We go overseas for the good stuff...

Joe may have nailed it, but he's only one voice out of many liberal ones that have saturated the wires and airwaves. It's a shame you have to go to an overseas paper to get a good, balanced piece on the Vet ad controversy.

Bush has refused to attack Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who have also published a bestselling book. He instead calls for the abolition of all 527 organizations - and has challenged Kerry to make the same call. "Not only has president had over $62m spent attacking him by these shadowy groups, but not forget about Michael Moore’s movie," said Jennifer Millerwise, a Bush campaign spokeswoman.

For weeks, she said, Americans could "hardly turn on a television" without seeing Michael Moore "launch unbelievable attacks on this president" as he promoted Fahrenheit 9/11, his highly successful film.

The Democrats have refused to criticise any of the 527s, save for asking some of the more zealous to calm down. MoveOn recently ran an online poster competition where one entry compared President Bush to Hitler.

AP Throws Objectivity out the Window

Looks like the MSM is not even trying to hide their bias anymore. No doubt this will be picked up on the pages of many Sunday newspapers tomorrow, which is the biggest circulation day for most. The first graph alone would have never gotten past most editors I have known...

WASHINGTON (AP) - John Kerry's Vietnam War service records run to multiple medal commendations and a notation of "conspicuous gallantry" in combat. President Bush's file tracks the stateside career of a National Guard test pilot. Yet the combat veteran is the one under attack as a wartime pretender in the race for the White House.

UPDATE: And if you think that's a bad lead, take a look at the totally biased headline on this latest one entitled Kerry urges Bush to stop mudslinging ads about war record.

Stop? What happened to "Bring it on?"

"The New Soldier" electronic adaptation is online

"The New Soldier," John Kerry's 1971 anti-war tome, which seems to be incredibly hard to find these days, has been webposted now in PDF format (you'll need Adobe Reader to see it) .

Here the intro.
The full text.
And the Epilogue.

And people want this man to run the country?

Joe Scarborough vents and gets it right

Joe Scarborough, the only conservative known to inhabit the halls of MSNBC, has nailed it about the way the MSM seems to overlook how other groups can hurl vile crap at the President, yet nothing is said when the other side returns fire.

The Times' aggressive expose on the 260 decorated Vietnam veterans who make up "Swift Boat Captains for Truth" came complete with a do-it-yourself Vast Right Wing Conspiracy chart...

Funny how attack ads by left-wing groups likemoveon.org didn't provoke the same moral outrage as this vet ad.

I wonder why these high minded media types never drew charts connecting anti-Bush 527 groups to John Kerry. Oh wait. I know the answer. It's because 90 percent of the reporters and talking heads who work for national news outlets will be voting for John Kerry this fall. If you don't believe me then ask Newsweek's top political gun Evan Thomas, who admitted last month that the majority of reporters in America wanted Kerry elected president...

And why don't you check the transcripts of your favorite left-leaning talk show and see if these noble warriors of truth raised the slightest concern when a liberal ad ran in 2000 suggesting that George W. Bush committed an act as heinous as dragging an old black man to his death...

And why are they so offended by John O'Neill's book-- the contents of which may be true-- when they French-kissed Joe Wilson for writing a book that we now know is filled with lies?

Timeline Trouble

According to Glenn Reynolds, John Kerry may have either some serious explaining to do or he should start removing material from his website again in yet another attempt to rewrite his ever-changing Vietnam history.

...when Kerry was protesting the war and holding private meetings with North Vietnamese and Viet Cong representatives in Paris, he was still a Naval officer in the reserves.

Kerry's lawyers also might want to look this over...

Article 104—Aiding the enemy

Text. “Any person who—
(1) aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with arms, ammunition, supplies, money, or
other things; or
(2) without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly; shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct.”

They still don't get it

You have to feel sorry for the folks at the New York Times. They can't seem to get over the fact that there are more sources for news than themselves.

[Kerry's] aides were faced with a strategic dilemma that has become distressingly familiar to campaigns in this era when so much unsubstantiated or even false information can reach the public through so many different forums, be it blogs or talk-show radio.

This, of course, has already been talked about in this book. The Fourth Estate is losing its grip on the monopoly it has of informing the public and it is driving them nuts.

New Poll Shows Swift Boat Impact

Rasmussen Reports just posted a survey which found that 47% of America's Likely Voters have a favorable opinion of John Kerry's military service.

However, PolPundit has a different read on this:

Given that Kerry's war service has been unquestioned until recently, my guess is that undecided block are probably wavering between the favorable and unfavorable impressions. With 17% of Americans undecided, it shows the Swiftboat Veterans have had an enormous impact and may prove decisive in destroying a candidate's most important asset - his credibility.

Pattern of Democratic attempts at censorship

C. D. Harris is sensing a pattern...and he's right.

NewsMax nails it on the head

Carl Limbacher, (also known as Carl from Oyster Bay to those of us who have been on the web a good while), has totally nailed the outright hypocrisy when it come to filing FEC complaints.

When the White House accused the Kerry campaign of "losing its cool" on Friday by filing an FEC complaint against the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, the Democratic nominee immediately fired back with an allusion to Michael Moore's movie "Fahrenheit 9/11."

"John Kerry is not the type of leader who will sit and read 'My Pet Goat'" when he is under attack, responded Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter, citing the scene of Bush in a Florida classroom immortalized in Moore's film.

Was Cutter's reference merely coincidental? Or further evidence of illegal coordination between the Bush-bashing Moore, his backers at the 527 group MoveOn.org and the Kerry campaign? That's what the Kerry FEC complaint alleges against Bush and the Swiftvets, citing an array of contacts and associations between Bush insiders over the years and the Texans who bankrolled the Swiftvet ads.

But if that's the basis for claiming the campaign finance laws have been broken, Moore, MoveOn and Kerry himself have much, much more to worry about.

A Look at MoveOn.org and Swift Boat Vets For Truth

The Patriot Paradox blog has posted an interesting examination of who is giving to who when it comes to MoveOn.org and the Swift Boat Vets.

The Kerry campaign just keeps coming with attack after attack on the Swifties. He calls them Republican activist and Bush cronies, but what about MoveOn.org? They attack Bush all the time with nary a whimper from the President. Perhaps he is thicker skinned? In any case lets look at these two 527s, info courtesy of opensecrets.org:

Says it all

Media leaps to the rescue...but won't give interviews!

And no sooner than The Washington Post releases "Swift Boat Accounts Incomplete And Flawed", a day early, here comes William Rood, a Chicago Tribune editor and former Swift Boat Commander who claims that the Kerry critics are wrong.

"There were three Swift Boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago -- three officers and 15 crewmembers. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on February 28, 1969. "One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a SilverStar for what happened on that date. I am the other."

However, please also note that William Rood will not be available for further comment or interviews. An interesting tactic. Make controversial claims and then refuse to answer questions.

Doesn't this sudden outpouring of negative press for the Swifties seem coordinated to you? Sure does here.

UPDATE: The Country Store blog picks this one apart.

Release the hounds

Seems that Kerry's people have given their allies in the Mainstream Media (MSM) the OK to go after the Swift Boat Vets with everything they've got. It's only Saturday morning and the Washington Post has already posted Sunday's front page story, ripping the vets.

Considering the length of this piece and the sudden interest in any holes in the vet's stories from The New York Times and the Post over the past two days, one would tend to think that research has been quietly going on for months...and the stories were held back and polished, until the order came down to strike.

Swift reaction

The AP is now running a story that states that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are having an impact on John Kerry's campaign. After weeks of ignoring or dismissing the story, the mainstream media has finally caught up with the Bloggers and have begun to cover this story.

However, the Washington Times reports that the angle of the coverage is somewhat one-sided:

According to the Media Research Center, the major TV networks -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- have collectively aired just nine stories about the "swiftees" charges as of this writing, and nearly all covered ad hominem attacks to discredit the accusers. Conversely, the same networks devoted 75 stories questioning President Bush's National Guard service. As the media center calculates, that's an eight-to-one disparity.

In print, the "major" outlets haven't performed any better. The Washington Post finally covered the story on Thursday, though the report was a blatant attempt to discredit one of the "swiftees." The New York Times gave huge space to SBVT on its front page on Friday -- but only to "reveal" all the connections linking the veterans to the Republican party. Not too long ago, the same papers, along with dozens of other major dailies, devoted thousands of inches of print space to Mr. Bush's National Guard service.

Meanwhile, the Kerry campaign has gone into full attack mode by saying that (gasp!) some of the vets might have actually donated to the GOP!!!

The Horror!

Out on the blogsphere, Tom Maguire has rightfully pointed out that Kerry's campaign has inadvertently endorsed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth when they said:

"When somebody's attacking your military record, you reach a boiling point, and he reached a boiling point last night," Ms. Cutter explained. "When you go and fight in a war, when you spill blood for your country, your instinct is to fight back and defend your record.

Which is exactly what the swift boat vets are doing...

Firing up the blog

Well, after a long internal debate (and a change of jobs that would allow more free expression) I have finally jumped head first into the Blogsphere. Please bear with me as I get this sucker going and look for many more posts to come.