What John Kerry Meant to Say:

Updated below...

"I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq."

- Senator "Scary" Kerry


Uh....yeah, that's it.


....dumbass.
(Click the photo, trick-or-treater...and don't forget to scare a liberal today)

11/01/06 UPDATE:
Now this is what humor looks like:

from Michelle Malkin, by way of Flopping Aces

I think John Kerry is a GOP plant. He must be a plant. No one can be that stupid...except maybe a plant.

I'm sure Kerry thought he was being cute, but even if you took this 2nd or 3rd version of what John Kerry meant to say,

“Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.”

at face value, it makes no sense as a "joke". It sounds like he is spinning what he meant. I think he said it, the way he meant to say it, not realizing how it would be taken- as a slam on the military. Of course, he wasn't trying to slam the military. He was trying to encourage students to pursue education by using a "boogieman" in the form of the Iraq War. The problem is, it is revealing not only of his outlook on Iraq as a disaster (as MSM will have you believe), but his perception that our military are made up of victims. His statement is reflective of how he really feels about the military. He sees it as a loser's option, populated by the poor and uneducated. It's the prevailing attitude of many on the Left. We know better.

Senator Kerry shouldn't be worrying about his 2008 Presidential bid. He should be worrying about whether or not he'll be able to keep his Senatorial seat, after this latest in a history of slandering and disrespecting the military.

Time to Emphasize and Underscore some of the Positives, Once Again

U.S. Army 1st Lt. Roman S. Olesnyckyj, 3rd Platoon leader of Company C, 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, patrols the streets of Bayji, Iraq, Sept. 16, 2006. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Joshua R. Ford
Tired of MSM's obsessing over the glass half-empty?
Defend America
Multi-National Force
Kurdistan- The Other Iraq

Are you a quagmirist or are you pro-victory? Do you want to be part of the problem; or part of the solution?



Hat tip: A Rose by Any Other Name

Psst...Pass it on.

Kuoted with Accuracy?

Apparently David Kuo has a blog, and is encouraging Christians to go out and vote.

Michael Medved's interview with David Kuo is nothing like the CBS anti-Republican agenda-driven 60 Minutes piece, that made David Kuo look like he has "turned against President Bush". Hyped as an insider's expose on the Bush White House, 60 Minutes focused on only the portion of his book that suited their pre-Election agenda, claiming evangelicals are only being used as political pawns, and are derided by Republicans in the White House. Their goal is to encourage the Christian "values voters" to sit this one out. But when questioned by Michael Medved about whether or not Kuo wants to see Democrats seize control of Congress, Kuo is taken aback. He sounds baffled at the whirlwind of politicization that had surrounded his book. It seems his intention was to write something deeply personal, and meaningful, regarding his faith and his disillusionment with the political process...and in turn, became a victim of it; a tool of the left.

Kuo speaks passionately and glowingly of Rick Santorum and President Bush as good men who truly are sincere Christians. He also said he's never heard President Bush say anything bad about religious leaders.

I don't think there's any question that Republicans value the power of the Christian vote; Democrats would just as well love appealing to religious Christians; but aligned with secularists and groups like the ACLU, it's not exactly a marriage made in heaven for either side. But you still have Democrats trying not to alienate the Christian voters- and it's all about using them for political gain, from John Kerry bragging about how he was an altar boy during 2004, to Hillary Clinton wearing a tiny cross around her neck and her husband speaking at more churches than President Bush.

Both sides do this: catering and pandering to their constituents, whether it be the religious vote, the black vote, the prison vote, the special interest vote, the trial lawyer vote, the union vote, the illegal immigrant vote, blah, blah, blah.

The idea of Christian leaders being mocked by the Bush White House is nothing unique to the White House in general. Everybody in Washington politics gets mocked. No doubt Bush supporters within his own Administration mock certain things about the President, as did Clintonistas within the Clinton White House. It's hardly a revelation.


Hat tip: Physics Greek Jesus Freak.

Previous post: 60 Minutes: A Month of "October Surprises"

Fun with Dick Wolf and Lynne

Wolf.

See Wolf.

See Wolf run.

Run, Wolf, run.


While at work on Friday, I could not resist tuning into the Hugh Hewitt Show, and am glad that I did. Apparently, an hour earlier, Lynne Cheney was on Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room, supposedly to talk about her new children's book, Our 50 States. Wolf Blitzer had other things in mind, and thought he'd put the 2nd Lady on the spot. The U.S. Vice President's wife and reader of Real Clear Politics, however, was no pushover. It was like Wolfie expected to toy with a docile poodle, and instead found himself with a tenacious pitbull who had him by the neck and would just not let go.



NewsBusters has video and audio for download.

CrooksandLiars has about 7 minutes of the interview for download.

You can listen to Hugh Hewitt's first hour; plus listener reaction 3rd hour, which also replayed the interview- listen to the sound-loop. And of course, it was blogged by Hugh. Update here, mentioning how the leftside of the blogosphere is trying to spin it their way.

If you are interested in the actual content of Lynne Cheney's book, Hugh Hewitt actually gave a stellar interview on Wednesday...and avoided getting beat up by the VP's wife. I think the book is probably worthwhile for adults to read as much as children.

Hat tip: Stop the ACLU for YouTube video.
Also blogging:

Flopping Aces (Updated post with entire interview).
Hot Air
Mary Katherine Ham

Not only does he love puppies....

Also blogging: Mike's America

10/29/06 UPDATE: Freedom Eden covers the Meet the Press Steele vs. Cardin debate.

Lazy Blogger's Method of Campaign Support

Putting Faith Before the Science and Deceiving the Public

I miss the conservative that was the Alex P. Keaton character. And I am terribly sorry for Michael J. Fox's condition, and the millions who suffer as he does, along with their families. I miss him as well.

From Michael J. Fox's autobiography:

I had made a deliberate choice to appear before the subcommittee without medication. It seemed to me that this occasion demanded that my testimony about the effects of the disease, and the urgency we as a community were feeling, be seen as well as heard. For people who had never observed me in this kind of shape, the transformation must have been startling.

Sums it all up nicely. The update from a reader whose relative has Parkinson's, writes:

I don't pretend to be an expert, but he gets shakey and termors when he TAKES the medication. (Without the medication, Parkinson's freezes the muscles - makes them rigid). The medication loosens the muscles, overdoing it, and thus causing the shaking.

I have no doubt about the sincerity of Fox's belief in the research; but it is based on faith; and the desperation to find a cure borders on Juan Ponce De Leon search for "the fountain of youth". Surely, Fox's desire to fund embryonic stem cell research can't be based upon the actual science, which has yielded zero cures or treatments thus far. Will embryonic stem cell research see fruition, and all the more quickly if only funded by the government? Perhaps. But in the meantime, let's not put all of our eggs in a basket of faith; especially when half the country questions the ethical means to unguaranteed results.

Previous post. Direct linking isn't working for me right now. You can access through the archives (hopefully) and look for my post dated March 5, 2006.
Freedom Eden blogs on the Michael J. Fox ad.
Little Ms. Chatterbox weighs in.
Go here to check out some various youtube videos, including the ad in question.

Doing the Enemy's Work for Them

The jihadists follow our politics much more closely than people realize. A friend at the Pentagon just sent me a post by the “Global Islamic Media Front” carried by the jihadist Web site Ana al-Muslim on Aug. 11. It begins: “The people of jihad need to carry out a media war that is parallel to the military war and exert all possible efforts to wage it successfully. This is because we can observe the effect that the media have on nations to make them either support or reject an issue.”-Thomas Friedman, NYTimes

I'm too pissed out of my mind to write coherently right now. Maybe when I calm down. They did it in Vietnam, and they're doing it again. (Click the Cheney/CNN "X" gif if you don't know what, in part, I'm referring to).

Also, I'll refer you to these:

Flopping Aces
New Wars
EU Referendum
Jihad Watch (old post, but one example of many from CNN)
An Old Soldier
The Bosun Locker

Yesterday's "Milestone"

CBS' 60 Minutes: A Month of "October Surprises"

"There is just no question that I, among others, have a liberal bias. I mean, I'm consistently liberal in my opinions. And I think some of the -- I think Dan is transparently liberal. Now, he may not like to hear me say that. I always agree with him, too. But I think he should be more careful."-Andy Rooney on Larry King Live; one of the best things he's ever said...ever! (Hat tip: Bernard Goldberg's Arrogance).

Are they going to do this all the way up through to November Elections? Unbelievable! It's a repeat all over again, of 2004.

A couple of weeks ago, Bob Woodward got to promote his recent release, State of Denial. I posted then about how 60 Minutes has a history of agenda-driven, anti-Bush stories, often running at least a segment a week that is in some manner, an attack on the Bush Administration.

So this past Sunday, and 23 days away from the Elections, 60 Minutes drops their latest "Bush bomb": David Kuo's new book, Tempting Faith. It is published by Free Press, which is a conglomerate of Simon & Schuster, which is a division of CBS Corporation (which, of course, owns 60 Minutes).

Former deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, David Kuo, wrote a book, released today, in which he asserts that administration officials have referred to evangelical leaders as "nuts" and that his office was used to curry favor with "Republican base voters," evangelical Christians, rather than to help the poor.- from NewsBusters

I've never heard the President say
anything bad
about religious leaders,
and I don't name names
in the book because I don't want to be personal--"
-David Kuo

In the aftermath of the Foley scandal, which appears to be politically motivated in order to alienate the "values voters" from the Republican Party (forget about the hypocrisy), Harry R. Jackson writes,

Two years ago, I predicted that the October Surprise for the 2004 election would be a major shift among black voters toward a family-values platform. The Washington Times was bold enough to print this prediction as an Op-Ed piece on October 29, 2004. The shift we spoke of was undoubtedly a part of the Bush and the GOP 2004 victory.

Ever since that election, Democrats and liberals have lost sleep worrying about the power of the evangelical Christian vote. They have taken aim at the faith community with two clear strategies. First, they have mobilized a group of left-leaning, “pseudo-evangelicals” to critique our moral, political movement. At least twenty books have been written to denounce evangelical Christian involvement in American politics.

Michael Medved mentions a host of these books including Christian Soul, by Andrew Sullivan (obviously has the wrong take on LotR), pointing out on his Monday program that the Left has been constantly on the attack about how "the religious right" have taken over the White House and how America is being turned into a theocracy.

So which is it, Democrats? Are Bush and Co. religious fanatics who wish to turn us into a theocracy? Or are Bush and Rove deviously using the "religious right" for selfish, political gain?

Medved derides Leslie Stahl for labeling David Kuo as "a card-carrying member of the religious right". Medved points out that Kuo has worked for Ted Kennedy and Gary Hart, as well as for conservatives such as William Bennett and George W. Bush. He was hardly a member of the hardcore Christian religious right.

One of David Kuo's complaints is that President Bush and lobbyists did not deliver on following through with funding for faith-based initiatives. Of the $8 million, only around 10% has been delivered. But different spending priorities have been created after 9/11; and fighting hard for tax cuts and growing the economy has been meaningful to the nation. Building a strong economy is every bit as important to helping the poor as is charitable money. And as Jim Towey told Leslie Stahl,

"He’s [President Bush] not king. He had to work with Congress. It’s naïve to say, 'Oh, because the president asked for it and didn’t get it, that meant he didn’t really want it.'"

It's great that Kuo has a passion for helping the impoverished; but his disillusionment with the political process has made him nothing more than a tool of it. Can anyone seriously doubt that 60 Minutes' "hard-hitting breaking news" hit-piece is nothing short of politically motivated to stem the tide of Christian voter turnout?

Harry R. Jackson concludes his piece by saying he believes the October surprise this year will be evangelical voters returning to the voting booths.

God....I hope that's true. It's a miracle that George Bush won re-election, considering how hard he was hammered in 2004 by a hostile media.

I wonder what other "October surprises" 60 Minutes has in store for Republicans in the next 3 Sundays, before Elections?

For the 60 Minutes David Kuo segment, you can download it at CrooksandLiars.com.

As a footnote on 60 Minutes last sunday, I could not help but roll my eyes at Andy Rooney's icing on the liberal cake:

"I don't understand why we think it is OK for us to have nuclear weapons but it isn't all right for some other countries to have any."

And there ya have it, folks. We begin and end this post with the venerable Andy Rooney. God bless the ol' fossil!

REALLY?!?

"You guys are blind! I can't believe it! Everyone here's just buying into what they're told by the media"-Cartman

For those who missed this past Wednesday's South Park Conspiracy episode.

Part One:


Part Two:


Don't worry...keep watching...

Part Three:

What is the "noble cause"?

If we "cut-and-run".....if America fails....what happens to them? "Stay the course", doesn't mean we don't adapt our plans to the fluidity of this war; what it means is that we demonstrate to our enemies our determination and intestinal fortitude, to win this war. That our will is greater and that America is no "paper tiger". That the pursuit of a policy of "going Jihad" against the American military is spiritually unprofitable and is a sure-fire way of achieving physical demise...go straight to hell...do not pass heaven; do not collect 72 virgins.

America offers Iraqis hope and a brighter future; our brave men and women in the military are there protecting innocent lives. The insurgents have nothing to offer Iraq other than suffering and darkness; they are there destroying innocent lives. How can anyone still draw moral equivalence between "us" and "them"? We ARE the good guys. It's that simple. Hand-wringers are just in the way. Moral relativity is for moral cowards who can't take a stand between right and wrong.....good and evil. United for good, we stand; divided by evil we fall.

The stakes are too high for America to falter. Our security is their security; and their security is ours.

"In the grind of this horrible war, these kids have won the hearts of uncountable American service members. During my own times of doubt about the mission, I think about these kids and cannot bear the thought of abandoning them when I know that they can grow up to be free"

Michael Yon
Click the photos to read more.

And while you're at it, Yankeemom reports on a wounded soldier who is low in spirits and could use your support.

A little humor to mix with the gravity of our situation...

Quote of the day, pulled from April 12, 2003:

The United States does not need a multi-billion-dollar national missile defense against the possibility of a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile.

Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco, accepting the Alan Cranston Peace Award

Is this who you want for House leader? Remember: a vote for Democrats is a vote against our national security.

Filmmaker David Zucker "gets it":

Zucker is the producer and director of comedies such as “Airplane” and “The Naked Gun.” In 2004, Zucker, a longtime Democrat, embraced the Republican Party based on concerns he had about national security issues and voted for President George W. Bush.

Patriotes has more on the background for this video.

A previous post of mine with Team America clips (I understand Kim Jong-il likes American movies...bet'cha he didn't love that one!) because 5' 2" tall "Dear Leader" really needs to be mocked...often.

Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt and Ex-Donkey Blog (also, Ex-Donkey Blog for the video)

Thank you , President Clinton!!!

Another part of the Clinton legacy (midwifed by Jimmy Carter, as Hugh Hewitt puts it) gives birth after a 12 year labor of appeasement talks. How many more lines in the sand can we afford to draw before the nuke-rattling becomes imminent?

DNC Supports the Troops!(?)

Hat tip: The Pugil Stick

Foley's Sunday Funnies

How about we get back to talking about the issues? Both sides want to talk about Iraq. Fine. Only Republicans want to talk about the economy. Fine.

Conservative and Liberal lines are breaking down...to Right and Wrong

Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow! was on The Colbert Report. Heard snippets on The Laura Ingraham Show, and so I had to find the video:


"I would but we're out of time; thank you so much for stopping by."

Hilarious!

"What a drag!"

James Bond actor Daniel Craig is not allowed to smoke in the new Bond film. The new 007 is furious with movie bosses who decided to cut out smoking scenes because they don’t want to send the message that smoking is cool to young Bond fans. Craig told Parade magazine: “I can blow off someone’s head at close range and splatter blood, but I can’t light a good Cuban cigar.”

Political correctness makes me barf. I'm all for toning down the decadence in our popular culture; personally, in most instances, I think inserting the "eff"-word into an otherwise PG-13 movie is totally unecessary and can ruin its audience potential. Why do it?

So, James Bond can have a license to kill anyone who so much as looks at him wrong, drinks, gambles, and then drives off after the bad guys (must explain the crazy car chases) in whatever vehicle is at hand- (especially if it doesn't belong to him), and sluts around like a male Paris Hilton (is there any venereal disease he doesn't have?)....but he's not allowed to smoke a cigar? Because that would be bad role-modeling?!? How gay is this?

Can you imagine Clint Eastwood's "Man-with-No-Name" staring down the bad and the uglies without chewing and spitting out the end of his cigar? How uncool would that look?! Let's not go there.

...Sherlock Holmes solving mysteries and biting on his fingernail instead of biting down on the bit of his pipe while saying "It's elementary, my dear Watson"? How mystifying would that be?!

...Or for Tolkien fans, Gandalf or Bilbo without being able to enjoy a "good, full pipe"? Unrealistic!!!

Now this....this is cool (and notice how the cigar helps make the scene?):

(The first photo, btw, is a double entendre).

The Mainstream Media Hubris of 60 Minutes

"It's blowing out at our stores," says Bob Wietrak, a vice president of merchandising at Barnes & Noble, Inc. "There has been phenomenal publicity. The book has been talked about on every talk show and every news show you can think of. Also, he's an authority. He was there."

A description of the Bob Woodward book? No. That was the description of Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies in 2004. Just a few months before that book came out, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill collaborated on Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty. And wouldn't you know it. Both O'Neill and the former terrorism adviser got prominent red carpet treatment on 60 Minutes, as well as making their rounds on the media circuit.

So let's lay out the 2004 timeline:

January 11, 2004: Paul O'Neill is interviewed (video here)in regards to his collaboration on Suskind's The Price of Loyalty. *Yawn*

March 21, 2004: Richard Clarke's interview airs. He had no publisher, until CBS came along seeking him out.

April 18, 2004: Bob Woodward with another interview and a simultaneous April 18th release of his new book, Plan of Attack.

May 21, 2004: 60 Minutes interviews retired general Anthony Zinni

That's 4 hit pieces running up to the November Presidential Election, plus coinciding with Kitty Kelley's book, The Family: The Real Story Behind the Bush Dynasty, which was due out for a September 14th, 2004 release, 60 Minutes runs with one too many anti-Bush stories and blunders on September 8th with this unintended gift to conservatives: Ra^therGate.

I guess 60 Minutes just couldn't squeeze in Michael Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, until a bit over a week after the November Election.


Notice that Simon & Schuster is the publisher of Richard Clarke's book, Anthony Zinni's book, the Suskind-O'Neill book, and Woodward's books. And as Little Green Footballs pointed out in 2004, Simon & Schuster is owned by Viacom, which owns CBS, which produces 60 Minutes. If you don't think people's political allegiance doesn't influence their decisions, consider the following:

Financial records show that Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone has donated $19,000 to Democrats in the past year [2004], some of it to Kerry, for whom he has also pledged to raise at least $50,000 as part of 'a bundle' of donations. The group's chief executive Mel Karmazin has also given $6,576 to Democrat politicians in the past year.

Kerry's campaign has received large donations from other major media and entertainment firms. At least 11 of Kerry's 'bundlers' of gifts of $50,000 or more are from the media. One, Nancy Tellem, heads CBS Entertainment.

When people claim that their decisions aren't based upon partisan politics, I call BS. I would have more respect for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, if they'd prominently admit to their biases. Have their writers mention in their bios, which way they vote. Now that would be much more honest, in the way of journalism.

So another anti-Bush book hits the market, another exclusive interview, last night; and you gotta love the timing of it. Why am I not surprised? It's easy money.

How many anti-Bush segments did CBS 60 Minutes air in 2004, including anti-military and anti-war pieces?

Have they ever featured a conservative, pro-Bush author in a segment? Pile them onto all the other anti-Bush "liberal hit jobs (to borrow Clinton's way of expressing things)", and what do we have? An agenda-driven, liberally-biased, see BS program, in its umpteenth year on the air. And for all the good it did them in 2004, President Bush is still our President, and the leader of the free world. God bless him!

Also blogging:

Newsbusters
Flopping Aces (non-accessible at the moment)

I'll update later tonight with more.

UPDATE 10/03/06: Curt attached an addendum to this post over at Flopping Aces. I've been Googling around to see if the incumbent Bill Clinton received this kind of negative onslaught from 60 Minutes in 1996; in a way, it's a bit of apples and oranges; but hey! Even apples and oranges share a common characteristic.

Anyway, I found that Roger Morris came out with Partners in Power in 1996, and 60 Minutes decided the content was too "explosive" for them to go with reporting on it:

The liberal establishment has been attacked for not giving Partners in Power the attention it warrants in this election year. Howie Carr, a Boston radio-show host, observed in the Boston Herald about two weeks after the book's publication: "Haven't yet heard it mentioned on any of the Sunday-morning chattering skull shows, have you?"

[Roger] Morris himself told The New York Post he saw a double standard in the way his Nixon critique was played up and his Clinton critique played down. In her New York Post media column, Maureen O'Brien said CBS's 60 Minutes had "backed off" from the Morris book because "the content was apparently so explosive," and went on to air Morris's charges. Mike Wallace, who investigated the charge that Clinton was involved in a guns-and-drugs smuggling operation, says he was not able to find independent confirmation.

So Roger Morris' book was too "explosive" and yet in 2004 they didn't find 4 "hard-hitting" anti-Bush books during an election year, "explosive"? And Unfit for Command? Did that get the time of day from the producers at 60 Minutes? They did find the time to squeeze in and devote an interview segment on Bill Clinton, June 20, 2004, giving him the opportunity to promote his book, My Life.

Jeff Cooper, 86: "responsible for keeping more soldiers and law enforcement officers alive than anyone in the world"

“If violent crime is to be curbed it is only the intended victim who can do it. The felon does not fear the police, and he fears neither judge nor jury. Therefore, what he must be taught to fear is the victim."

-Jeff Cooper, May 20, 1920-September 25, 2006
Excerpt from the LA Times obituary:

The modern technique of the pistol, which was later branched out to other small arms, features five elements, including the Weaver stance, named for Jack Weaver, a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy who used two hands to grip the pistol, which created isometric tension to steady it, and used the gun sight.

"Before that, everybody had been hip-shooting — shooting with one hand, without the use of the sights," said Head. "It made a big difference."

The modern technique "has been widely accepted by all the law enforcement agencies in the world," including the Los Angeles Police Department, Mills said. "The man's probably responsible for keeping more soldiers and law enforcement officers alive than anyone in the world."

Cooper, said Wiley Clapp, former handgun editor for Guns & Ammo, "has been referred to as the father of modern handgunning — accurately, I think. He is the guy who developed the technique of using a handgun defensively, the technique that is almost universal in both police and military circles and civilian circles.

"If you go to the movies and see Tom Cruise fighting his way through the bad guys … in the way they hold the pistol, the way they fire multiple shots, all of that is a somewhat Hollywood-ized version of the modern technique. The position they're generally in is a Weaver.

"So this thing that one ultra-conservative, right-wing retired colonel started in the mountains of Big Bear is so permeated in our culture that they're using it in the movies and so forth."

John Dean "Jeff" Cooper was born in Los Angeles on May 20, 1920. As a Marine during World War II, he served on the battleship Pennsylvania and later conducted what he described as "clandestine services" during the Korean War.

Cooper, who was discharged from the Marines in 1955, earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Stanford University and a master's degree in history from UC Riverside. From the late 1950s through the early '70s, he taught history part time through a community college and at the high school in Big Bear.

His books include "Cooper on Handguns," "The Art of the Rifle," "To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth," "Sports Car Annual," two volumes of "Gunsite Gossip," "Fireworks" (a collection of essays) and the memoirs "Another Country" and "C Stories."