Kerry Haters: We're Not Fonda John

 
Tell Us What You Really Think

Another one of those sites I came across by checking my referring pages.

John Kerry only ever wears black suits. Black like his wicked heart. If the universe were an episode of Superman, John Kerry would be Lex Luthor, or possibly "Brainiac". Howard Dean would, of course, be Superman. Although Howard would have to stand on top of a midget so that he looked tall enough to actually be Superman. This would be a small problem and a few midgets would probably die during the filming of each episode, but as I said this is just a small problem and the show will go on.

 
The Real Patriot Act

Chris Muir's Day by Day Cartoon nails it.

 
Credit to Kerry for Delinking from Kos? Not Yet!

Perhaps when this page is gone.

 
Good Bumper Snicker

Heh. (Hat-tip to Anti-John Kerry)

 
I'll Have to Insult My Dictionary

Ace has coined a new verb:

*kerry is a new word, meaning to wiggle out of an embarrassing position using "nuance"

"kerrying" is the art of flip flopping indecisively on issues

Of course, it's going to be a tad confusing to say "Kerry kerried on the subject of Iraq's possession of nuclear weapons."

 
The Quotable Kerry

From USA Today (hat tip to Man Without Qualities via Croooowblog)

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, helped found Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He said he respects war protesters: "I've been there. I know how tough it is." He also defended voting last year for a resolution authorizing the president to use force against Iraq. "If you don't believe ... Saddam Hussein is a threat with nuclear weapons, then you shouldn't vote for me," he said.

The comment about him helping found the VVAW is wrong; it was founded well before Kerry finished his service in Vietnam.

 
Another Story I Won't Touch

There have been several stories recently dealing with Kerry's Catholicism, and criticism by church leaders of his political stances on issues like abortion. Not going there, sorry.

 
KILL THIS BLOG!

My weekly request. Please make sure I have to find another hobby come November 3rd!

 
Sorry For Limited Blogging Yesterday

I got caught up in the email-writing campaign to the Daily Kos' advertisers. It was a lot of fun, and I received emails back from two of the three campaigns I complained to, saying that they had pulled their advertising.

As others have said, no doubt we will hear about the new McCarthyism pretty soon.

 
You Might Want to Put Some Ice on That

Yesterday's announcement that the economy had created 308,000 jobs has got to be bad news for John Kerry, whose hopes of getting elected require a stagnant job market and more unrest in Iraq. John Podhoretz suggests it's a Maalox moment:

They might need cases of Zantac and Tagamet also. These medications won't offer a solution to Kerry's electoral problem, but they will provide temporary relief for stomach upset.

Use only as directed. Side effects may include losing in November.

Let's hope!

 
If It's 1971 All Over Again, What Happened to My Hair?

David Limbaugh says John Kerry's stuck in the time warp (it's just a step to the left!).

I think he still harbors an attitude that America is an ugly bully on the world stage, that we have no business acting to protect our security without playing "Mother, may I?" with France, Germany and the United Nations, and that there is little connection between international terrorists and sponsoring states. Sure, just like there was no coordination between communists worldwide during Kerry's antiwar heyday in the seventies.

 
Go Here

Michael Friedman is organizing an e-mail writing campaign that I urge you to join.

Later note: I got an e-mail back from one of the campaigns (Martin Frost) saying that they have severed all ties with the Daily Kos.

Second note: The blogosphere gets results! A second campaign (Joe Donnelly) e-mailed me that they have demanded that their ad be taken down.

 
Kerry Slipping Among Cheeseheads

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that President Bush is leading Nuancy Boy 47%-41% in Wisconsin, a definite battleground state. Gore won Wisconsin by a mere 5,000 votes, so a loss here would be big trouble for Kerry.

In the last Badger Poll, only 18% said they had an unfavorable impression of Kerry. In the new poll, 34% said so. Those saying they had a favorable impression of the Massachusetts senator dropped from 42% to 37%.

 
Poor Little Rich Boy

Kerry didn't exactly come from the wrong side of the tracks according to Jim Geraghty, but he did have it tough:

His upbringing was far from impoverished, but he was constantly surrounded by old money and pureblood Brahmin aristocracy. His family had a 52-foot-sailboat; the other kids had yachts.

 
The Fittest Sick Guy You Ever Saw, Part Deux

The New York Times weighs in with an editorial commending the Botoxicated Brahmin for his elective shoulder surgery. However, it appears that even they smell a rat:

It was only a year ago that Mr. Kerry underwent surgery for the removal of his cancerous prostate gland — he initially delayed telling the public about that operation. His doctors have pronounced Mr. Kerry in excellent health, with no signs of recurring cancer in recent tests. These reassurances are welcome, but they are no substitute for the release of the senator's full medical file. The Kerry campaign has yet to deliver on its promise to make his medical history public.

In true liberal bias fashion, they go on to press for full release of Dick Cheney's medical records as well.

(Later note: What I meant here is that the last paragraph is all about Cheney).

 
Hannity Playing April Fools' Game

Jeez, he comes on and starts saying he won't support Bush anymore and my heart just dropped. Then I realized the date.

 
Yore Cheatin' Heart

Kerry is being accused of violating the campaign finance laws by coordinating his campaign with others. I plan to have a longer post on this later, but here's some reading material for those who can't wait:

Washington Times: Kerry accused of violating campaign law

Washington Post: GOP Complaint Cites Pro-Democratic Groups

Byron York, in The Hill: Like a chump, GOP follows the rules on campaign finance

 
Kerry Soft on Defense, Say Other Democrats

The Washington Post notes Kerry's reported tanking in 17 battleground states (USA Today reports that polling in those states shows Kerry going from a 28-point lead (63%-35%) to a 6-point deficit (51%-45%) since mid-February). I noticed this yesterday, but did not report on it because, to be honest, the 28-point lead did not seem credible, and a mere 6-point deficit for Nuancy Boy is hardly something to cheer about. Call me when he's losing by 17 points.

The Times goes on to note some of the scathing criticism that Kerry received for a proposed $4 billion cut in defense spending and a $1 billion cut in intelligence spending from his fellow Democrats.

Over the next five years, Mr. DeConcini complained, Mr. Kerry's amendment would have cut an additional $5 billion from intelligence activities. In an unmistakable reference to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, [Arizona Democrat] Mr. DeConcini observed, "We no longer seem immune from acts of terrorism in the United States." Arguing against Mr. Kerry's amendment, Mr. DeConcini warned his colleagues: "We have to stay ready. It makes no sense for us to close our eyes to developments around the world which could ultimately save U.S. lives and resources."

 
The Assassination Plot, Part Quinze (Completey Revised)

The Boston Globe becomes the second liberal source to cover the story, and they at least don't bury the lede:

Senator John F. Kerry said through a spokesman this week that he has no recollection of attending a November 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War at which some activists discussed a plot to kill some US senators who backed the war.

However, they do an incredibly poor job of covering the story, attempting to white-out Kerry's involvement, to the point where they show their obvious liberal bias. I would call this a CYA-WeaSeL story--Cover Your Ass, While Sparing the Liberal.

The CYA part is that they provide all the basic nuggets of information on the story. They mention the assassination plot, note that the FBI had records of the meeting, acknowledge that Kerry has waffled on his denial of being present, and include a mention of the Nicosia break-in.

However, they weasel for Kerry in the following ways:

1. They cast doubt on whether he was at the meeting by citing two people who can't remember Kerry at the meeting, and one (Randy Barnes) who suddenly is unsure. They devote four paragraphs to this part of the story (out of 16 paragraphs total). But of course, memory is a tricky thing, especially memory of events that happened 33 years ago. The key fact that places Kerry indisputably at the meeting is that the FBI's contemporaneous surveillance of the meeting says that Kerry was there, and that he resigned at that meeting.

2. Following the Lawrence O'Donnell talking points, they try to characterize the assassination plot as just a goofy idea that was mentioned in passing and was laughed down.

In a telephone interview from his Florida home, Camil confirmed historical reports that he had suggested a vague plot aimed at prowar senators....

In any case, Barnes said, the plot suggested by Camil was never taken seriously and was quickly shouted down.

As I have discussed earlier, this is a complete mischaracterization of events. Gerald Nicosia's book, Home To War makes it clear that this was not some vague plot that was never taken seriously and was quickly shouted down. Camil came to the Kansas City meeting with three proposals. The first two were voted down at the initial meeting place. The VVAW moved their meeting twice before discussing the third proposal, the assassination plot, because they were (rightly) concerned about surveillance. They checked the place they first moved to (a church), and found that it was bugged and so they moved to a third location. At that location "a vote was taken to exclude anyone but regional coordinators and members of the national office". There was good reason for the desire for secrecy; "According to [VVAW member Randy] Barnes, everybody knew the discussion in that hall 'was grounds for criminal indictment of conspiracy.'" Second, the plot was not vague at all; at least three senators were mentioned by name as potential targets (Stennis, Tower and Thurmond), and the proposal was given a name: The Phoenix Plan (or Phoenix Project; Nicosia calls it the former, but most current accounts use the latter). The book also makes it clear that the plan was the subject of heated, nearly violent debate.

3. They completely bury the story of the Nicosia break-in, mentioning it only in the last sentence, and then only as an apparently unrelated incident:

Separately, Nicosia said Sunday that someone had broken into his home and stolen some of the files, and the case is under investigation.

 
Mr Likeability

Larry Elder takes on Mr Ed's friendliness gap:

Kerry reminds me of a story I once read about the San Francisco Giants' slugger Barry Bonds. Mired in a batting slump, Bonds sat in the locker room and complained about his uncharacteristic struggle to get his offense going. I can't put my finger on the problem, said Barry aloud. I'm struggling. Can't buy a hit. Bonds then looked up and noticed a chronically poor-hitting teammate nearby. Bonds turned to him and said something like -- you must feel like this all the time.

 
Ichabod Kerry? Major Frank Kerry?

Hugh Hewitt compares the Botoxicated Brahmin to other famous fictional characters. Somehow he misses Lurch and Herman Munster.

 
Guess Which Kerry Is

Zell Miller:

"It's obvious to me that this country is rapidly dividing itself into two camps - the wimps and the warriors. The ones who want to argue and assess and appease, and the ones who want to carry this fight to our enemies and kill them before they kill us."

Nothing but net!

 
Nuancy Boy Be Chillin'

(Via Right-Wing & Right-Minded) Kerry goes for the hip-hop vote. Be sure to check out the 'fro at the former link.

 
Welcome NPR Fans!

Heh, you never know what you will find by checking your referring pages. (Click on Guest Access)

Note that Rick refers to his "link" but does not actually provide a link, nor does he give the source for his quotation.

I found two sources for the quote he used, the first a blog named Kerry Haters, and the second an organization of "experts" that includes, among others, Charles Krauthammer, Richard Perle, and Al Haig.

What some might call "fair and balanced" sources.

:) Just as fair and balanced as NPR!

 
Maybe Nader Was Wrong

If this is what Lurch is like when he's loosened up a bit, maybe he ought to stick to being uptight.

[Seinfeld Producer Larry] David joked that Kerry should consider him to be vice president because he considers himself "a nincompoop, a chicken and a liar" who could offset President Bush and balance the ticket. David said the only problem is that if something were to happen to Kerry, those qualities "would obviously be disastrous for anyone who was actually the president."

"You are qualified," Kerry responded, "to be a Republican."

You can imagine the delivery.

 
This Sounds a Little Fishy

The Idaho Statesman reports in a dated story that Kerry "would appoint a salmon czar who would answer directly to him and his vice president if he´s elected president."

Sounds like a reel good idea, but you know that Live Shot is likely to flip-flop on the idea of a Piscine Potentate. (Jokes stolen from Lucianne posters).

 
Two Thumbs Up

Here's a good movie about Nuancy Boy's Post-Vietnam career.

 
Pot, Meet Kettle

Ralph Nader, who's clearly one of the least relaxed people out there, thinks Kerry needs to loosen up.

"John Kerry has got to get loose,'' Nader said. ``He cannot allow political consultants to put handcuffs on his mind and his imagination. He's got to stop talking Senate-ese and be the old John Kerry I knew 23 years ago.''

Sounds to me like the old "embrace your liberalism" that Walter Cronkite and Katrina vanden Heuvel suggested.

 
Room with a View

Turns out some of Kerry's Beacon Hill neighbors are planning on renting their pads for the DNC this year.

If this is like 1972 and the skirmishing over the vice presidency continues right onto the convention floor, then you can bet a hot real estate dollar that John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, and Bob Graham are going to be bidding up the price. In politics, like love, proximity matters.The roof deck, by great fortune, overlooks Kerry's house, so picture Edwards, telescope in hand, muttering to himself: "He's picking up his telephone. He's dialing. C'mon, phone, ring. Ring. Darn -- he's talking to someone else."

 
Hire This Guy!

(Via Instapundit) Here's a great Bush Ad, apparently not approved by George W.

 
The One that Got Away

Scrappleface has a classic riff on the FBI's investigation of Kerry.

"This looks like another tragic intelligence failure," said an unnamed aide to the Senate Intelligence Committee. "FBI agents knew Kerry was in the country and they even attended his anti-war speeches, but apparently their reports never reached the highest levels of the agency. He was literally within our grasp and we let him slip through."

 
The Ketchup Connection

Danegerus has a good take.

 
Kerry Preferred Tanking

Glenn (Instapundit) Reynolds shows a graph of the Bush/Kerry shares at the Iowa Electronic Markets.

I think that IEM is generally more accurate than snapshot polls, but this is interesting to me -- despite my deep skepticism regarding Kerry, it doesn't seem to me that it's been an especially good month for Bush. What information are the market participants taking into account that the conventional widom is missing?

I have followed the IEM for quite a long time now. While I find it entertaining and interesting, I'd be the last person to claim it is more accurate than polls. What the IEM reflects, more than anything else, is the conventional wisdom on elections. For example in the week prior to the 2000 election, the IEM showed Bush winning quite easily, as the CW suggested. However, bizarrely, the IEM had chosen to make the winner of their market the winner of the popular vote. So in the very last hours, Gore shares suddenly surged as it became evident that he was going to win that meaningless tally.

This year, the IEM has changed the rules. Instead of winner take all, they will base the payoff on the percentage of the popular vote that each candidate gets. That is, if Bush wins 53%-47%, each share of Bush will earn 53 cents and each share of Kerry will be worth 47 cents. Third party candidates are ignored in the calculation of percentages of the total vote. One important note: Bush shares are linked to a specific candidate; in this case Kerry. If Kerry were to drop out of the race, the Bush/Kerry Shares and the Kerry/Bush shares would both be worthless, and it would be the Bush/Clinton or Bush/Other Democrat shares that would suddenly surge in value.

When Kerry was winning all those primaries and getting gushing coverage, he looked like a winner. What is happening now, IMHO, is that the market is realistically looking at Nuancy Boy and seeing a loser.

 
Hunt's Catsup Gaining Market Share?

This is quite funny.

 
Blog Talk

Just doing some thinking here about the nature of blogging. One thing that I have already found invaluable is my site meter. I enjoy checking it during the day, not just for the charge of seeing the numbers go up (although that is of course, quite thrilling), but also to see where the people are coming from. Today I noticed that I had been linked from Airborne Combat Engineer; my first military link. So I immediately added a section for heroes. But also I clicked on a few of the links he has and of course found more interesting stuff that I will be linking to shortly.

That strikes me as one way to build your blog readership. Find the people who link to you and figure out what they find interesting; chances are strong you will find it interesting.

A second way is to find influential bloggers who allow comments and make some intelligent comments at their sites. Be sure to read what the blogger said, and the linked article before you comment. Be wary of responding to other comments. There are a lot of trolls out there--folks who make provocative comments for the purpose of getting lots of angry replies. Don't respond to them. If you can reply with a link that tends to prove your point or disprove someone else's or furthers the conversation in general, do so.

Nothing drives traffic like original work. I do lots of posts which amount to nothing more than a funny header, the link, and a pull quote. But I don't kid myself that will bring a lot of people to my site for the first time, or keep them coming back. Take the time to figure out something that's being ignored, or brushed over. Last week I picked up the book that started the VVAW assassination plot and synopsized the Kansas City meeting, then mentioned in a couple of comments sections (on-topic!) that I had done so. That really upped my traffic. Yesterday I took a couple hours to summarize the assassination plot story as we know it to date, and bada-bing, I had 50% more visitors.

That brings me to the last point. Specialize! Kerry Haters is a specialized site, but I'm far from the only anti-Kerry site out there. So I focused on the VVAW story, reading and commenting on everthing I could find on that subject. Now to a certain extent I got lucky; the Nicosia burglary moved that story from 33 years ago to today. Roger Simon has been all over the Oil for Food program story; that kind of specialization has gotten him frequent Instapundit mentions. I keep praying that the VVAW story will result in the Instaboom someday.

 
Kerry--Soft on Communism, Squishy on Terror, Tough on Global Warming

Peter Kirsanow gets it right in the National Review.

And while Kerry dismisses the threats of Communism and terrorism as "bogus" or "exaggerated," he sees fit to compare the threat of global warming to the threats of the Cold War. This kind of flippant analysis — from a presidential candidate, no less — would not be lightly tolerated in a society with a long memory.

 
$2.12 is close to $3.00?

Nuancy Boy is promising to reduce gas prices.

Kerry has chosen San Diego, which has the highest gas prices in the country -- $2.12 for a gallon of regular unleaded -- to lay out his proposals.

"I happened to notice that gas is now close to $3 a gallon here in California."

 
A Third Rate Burglary Part Trois

A new suspect has emerged in the burglary of Gerald Nicosia's papers on John Kerry. It's a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy!

"I hadn't gotten a chance to review them all. I am sure there were some things about John Kerry that weren't known," Nicosia said. "These files would also cast a bad light on the ... Republican Party. This surveillance happened under the Nixon White House and Nixon FBI."

Oh, heavens, no! We can't have anything reflecting badly on Richard Nixon!

I also wonder about that little ellipsis. Could it be another Dowdism?

 
Something a Little Lighter

Okay, the assassination story is making me feel just a tad paranoid right now, so I thought I'd switch to a couple of lighter bits.

Here's a good cartoon on Kerry's claim that the White House is engaging in character assassination (oops!) on Dick Clarke.

(Via Best of the Web Today) Croooow Blog turns up interesting information on a vet whom the Kerry campaign trotted out to complain about President Bush's joke about not finding WMD in Iraq. Does anybody on Kerry's team know how to Google?

 
The Assassination Game Part Quators

Did a little googling on the Phoenix Project, and found that the folks over at Free Republic had another tantalizing item from an Armed Forces Radio Network broadcast of January 1973:

In the top of the News, Senator John Stennis underwent a lengthy operation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center after he was shot during a hold up in front of his Washington home today.

The surgery was for the removal of two bullets, one from the Senator’s chest, and one from his left leg.

A hospital spokesman says that Stennis’ condition is listed as stable.

Stennis is one of the three senators mentioned as potential targets in the original Tom Lipscomb article on the assassination plot.

Here's a confirmation of the shooting story from a bio of Stennis at NASA's website.

This story just gets hotter and hotter!

 
The Assassination Game, Part Treize

(Via Captain's Quarters) The Wall Street Journal's John Fund has an excellent piece on the national media's silence on the VVAW assassination plot story. This is a significant article and should ensure that the story gets more coverage. Most of it is an abbreviated version of my long summary below, but he does add one fact that I was not aware of:

But did he resign from the group itself at the November 1971 meeting in Kansas City, or just from its national leadership? Two months after Kansas City he represented VVAW at a speech at Dartmouth College. On Jan. 26, 1972, he was at a Washington protest meeting where the New York Times described him as "a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War."

 
The Assassination Game: The Story So Far

Like many news stories, the VVAW assassination plot has dribbled out a bit at a time, so that the entire picture may be hard to see, just as the subject of a jigsaw puzzle may be difficult to identify until all the pieces are put together. So I thought I'd spend a little time recapping the story as we know it to date.

In 2001, Gerald Nicosia wrote a book entitled Home to War with the subtitle A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement. The movement referred to is the anti-Vietnam War movement. The book is extremely sympathetic to the anti-war cause, which is not surprising in that the author notes that he was seriously considering emigrating to Canada in 1971 in order to dodge the draft, even making a trip to Toronto. How sympathetic? Well, consider that former VVAW member and current presidential aspirant John Kerry hosted a party for the book, and also contributed a blurb that reads as follows:

"Home to War captures America's struggle to heal the wounds of a war too many--particularly those at the highest levels of our government--would have preferred to forget. Gerry Nicosia's important new book ties together the many threads of a difficult period in our history every American should take the time to understand in its totality."--Senator John F. Kerry, recipient of the Silver Star for heroism in Vietnam.

On pages 219-222 of the softcover version of the book (Three Rivers Press, first printing), Nicosia discusses the assassination plot, which I summarized as follows:

The section begins by introducing Scott Camil, the person who proposed the assassination. "...[E]x-Marine Sergeant Camil could be described as on fire most of his waking hours." When he got to Vietnam, "he had done his best to kill as many Vietnamese as he could--men, women and children." Camil had become something of a leader in the VVAW after coming home and reading the Pentagon Papers and realizing that "his conduct was not so distant from that of the good German boys of the thirties who had followed orders and exterminated Jews..."

Camil went to the Kansas City meeting with several proposals. One of the sticking points about ending the war at the time was the situation of the POWs. Camil proposed that the VVAW offer themselves to the North Vietnamese as hostages in exchange for the POWs; unfortunately this plan foundered when none of the other VVAW members volunteered.

He also proposed that the VVAW "return in force to Washington D.C., and there apply pressure in every conceivable way to the legislators who were still voting to fund the war." When this also was voted down, Camil made his most dramatic proposal.

VVAW coordinators moved the meeting TWICE before even discussing it. First they moved it to a church, but their electronics expert discovered that the church was bugged. After that, they moved to a Mennonite hall located on 77th Terrace. At that location "a vote was taken to exclude anyone but regional coordinators and members of the national office". There was good reason for the desire for secrecy; "According to [VVAW member Randy] Barnes, everybody knew the discussion in that hall 'was grounds for criminal indictment of conspiracy.'"

Camil's proposal became known as the Phoenix plan, in mockery of a US military plan in Vietnam, under which village leaders and others sympathetic to the communists were being executed. The "Phoenix" notion was that Vietnam would rise from the ashes, transformed after the elimination of the communist sympathizers. The VVAW's Phoenix plan was to assassinate "the most hard-core conservative members of Congress, as well as any powerful, intractable opponents of the anti-war movement."

John Upton, a member of the VVAW steering committee, says that at first the plan was laughed down, but Camil was insistent and he had supporters. "Especially when we moved over to 77th Terrace, a lot of people were convinced this was the way to do it." (Italics in original).

Quoting again from the book, not Upton, "The Phoenix plan, like the rest of Camil's proposals, was voted down in Kansas City...."

Nicosia's book does not mention John Kerry being in attendance at the Kansas City meeting, and in fact at least implies that he had resigned from the VVAW several months before. Quoting from page 211, "In St. Louis in July... Kerry played his trump card: He resigned from the executive committee."

However, on March 12, 2004, Thomas Lipscomb, reporter for the tiny New York Sun, broke the story that Kerry had apparently been in attendance at the Kansas City meeting where the assassination plot was discussed. Key paragraphs:

Mr. Kerry denies being present at the November 12-15, 1971, meeting in Kansas City of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and says he quit the group before the meeting. But according to the current head of Missouri Veterans for Kerry, Randy Barnes, Mr. Kerry,who was then 27,was at the meeting, voted against the plot, and then orally resigned from the organization.

Mr. Barnes was present as part of the Kansas City host chapter for the 1971 meeting and recounted the incident in a phone interview with The New York Sun this week.

In addition to Mr. Barnes’s recollection placing Mr. Kerry at the Kansas City meeting, another Vietnam veteran who attended the meeting, Terry Du-Bose, said that Mr. Kerry was there.

The article also notes that Douglas Brinkley's recently-published hagiography of Kerry, "Tour of Duty", states that Kerry resigned in a letter dated 11/10/71, which was supposedly on file with the VVAW papers in Madison, Wisconsin. However, a footnote comments that Brinkley could not find the letter himself, and relied on an earlier book. However, Andrew Hunt, the author of that earlier book, says that he never found the letter either, and never said that he had.

The date is significant because it was two days before the assassination plot was discussed. This undermines the claim that Kerry had resigned months earlier, and highlights that Kerry was making sure that his supposed resignation predated the assassination plot.

CNS News picked up the story a few days later, revealing that Nicosia had obtained FBI files under the Freedom of Information Act which noted Kerry's presence at the Kansas City meeting. Nicosia commented:

"I am in kind of an awkward position here. I am a Kerry supporter and I certainly don't want to do anything that hurts him. On the other hand, my number one allegiance is to truth. So I am going to go with where the facts are, and John is going to have to deal with that," Nicosia said.

"I am having some problems with the things he is saying right now, which are not matching up with accuracy," he added.

Kerry was at the meeting, Nicosia insisted, pointing to FBI files and the minutes from the VVAW meeting, which he has obtained. "The minutes of the meeting -- November 12th through the15th -- it's got John Kerry there, it's got John Kerry resigning there on the third day," Nicosia said.

Faced with this evidence, Kerry backtracked on his statement that he had resigned prior to the Kansas City meeting, The New York Sun noted on March 19, 2004.

“John Kerry had no personal recollection of this meeting 33 years ago,” a Kerry campaign spokesman, David Wade, said in a statement e-mailed last night from Idaho, where Mr. Kerry is on vacation.

Mr. Wade said Mr. Kerry does remember “disagreements with elements of VVAW leadership” that led to his resignation, but the statement did not specify what the disagreements were.

“If there are valid FBI surveillance reports from credible sources that place some of those disagreements in Kansas City, we accept that historical footnote in the account of his work to end the difficult and divisive war,” the statement said.

It did not address the murder plot, though as recently as Wednesday a top aide to Mr. Kerry said that the Massachusetts senator and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was “absolutely certain” he was not present when the assassination plan, known as the “Phoenix Project,” was discussed.

The New York Sun first reported last week that other anti-war activists placed Mr. Kerry at the Kansas City meeting. A total of six people have now said publicly that they remember seeing Mr. Kerry there. Participants say the plot was voted down, and several say they remember Mr. Kerry speaking and voting against it.

A historian and expert on activism against the Vietnam War, Gerald Nicosia, provided the Sun yesterday with minutes of the meeting.

Mr. Nicosia also read quotes from FBI surveillance documents he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act as he was preparing his 2001 book, “Home to War.”

“My evidence is incontrovertible.He was there,” Mr. Nicosia said in an interview yesterday. “There’s no way that five or six agents saw his ghost there,” said the historian, who lives in Marin County, north of San Francisco.

At this point, the mainstream media began to be interested in the story. The Kansas City Star, a Knight-Ridder paper, noted Kerry's retraction of his earlier claim that he had not attended the meeting.

The New York Times waddled in on March 23, although predictably, they did not mention the assassination story. Instead they highlighted the FBI's surveillance of Kerry, noting that Kerry's aides considered it "a badge of honor" and an encroachment on Kerry's civil liberties.

CNN contributed an article that same day that was marginally better. Although they focused also on the outrage of surveillance on such a fine, upstanding, young man, they did find the time to mention the assassination plot... beginning in the 25th paragraph!

Meanwhile, the New York Sun continued to shine. On March 22, they revealed that officials with the Kerry campaign had pressured one of the veterans who corroborated the account of Kerry being present at the Kansas City meeting to attempt to get him to change his story.

The veteran, John Musgrave, says he was called twice by the head of Veterans for Kerry, John Hurley, while a reporter for the Kansas City Star worked on a follow-up piece to a New York Sun article about the November 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War at which a plot to kill U.S. senators was voted down. Asked by The New York Sun if he felt pressured, Mr. Musgrave said, “In the second call I did.” Mr. Musgrave said Mr. Hurley said Mr. Kerry had told him “he was definitely not in Kansas City.”

According to Mr. Musgrave, Mr. Hurley said, “Why don’t you refresh your memory and call that reporter back?”

The next big story on the case came on March 26, when the Associated Press noted that Gerald Nicosia, whose book had started the whole flap, reported to the police that his home had been burglarized.

Author Gerald Nicosia reported to police Friday that three of the 14 boxes of once-secret FBI files he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act were taken from his Corte Madera home.

Particular files from the remaining 11 boxes were also taken, Nicosia said, including files containing documents about Kerry that hadn't been reviewed yet by others.

"The three files folders about John Kerry were taken," Nicosia said. "Those revelations are lost now, at least to me."
I half-jokingly wondered at the time whether the burglars had left any ketchup behind. At Lucianne.com, a follow-up story with more details from the Los Angeles Times was published, and one of my fellow L-Dotters, ProudVet provided the next dot.

Reply 8 - Posted by: ProudVet, 3/27/2004 6:56:30 AM

I'd suggest looking for his brother who was involved in LowellGate.

The linked article was startling to say the least. Apparently published in Insight Magazine, it discussed John Kerry's history. The key points are as follows:

On Sept. 18, 1972, the evening before the primary election during his second attempt for Congress, Kerry's brother Cameron and one Thomas Vallely, both part of his current campaign team, were arrested by Lowell police at 1:40 a.m. and charged with breaking and entering with the intent to commit larceny. The two were apprehended in the basement of a building whose door had been forced open, police said. It housed the headquarters of candidate DiFruscia. The Watergate scandal was making headlines at this time, and it was called the Lowell Watergate.

"They wanted to sever my telephone lines," DiFruscia said recently. Had those lines been cut, Kerry's opponent would not have been able to telephone supporters on Election Day to get out the vote and coordinate poll watchers, vital roles in a close election. "I do not know if they wanted to break into my office," says DiFruscia today. At the time he said, "All my IBM cards and the list of my voter identification in the greater Lowell area are in my headquarters."

Cameron and Vallely, along with David Thorne, who was Kerry's campaign manager at the time and has been close to him since they attended Yale together, did not deny the two entered the building in which they were captured. They said at the time they were in the cellar of the building to check their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning they would be cut.

This reporter heard an allegation that another congressional candidate placed the alleged anonymous call, which was denied. But if the Kerry campaign was concerned about someone breaking and entering to cut off its telephone service, why didn't they just call the police? Why break the law?

That's the story as it stands today. Hope you don't mind the length of this piece, but it's a complicated story and I have gotten pieces of it wrong from time to time (for example, in one post to Lucianne's website, I stated that Nicosia was a VVAW member who was present at the assassination plot meeting; I realize now that is incorrect).

(Later addition: In the interests of fairness, I should note that there is no evidence that Kerry was favor of the plot. Indeed, all indications are that he opposed the plan and resigned in large part because of it. However, that he denied being in attendance at the meeting until confronted with FBI evidence, that his campaign pressured one of the witnesses who recalls him being there, and of course the burglary of Mr Nicosia means that this story has relevance in the present).

 
The Fittest Sick Guy You Ever Saw

That seems to be the point of this weird article in the WaPo about our friend Live Shot.

Kerry rarely gives a speech without calling himself "a fighter" and often punctuates his speech by taunting Bush: "Bring it on!" As a soldier in Vietnam, he killed people, one aide noted.

 
It's a French Thing

(Via Anti-John Kerry)This is too good to be true.

US presidential hopeful John Kerry (news - web sites) needs to stop acting so French if he wants to win the race for the White House, a French-born, US-based consultant and "medical anthropologist" says.

 
Welcome, Blogs For Bush Readers!

I was thrilled to be mentioned in a post on Blogs for Bush, after I alerted Captain Ed about the possible Lowellgate connection to the Nicosia break-in (see A Third-Rate Burglary Part Deux below). In turn, let me thank Lucianne.com reader ProudVet, who pointed me to the information. As I mentioned in my reply, I'm struck by how the stories tend to snowball in the blogosphere, picking up extra bits of information as they roll down the hill.

I will be requesting to be added to the Blogs for Bush blogroll today, and am adding a link to their wonderful site to my Blogger Royalty section. Please poke around and enjoy. I hope to upgrade the site a bit in the near future, to make it more visually pleasing, but blogging that liberal loser, John Kerry, has kept me quite busy.

 
An Excuse Not to Kiss Babies?

Reuters reports that Mr Ed is about to have shoulder surgery, stemming from a sudden bus stop. Apparently he can ski and throw the football, but it is a problem on the campaign trail because:

Wade said Kerry, 60, was in pain only when he made certain movements such as "picking up a baby on the rope line."

 
Cartoon of the Day

Barbara Bass wonders who Nuancy Boy really is.

(Later addition: Link added. Barbara has an excellent sense of humor, be sure to scroll back for earlier cartoons. My favorite is the ski bunnies).

 
Yet Another Downside to a Kerry Presidency

The Cape Cod Times reports that couples planning to marry at a Nantucket Lighthouse might be out of luck:

The lighthouse is just a stroll from the shingled, waterfront digs that Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, call home when they visit.

Given the proximity of the popular lighthouse and a summer retreat of a potential president, islanders are being warned that Brant Point could be off-limits for wedding events, said Assistant Town Clerk James Grieder.

 
Yet Another Foreign Leader for Kerry

The AP reports:

The new leader of the militant group Hamas on Sunday called President Bush the enemy of Islam and said that "God declared war" against Bush, the United States and Israel.

 
Generic Liberal?

The Washington Post's Dan Balz wonders whether Kerry has anything to offer other than being the un-Bush. Best bit:

A new poll from the Pew Research Center found that public impressions of Kerry have shifted to the left in the past three months, with 40 percent describing him as liberal, compared with 28 percent in January.

 
Pants on Fire

The Manchester Union Leader takes on Kerry's 1971 testimony that 200,000 Vietnamese a year were "murdered" by the United States of America. Conclusion:

Either the 1971 John Kerry was lying, or the 2004 John Kerry is lying — or both. We think both.

 
More Foreign Leaders for Kerry

The NY Post checks the prevailing winds and reports:

The Kerry debate was kicked off by the Saudi daily Al-Jazeera, which published a front-page photo of the Massachusetts senator with Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Several other Saudi papers later ran the "friendship photo" "the history of a long and close friendship between Sen. Kerry and the Saudi kingdom."