BROADSIDES

October 31, 2004

The October Demise
Last week, the New York Times and the Kerry campaign (sorry for the redundancy) served up the October Surprise. The Times -- no stranger to faking news -- merely distorted an old news story from early last year and breathlessly reported it on the front page on October 25:

Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq

Then, right on cue, John Kerry feigned shock that President Bush and American troops had failed to secure the site from being "looted." The Kerry campaign even had commercials cut and ready to air on the subject.

But it turned out that the October Surprise was no surprise at all. The looters were, as the American Forces Information Service reveals, us:

A U.S. Army ordnance company removed roughly 250 tons of munitions from Iraq's Al Qaqaa weapons depot in mid-April 2003, that unit's commander said in the Pentagon today ...

In today's press briefing, Army Maj. Austin Pearson explained how his former unit, the 24th Ordnance Company of the 24th Corps Support Group, entered the Al Qaqaa facility, which fell in an area known to the unit as "Objective Elms." On about April 13, 2003, less than a month after the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the company removed about 250 tons of "TNT, plastic explosives, detonation cords, initiators and white-phosphorus rounds," Pearson said.

Surprise!

After Maj. Pearson's announcement, the Kerry campaign ceased any and all mention of missing explosives.

Psst...hey, Senator Kerry. Here's a bombshell revelation that's sure to sink the Bush campaign. Get this: George W. Bush was once arrested for drunk driving!!! It's gold! Run with it!

B. Sides @ 10:47 PM

October 20, 2004

Quote of the Day
It's like Captain Kirk whipping out his communicator to contact the USS Fabulous. Set phasers on stunning! -- James Lileks on the film clip of John Edwards pulling out a compact mirror to check his hair.

B. Sides @ 10:50 AM

October 19, 2004

The Democracks
Gee, I wonder with which political party these twerps are affiliated.

B. Sides @ 8:30 AM

October 17, 2004

Editors Of The Columbus Dispatch 'May' Be Racist
Last week, Drudge exposed the Democrat/Kerry race-baiting strategy for the campaign's home-stretch. Their "mobilization" manual urges party and campaign operatives to have "minorities" allege voter intimidation -- even if none exists. "If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet," the manual directs, "launch a 'pre-emptive strike.'"

You'd think that, once exposed, the DNC and the Kerry campaign would back away or even denounce such a desperate tactic.

Not so.

Amazingly, Kerry campaign spokesman Tad Devine went on CNN to defend the Dems' plan to deliberately make false accusations of GOP racial intimdation. Devine carped, "What happened in 2000 will never happen again. We're going to make sure that people vote. We're going to make sure people of color are not turned away from voting places." (I'm still waiting for just one example of a voter "of color" -- or any other color -- who was "turned away" from voting in Florida or elsewhere in 2000.)

Has the Kerry campaign's admission that its home-stretch strategy is based on perpetuating a racist hoax discouraged Kerry operatives-masked-as-objective-journalists?

Of course not.

The lefty editors at the Columbus Dispatch are gleefully part of the hoax. Here's today's front-page headline:

Punch cards may hurt blacks

Must be a bitch to edit a newspaper while wearing a white hood.

Isn't it interesting that punch card ballots weren't controversial in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections? Only in 2000 -- when a Republican won -- and in 2004 -- when a Republican is about to win again -- are these punch cards, according to leftists, suddenly difficult to tally and damaging and confusing to an entire race of people.

The Civil War ended in 1865 and yet today the party of slavery, its presidential candidate and its accomplices in the press continue to treat voters who have a darker skin hue as if they are property of the Democratic Party.

B. Sides @ 10:55 PM

October 13, 2004

Would Kerry Also Label This A Nuisance?
John Little over at the Blogs of War notes this article in the London Evening Telegraph. It's a sobering reminder that there were many valid reasons for the United States to lower the boom on Saddam.

Shocked investigators reported finding "thighbones the size of matchsticks" at what they believe is the site of one of Saddam Hussein's atrocities. Among the findings-were the skeletons of unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys.

A baby had been shot in the back of its head and was found still being clutched by its mother, who had been shot in the face ...

One trench contains only women and children while another contains only men. "The youngest foetus we have was 18 to 20 foetal weeks," said a US investigating anthropologist. "Tiny bones, femurs - thighbones the size of a matchstick."

Some 300,000 people are thought to have been killed during Saddam's regime. Iraq's human rights ministry has reportedly identified 40 possible mass graves across the country.

When Hanoi John Kerry whines that Operation Iraqi Freedom was waged "at the wrong time," I guess he's right only in the sense that it came too late for these children.

B. Sides @ 3:29 PM

Don't Point That Photograph At Anyone, It May Be Loaded!!!
Sure is ironic how many half-wits are employed as educators. (Via Drudge)

B. Sides @ 10:14 AM

Desperate Democrats
I think it was Rush Limbaugh who observed that when liberals are losing, they unintentionally do and say very weird and funny things. If that's true, then John Kerry and the Democratic Party are losing big.

It took just about a day for Kerry and the Dems to blame President Bush for the death of Christopher Reeve. Iowa's socialist senator, Tom "I get to go to the front of the boarding gate line because I'm a senator" Harkin, used the occasion of Reeve's death to attack the president's stem cell research policy. (Conveniently, Harkin failed to note that Bush is the first president to authorize stem cell research.)

John Edwards -- a man who made millions suing the industry which makes medical advances possible -- undertook what Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer called the worst case of political demagoguery he'd ever seen. (Krauthammer is himself paraplegic.) While campaigning in Iowa this week, Edwards declared:

Christopher Reeve just passed away, and America just lost a great champion for this cause, somebody who was a powerful voice for the need to do stem cell research and change the lives of people like him, who have gone through a tragedy. Well, if we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.

I can only assume that after saying this, Reverend Edwards commenced talking in tongues.

Last Saturday, the Kerry campaign aired a commercial with actor Michael J. Fox lauding Kerry's position on stem cell research and hammering the Bush position. The next day, Kerry blamed Bush for a shortage of flu vaccine.

The election is just 19 days away and our nation is at war. Yet, the Kerry campaign and the Democrats are demagoguing stem cell research and flu vaccine supplies and vowing that a Kerry presidency will engender a mass faith healing of the diseased and crippled.

Clearly, the outcome of this election does not hinge upon stem cell research, vaccine supplies and similar issues. So why is the Kerry campaign and the Democrats devoting so much time and nutty statements about them? The answer is desperation.

The Kerry campaign knows they're not beating the president on the war and other major issues so they're reduced to making ridiculously over-the-top claims on minor issues.

After Kerry loses, maybe Reverend Edwards can cure the Democrats' paralysis.

B. Sides @ 8:41 AM

October 11, 2004

Kerry's Nuisance Nuance
John Kerry has nuanced his position on terrorism yet again. In an interview with the New York Times magazine, Kerry declared:

We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance ... As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.

There's no way around it: this is a stunningly stupid statement. What's more, it reveals a sick, twisted sense of priorities.

Most of us assign the rank of "nuisance" to things such as loud teenagers next door, moles digging up the yard and Teresa Heinz. But I'm sure the families of those Americans murdered by terrorists and the patrons of terrorism would adamantly maintain that terrorism is much more than a mere nuisance.

In today's Bleat, James Lileks puts it best:

A nuisance? I don’t want the definition of success of terrorism to be “it isn’t on the rise.” I want the definition of success to be “free democratic states in the Middle East and the cessation of support of those governments and fascist states we haven’t gotten around to kicking in the ass yet.” I want the definition of success to mean a free Lebanon and free Iran and a Saudi Arabia that realizes there’s no point in funding the fundies. An Egypt that stops pouring out the Jew-hatred as a form of political novacaine to keep the citizens from turning their ire on their own government. I want the definition of success to mean that Europe takes a stand against the Islamicist radicals in their midst before the Wahabbi poison is the only acceptable strain on the continent. Mosquito bites are a nuisance. Cable outages are a nuisance. Someone shooting up a school in Montana or California or Maine on behalf of the brave martyrs of Fallujah isn't a nuisance. It's war.

But that's not the key phrase. This matters: "We have to get back to the place we were."

But when we were there we were blind. When we were there we losing. When we were there we died. We have to get back to the place we were. We have to get back to 9/10? We have to get back to the place we were. So we can go through it all again? We have to get back to the place we were. And forget all we’ve learned and done? We have to get back to the place we were. No. I don’t want to go back there. Planes into towers. That changed the terms. I am remarkably disinterested in returning to a place where such things are unimaginable. Where our nighmares are their dreams.

We have to get back to the place we were.

No. We have to go the place where they are.

Bravo, James.

B. Sides @ 1:43 PM

The Associated (With Kerry) Press
Bias -- pure and 100-proof -- is a great thing; it's the fuel of opinion and ideas. I love bias.

But there's something laughable about bias poorly veneered as objective reporting.

It's no shock to the system to learn that much of the dominant press is, under the guise of reporting, openly campaigning for Hanoi John Kerry.

Should the Emmys ever have a "Worst Performance By A Campaign Operative Pretending to Be A Reporter" award, the trophy would go to Dan Rather and CBS News this year. No question.

But a dishonorable mention in this category goes to the Associated Press. Last month, one Associated Press wire "report" bore this headline: "Bush Twists Kerry's Words on Iraq". Later, the headline changed to "In new attacks on Kerry, Bush twists his rival's words". Then, after some pajama-clad bloggers pointed out that the report was really an editorial piece, the AP rushed to change the headline to "Bush, Kerry Twisting Each Other's Words".

So the AP lefties got caught. But they aren't giving up.

This morning, the Yahoo newstracker listed the AP's "top" three "stories":

'Superman' Christopher Reeve Dies at 52
Bush Rhetoric Becoming More Aggressive
Kerry Vows to Fight for Middle Class

The difference in tone between the Bush headline and Kerry headline is about as subtle as a ball bat in the groin. It's suggested that the president is little more than the HAL 9000 -- a mindless machine which is programmed to become more aggressive if its survival is threatened. But, fear not: the saintly John Kerry, the embodiment of all that is good about humanity, "vows" to protect us from HAL's homicidal appetites.

Before you stick your finger down your throat, consider this: at least the story about Christopher Reeve's death isn't skewed against Bush. Right? Umm -- hold on:

Reeve died Sunday of complications from an infection caused by a bedsore. He went into cardiac arrest Saturday, while at his Pound Ridge home, then fell into a coma and died Sunday at a hospital surrounded by his family, his publicist said ... His advocacy for stem cell research helped it emerge as a major campaign issue between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry. His name was even mentioned by Kerry during the second presidential debate on Friday.

The AP is shameless. Funny, but shameless.

B. Sides @ 9:49 AM

October 09, 2004

The L Word
The debate last night wasn't even close -- the president thrashed the flipper. Though I find the townhall format tedious to watch, W clearly loves it. And it showed.

Hanoi John, on the other hand, obviously sensed things weren't going his way; that's why he trotted out tired and weird canned remarks about Halliburton. Kerry has made the war on terrorism the centerpiece of his campaign but last night he came across as unprepared for questions on that topic. Oops.

The most significant moments of the evening were when the president invoked the L Word to remind the audience that Kerry isn't a taxpayer-friendly, moderate Democrat who, contrary to his campaign promise, will cut taxes for "the middle class." Some Bush excerpts:

That's what liberals do: they create government-sponsored health care ...

They [the National Journal] don't name him the most liberal in the United States because he hasn't shown up to many meetings. They named him because of his votes ...

He just brought up the tax cut. You remember, we increased that child credit by $1000; reduced the marriage penalty; created a 10-percent tax bracket for the lower income Americans -- that, right at the middle class. He voted against it. And yet he tells you he's for a middle-class tax cut.

Good stuff.

It's Halloween time and John Kerry's costume is that of a centrist Democrat. But by invoking the L Word, the president unmasks the senator for what he is -- a tax-hiking, defense-gutting liberal. If W sticks to this course, he'll win by a decisive margin on November 2.

B. Sides @ 8:21 AM

October 06, 2004

Slam Dunk
A friend called last night after the vice presidential debate and, referring to John Edwards, said, "You can't talk to the American people like you talk to a jury."

I couldn't have said it better.

Edwards often appeared fidgety, disorganized and even confused. I guess this is what happens when someone has to defend the claim that John Kerry has a consistent position on Iraq.

Dick Cheney, on the other hand, came off as, well, Dick Cheney -- calm, confident, professional, and reassuring.

For me, the knockout punch was Cheney's explanation of the Kerry/Edwards flip-flop supporting our troops in Iraq. Today's New York Post editorial writes about that moment:

Nothing hit home like his pointed observation on why the two Democrats first voted to commit U.S. troops — to an operation they now claim was "the wrong war at the wrong time" — but then voted against providing those troops with the $87 billion worth of bombs, bullets and body armor that they needed.

"I couldn't figure out why that happened originally," he said.

"And then I . . . figured out what was happening was that Howard Dean was making progress in the Democratic primaries, running away with the primaries based on an anti-war record. So they, in effect, decided they would cast an anti-war vote — and they voted against the troops."

"Now," asked Cheney, "if they couldn't stand up to the pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to stand up to al Qaeda?"

Cheney's closing debate statement, like the president's last week, was excellent:

I've worked for four Presidents, and watched two others up close, and I know that there's no such thing as a routine day in the Oval Office. We saw on 9/11 that the next -- next decision a President has to make can affect the lives of all of us. Now we find ourselves in the midst of a conflict unlike any we've ever known, faced with a possibility that terrorists could smuggle a deadly biological agent or nuclear weapon into the middle of one of our own cities. That threat, and the Presidential leadership needed to deal with it, is placing a special responsibility on all of you who will decide on November 2nd who will be our Commander-in-Chief. The only viable option for winning the war on terror is the one the President's chosen: to use the power of the United States to aggressively go after the terrorists wherever we find them, and also to hold to account states that sponsor terror.

Now that we've captured or killed thousands of al Qaeda and taken down the regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, it's important that we stand up democratically elected governments as the only guarantee that they'll never again revert to terrorism or the production of deadly weapons.

This is the task of our generation and I know firsthand the strength the President brings to it. The overall outcome will depend upon the ability of the American people and the strong leadership of the President to meet all the challenges that we'll face in the days and years ahead. I'm confident we can do it.

Game, set, match: Cheney.

B. Sides @ 1:22 PM

October 05, 2004

Commies For Kerry
The Communist Party USA is strongly urging its merry band of Marxists to support John Kerry for president. Comrade Sam Webb explains his endorsement of Kerry on the CPUSA website:

... a victory by Kerry and the broad democratic movement that supports him would be a body blow to the extreme right, bring some relief on bread and butter issues, and lift the siege on our nation's constitution.

It also would create a much more favorable political terrain on which the people's movement could struggle for its agenda, beginning with an end to the occupation of Iraq.

Thus the stakes are high, and what adds to the drama is that the electorate is so divided that the outcome will depend on which campaign is able to turn out the biggest vote.

Given these circumstances, what should be the role of left and progressive people?

It is not to parse every word, vet every speech, and scrutinize every statement of Kerry. Nor is it to damn Kerry with faint praise. Rather its main task, as I see it, is to bring into sharper focus the differences in the two lines of policy represented by Kerry and Bush, to delineate the vastly improved political playing field that a Kerry victory would bring, and, above all, to become involved in the grassroots efforts to mobilize the vote.

In so doing, the left will help voters gain an understanding of the bigger picture, extend the practical efforts to reach the electorate, and enhance its connections to the main democratic organizations - connections which are critical to post-election struggles.

Notice that phrase "enhance its connections to the main democratic organizations." Not "establish" but "enhance." In other words, the Communists believe they've already infiltrated the Democratic Party and, through Kerry's election, hope to "enhance" that "connection." Given Kerry's checkered history of playing footsies with communist regimes -- both as an anti-Vietnam protestor and as a senator -- the Communists would undoubtedly achieve an enhanced status in Democratic circles under a Kerry administration.

A few thoughts on this...

... If John Kerry is the war hero and the champion of the American military that he claims to be, then there's not a snowball's chance the commies would endorse him.

... Will John Kerry be asked to denounce this endorsement? Will the liberal press even report it? (It's a sure bet that if a wacko fringe group embodying a homicidal political philosophy endorsed Bush, it would be the lead story in the New York Times and on CBS Evening News.)

... What's it say about a presidential candidate when his candidacy is enthusiastically endorsed by card-carrying communists?

... And how funny is it that the Communist Party website has a shopping link where they sell items that denounce the very economic system which let's them freely sell stuff?

B. Sides @ 2:23 PM

October 04, 2004

Echoes Of The Bush Doctrine
On the evening of September 11, 2001, President Bush conferred with his war cabinet deep in the ground below the White House. After being informed by his advisors that al-Qaeda was based in Afghanistan but operating across many countries, the Washington Post reported, the president responded with what can be considered the first draft of the Bush Doctrine:

Let's pick them off one at a time.

Last week al-Jazeera, the propaganda arm of Islamic terrorism, announced the latest war cry (actually, more like a war whine) from al-Qaeda's leadership. Since Usama bin Laden is composting beneath tons of Afghan cave rubble, the message was purportedly recorded by his second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. In a nearly desperate tone, al-Zawahiri inadvertently affirms the effectiveness of the Bush Doctrine (emphasis added):

The youth must not wait for anyone and must begin resisting from now — and take experience and lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan and Chechnya ... The interests of the Americans, British, Australians, French, Polish, Norwegians, South Koreans and Japanese are spread everywhere. We must not wait more ... or we will be devoured one country after the other.

So much for John Kerry's slur that the liberation of Iraq is a "grand diversion" from the war on terrorism.

Before casting their ballot on November 2, voters should consider this disturbing fact: not only does John Kerry oppose the Bush Doctrine, so does al-Qaeda.

B. Sides @ 9:12 AM

October 01, 2004

Is That A Gavel In Your Pocket?
Apparently at the next session of the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia will wear a toga rather than a robe.

B. Sides @ 8:31 AM