Kerry Haters: We're Not Fonda John

 
Yep, He's Running

Kerry takes a trip down memory lane in Iowa:

John Kerry paid an emotional return visit Friday to the state that launched him toward his party's nomination for president, saying he felt "an unbelievable wave of nostalgia."

Kerry insisted the only reason for his return to Iowa was to thank supporters, but the focus at one point turned to the future when his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, made a reference to "whoever is up in '08." The crowd then began chanting Kerry's name.

"Whoever's up in '08 will not be running against the president, which is a blessing," she said.

 
Crush Kerry on the Democrats' Uncivil War

Patrick Hynes has a brilliant article on the battle for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party over at CK today. Great read, with a hilarious (and apt) punchline at the end. As I mentioned in the comments, the only thing I would add is a link to this column by Peter Beinart, where he suggests that the Democrats would be well-served if they made a public break with Michael Moore and the clowns at MoveOn.org.

 
WHO’S OUR ENEMY?


U.S. Army Spc Thomas Wilson, left, speaks to US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, not pictured, during Rumsfeld's visit to Camp Buehring, 120 km (74 miles) north of Kuwait City, on Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2004. Wilson, of the 278th Regimental Combat Team that is comprised mainly of citizen soldiers of the Tennessee Army National Guard, asked Rumsfeld why vehicle armor is still in short supply, nearly three years after the war in Iraq began. A day after being challenged by a soldier on the U.S. Army's failure to provide adequate armor for vehicles used in Iraq, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday he was pleased to hear the gripe and expected that efforts would be made to resolve the problem. (AP Photo/Gustavo Ferrari)

What bothers me about “the Rumsfeld question” is the idea that the MSM seems to be against the US in the war on terrorism. They seem to purposely go out of their way to find the negative, the embarrassing stories, and no matter who is Commander-in-Chief, you’ll find some negative and embarrassing tidbits. The MSM has a vital part in this war yet they seem to be rootin’ for the enemy.

ACE has two good posts on the subject:
Would you ask your CEO a hard question in front of the press?
Would you feel a sense of urgency about going through the proper channels (out of the public eye) to solve the problem?

War management critics are "piling on"
[N]aturally, the anti-war people are piling on, happy to be given any ammo to use against the war.

And a caller to Rush’s show yesterday says it all:
Caller: Reason I'm calling is, you always say that everything is you know, history is based on our perspective, and listening to the up-armoring of our vehicles over in Iraq, I'm reminded of World War II when the Sherman tanks had trouble getting through hedgerows. They went back to the beach obstacles, cut them up, welded them onto the front of the tanks so they could knock down the hedgerows and move through the hedgerow country and get around Germany anti-tank emplacements. And then they even took a step further, they went back and got armored plate, welded that onto the side of their tanks to protect them from the shoulder launched panzerfausts which were taking out Germans …
…
[T]he press back then was patting the military on the back for being resourceful enough to solve the problem on their own. It took a while before the Shermans were upgraded and operated a little better in France and, you know, on into Germany, and then they took -- wasn't till the end of the war when they came up with the M-24 Pershing tank which was a much better tank and much safer for the guys operating it.

 
LET THEM KNOW YOU CARE



Helping our soldiers at this time of year takes so little yet it means so much to them. There are several legitimate organizations; here are three.
TROOPS PHONE HOME
AMERICANS looking for a way to support the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan this holiday season might want to consider the USO's Operation Phone Home — a program to give pre-paid phone cards to those serving in forward-deployed locations.
…
Operation Phone Home, started in March of last year, has distributed more than 80,000 phone cards so far. The USO plans to distribute many more over the holiday season to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and to those recuperating from injuries in the United States and abroad. According to the USO, the phone cards are by far the most popular item requested by deployed troops.
Donations can be made online at USO.org/Donate or over the phone by calling 1-800-876-7469.
Or send a check, made out to the USO and with "O.P.H." written on the memo line, to:

USO World Headquarters
PO Box 96860
Washington, D.C. 20090-6860

Corporate sponsorship of the phone cards is also welcome. The USO's Web site, uso.org, has additional contact information


Here are two others:

Operation Gratitude

America Supports You

 
BLOGGER ETHICS

Pat had the pleasure of being cited in Captain's Quarters blog regarding the ethics of blogging. I agree with Pat's position 100% and am slightly dismayed that it wasn't revealed that John Thune (Senator-elect from South Dakota) paid significant amounts of money to Daschle V. Thune.

This swings both ways: yes, the blog should be criticised for non-disclosure but the bigger issue is that this ACTUALLY lends credence to the argument that blogs need to be regulated. What would our outcry be if we found out that John Kerry paid substantial amount of funds to CBS or CNN or Chrissy Matthews or Lawrence O'Donnell?

I am very upset. Please comment.

 
Around the Horn

Over at Brainsters, I discuss the right take on steroids, answer eight exceptionally stupid questions from Kevin Drum, and analyze whether steroids could help Barry Bonds lift his batting average.

Kitty Litter takes a look at some appropriate holiday songs for the Maplewood, NJ school district (which banned Christmas Carols), and introduces us to Professor Shade, who wants to know which celebrities you'd like to see dead. I'd limit the latter myself to folks like O.J. Simpson and Scott Peterson, glaben.

Something to Cry About reveals liberal racism in a series of excellent posts.

 
Kerry Stiffing His Staff?

Captain Ed pointed us to this column in today's WaPo. These kinds of reports certainly won't help if Kerry decides to run again.

There are rumblings that, despite a recent discovery of $15 million in leftover campaign money, some of the Kerry campaign advance team are having trouble getting paid for the last several weeks of the campaign. Worse, many of them have not seen a per diem check since the end of August, we're told, and they do not know when they're going to get paid.

Phone calls apparently don't get returned and, if they do, the mantra is "next week" or "you're on my list."

Sounds to me like the ranks of Kerry Haters is going to be growing!

 
HE MUST BE DELUSIONAL



Remember the last time he reported for duty?
REPORTING FOR DUTY
Sen. John Kerry and his Massachusetts minions insist he has not decided on whether he will run for president again. But actions speak louder than words, and when one does things like set up leadership PACs, and take time away from holiday celebrations to hang out with campaign volunteers and state fundraisers, one's intentions ring loud and clear.
…
Kerry, however, isn't closing all doors. He has already made the decision not to bleed out completely his presidential campaign fund, keeping it up and running for at least two more years, according to sources. Moreover, he still has his Senate re-election PAC, as well as his new leadership PAC, to keep him busy and rolling in political influence.

 
One Last Hail Mary for Kerry

Well, you may think that the Democrats have given up on this election, but Tim Noah is still praying for a miracle.

The magic number for 2004 is 18. If 18 Bush electors betray both their party and the popular vote and cast their votes for John Kerry on Dec. 13—when, as we Electoral College bores like to point out, the real presidential election takes place in state capitals around the country—then John Kerry will become president. It isn't remotely likely, and it would violate the principle of democratic government (just as the Electoral College itself does). But it remains in the realm of the possible.

 
THE RACISTS ARE BACK!

The democrats are getting back to their roots; they are finally being honest with the American people about how they feel about blacks:

In light of their reaction to the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, I gather liberals have gotten over their enthusiasm for multiculturalist milestones. It's interesting that they dropped their celebrations of the "first woman!" "first black!" "first Asian!" designations at the precise moment that we are about to get our first black female secretary of state.

When Madeline Albright was appointed the FIRST WOMAN secretary of state, the media was euphoric. (And if memory serves, Monica Lewinsky was the first Jewish female to occupy her various positions on the president's, uh, staff.)

With Albright at the helm of the State Department, Osama bin Laden ran wild throughout the Middle East, the North Koreans began feverishly building nukes under her nose, and we staged a pre-emptive attack solely for purposes of regime change based on false information presented to the American people by Albright about a world leader who was not an imminent threat to the United States. Slobodan Milosevic wasn't even a latent, long-term, hypothetical threat.

But the girls in the mainstream media were too smitten with Albright's brooch collection and high heels to notice the shambles she was making of foreign policy.

The New York Times raved about Albright's brooches in an article titled, "A Diplomat Who Says 'Read My Pins.'" In the San Francisco Chronicle, Leah Garchik was amazed by Albright's "jewel-encrusted flag" pin -- Albright's clever ruse to prove that Republicans did not have "dibs on patriotic jewelry." Perhaps Rice could impress American journalists if she talked more about her accessorizing.

People magazine quoted an aide gushing that Albright "stays in her heels all day." Albright herself told Harper's Bazaar, "I've kidded that the advantage of being a woman secretary of state is makeup." This was a great leap forward for feminism? At this point even Paris Hilton was rolling her eyes and saying, "Oh, come on now!"

But Bush nominates a brilliant geopolitical thinker who happens to be black and female and all of a sudden she's Butterfly McQueen, who don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no Middle Eastern democracies.

--Ann Coulter

Now Harry Ried weighs in on how he views blacks that are smarter and more successful than he is (with a notably Richard Clarke overtone):

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to judicial nominations. Again, Harry Reid on National Public Radio, November 19: "If they"--the Bush White House--"for example, gave us Clarence Thomas as chief justice, I personally feel that would be wrong. If they give us Antonin Scalia, that's a little different question. I may not agree with some of his opinions, but I agree with the brilliance of his mind."

Could you support Antonin Scalia to be chief justice of the Supreme Court?

SEN. REID: If he can overcome the ethics problems that have arisen since he was selected as a justice of the Supreme Court. And those ethics problems--you've talked about them; every people talk--every reporter's talked about them in town--where he took trips that were probably not in keeping with the code of judicial ethics. So we have to get over this. I cannot dispute the fact, as I have said, that this is one smart guy. And I disagree with many of the results that he arrives at, but his reason for arriving at those results are very hard to dispute. So...

MR. RUSSERT: Why couldn't you accept Clarence Thomas?

SEN. REID: I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. I think that his opinions are poorly written. I don't--I just don't think that he's done a good job as a Supreme Court justice.

But some liberals are noticing that, lo and behold, Ann Coulter and conservatives might be on to something here.

 
More Russ Vaughn

The poet laureate of the election season is back:

Did you really believe we’re too stupid to see,
How you tried to deceive us with smug sophistry?
Did you actually think we’d accept without thinking,
That our ship of state’s hulled, our economy’s sinking?
We saw how with help from your media tools,
You picked just the right captain for your ship of fools.
With your Cambodian Admiral at the helm of your boat
You needed an ocean of lies just to keep him afloat.

Be sure to read all the way to the bottom to find the inspiration for the poem. Great job as usual, Russ!

 
DOWN MEMORY LANE



I came across this movie review when weeding out my blogging files. It illustrates the lengths to which the MSM went, and will again, to promote their guy. I had posted this before, and I thought it was worth an encore considering that Kerry is attempting to remain a political force.

VIET WAR DOCUMENTARY PUMPS UP KERRY
By LOU LUMENICK (10/01/04)
UPRIVER: THE LONG WAR OF JOHN KERRY *** (3 stars)
No flip-flops here.
CAN George Butler's "Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry" do for the be leaguered Democratic presidential candidate what Butler's "Pumping Iron" did three decades ago for a bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Probably not, at this late date.
A latecomer to the flood of political documentaries that have followed in the wake of "Fahrenheit 9/11," Butler's film still manages to accomplish what the candidate's foundering campaign has utterly failed to do.
Butler, a longtime friend of Kerry, carefully and persuasively reconciles what the GOP has successfully painted as the seeming conundrum of a decorated Vietnam war hero who became one of that conflict's most prominent critics.
Drawing on a wealth of archival materials, Butler ("Shackleton") unearths a telling 1971 clip from "The Dick Cavett Show" in which Kerry, the highly effective spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, squares off against John O'Neill, who headed a pro-war group organized by the Nixon administration.
Yes, that's the same John O'Neill who wrote the current best-selling anti-Kerry hatchet job, "Unfit for Command" — and whose accusations against the candidate are debunked by several Swift Boat veterans who attest to Kerry's bravery under fire in Butler's film.
But perhaps Kerry's greatest bravery is illustrated by the documentary's centerpiece, a lengthy excerpt from his eloquent and riveting testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — which he followed by joining other vets gathered on the Washington Mall in tossing their medals over a fence.
This got Kerry extraordinary five-minute segments on network TV newscasts, as well as a place of honor on Nixon's enemies list (presidential adviser Charles Colson is heard on a White House tape telling the boss the FBI could find "nothing on him").
"Upriver" presents such a winning portrait of Kerry's moral fiber that his supporters will kick themselves that Butler didn't finish it earlier.

 
A Passion for the Oscars?

Our buddy Patrick Hynes over at Crush Kerry has a new project: Trying to get as many Oscar nominations as possible for The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's movie about the life and death of Jesus Christ. He asks that you visit his site and sign his petition.

I don't know how well these campaigns work. But I do suspect that if there is no campaign there will be few nominations for The Passion. So pop on over to Patrick's site and sign the petition!

 
Over at Brainster's

I make a cheap joke at Michael Moore's expense (or should I say, expanse), notice Ben Stein's funny, and have more NFL coverage than you can shake a stick at.

 
BUSH ON STEROIDS



Check out the hypocrisy here.

 

It's the Winter Solstice, Charlie Brown!

(or New School Prayer II)
by Ann Coulter
Posted Sep 25, 2003

David Limbaugh's new book, Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity," (Regnery) will make you cry for your country. (But don't pray for your country if you're anywhere near a public school!) Released this week, Limbaugh's copiously researched book documents how the courts, the universities, the media, Hollywood and government institutions react to any mention of Christianity like Superman recoiling from kryptonite, Dracula from sunlight, or Madonna from soap and water. His straight, factual narrative of what is happening in our public schools makes you wonder how much longer America can survive liberalism.

In a public school in St. Louis, a teacher spotted the suspect, fourth-grader Raymond Raines, bowing his head in prayer before lunch. The teacher stormed to Raymond's table, ordered him to stop immediately and sent him to the principal's office. The principal informed the young malefactor that praying was not allowed in school. When Raymond was again caught praying before meals on three separate occasions, he was segregated from other students, ridiculed in front of his classmates, and finally sentenced to a week's detention.

Before snack time in her kindergarten class in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., little Kayla Broadus held hands with two of her classmates and recited this prayer: "God is good, God is great, thank you, God, for my food." The alert teacher pounced on Kayla, severely reprimanded her, and reported her to the school administration. In short order, the principal sent a sternly worded letter to Kayla's parents advising them that Kayla was not allowed to pray in school, aloud or with others.

The school board then issued a triumphant press release crowing about its victory over a kindergartner praying before snack time. Thus was creeping theocracy in Saratoga Springs stopped dead in its tracks! Kayla's mother brought a lawsuit, winning Kayla the right to pray out loud. But she was still prohibited from holding hands with others while she prayed. Hearing the G-word in kindergarten might interfere with the school's efforts to teach proper sexual techniques in the first grade.

Thanks to the vigilance of an alert teacher at Lynn Lucas Middle School outside of Houston, two sisters carrying Bibles were prevented from bringing their vile material into a classroom. The teacher stopped the students at the classroom door and marched them to the principal's office. (Maybe it was just the sight of public school students carrying a book of any kind that set off alarm bells.) The sisters' mother was called and warned that the school intended to report her to Child Protective Services. When the mother arrived, the teacher threw the Bibles in the wastebasket, shouting, "This is garbage!"

In another display of tolerance at Lynn Lucas Middle School, school administrators snatched three students' books with covers displaying the Ten Commandments, ripped the covers off, threw them in the garbage, and told the students that the Ten Commandments constituted "hate speech." (Also, it would be insensitive to expose the Ten Commandments to students who had never been taught to count to 10.)

After the massacre at Columbine High School, students and families were invited to paint tiles above student lockers. The school district had taken all reasonable precautions, immediately deploying an army of secular "grief counselors" with teddy bears to descend on the school after the attack. Nonetheless, some students painted their tiles with "objectionable" messages, such as: "4/20/99: Jesus Wept" and "God Is Love." This would not stand: The school removed 90 tiles with offending religious messages.

A federal court upheld the school's censorship of the religious tiles. Of course, Columbine school officials had earned a measure of deference after having inculcated such a fine sense of morality in their students that two boys could walk into school one day and stage a bloody massacre. You don't argue with a track record like that.

Not all mentions of religion constitute "hate speech." In Tupelo, Miss., school administrators methodically purged all Christmas carols of any religious content--and then led the children in a chant of: "Celebrate Kwanzaa!" At Pattison Elementary school in Katy, Tex., Christmas songs are banned, but students are threatened with grade reductions for refusing to sing songs celebrating other religious faiths.

In New York City, the chancellor of the Department of Education prohibited the display of Nativity scenes in public schools, while expressly allowing the Jewish menorah and the Islamic star and crescent to be displayed. Some would say that was overkill, inasmuch as New York City is already the home of the world's largest public display built in commemoration of Islam: Ground Zero.

Between issuing laws prohibiting discrimination against transgendered individuals and running up a $38-billion deficit, the California legislature mandated a three-week immersion course in Islam for all seventh-graders. A "crash course" in Islam, you might call it, if that weren't so ironic. Students are required to adopt Muslim names, plan a trip to Mecca, play a jihad game, pray to "Allah, the Compassionate" and to chant "Praise to Allah! Lord of Creation!" They are encouraged to dress in Muslim garb. Students are discouraged, however, from stoning girls at the school dances, abusing their "Jew" math teachers or blowing up their classmates.

A popular student textbook, Across the Centuries, treats the Inquisition and Salem witch-hunts as typical of Christianity, but never gets around to mentioning the Muslims' conquest of Spain, the Battle of Tours, or the execution of Jews in Qurayza. Or 9/11.

There is no surer proof of Christ's divinity than that he is still so hated some 2000 years after his death. Limbaugh's Persecution covers it all in staggering, heartbreaking detail. His methodical description of what is happening in our public schools alone will call to mind the hate speech banned in Columbine: "Jesus Wept."