Nightline goes to the wrong source

And you thought CBS was biased. Instead of interviewing any of the Swift Boat Vet for learn about John Kerry's war time activities, what does ABC do?

They talk to the enemy instead of the men who served with him.

There is nothing more to be said except for the reaction of John O'Neill:

I would only ask the American people: "Who do you trust more, three members of a communist regime that tortured and killed our American troops or a group of more than 280 highly decorated American veterans, who proudly served their country and are now responsible members of their respective communities?"

The number of veterans who support John Kerry’s accounts of his military service would not fill one Swift Boat. But instead of sitting down to interview some of the 280 plus members of our Swift Boat organization, ABC News chose to travel to Vietnam taking extraordinary and highly suspect steps to find someone to corroborate John Kerry's story.

ABC News Nightline has now dedicated three separate programs to this one incident while ignoring John Kerry's now discredited Senate testimony that he spent Christmas in Cambodia, his receiving a purple heart after all three of the officers required to approve such an issuance rejected his application, or his constantly changing account of the circumstances surrounding his remaining medal, a bronze star.

Further, one has to wonder why ABC News will not address the serious questions as to why John Kerry only received an honorable discharge through the act of then President Carter, seven years after his discharge, and had to have all of his military citations reissued, on the same day, when he became a United States Senator in 1985. And, finally, why has Nightline found it of no interest to permit any POWs to come on their program to explain why they believe John Kerry betrayed their nation, caused them to be incarcerated for an additional two years and caused them tremendous additional hardship and suffering.

Light blogging this weekend

Too many things to do and not enough time to do them in. There will be very light blogging forecast for the next few days.

Even more voter fraud?

It would appear that there is trouble brewing between the City of Milwaukee and the Milwaukee County Election Commission:

You do the math:

The City of Milwaukee asked for 938,300 ballots for the November 2004 election
The Milwaukee County Election Commission proposed giving the city 574,105, but then increased that amount to a total of 679,500.

The total population in Milwaukee: 596,974 in 2000 and 593,920 in 2004
The total number of people who are of legal voting age in Milwaukee in 2004: 423,811

Total votes cast in 2000 fall election: 245,670
Total votes cast in 2002 fall election: 141,351 (pre-registration of 335,889)

Total votes case in 2004 September election: 94,643 (total ballots requested by City of Milwaukee: 841,357)
Total number of pre-registered voters as of the September 2004 election: 382,737

Smells like fraud from here, doesn't it?

Wonderful news from the border

It's not only just cheap labor crossing the southern border anymore:

U.S. security officials are investigating a recent intelligence report that a group of 25 Chechen terrorists illegally entered the United States from Mexico in July.
The Chechen group is suspected of having links to Islamist terrorists seeking to separate the southern enclave of Chechnya from Russia, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports.
Members of the group, said to be wearing backpacks, secretly traveled to northern Mexico and crossed into a mountainous part of Arizona that is difficult for U.S. border security agents to monitor, said officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.

So what if they're fake address...we'll print them anyways!

The troubles never seem to end for the New York Times. It's bad enough some of their writers can't be trusted, now the letters to the editor are suspect as well:

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) - A group of high school students in a summer program at Duke University managed to get several letters published in The New York Times - some under false pretenses - at the urging of a professor, an editor for the newspaper said.

The Times generally does not publish letters written for class assignments, but used 17 letters to the editor in a month from students in Mark Duckenfield's international relations course.

Thomas Feyer, letter editor for the newspaper, said students, at the instruction of Duckenfield, wrote the letters about subjects ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to American consumption as if they were submitted from their hometowns instead of Durham.

"They are clearly smart and good writers - they wrote very nice letters - but I want people to be up front," Feyer said. "The professor was urging them to deceive us, and it undermines the credibility of the paper if it's discovered as it was in this case....

..."I think that policy (of not printing letters prompted by school assignments) is an absolute disgrace and a real insult to their newest and most idealistic readers," Duckenfield wrote in an e-mail from the London School of Economics, where he currently works.

No, Professor...what's disgraceful is using your students to push your far-left ideology on the rest of the public by urging them to lie.

Beyond the pale...in my own state no less

I heard about this briefly on Phil Valentine's show on WTN-99.7 FM yesterday, but he didn't want to run it unless confirmed. In any case, here it is. Judge for yourself:

October 12, 2004 – Democrats in a race for a state House seat in District 82, are circulating a flyer that shows a retarded child with President Bush’s face running in a track race. The headline says: “Voting for Bush Is Like Running In The Special Olympics: Even If You Win, You’re Still Retarded.”

The flyer is being distributed by Democrat Craig Fitzhugh. His opponent, Dave Dahl has issued a call to Fitzhugh to stop distributing the flyer.

There's a scan of the flyer to, which I can't bear to post here. Having a family member who is disabled doesn't help my mood too much either.

"Shameful"

Like I said yesterday, I really hate being right sometimes. At least, Edwards is being called on it for these statements:

October 13, 2004 -- TEMPE, Ariz. — John Edwards is claiming that if John Kerry wins the White House, paralyzed people like Christopher Reeve will get out of their wheelchairs and walk again — touching off a pre-debate fury.

That claim is "shameful" and a "falsehood," shot back the U.S. Senate's only doctor, Majority Leader Bill Frist, heading into tonight's final Bush-Kerry debate in Arizona....

...Frist, a renowned heart surgeon, said: "They're trying to shamefully use the death of people like Christopher Reeve to promote falsehood and dishonesty. To me it's crass and opportunistic. It's giving false hope to people."

Frist (R-Tenn.), a key Bush ally, said there are 120 to 140 stem-cell therapies now in use for paralyzed people. All involve adult-type cells from bone marrow and none involves stem cells.

Many scientists see stem cells as a potential cure for a host of diseases. None, however, has claimed, as Edwards did, that paralyzed people could walk again in just a few years.

They have no shame and say anything to get elected.

Was John Kerry DISHONERABLY Discharged?

This rumor has been making the rounds on the boards and chat rooms over the past few months. But getting the MSM to do any real investigative work on John Kerry's past is like pulling teeth. CBS doesn't seem to mind spending five years trying to prove a story about the president that has been debunked time and time again. But when it comes to the democratic nominee...nothing.

However, this morning, the New York Sun finally reports:

An official Navy document on Senator Kerry's campaign Web site listed as Mr. Kerry's "Honorable Discharge from the Reserves" opens a door on a well kept secret about his military service.

The document is a form cover letter in the name of the Carter administration's secretary of the Navy, W. Graham Claytor. It describes Mr. Kerry's discharge as being subsequent to the review of "a board of officers." This in it self is unusual. There is nothing about an ordinary honorable discharge action in the Navy that requires a review by a board of officers.

According to the secretary of the Navy's document, the "authority of reference" this board was using in considering Mr. Kerry's record was "Title 10, U.S. Code Section 1162 and 1163. "This section refers to the grounds for involuntary separation from the service. What was being reviewed, then, was Mr. Kerry's involuntary separation from the service. And it couldn't have been an honorable discharge, or there would have been no point in any review at all. The review was likely held to improve Mr. Kerry's status of discharge from a less than honorable discharge to an honorable discharge.

A Kerry campaign spokesman, David Wade, was asked whether Mr. Kerry had ever been a victim of an attempt to deny him an honorable discharge. There has been no response to that inquiry.

The document is dated February 16, 1978. But Mr. Kerry's military commitment began with his six-year enlistment contract with the Navy on February 18, 1966. His commitment should have terminated in 1972. It is highly unlikely that either the man who at that time was a Vietnam Veterans Against the War leader, John Kerry, requested or the Navy accepted an additional six year reserve commitment. And the Claytor document indicates proceedings to reverse a less than honorable discharge that took place sometime prior to February 1978.

The whole article has got stuff in it that has been discussed on this very blog for the past two months. The article continues:

Finding grounds for an other than honorable discharge, however, for a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, given his numerous activities while still a reserve officer of the Navy, was easier than finding "dirt."

For example, while America was still at war, Mr. Kerry had met with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegation to the Paris Peace talks in May 1970 and then held a demonstration in July 1971 in Washington to try to get Congress to accept the enemy's seven point peace proposal without a single change. Woodrow Wilson threw Eugene Debs, a former presidential candidate, in prison just for demonstrating for peace negotiations with Germany during World War I. No court overturned his imprisonment. He had to receive a pardon from President Harding.

Mr. Colson refused to answer any questions about his activities regarding Mr. Kerry during his time in the Nixon White House. The secretary of the Navy at the time during the Nixon presidency is the current chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Warner. A spokesman for the senator, John Ullyot, said, "Senator Warner has no recollection that would either confirm or challenge any representation that Senator Kerry received a less than honorable discharge."

The "board of officers" review reported in the Claytor document is even more extraordinary because it came about "by direction of the President." No normal honorable discharge requires the direction of the president. The president at that time was James Carter. This adds another twist to the story of Mr. Kerry's hidden military records.

In fact, the entire article read exactly like discussions that have been pointed out time and again all over the web:

Mr. Kerry has repeatedly refused to sign Standard Form 180, which would allow the release of all his military records. And some of his various spokesmen have claimed that all his records are already posted on his Web site. But the Washington Post already noted that the Naval Personnel Office admitted that they were still withholding about 100 pages of files...

...There are a number of categories of discharges besides honorable. There are general discharges, medical discharges, bad conduct discharges, as well as other than honorable and dishonorable discharges. There is one odd coincidence that gives some weight to the possibility that Mr. Kerry was dishonorably discharged. Mr. Kerry has claimed that he lost his medal certificates and that is why he asked that they be reissued. But when a dishonorable discharge is issued, all pay benefits, and allowances, and all medals and honors are revoked as well. And five months after Mr. Kerry joined the U.S. Senate in 1985, on one single day, June 4, all of Mr. Kerry's medals were reissued.

Stay tuned.

"They better hope that we're not elected."

I've been quite busy this week, working odd hours, otherwise, I would have given this the attention it deserves.

Yesterday, on Fox News, the following exchange was observed:

Discussing the plans of the Sinclair broadcasting group to air "Stolen Honor," the documentary about Kerry's Vietnam war service, Clanton stated:

"They [Sinclair] better hope that we're not elected."

Vester immediately asked if that was intended as a threat to Sinclair that a Kerry administration would not renew their broadcast licenses. Clanton tried to back off, but the threat was unmistakable.

These people must not be allowed back in power. Ever.

Exploiting Kal-El's Death

I didn't want to believe it...but Kerry is exploiting the death of Superman. And according to Wizbang, there's some question about the timing of it all:

Kerry said the last time he heard from Reeve was on Saturday, when the actor left a message on his cellphone, enthused by the Massachusetts senator's decision to raise stem-cell research in Friday's second presidential debate.

Oh really?

WHO TV (Des Moines) October 11th, 2004 - According to sources close to the actor, Reeve died Sunday. The actor fell into a coma on Thursday after going into cardiac arrest at his New York home.

It's true - Kerry will say ANYTHING to get elected...

UPDATE: On Drudge right now, the headline is 'WHEN KERRY IS PRESIDENT, PEOPLE LIKE CHRISTOPHER REEVE ARE GOING TO WALK'

Can't hear it right now, but Rush is blasting this on the radio, calling the statement "the ultimate cruelty"

I hate being right, sometimes...

Useless Nations turns down election request

I don't know why there hasn't been more of an outcry about these fringe groups trying to get a society of third world dictators to come and interfere in our business:

UNITED NATIONS - Seven American activist groups asked the United Nations on Monday to provide international observers for next month's presidential election....

...But the seven groups say it's not clear that the European observers will have the force of international law behind them since they are invited guests.

Other organizations signing the petition include the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, based in Philadelphia; the National Welfare Rights Union and the Michigan Welfare Rights Union, based in Detroit; the Independent Progressive Politics Network, headquartered in Bloomfield, N.J.; Seacoast Peace Response, based in Portsmouth, N.H.; and the North Shore Massachusetts chapter of the Alliance for Democracy.

I'm not sure what I would do if some yahoo from a backwater country tried to interfere or observe me on election day...would not be nice, I can tell you.

Freedom of speech only if you're a liberal

Blogs for Bush points out out the total hypocrisy of the Democrats trying to stop the broadcast of a anti-Kerry documentary.

More Voter Fraud

Bill Hobbs is reporting more voter fraud:

The Las Vegas Sun reports that the former executive director of the state Republican Party is attempting to disqualify nearly 17,000 Democrats from the voting rolls in Nevada's 3rd Congressional District. The reason? They are registered at addresses where they no longer live. In other words, they are fraudulently registered. The Democrats are claiming he is trying to disenfranchise people and suppress the vote. No. He is trying to assure that the election is clean and only properly registered voters are allowed to vote in the proper districts and precincts.

Keep an eye on his blog. He has been doing a great job following this story from all over the country.

Humor Break: Fellowship 9/11

DO NOT drink anything while viewing this. I will not be responsible for the replacement of computer monitors and keyboards due to the sudden introduction of fluids via the nose or mouth:

Michael Moore's searing examination of the Aragorn administration's actions in the wake of the tragic events at Helms Deep. With his characteristic humor and dogged commitment to uncovering - or if necessary fabricating - the facts, Moore considers the reign of the son of Arathorn and where it has led us. He looks at how - and why - Aragorn and his inner circle avoided pursuing the Saruman connection to Helms Deep, despite the fact that 9 out of every 10 Orcs that attacked the castle were actually Uruk-hai who were spawned in and financed by Isengard.

This is a scream.

Saudi Oil Minister Hints at Manipulation

Interesting statement made in this Reuters story on oil prices:

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said price levels were unjustified and should come down after November's U.S. presidential elections.

``There is no justification for it to be where it is. This is a political year and this may have some influence,'' he said.

Naimi reiterated that top world exporter Saudi Arabia could pump an extra 1.5 million barrels per day if required. Oil traders say that extra supplies of the kingdom's high-sulfur crude can do little to help.

If George Soros is a manipulator of currency, then why not the oil market?

Democrats: The party of religious tolerance

I saw this one via Blogs for Bush and I am totally floored at the behavior of the Kerry campaign towards these people who simply want to express their opinion. What happens when this group of seminarians try to attend a Kerry event in St. Louis is one thing, but after being told they could not be in there, the way they were treated by the democrats after the event was over is unbelievable:

When the event was over Kerry supporters poured out of the building just as fast as the obscenities and ridicule poured out of their drunken mouths (yes, many of them were rather intoxicated). We were hailed as pedophile hypocrites who needed to clean our own house before we tell them what to do. We were accused of being the scum of the Catholic Church and homosexuals. We were accused of harboring criminals and being oppressive of women and African Americans. We had some “homosexuals for Kerry” stand in front of us and make out…that was a great photo-op for many of the Kerry supporters. Needless to say it was a very ugly scene, but during it all we remained calm and prayerful – which infuriated them all the more.

If this is the way Democrats treat the faithful during the campaign, just imagine how they will be dealt with if Kerry is elected, with the full power of federal law enforcement backing them up. Be afraid, very afraid.

U.N.: Useless Nations

Once again, Kofi Annan proves that the U.N is nothing more that an intermational debating society run by third world dictators who try to figure out new way to line their pockets and screw their major benefactor:

BEIJING - The United Nations must show it is tough enough to ensure the security of its members so that individual countries do not take measures into their own hands, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Monday.

Speaking to Chinese university students in Beijing, Annan said fighting terrorism was best achieved through cooperation and information-sharing between states, not the use of force.

“Indeed, the first purpose of the United Nations, laid down in Article 1 of the Charter, is ’to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace’,” Annan said.

“We must show that the United Nations is capable of fulfilling that purpose, so that states do not feel obliged or entitled to take the law into their own hands.”

Superman returns to Krypton

Reports this morning say actor Christopher Reeves has died. I, and I hope others, wish his family the best in this trying time.

I also understand that John Kerry was just talking about Mr. Reeve last week as it relates to Stem Cell Research. Given the democrat's habit of exploiting any issue, I really hope they don't go there. You know what I mean.

Isn't it so sad that we even have to think about the possiblilty of a party using the death of a man to score political points? Ever since Paul Wellstone...

R.I.P., Kal-El.

Already Flip-flopping on Nuisance comment

What is with the Kerry campaign anyways? Are they firing up the bong so much that their short term memory is totally shot? Here in this CNN report, they are reacting to the Bush campaign's slamming of Kerry's foolish comments in the New York Times where he said, ''We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance.''

Bush campaign Chairman Marc Racicot, in an appearance on CNN's "Late Edition," interpreted Kerry's remarks as saying "that the war on terrorism is like a nuisance. He equated it to prostitution and gambling, a nuisance activity. You know, quite frankly, I just don't think he has the right view of the world. It's a pre-9/11 view of the world."

Republican Party Chairman Ed Gillespie, on CBS' "Face the Nation," used similar language.

"Terrorism is not a law enforcement matter, as John Kerry repeatedly says. Terrorist activities are not like gambling. Terrorist activities are not like prostitution. And this demonstrates a disconcerting pre-September 11 mindset that will not make our country safer. And that is what we see relative to winning the war on terror and relative to Iraq."...

...Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer called the Republican charges "absolutely ridiculous."

"This is yet another example of the Bush campaign taking John Kerry's words out of context, and then blowing it up into something that is nothing," he said.

"The whole article is about how John Kerry recognizes that the war on terror requires a multipronged approach. It's not just the military aspect, but you need diplomacy to be able to enlist your allies. The Bush people have never understood that. John Kerry has always said that terrorism is the No. 1 threat to the U.S."

Uh...guys, you need to sober up and look at what your boy said during the first debate which you are so proud of:

LEHRER: New question, two minutes, Senator Kerry.

If you are elected president, what will you take to that office thinking is the single most serious threat to the national security to the United States?

KERRY: Nuclear proliferation. Nuclear proliferation. There's some 600-plus tons of unsecured material still in the former Soviet Union and Russia.

More Oil for Food Stuff--The UN was on the take

Blogs for Bush takes another look at why the Oil for Food scandal is really at the heart of the controversy over going to War with Iraq:

It shows that despite John Kerry's assertions that George W. Bush failed to build international coalitions because he's a cowboy or because he 'rushed to war', the real reason a coalition with the likes of France, Russia and China could've never been built (yes, even with a 'President Kerry') is because those so-called "allies" were working with Saddam Hussein and guaranteeing him they'd protect him against a U.S. invasion... to protect their business contracts....

If John Kerry would've had his way, we would've continued down a road of meaningless sanctions from a world body that was so corrupted by the very target of the sanctions that we would've awaken some time in the near future to the realization that Saddam was armed to the hilt and we'd been suckered by "allies" who were on the take.

Read the whole thing.

NYT Interviews Kerry...must read

As we all know, the New York Times has been pulling out all the stops to help out John Kerry. There's a long interview with him in today's edition that may show more of him than they intended:

When I asked Kerry what it would take for Americans to feel safe again, he displayed a much less apocalyptic worldview. ''We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance,'' Kerry said. ''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 also quite of bit of talk about Kerry dealing with the Muslim world much in the same way that Jimmy Carter did...and we all know where that has gotten us. Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: The Bush campaign has reacted to this and an ad should be on the air within a day or so.

Power Line also has some thoughts:

With this we can agree: ''A new presidency with the right moves, the right language, the right outreach, the right initiatives, can dramatically alter the world's perception of us very, very quickly." We recall how the world's perception of the United States was quickly altered by Jimmy Carter's announcement that we had overcome our inordinate fear of Communism. Mutatis mutandis, John Kerry promises a restoration of the foreign policy of Jimmy Carter -- the looming presence left unmentioned in the Bai article.

We saw a preview of the futility of Carterism in the face Islamism in the Iranian hostage crisis that terminated the Carter presidency. For those who learn from experience, the case for Carterism is even less compelling in 2004 than it was in 1980. Kerry's resurrection of Carterism in the face of the Islamist war against America would indeed alter the perception of us very, very quickly, although I fear we would not be around long enough to appreciate it fully.

And don't miss what Hugh Hewitt, Roger L. Simon and Charles Johnson has to say about this piece.

Did Democratic donor profit from Oil for Food?

It was a foregone conclusion that Americans would sooner or later be connected to the oil for food scandal, but had anyone associated with the Bush administration been linked, we would certainly be hearing about it from the MSM...in fact, that is probably the only thing we would be hearing.

However, one article has already appeared, linking several U.S. firms to the scheme:

WASHINGTON - Major U.S. oil companies and a Houston oil investor were among those who received lucrative vouchers that enabled them to buy Iraqi oil under the U.N. oil-for-food program, according to a report prepared by the CIA's chief arms inspector.

The 918-page report says that four American oil companies — Chevron, Mobil, Texaco and Houston-based Bay Oil — and three individuals, including Oscar Wyatt, were given vouchers and got 111 million barrels of oil between them from 1996 to 2003. The vouchers allowed them to profit by selling the oil or the right to trade it.

The other individuals, whose names appeared on a secret list kept by the former Iraqi government, were Samir Vincent of Annandale, Va., and Shakir Al-Khafaji of West Bloomfield, Mich., according to the report by the inspector, Charles Duelfer.

The fact that these companies and individuals received oil from Iraq does not mean that they did anything illegal, experts on the program said. Such allocations may have been proper if the individuals and companies received appropriate U.N. approval.

However, according to Newsweek, Wyatt has a bit of a history of giving to a certain political group:

Law-enforcement sources say Americans who participated in alleged oil-for-food scams also may face further investigation. The CIA deleted from Duelfer's report names of Saddam's U.S. oil-for-food favorites. But an uncensored copy of the Duelfer report obtained by NEWSWEEK indicates Houston oil mogul Oscar Wyatt got oil allocations from Saddam which could have earned him and Coastal Corp.—a company he founded and ran until 2000—profits of more than $22 million. Wyatt and wife Lynn are major donors to political causes: since 1989 they have given nearly $700,000 in contributions, of which more than $500,000 went to Democrats. Wyatt told NEWSWEEK that his company did buy oil from Saddam but that he never did so personally, and that his company's dealings all complied with U.N. rules.

Houston's Clear Thinkers also has a little more about Wyatt's political leanings:

Mr. Wyatt, who is 79 years old, has long been one of Houston's most outspoken businessmen. He founded Coastal Corp. and turned it into a natural gas giant before retiring as its chairman in 1997. El Paso Corp. bought Coastal in 2001 for $22.6 billion, and Mr. Wyatt's public (and caustic) displeasure with El Paso's management generated an unsuccessful proxy battle to oust El Paso's board last year. Another example of Mr. Wyatt's outspoken nature was his public opposition to Operation Desert Storm in the first Iraq War in 1991, which was led by fellow Houstonian President George H.W. Bush.

The Houston Chronicle has a bit more too:

Wyatt has had a long relationship with Saddam, dating back to before the Gulf War when his company Coastal Corp. was a major buyer of Iraqi oil. He won fame in 1991 by taking his company's plane to Iraq to pick up American citizens being held hostage during the run up to the war.

He also did business with the Libyan leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi. In 2000, Coastal Corp. merged with El Paso Corp. Wyatt is still a large shareholder in El Paso, but he is not an executive with the company, which last month received the subpoena related to the Iraqi oil deals.

Wyatt Announced in March 1997 that he would retire and begin lobbying in Washington to lift sanctions against Iraq and Libya.

The lifting of sanctions is exactly what Saddam was hoping for so he could restart his WMD program, according to the recent CIA report. Of course, the MSM will probably headline this with a variation of "Texas Oil Man Linked to Saddam" to try to tie this to Bush. If fact, the New York Times has already attempted to link it to Bush, Cheney and Halliburton. We'll see how this plays out.