However, I think that Kerry said quite a few things straight out of the fever swamp. I am curious to see if they stick.

Halliburton, Oil Ministry, Lies about WMD's, nuclear materials from Africa, etc.

I am curious to see how it holds up.

However, Kerry did a credible job, but I don't think he got a knockout blow.

I also think that Jim Lehrer damaged his credibility with his questions. My wife, he does not follow politics nearly as closely as I do, and who was flipping the bird at Kerry, thought that the question were very biased.

Problem with brining in what you hear on the radio to the blog is a lot of times there are no links. And then there is the problem of perhaps mishearing or mistranscribing what was said. So take this for what it is worth, though I am quite sure that I heard this correctly.

I was listening to the Batchelor & Alexander show, which I highly recommend if you can get it in your area. John Batchelor is the host, I have no idea who Alexander is, as Batchelor is the only host I've ever heard. Batchelor is not a fireball of opinion, but gets some extremely interesting guests and is very good at leading a discussion for radio.

One of his regular guests is John Loftus, a guy with some sort of spooky connections, and who I have previously described here as a one-man Debka file. However, he said tonight that the Bush administration has made a decision to increase the pressure on Syria, and that some generals at CENTCOM are now saying out loud that they think that Saddam's WMD went to Syria, and that we are trying to get Assad to pull a Khadafy. I just went wow, because it sounds like something I might have said.

Quoth Ledeen, "Faster, please!

Then why is he going around making himself look orange like Lin Shaye in "There's something about Mary"

(Hat Tip Hog on Ice)

See what I mean? I wish I knew how to photoshop.

Tell me, if you wanted to connect with the common man who spends most of his day in a building, or being burnt brown by the sun, then you would go to the tanning salon and order an orange hue, right? Right?

Tell me again why I should vote for a man who can't even get his tan right for the debate?

Funny stuff!

Anyhow, have you noticed that no one seems to worry about W in the upcoming debate? Why do you suppose that is? I am not worried. Here's why:

Bush will be himself in the debate. Being himself has driven his poll numbers to above 50 percent according to Gallup. Therefore, his only preparation is to properly prepare his message. And in the last four years. Bush has had a ton of practice. He may mangle a syllable here or there, but everyone expects that, and doesn't hold it against him.

Kerry, mean while, has to figure out how to appeal to the torrent of undecideds departing his sinking ship, while holding onto his base. Kerry has to reconcile an impossibly contradicted message, while attacking Bush's message. The underdog here is Kerry. And modern Presidential debates are not really debates, but are instead a sort of dueling press conference.

So Kerry will have to go in, bolster his image, project a strong unambigious message that will appeal to his base and the swing voters (read as impossible) while undermining Bush.

And now he will be sporting an orange tan for everyone to gawk at while he attempts the impossible. And who says politics isn't fun?

A piece about the killing of a Hamas leader in Damascus, apparently by the Israelis. wretchard notes that this is an extraterritorial killing of a terrorist leader by Israel - though this is old for them. Russia has signed up for that, and obviously the US. (All we need is India on the case.)

At any rate, this really bodes ill for terrorists. There will be no sanctuary. Even in rogue states.

And this part is too good not to cut and paste:

She forgot the alternative which Putin may even now be thinking of. 'that there will be peace in the Middle East when every Arab school is as secure as Belslan; and the Kaaba as inviolate as any synagogue in Jersualem.'

Linked on Drudge, an article in Time headlined "You Say Yusuf, I Say Youssouf...
The Cat Stevens incident has its origins in a spelling mistake" The article says this:

According to aviation sources with access to the list, there is no Yusuf Islam on the no-fly registry, though there is a "Youssouf Islam." The incorrect name was added to the register this summer, but because Islam's name is spelled "Yusuf" on his British passport, he was allowed to board a plane in London bound for the U.S.

So the problem wasn't that Cat Stevens donated money to charities that are tied to terrorism, the problem is that we put an incorrect spelling in the database. Of course, if you Google Youssouf Islam, all the results are about Cat Stevens.

So it isn't "an incorrect name," its just a different transliteration. And wretchard at Belmont Club makes an important point about the Cat Stevens incident:

But now men traveling first-class in bespoke business suits know that neither wealth nor fame nor that immigration lawyer's telephone number can keep F-16s from popping out of the dark and escorting their flight to Bangor, Maine, from where the Mexicans might be allowed to continue, but not them. While Mr. Islam is certainly entitled to pursue legal action and may in the end be vindicated, the incident shows more clearly than any other that it's not September 10 any more. America is at war in a way that it never was in Vietnam. This one is for keeps.

Heard Dick Morris on the radio the other day, and he was promoting something he worked on called Fahrenhype 911, a documentary put together to rebut Moore and his movie. One of the things that he said was that Moore gets some mileage about Saudi investment in Harken Energy, the company that a lot of poeple got exercised about regarding a stock sale that Bush made while a director, claiming there was some crime there. There wasn't, of course, but it was certainly good fortune (literally) for Bush, because the proceeds of that sale went to his investment in the Texas Rangers, which did make him wealthy on his own.

But Morris says that the biggest investor in Harken Energy was George Soros - and sure enough, he's right.

Soros is the money behind all of those 527's and who pays Oliver Willis' blog salary, for example. So, the Wikipedia entry says "Ironically, Soros's Harken Energy bailed out Bush in 1986 by buying his ailing oil venture, Spectrum 7."

Or maybe not so ironic. Because all that 527 action is falling flat - and it is causing Kerry to lose.

Imagine the mechanism that it would take to put all that together. The President coopts McCain-Feingold, which forces unions and corporations out of the Democrat soft-money pool, and then Soros (who is the root of Bush's wealth) floods the airwaves with crackpottery to scare off all the undecideds. Those who think that Karl Rove is behind the CBS forgeries just aren't thinking big enough.

Whenever serious journalists get on TV and talk about Dan Rather and CBS and stuff, they are always "mystified" why CBS kept doing things that serious journalism organizations would [EDIT]not[/EDIT] do.

A quote from Ayn, for all you objectivists out there: "Check your premises."

Another way these oldline journalists are failing to get it is they keep trying to frame the CBS controversy in the context of "serious journalism," and can't figure out why it doesn't fit. The blogosphere doesn't suffer from such delusions. The reason why CBS didn't, and still hasn't, acted like a serious journalism organization is because it isn't a serious journalism organization. If you frame the story in the context of "they're really just partisan hacks," then the whole story makes sense. There isn't any mystery at all.

Let me put my 2 cents in on pittspilot's post below. First of all, welcome back. Second of all, the treatment by the Democrats of Allawi is simply shameful. Only 19 of the 49 Senate Democrats bothered to show for the speech, one Democrat, a Senator Dayton (Can't be bothered to look up his state right now), said he wouldn't go and he wouldn't watch it on TV, it was just a put up job for President Bush. But he's got nothing on Kerry. Imagine what effect Kerry's election would have on Allawi. All of his authority would be undone. Good thinking, Mr. We Can't Go it Alone.

I think it is a good thing, though, that we are now, after months of talking about Vietnam, arguing about the WOT and particularly Iraq. We need to have this election as a national referendum on it. Michael Moore thinks that breaks his way. And if it does, so be it, at least we will have honestly debated the issue and made an informed choice.

No longer is Kerry and the Democrat party going to make the claim that they are Bush-lite or Bush-plus on Iraq. They are anti-Bush, pure and simple. So let's decide.

UPDATE: Turns out Dayton is from Minnesota, so the Powerline fellas have the goods on him.

It continually amazes me how low we have sunk in the level of political discourse in this political campaign. It's like a debate between teenagers, who lack maturity. Let me give a specific example:

I often hear how the Administration is "politicizing" the War on Terror. However most of these objections revolve around how the President brings up 9/11 and the War on Terror during this campaign. I have news for these folks. War, is a political act. 9/11 was a political act.

You see, we do not need to politicize the war, because it already is! Don't believe me, or are dealing with someone who doesn't understand this, ask them a simple question; If not politics, how do we deal with all the various aspects of a war, in a Republic such as ours?

Of course we have to talk about this politically. And vigorously. How we conduct the war, what we are going to do next, whether we should stay in it, and who has the best plan are only some among the many things that urgently require discussion.

What Bush has done, and what he plans to do are all on the table. What Kerry plans to do is also on the table. Forget hurt feelings, forget Vietnam, let us concentrate on the pressing task ahead.

However, as in anything, it is possible to carry something too far. Examples? Well today provided the impetus to this post.

Item 1: Teresa Heinz Kerry said that she would not be surprised if UBL shows up next month.

If you are going to level this kind of charge, you need to have proof. You also need to explain how the capture of UBL is a bad thing. And you also need to explain how this type of comment helps the war on terror, because it is abundently clear to me that this comment undermines the war on terror. You see, the context suggests that the only reason that Bush wants to capture UBL is to assure electoral victory. This is different from arguing that the opposition is incompetent. You are arguing that the opposition is corrupt. For that type of charge you need to have more then innuendo.

Item 2: "The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips," said Joe Lockhart, a senior Kerry adviser." What the hell is that? I heard it this morning on Laura Ingraham and almost drove off the side of the road.

First, if you have paid attention to Allawi you would notice a couple of things. One is that Allawi appears to be very independent. He often says and does things that indicate that he is independent of the United States. This is of paramount importance. And in one fell swoop, the Kerry campaign has undermined Allawi badly. Secondly, if Kerry should win, he is going to have to deal with Allawi. Unless Kerry plans to replace Allawi, but then wouldn't Kerry's guy be a puppet?

Secondly, it is disgraceful treatment of the man. I am not completely sold on Allawi yet, but thus far he has impressed me. The man is doing work under circumstances that would try any mortal, and furthermore under grave danger for his life. Allawi faces more danger on a daily basis then either Kerry or Bush ever did, and his future is far less secure then Kerry or Bush's ever was. If this all turns to crap, Kerry retires to Aspen to ski, Bush returns to Crawford, but Allawi is likely to lose his life in a most painful manner, and likely his family will be wiped from the face of the earth as well. The man, with a number of brave others, is carrying Iraq on his back, and for that they should be given a large amount of slack.

I am utterly sickened by the Kerry campaign. The man is a disaster. He would be an unmitigated menace as President, and is one as a Senator. Thank you Mass. we really appreciate the gift.

Update

"You cannot lead the war on terror if you wilt when times are tough," Bush said in front of a flag-draped airport hangar. "You cannot expect the Iraqi people to stand up and do the hard work of democracy if you are pessimistic about their abilities. You cannot expect the Iraqi people to do the hard work if you say that they'd be better off with Saddam Hussein in power.

"What kind of message does it send our troops, who are risking their lives and who see firsthand the mission is hard, but know the mission is critical to our success?"

Still going to be voting for that Libertarian, Grant? We need all the help we can get.

And CA has shown signs of closing. 19 points to eight points.

Not my guy, but good enough. Back in June, I posted that the President should not postpone the nomination of a DCI until after the election. And he didn't, and Goss passed, overwhelmingly.

This is a good thing for the country, and the war effort, that we have a real DCI, not an acting one. And I think that it shows that the President still has good political instincts. Which is good for him.

Where I am this week.

Still kinda lagging in the bloggage, I couldn't keep up with the fire around the CBS memos. And now, after the storm, quiet.

Well, not entirely. Seems that John Kerry is now saying that Bush will reinstate the draft. I said that this issue was coming, though not exactly in this way. Still, as I have documented time and time again, the only people talking about the draft are Democrats. So if Kerry thinks the draft is a bad idea, he needs to talk to his fellow Democrat Senators.

So far, the prediction on CBS is holding out. Of course, not yet a day old, but there you are. I heard what Rather said on a radio broadcast, and he didn't even get Burkett's branch of service right! And, oh yeah, notice how the blogosphere ferreted out Burkett? That's pretty darn impressive, I think, and I had nothing to do with it. At any rate, why isn't anyone birddogging Rather on all that "we were super extra careful in our authentication" stuff, now that he says, well, we just trusted this guy, and so we didn't authenticate it, especially since the White House didn't push back.

So Rather admits he lied in his own defense. He should get fired, or resign. But he'll ride it out.

I don't buy it, not as presented. Novak is not plugged into this administration. He was against a war in Iraq. So I don't believe him on these inside the administration stories.

Though I do expect many troops will be leaving Iraq after the election. But they'll be headed for Syria or Iran.

Flipping through the pages of a newspaper will never be replaced by internet browsing, I think. For one, it is easier to sit at the kitchen table with your coffee with a paper. And web browsing is too random access - you can hit the articles you want without seeing anything else - which can be bad. That is one downside to the use of blogs as news services, since they focus exclusively on what is available online.

For example, this story - a column, really - I would have missed had I not flipped the pages in the post over coffee this morning. A column by Elizabeth Wilner, a political director for NBC News, entitled "Hey, Pal, What Happened to Your Gloves?"

Ms. Wilner is peddling the line that Democrats aren't mean enough to play ball with the Republicans, and that's why Kerry is getting his clock cleaned. (Evidently, she must have gotten called by Bill Burkett, too!) To support this theory, she includes this:

And throughout August, the Democrats' roughest month to date, Kerry advisers insisted that taking the high road amid attacks on Kerry's Vietnam service by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was the way to go. They referred to polling and focus group data showing that negativity turns voters off. Meanwhile, several Democratic consultants not working for the Kerry campaign cringed in frustration as their own experience and polling data told them the charges were resonating.

The Bush campaign doesn't go into a defensive crouch. When attacked, it does a quick two-step, moving quickly from defense to offense so the coverage of their reaction includes an immediate and even preemptive strike against the credibility of the source -- be it "60 Minutes" or the new Kitty Kelley book on the Bush family that began to make the pre-publication publicity rounds last week.

What Ms. Wilner and other Democrats (come on, what are the odds she's a Republican?) is apparently blind to is that the story lines are not equivalent. Even if you find the Swift Boat ads distasteful, you have to admit that they have forced the Kerry campaign to retract 2 of Kerry's hero stories: being in Cambodia, Christmas, 1968, and that his first Purple Heart was the result of an injury caused by himself, not enemy fire. The 60 Minutes allegations are based on forgeries (Ms. Wilner might watch her own network, or read the paper her column is in, if she is in any doubt.), and the Kitty Kelly stuff is just ludicrous. This isn't a question of whether each side deals with filthy lies differently - it is that one side is dealing with filthy lies, and the other is trying to duck filthy truths.

This blindness on the part of Democrats is leading them down to disaster. The problem isn't the charges that the Swift Boats have levelled, the problem is that Kerry keeps talking about Vietnam. The problem isn't that Bush has legions of Republican operatives giving him stand-off protection from the Killian memos, the problem is that the memos are laughably bad forgeries.

If there is any question over whether the Democrats are mean enough to be in the race, check out the post I linked to at Ace's, or this one at Allah's and just keep scrolling down.

A couple more fearless predictions - they don't cost nothing, why not?

1. Dan Rather will not get fired, and CBS will not retract its story on the memos. They are going to take a Bill Clinton "we just have to win" strategy. And like Clinton, it will work. But, again, as with Clinton, the damage is done. There will always be some amount of snickering whenever Rather or CBS News is mentioned.

Nader will pick up in the polls. Deanites who swallowed their pride and anti-war fervor for "electability" are going to feel betrayed as "electability" gets to be more and more an unlikely trait for Kerry. Nader is more politically aligned with the Deanites - the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party," so to speak - so those who compromised their principles to win will return to their principles rather than betray their inner selves and lose.

UPDATE:That was quick! But the prediction still stands, because they appear to be going with the "Fake but Accurate" play. That's not a retraction:

"The editorial story line was still intact, and still is, to this day,'' he said, "and the reporting that was done in it was by a person who has turned in decades of flawless reporting with no challenge to her credibility.''

Not a retraction at all.

Work, school, etc. Still thinking, just not blogging.

However, the economy must be doing much better - I've had 5 people call in the last month to offer me a job, out of the blue.

The first word of the Democrats' new commercial about President Bush is...Vietnam. Seriously, you guys don't get it at all. And Dan Rather is in your commercial. How convenient.

Okay, I'm not like the king (or queen, if you will) of fashion, but listen up. Denim miniskirts with pink Ugg boots?

I would lose that.

So Instapundit links to this column by John Fund. It's about that deal where the former CBS VP says that bloggers are in their PJ's (as I am right now.) Since I hadn't watched it, I only knew the pajamas line. Fund discusses the appearance a little more, and notes this:

He told Fox's Tony Snow that the "60 Minutes" team is "the most careful news organization, certainly on television." He said that Mary Mapes, the producer of the story, was "a crack journalist" who had broken the Abu Ghraib prison abuse story.

Wow, she broke that story? That is some great journlism. Did she sneak into the prison, in a war zone, with a hidden camera? Well, no, not exactly. She was handed the story, on a platter, by David Hackworth.

Frederick turned to his brother-in-law, William Lawson, for help. Both feared the younger Frederick would end up taking the fall for what they considered command lapses. So, Lawson sent an e-mail message in March to Hackworth, who is known for challenging the military establishment.

Within minutes, Lawson got a call back from one of Hackworth's associates. The author and commentator put Lawson in touch with the CBS News program "60 Minutes II" and helped set in motion events that led to the public disclosure and apologies by President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Wow, that's crack journalism indeed!

Instapundit links to a story in PCMagazine where a guy named Edward Mendelson puts up a story purporting to show that the IBM Composer and MS Word are practically indistinguishable. (He writes: "I performed this experiment in typography because I have been interested for years in the history and technology of type, not for any partisan political purposes, except to the degree that the public interest is better served by truth than by falsehoods" - i.e., he's not political, he's just for the truth.)

Anyway, he puts up a piece of a scan from the Composer manual that he got from the internet, then does a Word document of the same text, and lays them next to each other and says, see, you can't tell the difference. Instapundit notes in his post that the images are small, so it is hard to see. Well, they are small, but they are still easy to compare. And we are all empowered to do the exact same thing that Mendelson did. So I fired up Word and started typing. First thing I noticed, while Mendelson writes that he did this "without any adjustments whatsoever to the spacing of the type," he did have to make a couple of adjustments to Word out of the box - he had to turn on full justification and he had to adjust his margin to 3 inches.

And, yes, they look similar side-by-side, but do an LGF-like comparison, overlaying the two, and you see that they are different.

I took the one from the manual, made the text red, changed the transparency, then overlayed and adjusted the size so it matches. And I've doubled the size so you can see the results:

First off, the line to line height is different, but even if they were the same line height (the Composer was supposedly adjustable), the word spacing would still be different.

Mendelson here has pulled the old, look, I'm at a magazine, I represent the truth, believe what I say trick without realizing we'll check him. Even better, the blogosphere is way ahead of this - Shape of Things has done this already. Answer is, it ain't the same.

And I'm not going to be the only one to address this article, either.

I think Mendelson is about to learn about blogs.

UPDATE: LGF already on it.

A couple months ago, my 3 year old spent some time with a 5 year old, and discovered the knock knock joke. Which means we hear lots of knock knock jocks, even months later. However, I was pretty impressed that he began making up his own knock knock jokes. A sample:

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Choo choo train.

Choo choo train who?

Choo choo train...man!

Okay, he's still learning, but it's all in the delivery. Still, as a result, I am not one to think that the "knock knock" joke is a source for cutting edge humor. Until I saw this one over at Protein Wisdom....

Ace may have the goods on who provided the docs to CBS. This is fun.

UPDATE: Holy Schnikies! Ace gots more. The big media have sued Free Republic over and over. CBS just got owned by them.

This post at Powerline Blog compares Dan Rather to a suicide bomber. That sounds kind of extreme, until you read the whole thing. I would hope that it overstates the case, but unfortunately, I don't think it does.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Wretchard compares bloggers and freepers to English longbowmen.

Yes, it was a normal day. Except CBS is exploding.

Want to see a piece of history? Click here and scroll down to post #47. That's the place it was first mentioned on the internet.

Today was the third anniversary of the terrorist attacks. I spent time blogging, hanging out with my son, and my wife. I repaired some patio chairs. I went to the Home Depot.

It was a very normal day. And that is a very good thing.

Just in case anyone is wondering.

Yes, I know it's late, get off my case. I'm about to change into some work close and fix some vinyl patio chairs. But I have babysitting duty this morning.

I used Google Image Search to find "1972 memo". Down at the bottom right hand corner in the results (yours may vary) is a link to a document called bobmemo.jpg. I made a copy of it, you can see it here. (opens in a new window.) It is not a great scan/photo, but it is kind of interesting. This is a typed memo in a radio station from 1972 (I don't have any reason to believe that this is a fake - it is collected on a page of other radio station ephemera.) What is most interesting to me is that it is a fairly sophisticated set of formatting - the type is certainly proportional, there are some complex paragraph formatting details, and in the first block of text, it even looks fully justified. Just guessing, looks like this was typed using an IBM Selectric Composer. But the font doesn't look anything like the Times New Roman.

I just opened Word 2002 and started typing in the CYA memo, like over at LGF. Wow. Just wow. When you type 187th and the autocorrect turns that "th" into a superscript, it is chilling.

Every line break, every space, exactly like the document on the CBS website.

Seriously, these guys are just toast.

I am stunned that CBS is sticking by their story. Stunned. And the defense is just lame. It is certainly possible that Killian phoned his comments to a typesetting house that then printed the memos on a press. That would be a way for that memo to be produced, and if it just happens to look exactly the way that Microsoft Word would if you created the same memo, well, gosh, one heck of a coincidence.

But the point remains that they should have looked askance at something so strangely unlike other documents that have been authenticated from the time.

The CBS woulda shoulda coulda defense can be resolved very easily, as I emailed Jonah the other day:

This can be easily resolved. Show one other memo from the unit from the same timeframe about a different subject (alternatively, another original, not a copy, from Killian's file, since it might have been a personal typewriter or one from his office) with the same typeface.

All the other docs regarding Bush in the AF use plain old typerwriter font.

Ace gots something scary.

In a way, CBS's credulousness and outright partisanship has done a service, here. Had the forger expected any serious questioning and verification, they might have gone the extra mile. Just gone down to a pawn shop and picked up an IBM Selectric. Imagine what the discussion would be today had they done that.

Despite that silver lining, the dark cloud is this - the obvious partisanship of CBS made them manipulable. That's what the "Rove is behind this" conspiracy theory really says. If Karl Rove planted these to discredit the critics, then he had to expect that CBS would take them at face value - even though they were extremely easy to identify as false. He knew that their eagerness to damage the Bush campaign would cause them to ignore all the blatant signs of falsity, and then they would be shown to be partisan hacks rather than an actual news organization. In other words, the conspiracists are just confiming everything we already knew.

On ABC News.

And school. I actually had to do stuff today, so I couldn't keep up with the world on the forged document stuff. But here's part of something I put in Allah's comments:

CBS lapped it up because it was all of the smoking guns. All of the things that have been alleged but never proven, right there in writing! The disobeying of orders, that he didn't go to drill in Alabama, direct reporting of string pulling not just with Bush's knowledge but his insistence.

It was just too good.

And so they ran with it.

And they say bias doesn't matter.

Powerline Blog has a post about the latest stuff on the Bush AWOL story. They point to the CBS News site about it, and a reader notes:

Every single one of the memos to file regarding Bush's failure to attend a physical and meet other requirements is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing (especially in the military), and typewriters used mono-spaced fonts.

The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction high-end word processing systems from Xerox and Wang, and later of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's.

Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang and other systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used mono-spaced fonts. I doubt the TANG had typesetting or high-end 1st generation word processing systems.

I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old. This should be pursued aggressively.

Now, look at one of these "new memos." And look at one of the old ones that has been used in previous stories.

The new docs are forgeries, and CBS News is passing them on uncritically.

P.S. to the hoaxsters - nice try, but if you write a "CYA" memo, you don't put CYA in the subject line.

UPDATE: You can see all those docs used to previously call the President's service into question here. All in typewriter font.

UPDATE II: Here's another document signed by Killian - typewriter font. As are all of the other documents from that unit that have been released.

No, not this one, the first one, December 29, 2002.

World War III

Here's the lineup.

Good guys: US, Israel, Russia, and India.

Bad guys: E