on the famous Nixon "enemies list," denied the Nixon Administration had anything to do with setting up the debate or who participated. During the election Kesler gave the entire story to Todd Purdum, but nothing appeared in the Times. Kesler also outlined how the debate had come about in a commentary piece in the Augusta Free Press in August of 2004. And the Kesler challenge for Kerry to debate was carried in the June 2, 1971 New York Times.

If The New York Times fails to correct that error, O'Neill could have a pretty good libel action. How can there be "absence of malice" when a great newspaper repeatedly lists claims by eyewitnesses backed by military records as "unsubstantiated," while its reporter ignores published records including its own archive?

In any case, it is time for some tough reporting to evaluate the Kerry's claims as listed in Zernike's article. I will be following up with several other key incidents which appear to be widely at variance with these claims. These will include what appears to be the current state of the evidence about the "skimmer" operation Kerry has decided to put in play again and the greatest newspaper coverup in modern history.

It is time we all got to see a picture of the famous Kerry "lucky hat," rather than another account by the latest star-struck journalist. It is time for Kerry to stop alluding to "records" and start producing them. And it is time media assigned reporters with military experience or the resources to analyze this record and see just who is lying about what.

Thomas Lipscomb is an independent investigative reporter who was nominated for a Pulitzer for his reporting on Kerry during the 2004 elections.

Kerry's Big Secret Revisited

RealClearPolitics

I may have been too quick and too generous in giving John Kerry the benefit of the doubt about the full and complete release of his military records, as reported by the Boston Globe on Tuesday. As Thomas Lipscomb details in today's Chicago Sun-Times (below), some questions and confusion remain.

The exact details will most likely get sorted out in time, but just for the moment let's consider the one aspect of this story that we know for sure: Kerry released his records exclusively to The Boston Globe. This is an odd decision for someone seeking end speculation regarding the whole affair, and it's also a perfect example of why the issue of Kerry's military record continues to plague him.

Without maligning Michael Kranish's motives or his ability as a reporter, it's fair to point out that privately funneling documents through a single source from your hometown paper and then declaring the story "dead" and "over" is hardly the epitome of full public disclosure. John Kerry would never accept this type of standard from his political opponents or this administration. Why he thinks the public should accept it now from him is beyond me.

It's also an issue of fairness and bias in the press. When rumors and questions about George Bush's Texas Air National Guard service were recycled in early 2004, the press reacted like a pack of rabid animals, rushing to file FOIA requests and beating Scott McClellan bloody day after day with demands to see all relevant documents (Meanwhile, John Kerry's campaign took advantage of the media frenzy to send Terry McAuliffe and his minions out to denounce President Bush in public as having been AWOL). The press would have gone into high dudgeon if Bush had given documents to the Washington Times and then told everyone else to go take a hike.

Months later when questions were raised about Kerry's service record there was no media frenzy and no assault on Kerry by the press demanding full disclosure. Instead the press attacked Kerry's accusers, trying to dismiss and discredit the hundreds of veterans who came forward from all walks of life to go on the record with their complaints about Kerry.

The fact the Swift Boat Vets existed at all was the big story of the year (unprecedented in modern political history, I believe), and one that the mainstream press did their best to ignore. Is there any question what the press would have done if a similar group of a hundred (or even ten, for that matter) of George Bush's fellow Guardsmen had come forward to challenge his service, truthfulness and integrity?

Ironically enough, this was all happening right around the time Mary Mapes was phoning the Kerry campaign on behalf of Bill Burkett as part of a deal to get her hands on phony military records to put on air to damage President Bush.

Did Kerry really release Navy records?

Chicago Sun-Times

BY THOMAS H. LIPSCOMB

A front page story in the Boston Globe claimed that: "Senator John F. Kerry, ending at least two years of refusal, has waived privacy restrictions and authorized the release of his full military and medical records." In another Globe story Kerry had promised "The truth in its entirety will come out." But did it?

Kerry's election hopes faltered last summer and fall as accusations of fraudulent and incomplete military records were aired. The fact that Kerry repeatedly refused to sign a single-page military form called the Standard Form 180, that would have released all his military records to the public, was taken as proof he had something to hide.

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth head John O'Neill, who raised many of the charges against Kerry during the campaign, was challenged by Kerry on "Meet the Press" in January. Kerry promised he would sign his Standard Form 180, but he wanted former Swift Boat officer O'Neill to sign as well.

All depends on how it's filled out

O'Neill did sign it and provided copies to the Chicago Sun-Times. According to O'Neill, "The Standard Form 180 could release 'the full military and medical records.' Or it could release just a few. It all depends on how it is filled out and where it was sent."

"There is nothing magic about signing a SF 180," said former Naval Judge Advocate General Mark Sullivan. "It is sort of like your checkbook. You can fill out a check for one dollar or a million. It is the same check form."

"And the Globe story says Kerry sent it to the Navy Personnel Command, which is only a limited storage location. So it is not surprising that the Globe then notes that what they received was largely 'duplication' of records previously released. The Navy Personnel Command primarily stores a subset of service records rather than a person's full military records. There is no doubt there are a lot of after-action records missing from what Kerry has released," said Sullivan.

Kerry's not talking

Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has already found a discrepancy confirmed by the Department of the Navy of "at least a hundred pages" missing from those already disclosed by Kerry.

"If you take a look at my SF 180," O'Neill said, "you will see I have authorized the total release of all my records to anyone requesting to see them. But without seeing how Kerry's SF 180 was filled out, everyone is only guessing about what was released."

So how an SF 180 is filled out is as important as signing it. But no one in the press has yet claimed to have seen a copy of Kerry's SF-180. When asked if she had a copy of Kerry's SF 180, the Globe's Managing Editor Mary Jane Wilkinson said, "I haven't seen it, and I don't know if anyone here has."

Kerry's Senate offices could not provide a copy of the Kerry SF 180 and would not answer inquiries. Is it possible that Kerry filled it out wrong or sent it to the wrong place?

O'Neill made Kerry an offer. "I'll be happy to bring one to Kerry's office and help him fill it out. And then we can take mine and his and deliver them to the right place together to make sure, as Kerry puts it, 'the truth in its entirety will come out.' "

Now that the Boston Globe has in its possession what it claims are Kerry's "full military and medical records," is the Globe ready to make these records available to the public? Wilkinson replied, "It is my understanding that Kerry will release these papers to anyone else now that he has signed the Form 180. The Boston Globe is not going to make available the papers we have received."

Now He's for it Again.

Washington Post

"The Senate gave final passage yesterday to an $82 billion emergency war-spending bill, sending President Bush a measure that will push the cost of the Iraq invasion well past $200 billion," reports the Washington Post. The vote was unanimous: 100-0.

Among the senators supporting the measure were John Kerry and eight others who in October 2003 voted against a similar appropriation of $87 billion:

Barbara Boxer (Calif.)
Robert Byrd (W.Va.)
Tom Harkin (Iowa)
Jim Jeffords (Vt.)
Ted Kennedy (Mass.)
Frank Lautenberg (N.J.)
Pat Leahy (Vt.)
Paul Sarbanes (Md.)

It seems pretty clear that Kerry in particular was engaging in a little political posturing back in 2003, putting his own interest in appealing to his party's far left ahead of his country's interest in winning the wars (in Afghanistan as well as Iraq). Thank goodness his political opportunism was so transparent. Had it not been, it's just possible he would be president today.

Excepted from WSJ's Best of the Web

In other news, Boxer is an idiot, and Kerry flip-flops again.

OpinionJournal

In an apparent effort to impress porcine propagandist Michael Moore, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California joined Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio in objecting to the counting of Ohio's 20 electoral votes for President Bush. The result? The joint session of Congress that certifies the presidential election adjourned for two hours, and the House and Senate each convened separately to debate, then reject, the objection. The tally in the Senate was 74-1, with only batty Boxer voting to sustain it, and as we write, the House vote stands at 263-32, with 135 members not voting.

This didn't happen even in 2000, when senators sensibly decided not to join various far-left House members in objecting to the counting of Florida's votes. Today, it's clear, the Democrats are in such desperate shape that they are resorting to crying that American democracy is illegitimate--a sure sign that they don't expect to win anytime soon.

John Kerry, typically, is trying to have it both ways. He's traveling overseas and so isn't in attendance (what else is new?), but yesterday he sent an e-mail to supporters saying:

Despite widespread reports of irregularities, questionable practices by some election officials and instances of lawful voters being denied the right to vote, our legal teams on the ground have found no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.

But, that does not mean we should abandon our commitment to addressing those problems that happened in Ohio. We must act today to make sure they never happen again.

So according to Kerry, Bush won fair and square, but it was an illegitimate election anyway. This is the "moderate" Democratic position. The extreme position is that Bush "stole" the election by getting three million more votes than Kerry. An outfit called United for Peace and Justice is actually planning an Inauguration Day protest. And if you can't make it to Washington, you can still join in:

UFPJ also encourages everyone to wear a white ribbon on January 20, no matter where you are or what you are doing. In many cultures, white is the traditional color of mourning.

Of course, the joke is on these losers, who apparently are unaware that in our culture, white is the traditional color of surrender.

More nuance and flipflops

David Limbaugh at townhall.com

The Democratic Party keeps agonizing over why it lost the election and how to recover. Let me suggest this: Quit undermining the electoral process in the name of protecting it. And quit exploiting African-American voters by stirring fear in their hearts over fraudulent claims that Republicans want to disenfranchise them.

It's hard to estimate how much damage occurred to our democratic process with the spate of litigation and unsubstantiated allegations of GOP voter fraud in Florida in 2000.

Neither the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights nor the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division found any credible evidence that the GOP harassed or tried to suppress black voters in Florida in 2000. But these findings did not deter disgruntled, race-baiting Democrats from repeating those charges for the next four years.

They did not stop John Edwards from telling "a largely African-American crowd" at a rally in Miami Gardens, "Whatever it is, we know they're going to be up to their old tricks, right, trying to keep people from voting." They did not keep John Kerry from telling African-American church congregations in Florida and Ohio, "Never again will a million African Americans be denied the right to exercise their vote in the United States of America."

On election night, Kerry apparently saw Ohio 2004 as a potential Florida 2000 -- a state whose electoral votes could reverse his defeat -- and so delayed conceding the election until the next day when a challenge seemed farfetched. Nevertheless, his decision to spare America the uncertainty of another protracted series of contests was wise and decent.

When the Green and Libertarian candidates sought a recount, Kerry continued in that posture, saying he wouldn't get involved. But this week, he appears to have changed his mind -- by trying to intervene in their suit to include Delaware County in the recount -- yet says he hasn't. Kerry campaign attorney Daniel Hoffheimer denied Kerry was trying to overturn the Ohio outcome, but said Kerry just wanted the recount to proceed in all counties to ensure that all votes were counted. Is that a vintage Kerry flipflop or merely sophisticated Kerry nuance that is beyond the ability of ordinary mortals to fully understand?

Just for the record, all the votes have been counted. Hoffheimer must mean he wants all the votes recounted. That seems to be the new standard for Republicans these days: They have to win twice.

Hoffheimer admitted that no evidence has been found proving fraud, but turned right around and said, "We know there were a lot of problems in this election. We want people to feel the election was fair."

Do we see a pattern here? Just as in Florida, there is no evidence of fraud, but they're going to insist on an expensive, unwarranted recount anyway, just to make people feel better?

Which people are they talking about? Surely not the Left's black helicopter crowd, who wouldn't be convinced of a legitimate Bush victory if they personally counted all the votes themselves -- the people whose loony "proof" of election fraud is the skewed exit polling results.

Their demagogic mantra, "Every vote must count," is getting old. No, only legal votes should count. And they don't always have to be counted twice.

The Democrats started a very dangerous precedent in Florida, and they're playing with fire again in Ohio. While they profess to be motivated by a desire to restore public confidence in the process, they are going to degrade our system to that of a glorified banana republic if they don't stop these reckless assaults.

It seems, as usual, that Kerry wants it both ways: to promote the recount behind the skirts of the other parties while denying his interest in it. Admittedly, I have no way of knowing for sure whether Kerry is trying to overturn the Bush victory. What I do know is that even if he isn't, his participation in this charade is destructive and he must put an end to it.

Kerry certainly cannot control the Green and Libertarian windmill chasers, but he can take charge of his own campaign. And if he refuses to exhibit the statesmanship to opt out of this disgraceful nonsense, then adults at the helm of his party, if there are any left, should take him to the woodshed and persuade him to cease and desist.

The Democratic Party is at a crossroads. It needs to decide whether it wants to continue to marginalize itself as the party of Michael Moore, or be a constructive force in the future of American politics and governance.

How Kerry whistleblower suffered for truth

Chicago Sun-Times

How Kerry whistleblower suffered for truth
BY MARY LANEY

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

His name is Steve Gardner. He's also known as "The 10th Brother," as in Band of Brothers. He's one of two members of Sen. John Kerry's 12 Vietnam swift boat crew members who refused to stand with Kerry at the Democratic Convention. The other man remained silent.

"They said I had a political agenda. I had no and have no political agenda whatsoever. I saw John Kerry on television saying he was running for the Democratic nomination for president, and I knew I couldn't ever see him as commander in chief -- not after what I saw in Vietnam, not after the lies I heard him tell about what he says he did and what he says others did."

Gardner explains he was sitting at home in Clover, S.C., when he first saw Kerry on television. It was before the primary races. For 35 years, Gardner says, he hadn't talked about his tour of duty in Vietnam. But when he saw Kerry talking about running, he says he got up, called the newspaper in town, called radio stations and "talked to anyone I could about why this man should never be president." Eventually he got a call from Adm. Roy Huffman, who had been in charge of the coastal division in Vietnam, reunited with other swift boat veterans, and the rest is, as they say, history.

Gardner's story is one that bears telling. He volunteered for the Navy, enlisting on his 18th birthday in February 1966. After training, he was shipped to Vietnam and served for two years as a gunner in the swift boat division. His superior, for four months, was none other than Lt. j.g. John F. Kerry.

"I had confrontations with him there. He nearly got us rammed by the VC one night because he wasn't watching the helm. I heard the motor coming close, turned on the spotlight, and the boat was only 90 feet away, coming fast. The VC was aiming an AK47 at us. I shot him out of the boat. We pulled a woman and a baby off the boat. Kerry wrote it up that we captured two VC and killed four more on the beach. None of that was true. The only thing true on Kerry's report was the date. The woman was catatonic and wouldn't call her baby VC and there were no VC on the beach. If we had seen that report before Kerry sent it up the chain of command, he would have been court-martialed and never allowed to run for office. And that's just the San Pan incident. There was much more. He is a self-aggrandizing bold-faced liar. I believe he caused the extension of that war."

Gardner told this story and others to radio stations and he wrote a piece for the local paper. Then, he says, he received a phone call from John Hurley, the veterans organizer for Kerry's campaign. Hurley, Gardner says, asked him to come out for Kerry. He told Hurley to leave him alone and that he'd never be for Kerry. It was then Gardner says, he was threatened with, "You better watch your step. We can look into your finances."

Next, Gardner said he received a call from Douglas Brinkley, the author of Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War. Brinkley told Gardner he was calling only to "fact check" the book -- which was already in print. "I told him that the guy in the book is not the same guy I served with. I told him Kerry was a coward. He would patrol the middle of the river. The canals were dangerous. He wouldn't go there unless he had another boat pushing him."

Days later, Brinkley called again, warning Gardner to expect some calls. It seems Brinkley had used the "fact checking" conversation to write an inflammatory article about Gardner for Time.com. The article, implying that Gardner was politically motivated, appeared under the headline "The 10th Brother."

Twenty-four hours later, Gardner got an e-mail from his company, Millennium Information Services, informing him that his services would no longer be necessary. He was laid off in an e-mail -- by the same man who only days before had congratulated him for his exemplary work in a territory which covered North and South Carolina. The e-mail stated that his position was being eliminated. Since then, he's seen the company advertising for his old position. Gardner doesn't have the money to sue to get the job back.

"I'm broke. I've been hurt every way I can be hurt. I have no money in the bank but am doing little bits here and there to pay the bills," he said.

All the millions of dollars raised by Gardner and his fellow Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and all the proceeds from John O'Neill's book, Unfit for Command, go to families of veterans, POWs and MIAs.

And, even though Gardner is broke and jobless for speaking out, the husband and father of three says he'd do it all over again. He says it wasn't for politics. It was for America.

Instead of 'No War for oil,' Kerry should have touted 'No Food for Oil.'

New York Press:

Excerpted from PLEDGING THEIR TIME
A few liberal journalists finally wake up.
By Russ Smith

"... In contrast, the American Prospect's executive editor, Michael Tomasky, is still in denial. The former New York magazine columnist (where his intelligent commentary is missed) took the opportunity on Nov. 22 to complain about the admittedly aggressive recent actions of the GOP-controlled Congress. One can agree that Tom DeLay's recent maneuver to protect himself if he's indicted is sleazy, but if in fact the Texan faces criminal charges, he'll be moved out of the Majority Leader's chair in a flash. Tomasky argues '[N]o Congressional party has governed like this in modern American history, because today's Republicans are less interested in the will of the people than in awarding their large contributors and pursuing their ideological crusades.'

Lay off the sour grapes, Mike. No one was forced to vote for congressional Republicans earlier this month, and if the 'ideological crusades' are unpopular, many GOP leaders will be sent packing in 2006, even those in safe gerrymandered districts. Tomasky was further annoyed that 'not a single Republican bothered to show up on the Senate floor during the floor speeches bidding adieu to Tom Daschle, who gave a quarter-century of his life to the body.' So what? Daschle was a divisive Democratic leader and I'm sure he got plenty of bear hugs from his real friends, and probably would've been ticked off if his opponents shed crocodile tears for the evening news on the occasion of his departure.

In retrospect, John Kerry could have picked off hundreds of thousands of votes—maybe in Ohio!—from lukewarm Bush supporters if he'd demanded, perhaps at his Boston convention, that Kofi Annan resign as secretary general of the United Nations. It's not a hard case to make, given the corruption Annan has shoved under the Persian rug in his well-appointed digs, but Kerry, afraid of alienating the world community, kept mum. So did Bush, for that matter, but he already had the upper hand on foreign policy. A smart Kerry adviser would've counseled the candidate to angrily tell his far-left supporters to leave the "No Blood for Oil!" posters at home and replace them with the words "No Food for Oil."

The Wall Street Journal's Claudia Rosett has been dogged on this issue, calling the scandal (Nov. 17) "the biggest fraud in the history of humanitarian relief," and it's only now that attention is being paid to the hearings led by GOP Sen. Norm Coleman and Rep. Henry Hyde, that will likely, even at a glacial pace, cause Annan to retire in disgrace before his term is up. His departure can't come too soon: As the Chicago Tribune editorialized on Nov. 21, Annan was quick to call the U.S. invasion of Iraq "illegal," and condemn the assault on Fallujah, but on the subject of Saddam Hussein funneling billions of dollars intended for humanitarian aid but instead diverted to his military and construction of palaces, the U.N. leader, who increasingly makes Al Sharpton look virtuous, looked the other way.

Kerry's post-election balance sheet is ticking off the DNC in a big way

Gotta love all the internal squabbling in the Democratic Party these days. . .

My Way News

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

Some said he will be pressured to give the money to Democratic campaign committees rather than save it for a potential White House bid in 2008.

"Democrats are questioning why he sat on so much money that could have helped him defeat George Bush or helped down-ballot races, many of which could have gone our way with a few more million dollars," said Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 presidential race.

Brazile is a member of the 400-plus member Democratic National Committee, which meets early next year to pick a new party chairman. One high-ranking member of the DNC, speaking on condition of anonymity, said word of Kerry's nest egg has stirred anger on the committee and could hurt his chances of putting an ally in the chairmanship.

Congressional Democrats and labor leaders also privately questioned Kerry's motives. One said he would personally ask the Massachusetts senator to donate some of the money to the Democratic House and Senate campaign committees.

Democrats lost seats in both the House and Senate on Nov. 2, setbacks compounded by the multimillion-dollar debts they incurred in the process.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee borrowed $10 million in the final days of a campaign in which it spent heavily in Texas, where four veteran lawmakers wound up losing their seats. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee borrowed a smaller amount, more than $3 million according to officials. Even so, Democrats lost four Senate seats, and will have 44 seats when the new Congress convenes, fewer than at any time since 1930.

Three former Kerry campaign aides, also demanding anonymity out of concerns about alienating their former boss, said they were surprised and disappointed to learn that he left so much money in the bank.

Kerry had roughly $45 million left in his primary campaign fund as of mid-October, according to his Federal Election Commission report, and could use that as seed money for another presidential bid.

His final report is not due until next month, but officials close to Kerry said he has $15 million to $17 million in that account, with no outstanding debts, after giving the DNC about $23 million and state parties about $9 million since the mid-October report.

In addition, the report showed that Kerry had about $7 million on hand in a legal and accounting compliance fund that he could use for legal expenses in a 2008 campaign. Officials said he raised several million more for that account since the filing.

Last summer, Kerry donated $3 million each to the House and Senate campaign committees and $2 million to the Democratic Governors Association.

While Kerry has likely given more money to state committees than any other nominee, no other Democrat has raised as much as he did. And second-guessing Democrats said Wednesday they couldn't recall a candidate leaving so much money on the table after a campaign.

"He's going to have to give some of it up for 2005 and beyond," Brazile said. "The party will demand it."

Wah.

The unfortunate suicide of the young man was likely caused more by "girlfriend problems" rather than a Kerry loss. Chalking it up to a Kerry loss is akin to ambulance-chasing by this Schooler quack. . .

BocaNews.com

Kerry supporters seek therapy in South Florida
Boca Raton trauma specialist has treated 15 patients

More than a dozen traumatized John Kerry supporters have sought and received therapy from a licensed Florida psychologist since their candidate lost to President Bush, the Boca Raton News learned Monday.

Boca Raton trauma specialist Douglas Schooler said he has treated 15 clients and friends with “intense hypnotherapy” since the Democratic nominee conceded last Wednesday.

“I had one friend tell me he’s never been so depressed and angry in his life,” Schooler said. “I observed patients threatening to leave the country or staring listlessly into space. They were emotionally paralyzed, shocked and devastated.”

Schooler’s disclosure comes after the weekend discovery of a Kerry volunteer’s corpse at Ground Zero in New York City. Georgia resident Andrew Veal, 25, reportedly killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head due to Kerry’s loss and a girlfriend problem.

Some mental health professionals in South Florida said Monday they have already developed a new category for the Kerry-related stress reactions. Because Palm Beach County voted heavily for Kerry, the therapists said, many residents hurt themselves by so anxiously expecting the Massachusetts senator to win – especially those who maintained unrealistic recount hopes after their candidate’s concession.

“We’re calling it ‘post-election selection trauma’ and we’re working to develop a counseling program for it,” said Rob Gordon, the Boca-based executive director of the American Health Association. “It’s like post-traumatic stress syndrome, but it’s a short-term shock rather than a childhood trauma.”

Gordon, the first American Red Cross psychotherapist sent to Ground Zero after the 9/11 terror attacks, said therapists’ main concern is to prevent the recurrence of Kerry-related suicides like the one in New York City.

“There are definitely people depressed by John Kerry’s loss, and this can easily lead to suicides like the one we saw up in New York this weekend,” Gordon said. “Luckily, it can be treated if people seek help. We’re urging people to call us immediately if they feel depressed or know anyone who is seriously stressed out.”

Also in Boca, at least one counseling center and an emotional support group were preparing for an influx of Kerry supporters at their first post-election meetings today.

“We’ll let the Kerry voters talk about it and let off some steam, and by listening to other people’s stories, we’ll help them refocus and surrender to the things in their life which they can’t possibly change,” said a spokeswoman for Emotions Anonymous, a recovery group meeting tonight at Glades Presbyterian Church.

“We’re referring people with election-related stress to the Democratic National Committee,” said Karen Jacobs of the Center for Group Counseling. “We’ll do what we can for anyone who shows up for our support group programs this week, but we haven’t implemented a specific program for Kerry-related trauma.”

Schooler, practicing in Boca since 1984, said he treated his 15 patients last week with hypnosis-based rapid response trauma therapy. This week, he is charging a sliding fee to non-clients who feel they need the one-time “election therapy” session. South Floridians can contact him at 561-395-3033.

“A lot of Kerry voters don’t know what to do with their anger, because there was no recount, so they’ve kept it bottled up,” said Schooler, who also is a certified sex therapist. “I help them transform the anger into more positive emotions.”

Asked to describe symptoms of the post-election trauma, Schooler said, “They include feelings of extreme anger, despair, hopelessness, powerlessness, a failure to function behaviorally, a sense of disillusionment, of not wanting to vote anymore – that sort of thing. We’re talking about a deep, unhealthy personal suffering that can best be remedied by intensive short-term therapy.”

Bush Wins Race As Kerry Concedes

Despite John Edwards weak pledge to bolster rabid, unbelieving democrat faithfuls last night at 2:00 a.m., John Kerry has done the right thing and ended the possibility of dragging the nation through another divisive, agonizing battle for the presidency.

Yahoo! News


Our Commander-in-Chief

WASHINGTON - President Bush won a second term from a divided and anxious nation, his promise of steady, strong wartime leadership trumping John Kerry's fresh-start approach to Iraq and joblessness. After a long, tense night of vote counting, the Democrat called Bush Wednesday to concede Ohio and the presidency, The Associated Press learned.

Kerry ended his quest, concluding one of the most expensive and bitterly contested races on record, with a call to the president shortly after 11 a.m. EST, according to two officials familiar with the conversation.

The victory gave Bush four more years to pursue the war on terror and a conservative, tax-cutting agenda — and probably the opportunity to name one or more justices to an aging Supreme Court.

He also will preside over expanded Republican majorities in Congress.

"Congratulations, Mr. President," Kerry said in the conversation described by sources as lasting less than five minutes. One of the sources was Republican, the other a Democrat.

The Democratic source said Bush called Kerry a worthy, tough and honorable opponent. Kerry told Bush the country was too divided, the source said, and Bush agreed. "We really have to do something about it," Kerry said according to the Democratic official.

Kerry placed his call after weighing unattractive options overnight. With Bush holding fast to a six-figure lead in make-or-break Ohio, Kerry could give up or trigger a struggle that would have stirred memories of the bitter recount in Florida that propelled Bush to the White House in 2000.