Ashley Faulkner lost her mother on 9/11. Back in May when President Bush was in Lebanon he took a moment to hug and comfort her. The story of the hug was run in the Enquirer and spread on the web. Now the Faulkners are being featured in a new ad from the group Progress for America.

The most expensive TV ad buy of the presidential campaign shows President Bush consoling a teenage girl whose mother died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

The ad, created by the conservative Progress for America Voter Fund, will run until the election on cable stations and in nine key states at a cost of $14.2 million, said the group's president, Brian McCabe. (Related link: Ad analysis)

The ad was inspired by a photo of Bush hugging Ashley Faulkner, who is now 16, while campaigning in Lebanon, Ohio, on May 4. The photo, taken by the girl's father, Lynn Faulkner, was widely circulated on the Internet. As Bush shook hands in the crowd, the Faulkners' neighbor told him that Ashley had lost her mom on 9/11. Bush enfolded Ashley in his arms and offered her comfort.

"In the midst of all those people and all that noise, it was an intimate and personal moment," Lynn Faulkner, a marketing consultant and a Republican, said in an interview. His wife, Wendy Faulkner, an information-systems executive, was in the South Tower on Sept. 11.

The ad features the photo and Ashley and her father talking about Bush. "All he wants to do is make sure I'm safe," Ashley says in the ad. Lynn says in the ad that he saw in Bush "what I want to see in the heart and soul" of a president.

--Progress for America

The ad is titled "Ashley's Story" and can be viewed here. It's a pretty moving ad.

A transcript of the ad:

LYNN FAULKNER:
My wife Wendy was murdered by terrorists on September 11th.

NARRATOR:
The Faulkner's daughter Ashley closed up emotionally, but when President George W. Bush came to Lebanon, Ohio she went to see him as she had with her mother 4 years before.

LINDA PRINCE:
He walked toward me and I said "Mr. President, this young lady lost her mother in the World Trade Center."

ASHLEY FAULKNER:
And he turned around and he came back and he said "I know that's hard, are you all right?"

LINDA PRINCE:
Our president took Ashley in his arms and just embraced her. And it was at that moment that we saw Ashley's eyes fill up with tears.

ASHLEY FAULKNER:
He's the most powerful man in the world and all he wants to do is make sure I'm safe, that I'm ok.

LYNN FAULKNER:
What I saw is what I want to see in the heart and in the soul in the man who sits in the highest elected office in our country.

NARRATOR:
Progress for America Voter Fund is responsible for the content of this message.

--Update--
The ad has its own domain, AshleysStory.com.

Last summer, John F. Kerry refused to cross a police picket line and address the US Conference of Mayors meeting in Boston. Last night he rode in a motorcade that crossed two Florida police picket lines en route to a get-out-the-vote rally in vote-rich Orlando.

Aides said the demonstration, staged by members of the Orlando Police Department represented by Fraternal Order of Police Local 25, was sprung on the campaign without prior notice in an effort to embarrass the city's Democratic mayor, Buddy Dyer. Local media describe the union as Republican-leaning, the same label aides to Mayor Thomas M. Menino attached to the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association in the midst of its dispute before the Democratic National Convention in July.

"It was a surprise demonstration by an organization that supports President Bush," said David Wade, a spokesman for Kerry.

The officers' contract expired Oct. 1. The city has offered the membership a 2 percent raise, as it did all city labor unions. The union is seeking 4 percent.

One of the pickets, Officer Paul Bruning, said the union notified Democratic officials in Miami last week of its plans to picket Kerry both at Orlando International Airport and at the Barnett Park Recreation Center.

--Boston Globe

...not enough crack cocaine to hand out.

Mary Poppins. Jeffrey Dahmer. Janet Jackson. Chad Staton.
Defiance County elections officials were confident the first three hadn't moved to their small community. But the fourth one lived there, and - in exchange for crack cocaine - tried to falsely submit the first three names and more than 100 others onto the county's voter registration rolls, police said.

Now Mr. Staton, 22, of Defiance, faces a felony charge of false registration in a case that has quickly gained national attention as part of a hotly contested presidential battle that's attracted a flurry of new voter registrations across the country - and a flurry of complaints of voter registration fraud.

Defiance County Sheriff David Westrick said that Mr. Staton was working on behalf of a Toledo woman, Georgianne Pitts, to register new voters. She, in turn, was working on behalf of the NAACP National Voter Fund, which was formed by the NAACP in 2000 to register new voters.

Sheriff Westrick said that Pitts, 41, of Toledo, admitted she gave Mr. Staton crack cocaine in lieu of cash for supplying her with completed voter registration forms. The sheriff declined to say how much crack cocaine Pitts supplied Mr. Staton, or to say whether Pitts knew that the forms Mr. Staton gave her were falsified.
...
Of the 130 forms submitted, county elections board director Wayne Olsson said that only six turned out to be legitimate.

Noting that the potentially new voters had listed addresses in Defiance County, Cuyahoga County elections officials sent the forms to Defiance County, where they arrived the afternoon of Oct. 8.

The package came with a small note inside from Cuyahoga County officials: Check the signatures on the cards for fraud.

Within an hour, Defiance County elections workers had deduced that the batch of 130 was mostly faked forms, said Laura Howell, the county elections board's deputy director.

"We could tell by the handwriting that many of them were written by the same person," she said. "And of course we know the streets. Defiance being a small town, many of [the forms] had streets not even in Defiance."

And so elections workers immediately began sending out letters, addressed to the people listed at those addresses, as a precaution to ensure that a Mary Poppins, a Jeffrey Dahmer, or a Janet Jackson didn't, in fact, live in Defiance County, she said.

Letters also went out to George Foreman, Brett Favre, Michael Jordan, and Dick Tracy, among others in the bundle to see if the post office would return them as undeliverable.

Letters even went out to a handful of people registered on forms with different personal identifiers but the same name: Chad Staton.

None of the Chad Statons made the cut.

In the meantime, elections officials contacted the office of Sheriff Westrick, a Republican, who began an investigation that included the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification & Investigation.

Sheriff's deputies arrested Mr. Staton as he walked along a Defiance street about 8 a.m. yesterday, and issued a press release by noon that soon spread across the Internet.
...
it's not the first complaint of fraud against the NAACP Voter Fund, which insists it is nonpartisan.

Elections officials in Lake County, just east of Cleveland, last month began investigating the group and an anti-Bush group called Americans Coming Together, or ACT Ohio, for hundreds of suspicious registration forms and absentee ballot requests.

Among them was one, submitted by the NAACP Voter Fund, for a man who'd been dead for more than two decades.

--Toledo Blade

... on Friday's post about foreigners trying to influence the election by writing to Clark County residents, the Guardian has posted some responses they've received.

A few highlights:

Dear wonderful, loving friends from abroad,
We Ohioans are an ornery sort and don't take meddling well, even if it comes from people we admire and with their sincere goodwill. We are a fairly closed community overall. In my town of Springfield, I feel that there are some that consider people from the nearby cities of Columbus or Dayton, as "foreigners"- let alone someone from outside our country.
Springfield, Ohio
...
I just read a hilarious proposal to involve your readership in the upcoming US presidential election. At least, I'm hoping that it is genius satire. Nothing will do more to undermine the Democratic cause in Ohio than having patronising Brits wander around Clark County telling people how to vote. Just, for a second, imagine if the Washington Post sent folks from Ohio to do the same in Oxfordshire. I'm saying this as a Democrat, and as someone who has spent the last few years in the UK. That is, with all due respect. Please, please, be rational, and move slowly away from the self-defeating hubris.
United States
...
My dear, beloved Brits,
I understand the Guardian is sponsoring a service where British citizens write to Americans to advise them on how to vote. Thank heavens! I was adrift in a sea of confusion and you are my beacon of hope!

Feel free to respond to this email with your advice. Please keep in mind that I am something of an anglophile, so this is not confrontational. Please remember, too, that I am merely an American. That means I am not very bright. It means I have no culture or sense of history. It also means that I am barely literate, so please don't use big, fancy words.

Set me straight, folks!
Dayton, Ohio

--Guardian Unlimited

And there are many there that are quite a bit more strongly worded.

Readers of a British newspaper have been invited to write Clark County voters with the aim of persuading the undecided to vote for either George W. Bush or John Kerry.

The 400,000-circulation Guardian, a London-based newspaper, published an article explaining to its international readers that although they have no vote in the U.S. presidential election, they can make a difference.

“ ... We’ve zeroed in on one of the places where this year’s election truly will be decided: Clark County, Ohio, which is balanced on a razor’s edge between Republicans and Democrats,” the article reads. It can be found on the Internet at guardian.co.uk, under the heading “My fellow non-Americans...” by Oliver Burkeman, who is based in the newspaper’s New York City bureau.

The newspaper is encouraging its readers from “Basildon to Botswana” to write Clark County residents who do not have a declared party, “which somewhat increases the chances of their being persuadable.”

Features editor Ian Katz said the unique idea stemmed from many foreigners’ feelings of helplessness while they watched the unfolding of the U.S. election — an election they feel will have a strong impact on the entire world.
--Springfield News-Sun

Cleanup will soon be under way at the Bush-Cheney Victory Center in York County for the fifth time this election season.

Vandals spray painted anti-Bush messages and "Vote Kerry" on the building and on the rented sign out front Wednesday night.

They also stole the letters from the sign out front which had been advertising a veterans event for this weekend.

"I just don't understand the mentality we're dealing with here. I mean, what are they proving? Because it's really, it's degrading to the other party to have this kind of vandalism going on," said Darwin Doll, headquarters coordinator.

The vandals hit other businesses and a barn along Route 74 just outside of Dallastown Wednesday night.

Doll said the Victory Center will now be equipped with security cameras.

--TheWGALChannel.com

All Italy is abuzzing today about a Kerry gaffe aired last night on HBO in Italy. As reported in today's Corriere della Sera in Italy, Defense Minister Antonio Martino criticized John Kerry for an incredible remark that the conditions of the Iraqi Army were so bad that even the Italian Army could kick their a**es.

Martino remarked that Kerry, "instead of saying what he thinks, should think about what he says."

But that would be too much for the great statesman from Massachusetts, wouldn't it?

--The Corner on National Review Online

Democrats in a race for a state House seat in District 82, are circulating a flyer that shows a child with disabilities 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.

According to Dahl, “Hard-ball politics is one thing and everyone expects tough battles, but using those who are born with mental disabilities for political fodder is disgusting.”

Dahl says the flyers have been distributed for at least two weeks from Fitzhugh’s campaign office in Ripley, Tennessee. It also serves as the Kerry-Edwards headquarters. “At first, I really did not believe that Fitzhugh and the Democrats would stoop to such gutter politics, but then people started bringing the flyer to me at the end of last week. I was shocked and disgusted.”

--TraditionalValues.org

Bill Hobbs has the response from the Special Olympics people:

We at Special Olympics are astounded and appalled by a political flyer being distributed in Tennessee, showing the head of President Bush superimposed on the body of a Special Olympics athlete, saying, "Even if you win, you're still retarded."

We see this communication as an egregious, gratuitous insult to our almost 2 million athletes in over 150 countries around the world and a stunning affront to the more than 200 million people in the world who have intellectual disabilities.

We cringe at the thought that any one of these capable and courageous athletes would ever have to endure the agony, embarrassment, pain and suffering that this flyer would certainly cause.

We hope that the person or persons responsible for this outrageous political advertisement would come forward, identify themselves, and explain to the people of Tennessee and everywhere else why they would choose to denigrate the spirit, courage, and accomplishments of the Special Olympics athletes.

--BillHobbs.com

Sinclair Broadcasting Group, owners and/or operators of Fox 45 and ABC 22 in Dayton and WB 64 in Cincinnati are preempting prime time programming on their stations to run Stolen Honor, a documentary about John Kerry's conduct upon returning from Vietnam.

Off the bat, I think the judgements about Sinclair's presentation of the documentary are premature. As yet we don't have a clue as to how it will be presented, it might just end up being presented in an evenhanded manner. Or of course it could be completely biased, the point is we don't know yet.

Personally I don't see how this is worse than what CBS and Michael Moore have done. Raise a stink about it if you want, boycott Sinclair stations, try to convince them not to run it, rebut it, tell people where it's wrong. That's fine. That's your right. I don't have a problem with that.

I do however have a problem when people start whining to the FEC, when people move from "I don't like what that guy's saying, let's try and get him to stop" to "I don't like what that guy's saying, let's use the power of the government to get him to stop." The very purpose of the free speech clause of the First Amendment was to protect political speech. Airing this documentary is political speech. Sinclair has just as much right to air that documentary as the Left has the right to protest it.

Were the FEC to do the unthinkable and rule that Sinclair can't broadcast it, that decision would be a travesty.

Robin Dahle, who asked President Bush the first question yesterday, was just on NPR's Weekend America...

Dahle said that, before the debate, there was a 40 percent chance he'd vote for President Bush. He's now 80-90 percent sure of his vote, although not 100 percent.

The reason he gave was that Bush was more "personable." He also said that Kerry blundered when he said that only 3 people in the room made $200,000/year. He said that Kerry had made that assumption based on the appearance of the audience and the location of the debate. Dahle found that condescending.

--Blogs for Bush

Congrats to John Howard who won a fourth term yesterday.

There are in fact a couple of Internets. Now I can't speak as to whether draft rumors are flying around on Internet 2, but with all the college-types on there it's not out of the question.

This is Wictory Wednesday. Please volunteer to help the President win reelection. President Bush needs your support now more than ever to help counter the attacks and spin emanating from the Left. You can also sign up to get e-mail from the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign. If you are an Ohioan who supports the President please consider joining the Ohioans for Bush-Cheney Yahoo! Group. If you'd like to help out monetarily you can give to the RNC.

His conclusion at the end of the debate:

If I ever need to sue somebody, I'll call John Edwards.

If I ever need somebody killed - like, you know, terrorists trying to kill me or my family - I'll call Dick Cheney.

--The Kerry Spot on National Review Online

Your hometown newspaper has taken to calling you "Senator Gone." You've got one of the worst attendance records in the United States Senate.

Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session.

The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.

--Washington Post

Thought Cheney did very well tonight. He clearly knew his stuff, and I'd call it a draw in style. In the end, as with last week's debate, I think more people will agree with and believe what Vice President Cheney said. And also as with last week's debate, very few people's votes will have been changed.

And the runner up:

And with respect to [the Iraq War], we've seen a situation in which, first, they voted to commit the troops, to send them to war, John Edwards and John Kerry, then they came back and when the question was whether or not you provide them with the resources they needed -- body armor, spare parts, ammunition -- they voted against it.

I couldn't figure out why that happened initially. And then I looked and figured out that what was happening was Howard Dean was making major 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 if they couldn't stand up to the pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to stand up to al Qaeda?

--Washington Post

A group of protestors stormed and then ransacked a Bush-Cheney headquarters building in Orlando, Fla., Tuesday, according to Local 6 News. ... Local 6 News reported that several people from the group of 100 Orlando protestors face possible assault charges after the group forced their way inside the Republican headquarters office.

While in the building, some of the protestors drew horns and a mustache on a poster of President George W. Bush and poured piles of letters in the office, according to the report.

"We told them to leave, they broke the law," Republican headquarters volunteer Mike Broom said.

Two protestors received minor injuries when the crowd stormed the building, including a Republican volunteer.

--WKMG (Orlando, FL)

Hat tip Instapundit (He also has pics from the Knoxville attack mentioned below.)

An unknown suspect fired multiple shots into the Bearden office of the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign Tuesday morning. ... According to Knoxville Police Department (KPD) officers on the scene Tuesday, it is believed that the two separate shots were fired from a car sometime between 6:30 am and 7:15 am.

One shot shattered the glass in the front door and the other cracked the glass in another of the front doors.

Bush-Cheney volunteer campaign coordinator Suzanne Dewar says she originally planned to be in the office early Tuesday morning.

"If I had gotten here a couple hours earlier, I'd have been inside," Dewar explains. "And we don't turn the lights on until we open, so they wouldn't have [known] someone was inside."
...
Volunteers and staffers at the campaign office say they have no clues as to who might have committed the crime. However, they add that the shooting makes them even more enthusiastic about working for their candidates.

"If anything, they've energized us," Dewar says. "Thank you. Not thank you for shooting at us, but, nothing's gonna slow us down."

Dewar says she can't imagine why someone would fire shots into an office where people could have been injured or killed.

"I don't even know what to say to the person that did this," Dewar says. "...Get a life. This is ridiculous."

--WBIR (Knoxville, TN)

Keep this quiet though, people are supposed to think that only the "brownshirts" on the right would stoop to stuff like this.

Football may not be the best sport for you to take up on the campaign trail.

The Global Test you need to take before doing anything outside our own borders is now available online.

The Gallup Poll on the debate is out. It shows that 53% of people believe Kerry won the debate and 37% think President Bush did. Interestingly the only aspect of the debate Kerry led in was "Expressed himself more clearly".

Viewers saw Kerry as more articulate in the debate than Bush (60% to 32%), though they divided equally as to which candidate had a better understanding of the issues (41% each).

Thinking about the following characteristics and qualities, please say whether you think each one better described John Kerry or George W. Bush during tonight's debate. How about -- [Random Order]?

2004 Sep 30 (sorted by advantage for Kerry)		Kerry	Bush	Advantage
		%	%	pct. pts.
Expressed himself more clearly		60	32	+28
Had a good understanding of the issues		41	41	0
Agreed with you more on the issues you care about		46	49	-3
Was more believable		45	50	-5
Was more likable		41	48	-7
Demonstrated he is tough enough for the job		37	54	-17
+	Advantage indicates Kerry lead
-	Advantage indicates Bush lead

--Gallup

Kerry may have been a more effective speaker, but I don't know that that's going to equate to people changing their minds on whether he's the right person to lead the war on terror.

Hugh Hewitt's got a debate scorecard going where he grades each question and each response.

This is Wictory Wednesday. Please volunteer to help the President win reelection. President Bush needs your support now more than ever to help counter the vicious smear campaign the Left has launched. You can also sign up to get e-mail from the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign. If you are an Ohioan who supports the President please consider joining the Ohioans for Bush-Cheney Yahoo! Group. If you'd like to help out monetarily you can give to the RNC.

--Correction--
The Times has run a correction of the quote.

"We know we can't count on the French. We know we can't count on the Russians," said Mr. Kerry. "We know that Iraq is a danger to the United States, and we reserve the right to take pre-emptive action whenever we feel it's in our national interest."

In reference to a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding access to Iraqi weapons sites, Mr. Kerry actually said: "I think that's our great concern [-] where's the backbone of Russia, where's the backbone of France, where are they in expressing their condemnation of such clearly illegal activity [-] but in a sense, they're now climbing into a box and they will have enormous difficulty not following up on this if there is not compliance by Iraq."

Later, referring to French and Russian reservations on the use of force, Mr. Kerry said: "There's absolutely no statement that they have made or that they will make that will prevent the United States of America and this president or any president from acting in what they believe are the best interests of our country."

--The Washington Times
(via Polipundit and AlphaPatriot)

The state of Ohio is stepping in to investigate possible voter fraud in Summit County. And the Lake County prosecutor is also looking into fraud there.

More than 800 voter registration cards in Summit County are under investigation, NewsChannel5 reported.

The Board of Elections said the voter registration cards in question are for addresses that don't exist, spelling mistakes or have similar handwriting.

Fifty of those questionable cards apparently came from the AFL-CIO central office in Cleveland, WEWS reported.
...
Elections officials said the bogus cards were kicked out by the computer and forwarded to state investigators.

In the meantime in Lake County, elections officials said some voter advocacy groups are forging registration cards.

In one example, a man who's been dead for 20 years is apparently a new registered voter.

And in another case, it looks as if an entire neighborhood will be out of town on Election Day. Everyone there applied for absentee ballots.

--NewsNet5.com

Siegel: What do you do if you ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff what they need to achieve their mission in Iraq and they say, "We need a lot more troops"? Do you escalate the troop levels, or do you plan for a quick or a constant exit instead?

Kerry: You have to support our troops, and you have to do what's necessary to try to make this mission successful, but they have not asked for that. I have to wait until I'm president and sit down with them and see where we are.

Siegel: But you yourself have pointed out that Gen. Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, said there should be hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq, and you say he was fired for saying that. What if you get now the "real story," as you would say, the Army speaking candidly--

Kerry: I'll have to make a decision when I get there as to what the probabilities are. I can't hypothesize as to what I am going to find on Jan. 20--whether I'm going to find a Lebanon or whether I'm going to find a country that's moving towards an election. That depends on what the president does now.

Siegel: But--

Kerry: I think the leadership has been arrogant and disastrous.

Siegel: But should either you or whoever is president next year consider the possibility of an increase in troops? Is that even a consideration, or should it be completely off the table?

Kerry: I do not intend to increase troops. I intend to get the process in place that I described, and I believe as a new president, with new credibility, with a fresh start, that I have the ability to be able to change the dynamics on the ground.

--Best of the Web

Where's that nuance when you need it?

Offered up by Neal Boortz:

Continuing their deep plunge into the abyss of political cluelessness, The Poodle's campaign has now decided to accuse George Bush of trying to reinstate the draft. Really, is this the best they can do? How about a little show of imagination here? I'm known for my willingness to assist the clueless, so here are some suggestions for The Poodle's handlers. Over the next 42 days they can make a series of statements to the media claiming that:

George Bush has a secret plan to destroy Social Security so that he can give more tax cuts to the wealthy.

George Bush has a secret plan to end Medicare. Let nature take its course.

Bush wants senior citizens to die. To hurry them along he will cut off their food supply.

George Bush has a secret plan to accelerate global warming.

George Bush wants the FCC to limit CBS newscasts to between 2:00 and 3:00 am.

George Bush wants to open an investigation into Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick. (Come to think of it, that's not such a bad idea. If Bush's National Guard service is fair game, let's seek the Truth about Ted.)

George Bush wants $2.50 a gallon gas to enrich his Texas oil buddies.

George Bush wants to keep black citizens away from the polls with the possible exception of Colin Powell, Condi Rice and Clarence Thomas.

George Bush will start another war. He needs a war for each term. To save on transportation costs the next target will be Canada. He will use sealing our borders as an excuse.

--boortz.com: Nealz Nuze Today's Nuze

The sad thing is, they're already made most of those statements.

Poor, poor Democrats. I feel sorry for them. They think they're in a bad enough spot that they need to try to scare young people with talk of President Bush reinstating the draft. Never mind that the bills to reinstate the draft in Congress sponsored by people like Fritz Hollings (D-SC), Chuck Rangel (D-NY), Jim McDermott (D-WA), John Conyers (D-MI), John Lewis (D-GA), Fortney "Pete" Stark (D-CA) and Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) and not Republicans.

--Addendum--

"There will be no draft when John Kerry is president," the North Carolina senator vowed, raising the question of whether there would be a draft if Bush remains in the White House.

Edwards’ comment came on the heels of remarks last week by Kerry’s friend and fellow Vietnam War veteran, former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland.

In a speech at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Cleland told students they might find themselves pressed into military service if Bush wins a second term.

“America will reinstate the military draft” if Bush is re-elected and continues the Iraq War, Cleland predicted, according to an account of his speech by the Colorado Springs Gazette.

"Pay attention ... to what you've got going on in Iraq. That, ladies and gentlemen, is Vietnam. I've seen this movie before. I know how it ends. It does not end pleasantly," he added. Cleland has been in a wheelchair since 1968 when he lost both legs and one arm in a grenade accident in Vietnam.

Former Kerry rival Howard Dean, now traveling the country to drum up support for Kerry and raise money for Democratic candidates, said last week at Brown University in Providence, R.I., "I think that George Bush is certainly going to have a draft if he goes into a second term, and any young person that doesn't want to go to Iraq might think twice about voting for him."

--MSNBC

That is simply despicable. They are flat out lying and making stuff up in order to scare people into voting for Kerry. I'd deleted this line from the original post, but it's going right back in now: It's like the kooks have completely taken over.

This is Wictory Wednesday. Please volunteer to help the President win reelection. President Bush needs your support now more than ever to help counter the vicious and untrue smear campaign the Left has launched. You can also sign up to get e-mail from the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign. If you are an Ohioan who supports the President please consider joining the Ohioans for Bush-Cheney Yahoo! Group. If you'd like to help out monetarily you could give to the RNC or consider giving to Mel Martinex's effort to win the Senate seat in Florida.

Given [the] economic problems the President needed a way to mute their possible damage. He has done this by setting the negatives in context, by countering economics with cultural values, and by stressing his leadership on the war on terror. Bush’s stump speeches focus on what has been over come and what can still be accomplished. While he admits that the economy is still struggling, he points out that he inherited a struggling economy that was hit hard by 9/11 and the corporate scandals that rocked Wall Street. Bush insists that, thanks to the tax cuts he championed, the economy is on the up turn but promises to keep working until everyone who wants to find work can do so. This rhetorical strategy allows Bush to frame a perceived weakness as a roadblock overcome rather than a failure. It also keeps his campaign tone positive and focused on the future.

Another way Bush counters economic bad news is by appealing to the cultural values of those in distressed areas. In media interviews with independent voters one sees again and again where those with doubts about the economy often lean Bush because of cultural issues like faith, abortion, gay marriage, and guns. The recent media focus on the Assault Weapons Ban is a good example. While Kerry was blasting the President on the issue Bush was in Southern Ohio talking about his strong support for the Second Amendment and campaigning with Zell Miller on his support for family values. In the potential swing region of Appalachia who do you think wins in that battle?

In foreign policy Bush has positioned himself as a decisive and committed leader in the war on terror and in contrast to the overly nuanced and shifting Kerry. As with cultural issues, Bush tells voters that he is on their side; that only he has the commitment to do what it takes to protect American lives and values.
...
This brings up a third and crucial strength Bush has in Ohio: organization. Ohio is dominated statewide by the Republican Party and, despite some inter-party rivalry and even scandal at the state level; they are unified in support of President Bush. Building on this support the GOP is no longer willing to give the edge to the Democrats in “get out the vote” (GOTV) efforts. Instead, the Bush team has mobilized a massive volunteer effort to get out every possible supporter on November 2. They have utilized web technology and email lists to recruit, encourage and direct volunteers in everything from donations, voter registration, and phone banks, to bumper stickers and yard signs and a final 72-hour GOTV push. With a volunteer leader in every precinct in the state the GOP is ready to get their people registered and to the polls on Election Day. GOTV used to be a big advantage for the Democrats but Republicans should be their equals this year.

--Redstate

And it shows President Bush leading Senator Kerry by 11 points, 54 to 43, among likely voters in Ohio. A month ago it showed Kerry leading 48 to 46.

Bush picked up 11 points in his net favorability rating while Kerry lost 12 points off his favorability.

10% of Ohio Democrats support President Bush while only 3% of Republicans are supporting Kerry.

This certainly isn't good news for John Kerry, he needs to pick up either Ohio or Florida and as things go on Ohio is looking less and less likely. He hasn't led a poll in Ohio since August 26^th and hasn't led outside the margin since July 22^nd.

The Ohio Poll is sponsored by the University of Cincinnati.

From today's press conference:
"Why are our troops not without the allies that they need so that they are bearing 90% of the cost."

Well, that's what he said. It's obviously not what he meant, but if President Bush had said it then it would be on a calendar tomorrow.

The GOP has made up a list of 14 Kerry Flip Flops from today's speech alone.

A few of my favorites.

FLIP FLOP #2: Iraq Was “Diversion From” War On Terror. “That means we must have a great honest national debate on Iraq. The President claims it is the centerpiece of his war on terror. In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and the battle against our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight.” (Sen. John Kerry, Remarks At New York University, New York, NY, 9/20/04)

Kerry Said Iraq “Is Critical” To Success Of War On Terror. SEN. JOHN KERRY: “Iraq may not be the war on terror itself, but it is critical to the outcome of the war on terror. And therefore any advance in Iraq is an advance forward in that. And I disagree with the Governor [Howard Dean].” (Fox News’ “Special Report,” 12/15/03)

...

FLIP FLOP #4: Saddam’s “Downfall … Has Left America Less Secure.” “The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: we have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.” (Sen. John Kerry, Remarks At New York University, New York, NY, 9/20/04)

Kerry Questioned Judgment Of Those Claiming Saddam’s Capture Doesn’t Help American Security. “Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe we are not safer with his capture, don’t have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president.” (Anne Q. Hoy, “Dean Faces More Criticism,” [New York] Newsday, 12/17/03)

...

FLIP FLOP #7: Iraq War Took “Attention And Resources” Away From Afghanistan. “The President's policy in Iraq took our attention and resources away from other, more serious threats to America. Threats like … the increasing instability in Afghanistan.” (Sen. John Kerry, Remarks At New York University, New York, NY, 9/20/04)

Kerry Said War On Terror “Doesn’t End With Afghanistan” And Suggested U.S. Move On To Addressing Menace Of Saddam Huseein. KERRY: “I think we clearly have to keep the pressure on terrorism globally. This doesn’t end with Afghanistan by any imagination. And I think the president has made that clear. I think we have made that clear. Terrorism is a global menace. It’s a scourge. And it is absolutely vital that we continue, for instance, Saddam Hussein.” (CNN’s “Larry King Live,” 12/14/01)

...

FLIP FLOP #10: Would Not Have Invaded Iraq Given What He Knows Now. “Yet today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again, the same way. How can he possibly be serious? Is he really saying that if we knew there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to Al Qaeda, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer is no - because a Commander-in-Chief's first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe.” (Sen. John Kerry, Remarks At New York University, New York, NY, 9/20/04)

In Response To President's Question About How He Would Have Voted If He Knew Then What He Knows Now, Kerry Confirmed That He Would Still Have Voted For Use Of Force Resolution. SEN. JOHN KERRY: "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it's the right authority for a president to have. But I would have used that authority as I have said throughout this campaign, effectively. I would have done this very differently from the way President Bush has." (CNN's "Inside Politics," 8/9/04)

...

FLIP FLOP #14: Would Have Continued Containment Of Saddam. “I would have tightened the noose and continued to pressure and isolate Saddam Hussein - who was weak and getting weaker -- so that he would pose no threat to the region or America.” (Sen. John Kerry, Remarks At New York University, New York, NY, 9/20/04)

Kerry Expressed Opposition To “Policy Of Containment.” “So we’ve got a major set of choices to make here. And we’d better make them. We’ve been sliding into a fundamental policy of containment, which I share with Major Ritter the notion is disastrous to our overall proliferation interests and disastrous with respect to the Middle East and our interests with respect to Saddam Hussein and Iraq . But we have to make a decision whether we’re prepared to do what is necessary, and I mean to the point of a sustained targeting of the regime; not the Iraqi people, but the regime.” (Sen. John Kerry, Committee On Armed Services And Committee On Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, Joint Hearing, 9/3/98)

-- GOP.com

I'm sorry, but I don't trust to run our national security and foreign policy a man who's willing to change his policy to suit whatever the crowd wants to hear.

The DNC still has a page up using ^The Documents to attack President Bush.

Mason-Dixon has President Bush up by 7 and the Plain Dealer has President Bush up by 8. The average of the polls in Ohio released over the last week is President Bush by 9.

Politics in Gainesville turned rough and tumble Thursday night when, police say, a social behavior sciences instructor - a Democrat - punched the chairman of the Alachua County Republican Executive Committee in the face.

David Philip McCally, 55, of Gainesville faces misdemeanor battery and criminal mischief charges after he was accused of hitting both committee chairman Travis Horn, 32, and a life-sized, cardboard cutout of President George Bush.
...
Reached Friday, Horn said, "I enjoy thoughtful debate with my counterparts on the left. I think this is what makes this country great, but when you cross the line with physical violence, it's absurd."

After hitting the cutout, Horn said McCally left the office where a Young Republicans meeting was taking place. When Horn went outside, he said McCally came up to him. "He proceeded to say how he had a Ph.D., and he was smarter than me. I'm a stupid Republican," and other comments laced with obscenities, he said.

Horn said he was hit and knocked into a wall.

His lips were cut and his nose injured.

"I then proceeded to defend myself," he said. "I used the minimum force necessary to subdue him."

The police report states Horn kicked McCally because McCally was holding on to Horn's legs.

Police happened to be pulling into the area at the time, Horn said. A police report states officers saw McCally throw what they later learned was the first punch.

"Of course I'm going to have a restraining order filed against him," Horn said. "I certainly will seek his removal from the classroom. Obviously he's shown a serious lack of judgment."

As for Horn's commitment to his political opinions, he said, "If I have to take a beating every day for George W. Bush to be president, I'll do that. My passion for my beliefs continues unabated."

--Gainesvillesun.com (Hat tip Blogs for Bush)

He's back on the ballot.

Some are suggesting that because Phil Parlock has had run-ins with Democrats before that this incident is phony and even that the union thug who tore up the sign was one of Phil's sons.

You really want to tell me that either of these two people is the same as the last person?

Son 1:	Son 2:

Union Thug:

Son 1 is the better match, but I really don't think they're even close.

--Addendum--
I'll direct people to Michelle Malkin's site where they'll see "'That's ridiculous. This is a small town,' Parlock told me from his home in Huntington, W. Virginia. 'Everyone would recognize him.'"

Furthermore, the IUPAT, the union, is investigating. If they discovered that the person had nothing to do with the union or was Parlock's son don't you think they'd be mentioning that instead of apologizing? (A real class act by them.)

Hey, I'm with Malkin. If this all turns out to be a hoax I'll blast the guy, but you're going to have to possess better proof than a fuzzy picture of his sons that kinda, almost, sorta looks something like the guy.

A [national] Gallup poll being released Friday has Bush up 54-40 in a three-way matchup, with Ralph Nader at 3 percent.

--Yahoo! News

*Standard take this poll with a big 'ole grain of salt disclaimer*

Three-year-old Sophia Parlock cries while seated on the shoulders of her father, Phil Parlock, after having their Bush-Cheney sign torn up by Kerry-Edwards supporters on Thursday, Sept. 16, 2004, at the Tri-State Airport in Huntington, W.Va. Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards made a brief stop at the airport as he concluded his two-day bus tour to locations in West Virginia and Ohio.

Sophia Parlock, 3, cries while seated on the shoulders of her father, Phil Parlock, a supporter of President Bush, after a Bush-Cheney sign she and her father were holding was torn up by another person standing in the crowd that had gathered to greet Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., Thursday, Sept. 16, 2004, at the Tri-State Airport in Huntington, W.Va. At right, is Alex Parlock, 11, Sophia's brother.

*Disclaimer* There are of course idiots on both sides.

Received in the inbox today:

For Immediate Release
Thursday, September 16, 2004

Football Fans for Truth Takes Aim at Kerry's Football Fumbles

(Arlington, VA) -- September 16, 2004

A new organization has been created to help the American voter and sports fan determine whether John Kerry can be trusted to represent the nation both as President and sports-fan-in-chief. Football Fans for Truth, a 527 organization, will seek to raise awareness about John Kerry’s eminent failures in the area of sports knowledge, especially as it relates to America's favorite sport: football.

Football Fans for Truth believes the evidence it has collected is compelling. Last month, John Kerry lauded "Lambert Field" during a visit to Wisconsin. It is unknown what Kerry thinks of Lambeau Field, the historic home of the Green Bay Packers. John Kerry also praised the Ohio State Buckeyes football team; during a visit to Michigan.

Kerry's lack of knowledge extends far beyond the sport of football. ESPN's Peter Gammons reported that John Kerry told a radio interviewer that his favorite Red Sox player was Eddie Yost. Yost never played for the Red Sox. Gammons also reported that John Kerry lauded "Manny Ortez", an amalgamation of Red Sox first baseman and designated hitter David Ortiz and left fielder Manny Ramirez. When Kerry threw the first pitch at a Red Sox-Yankees game, he did not throw from the pitcher's mound -- yet still bounced the ball before it reached home plate. He then blamed his namby-pamby throw on the catcher, a National Guard soldier and Iraq war veteran: "I held back," Kerry told reporters. "He was very nervous. I tried to lob it gently."

"John Kerry is a menace to sports fans everywhere," said Football Fans for Truth Chairman Dino Panagopoulos. "Can we take four years of this?"

"I shudder to think of this man throwing out first pitches for four years," said Football Fans for Truth Director Jeff Larroca. "It is the mission of Football Fans for Truth to make the American public aware of the terrible dangers posed by Kerry to the sports world. He is not fit to be our sports-fan-in-chief."

Football Fans for Truth is already moving forward with its public education campaign. The organization has ordered a billboard near "Lambert Field" to educate Wisconsin football fans of the threat of a Kerry administration. It will stand through the election.

With additional public support from concerned sports fans, Football Fans for Truth plans to undertake other initiatives throughout the country.

"This is too important an issue for us to just sit on the sidelines," said Panagopoulos. "After watching one to many Kerry sports gaffes, we realized that we needed to get in the game. I mean, this is a person who probably prefers Astro-Turf to real grass."

Individuals can donate to Football Fans for Truth by sending a personal check for any amount in order to educating the American football public. The non tax-deductible check should be made out to "Football Fans for Truth."

Contributions should be sent to:

Football Fans for Truth
4201 Wilson Blvd., Ste 110
Box 106
Arlington, Virginia 22203

Press Contacts:

Pete Peterson 215-990-8928
Michael Barbera 703-380-6540
Email: ffft@cox.net

Our website will soon be up:

Footballfansfortruth.us

Boy, don't tick off those sports fans. :)

This time a "reputable paper" is reporting that President Bush might have "presenile dementia". and going on about how the White House will just cover up this condition.

This is Wictory Wednesday. Please volunteer to help the President win reelection. President Bush needs your support now more than ever to help counter the vicious and untrue smear campaign the Left has launched. You can also sign up to get e-mail from the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign. If you are an Ohioan who supports the President please consider joining the Ohioans for Bush-Cheney Yahoo! Group. If you'd like to help the cause monetarily you might consider giving to John Thune's campaign to unseat Tom Daschle.

Some have claimed President Bush wore an award ribbon he didn't earn, specifically the Air Force Outstanding Unit Award.

The Air Force has now completely debunked that.

The Air Force has knocked down allegations by a Web site that said President Bush, when serving as an officer in the Texas Air National Guard, wore a ribbon he was not authorized to wear -- a military offense that could have led to a bad-conduct discharge from the service if true.

The original story was offered to United Press International during late August by operatives from Democrats.com, an Internet activist group whose founder had earlier this year served as a source for The Boston Globe and other media outlets on stories about Bush's service in the guard in the 1960s and 1970s.
...
An e-mail message to UPI on Aug. 27 from Bob Fertik, founder of Democrats.com, stated, "Walt Starr called the Air Force and discovered that the only AFOUA given to Bush's unit was in 1975 -- five years after the photo. Case closed!"

The Air Force and the White House last week in interviews with UPI said the allegations were misleading. White House spokesman Trent Duffy referred UPI to the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Colorado where Technical Sgt. Rob Mims is the spokesman.

Mims said the claims were "not true. I verified that (Thursday). Lieutenant Bush received Air Force Outstanding Unit Award while he was in basic training with the 3724th Basic Military Training Squadron at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas."
...

Mims said that personnel records in the military are often incomplete due to "clerical errors."

"But I did verify that that unit did get the award while he (Bush) was there," said Mims.

The sergeant added that the photo in question was "taken after pilot training."

Mims said he confirmed his information about the medal with the Air Force's history office. "It's all there in black and white, we've spelled it out," said Mims.

The White House, through Duffy, said: "Lieutenant Bush at the time was completely authorized to wear those ribbons he has in those pictures. He could only wear those ribbons if he has the wings. He earned his wings in 1969."

--Washington Times Insider(subscription required)

Frank Abagnale, inspiration for the 2002 movie Catch Me If You Can has put in his two cents on ^The Documents.

"Though Mr. Abagnale has not personally seen the documents or copies of the documents, from what he has seen on television he believes the documents are forgeries. He feels this should be evident to anyone of any knowledge of forged documents," Sarah Hammermill, an information officer at Abegnale's[sic] company, Abegnale and Associates[sic] said in an email to blogger Robin K. Juhl.

"I can tell you that he sent an e-mail to Neil Cavuto of Your World on Fox News Network (he knows him personally) that stated: 'If my forgeries looked as bad as the CBS documents, it would have been Catch Me In Two Days.'"

Contacted by RatherBiased.com, Kelly Welbes, executive assistant to Abegnale[sic], confirmed the message.

"The person who wrote it was just asking his opinion on it. Mr. Abignale[sic] did, in fact, send that email to Fox News. And it is the opinion of Mr. Abignale[sic] that, having seen the documents as presented by CBS on TV, it is his opinion that they are forgeries," Welbes said.

Abegnale's[sic] comments are just the latest from what is fast becoming a gaggle of experts who doubt the authenticity of the CBS memos.

"Most of the colleagues that I know that are -- that are well trained and have a good reputation, every one that I have heard of on the nightly news or on the internet have basically come to the same conclusion regarding both the typing and handwriting," Jerry Richards, a former FBI document analyst told Fox News Channel's Special Report during tonight's edition.

--RatherBiased.com/LGF (bold emphasis added)

RatherBiased's post also would be a strong entry in any "Spell 'Abagnale' incorrectly as many times and in as many ways as possible" contest.

Poor, poor Democrats. I feel sorry for them. They think they're in a bad enough spot that they need to lower themselves to videos like this. It's like the kooks have completely taken over.

In the last days of that doomed 1992 Bush reelection effort, we knew we were losing. James Baker and other close Bush friends and family moved in to keep a close eye on all our work. In particular, they were looking for mistakes that would embarrass the family. At the time, dubious documents about the Arkansas governor's alleged "zipper problem" were floating temptingly around campaign headquarters. Wrong-headed whispers among junior staff about "saving the campaign" could be heard if you listened closely.

Finally, we were called into a meeting and given a simple instruction: Anyone caught trafficking in this information would be summarily fired. The Bush family did not want to "win this way." Because we were almost sure to lose anyway, they made a further promise that violators would never work in Washington again. Any doubts were laid to rest when we were told who sent this message: the president's son, George W. Bush.

--Michael Caputo - Christian Science Monitor (Hat tip Tim Blair)

Now compare that to the Kerry campaign. Even if you don't think The Documents came through the Kerry campaign/DNC there's more than enough name-calling, mudslinging and ad hominem attacks emanating from the Left to make the comparison unfavorable.

The lead expert retained by CBS News to examine disputed memos from President Bush's former squadron commander in the National Guard said yesterday that he examined only the late officer's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves.

"There's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them," Marcel Matley said in a telephone interview from San Francisco. The main reason, he said, is that they are "copies" that are "far removed" from the originals.
...
CBS executives have pointed to Matley as their lead expert on whether the memos are genuine, and included him in a "CBS Evening News" defense of the story Friday. Matley said he spent five to eight hours examining the memos. "I knew I could not prove them authentic just from my expertise," he said. "I can't say either way from my expertise, the narrow, narrow little field of my expertise."

--Washington Post

Retired Master Sgt. James Copeland does not care so much whether people think President Bush went absent without leave in 1972, but one thing he hears bothers him plenty.

"Maybe the Bush family was well known in Texas, but we didn't know who he was here. He was just another guy in a flight jacket," Copeland said Sunday.

Copeland, who lives in Hartselle, retired from the Air Force on Jan. 31, 1980. He was the disbursement accounting supervisor, a full-time position, for Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Montgomery from Oct. 28, 1971, to Oct. 27, 1975. His office was less than 100 yards from the hangar where Bush performed drills.
...
Copeland, 65, remembers meeting Bush on two occasions. He does not remember the precise dates. On one occasion, Copeland said, Bush and Lt. Col. John "Bill" Calhoun came to Copeland's office with a question about Bush's pay. Copeland is not sure, but he believes the question had to do with where to mail Bush's checks.

Bush was never a member of the Alabama National Guard, he just did his drills here. For that reason, Copeland thinks he referred the pay question to the paymaster for the Texas National Guard.

The other time Copeland remembers meeting Bush was at the base canteen. Bush was there drinking coffee or a soft drink, Copeland said.

Copeland stressed that Calhoun's account of Bush's service in Montgomery would be accurate because Calhoun was in a position to work with Bush during every drill. Calhoun told The Associated Press last week that he saw Bush every drill time, which was one weekend each month.

Not only was Calhoun in a position to know of Bush's service, Copeland said, but Calhoun "was an ethical and honest officer."
...
The suggestion that he or anyone else gave Bush a break because of the family legacy bothers Copeland.

"You hear people saying that everybody (at Dannelly) knew the Bushes. Well, that's just a lie," Copeland said. "He was just another pilot. No one paid any more attention to him than to anyone else. There was no hoopla."
...
Joe Holcombe, 71, of Joppa worked with Bush on the Blount campaign. He told THE DAILY last week that he remembers Bush missing at least one campaign meeting because of his National Guard drills.

--Decatur Daily News (Hat tip Captain's Quarters)

Calhoun had come forward before. Additionally there's Joe LeFevers.

CBS has left the flap over purported documents involving President Bush's record in the Texas Air National Guard in this posture: Who are you going to believe, CBS or your lyin' eyes?

To accept CBS's insistence the four documents from the early 1970s are authentic, you would have to believe the following:

(1) That the late Jerry Killian, Bush's commanding officer, typed the documents--though his wife says "he wasn't a typist."

(2) That Killian kept the documents in his personal files--though his family says he didn't keep files.

(3) That the disputed documents reflect his true (negative) feelings about Bush and a contemporaneous official document he wrote lauding Bush did not.

(4) That he typed the documents on a technically advanced typewriter, an IBM Selectric Composer--though that model has been tested and failed to produce an exact copy of the documents.

(5) That this advanced typewriter, which would have cost $15,000 or so in today's dollars, was used by the Texas National Guard and that Killian had gained the significant expertise needed to operate it.

(6) That Killian was under pressure to whitewash Bush's record from a general who had retired 18 months earlier.

(7) That Killian's superior, Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, was right when, sight unseen, he supposedly said the documents were authentic, but wrong when, having actually viewed the documents, he declared them fraudulent.

Now if you can't accept all that, there's another side. To believe the documents are forgeries, you have to believe this:

(1) The documents were typed recently using Microsoft Word, which produces documents that are exact copies of the CBS documents.

(2) There's no number 2. All you have to believe is number 1.

--The Weekly Standard (Hat tip Bill Hobbs)

I had been feeling disappointed in the Cincinnati Post. They had an editorial today all about how the forged documents showed that President Bush didn't fulfill his guard commitment and didn't mention at all that the documents had been shown to be forged.

It was like saying that this memo...

...which I discovered* and could claim to be from the personal files of Kerry's direct commander raised serious questions about not only whether he earned his Purple Hearts but also about whether he was in Vietnam at all and whether there was a serious purple monkey problem in Vietnam at the time. Just as this "document" says nothing about Kerry's service record, the forged national guard documents say nothing about President Bush's. They're fake, they can't show that President Bush received preferential treatment or disobeyed a direct order.

It now appears that they've seen the light and taken down the editorial as the link above now gives you a "URL is not valid" error. Good for them for correcting their mistake unlike some others. *cough*CBS*cough*

* "discovered" meaning "Found on my desktop after typing it up in Word, printing it out, scanning it in, editing it in Photoshop and saving it to my desktop"

Mike Allen is removing his name from the ballot for Hamilton County Prosecutor and Ohio Treasurer Joseph Deters is launching a write-in campaign.

All day Friday, Rather, his producer on the story, Mary Mapes, and other 60 Minutes staffers were scrambling to shore up support from their sources on the story. That effort didn't go so well. By Saturday, one of their key sources, retired Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, had said that CBS misled him, and that he had never been shown the memos in question.

"We pulled the trick of only calling some sources at the last minute to reconfirm," says the CBS producer. "Someone called Hodges, I think, on Monday night and read him parts of the document. The late contacts are a standard practice so we don't tip off the competition or our sources."

Hodges is a critical loss for CBS News' credibility. He was the superior officer of the man CBS claims wrote the memo, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who died in 1984.

MEANWHILE, OVER THE WEEKEND journalists from around the country were attempting to track down the original source of the documents. "We're having a hard time tracking how we got the documents," says the CBS News producer. "There are at least two people in this building who have insisted we got copies of these memos from the Kerry campaign by way of an additional source. We do not have the originals, and our sources have indicated to us that we will not be getting the originals. How that is possible I don't know."

One individual several news outlets were looking at was Bill Burkett, a former Texas National Guard officer. Burkett in the past has cooperated with both press and Democratic Party opposition researchers in slinging mud at President Bush. Burkett gained some national attention earlier in the campaign when he claimed he was at National Guard headquarters in Austin 1997, when he overheard Guard officials and a representative of then Governor Bush discuss how to sanitize Bush's files. That story was fully discredited. Nonetheless, Burkett sat down for at least three different interviews with CBS News for the story now at the center of the controversy. One of those interviews was with Rather's producer, Ms. Mapes.

"There are rumors here that if there are any real documents, they are hand-written notes from Killian that someone like Burkett was holding, and that instead of using the hand-written notes, someone typed them up to look more official," says the CBS News producer. "They would look better on TV and posted on line if they were typed, but on a number of levels, that story just doesn't hold up. There are too many inconsistencies factually with what is in the memos."
...
REPORTERS ARE ALSO LOOKING at staff and associates of Sen. Tom Harkin, who enthusiastically held a press conference on Thursday morning using the forged documents as the tent pole for attacks against President Bush. Harkin called Bush a "liar."

"Harkin has been pushing this story for a while," says the CBS producer. "Not this specific story, but the 'Bush is a liar about his record' story. His people seemed particularly interested in making sure they could keep their boss up to date on what was going on."

That Harkin was the individual selected to be the attack dog on this particular issue was an interesting one, give that Harkin himself has a checkered history about telling the truth about his involvement in the Vietnam War.

--The American Spectator

Gee, if you have no idea where the original documents are and can't get ahold of them... maybe you can't be too adamant about them being real...

While the Democrats are smearing President Bush's National Guard service and scaring people with bogus threats of disenfranchisement; President Bush is rolling out his Agenda for America with an ad campaign here in Ohio.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Everything seemed to be in place for a powerful run by Senator John Kerry in Ohio in the stretch drive after Labor Day. Al Gore lost the state by 175,000 votes in 2000, despite having pulled all his advertising early in October. Ohio has shed 250,000 jobs since George W. Bush became president. Rocked by scandals and an unpopular tax increase, the statehouse Republicans, from Gov. Bob Taft down the line, have been in unaccustomed disarray for weeks.

At the end of last month, the Census Bureau reported that Cleveland, with a poverty rate of 31.3 percent, led the country in that most dubious category, and this month American deaths in Iraq topped 1,000. Both developments might have given a leg up in the campaign to Mr. Kerry, a critic of Mr. Bush's economic policy and his conduct of the war. Yet Mr. Kerry seems to be falling back.
...
Democratic professionals have begun to criticize Mr. Kerry's efforts - privately and, in a few cases, publicly. Gerald Austin of Cleveland, a leading Ohio campaign consultant for more than 30 years, said that former President Bill Clinton could run a better campaign than Mr. Kerry's "even when he was under ether."
...
"I smell the same New England genius that I smelled in the Dukakis campaign in 1988," Mr. Austin added. "Kerry wants to run as a man of the people, and where do they put him for photo opportunities? Snowboarding in Sun Valley, shooting skeet in the Ohio valley, and windsurfing off that great working-class vacation paradise, Nantucket. Democrats - at least Ohio Democrats - play softball and touch football."
...
Another reason for Mr. Kerry's difficulties is demographic. The state has been closely contested so far, but it is less representative of the nation as a whole than it once was. As labor unions have waned and the suburbs and exurbs around cities like Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Toledo and Akron have flourished, the state has become more Republican. The Republicans now have a 12-to-6 majority in the Congressional delegation, and hold both Senate seats, the governorship, all the other statewide constitutional offices and both houses of the Legislature.

"Since 1948, Ohio has slowly become less of a barometer," said Michael F. Curtin, president of The Columbus Dispatch, who has tracked Ohio politics for decades, "On average, it has voted 1.7 points more Republican than the country has. The last Democrat to run stronger here than he did nationally was Lyndon Johnson in 1964."

--The New York Times

Last week’s seismic voter shift to George W. Bush showed no signs of dwindling in this week’s Time Poll. Bush continues to lead Democratic challenger John Kerry among likely voters by double digits, 52% - 41%, in the three way race, with Nader at 3%, the same as last week.

Putting this into perspective, just a month ago, post-Democratic convention, the Time Poll had Kerry with a statistically significant lead over Bush, 48% - 43%.

--TIME.com

Could still be a fluke, but if so it's now two flukes in a row.

I said at the time I would have preferred if we had given diplomacy a greater opportunity, but I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. And when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him. John F. Kerry, May 3, 2003

Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe that we are not safer with his capture, don't have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president.
December 16, 2003

Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it's the right authority for a president to have. But I would have used that authority as I have said throughout this campaign, effectively.
August 9, 2004

Iraq was "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time."
September 6, 2004

We should not send more American troops. That would be the worst thing.
John F. Kerry, September 4, 2003

If it requires more troops . . . that's what you have to do.
April 18, 2004

I will have significant, enormous reduction in the level of troops.
August 1, 2004

We're going to get our troops home where they belong.
August 6, 2004

We should increase funding [for the war in Iraq] by whatever number of billions of dollars it takes to win.
John F. Kerry, August 31, 2003

$200 billion [for Iraq] that we're not investing in education and health care, and job creation here at home. . . . That's the wrong choice.
September 8, 2004

--The Weekly Standard

CBS says Retired Maj. General Bobby Hodges, Killian's supervisor, was a source in verifying The Documents.

A senior CBS official, who asked not to be named because CBS managers did not want to go beyond their official statement, named one of the network's sources as retired Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges, the immediate superior of the documents' alleged author, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. He said a CBS reporter read the documents to Hodges over the phone and Hodges replied that "these are the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time."

--Washington Post

The problem? Hodges isn't playing along. He says he was misled by CBS.

HODGES SAID HE WAS MISLED BY CBS: Retired Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor at the Grd, tells ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "well if he wrote them that's what he felt."

Hodges also said he did not see the documents in the 70's and he cannot authenticate the documents or the contents. His personal belief is that the documents have been "computer generated" and are a "fraud".

--ABC News (Hat tip Instapundit)

It was a very good sized crowd. Don't think they could have fit more people (safely) into the Ross County Fairgrounds. Traffic was a bit backed up going in, but it wasn't too bad. You were always moving... just slowly. On the way out was a different matter entirely. It took us at least an hour and a half just to get out of the parking lot.

Appearences by Congressmen Bob Ney and Rob Portman, Ross County's State Representative and State Senator (who is ironically named John Kerry), Governor Bob Taft, Senators Mike DeWine and Zell Miller, and Anthony Munoz.

A few of my pictures:

Boy, those Kerry protestors showed up in full force.

Zell Miller and Rob Portman

Zell Miller got a very good reception.

Unfortunately my camera's batteries died just at the end. Missed some very good shots when he was closest to me.

He... and I... will be in Chillicothe, OH this afternoon.

The Left's been getting its jollies from being outraged over Vice President Cheney saying that if Kerry/Edwards wins there'll be more terrorist attacks. The problem is, that a) isn't what he meant and b) is only what he said if you take it out of context.

In an interview with the Enquirer after a campaign event in Cincinnati, Cheney said he wanted to "clean up" the controversy surrounding his remarks at a similar event Tuesday in Des Moines, Iowa .

There, he told a town-hall audience that if, on Election Day, "we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again...."

But Thursday, he emphasized the half-sentence that came after: "... that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind-set, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war."

"I did not say if Kerry is elected, we will be hit by a terrorist attack," Cheney said.

--Enquirer

It should probably be taken with a grain of salt, but The Spectator (working link with the text here) suggests that CBS got The Documents from the DNC who got them from an unidentified individual.

More than six weeks ago, an opposition research staffer for the Democratic National Committee received documents purportedly written by President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard squadron commander, the late Col. Jerry Killian.

The oppo researcher claimed the source was "a retired military officer." According to a DNC staffer, the documents were seen by both senior staff members at the DNC, as well as the Kerry campaign.

"More than a couple people heard about the papers," says the DNC staffer. "I've heard that they ended up with the Kerry campaign, for them to decide to how to proceed, and presumably they were handed over to 60 Minutes, which used them the other night. But I know this much. When there was discussion here, there were doubts raised about their authenticity."
...
The CBS producer said that some alarms bells went off last week when the signatures and initials of Killian on the documents in hand did not match up with other documents available on the public record, but producers chose to move ahead with the story. "This was too hot not to push. If there were doubts, those people didn't show it," says the producer, who works on a rival CBS News program.

Now, the producer says, there is growing concern inside the building on 57th Street that they may have been suckered by the Kerry campaign. "There is a school of thought here that the Kerry people dumped this in our laps, figuring we'd do the heavy lifting on the story. That maybe they had doubts about these documents but hoped we'd get more information," says the producer. "If that's the case, then we're bigger fools than we already appear to be judging by all the chatter about how these documents could be forgeries."

--The Spectator (working link with the text here)

Again, take it with a grain of salt until there are more actual facts.

CBS NEWS executives have launched an internal investigation into whether its premiere news program 60 MINUTES aired fabricated documents relating to Bush's National Guard service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. ... The source, who asked not to be named, described CBSNEWS anchor and 60 MINUTES correspondent Dan Rather as being privately "shell-shocked" by the increasingly likelihood that the documents in question were fraudulent.

Rather, who anchored the segment presenting new information on the president's military service, will personally correct the record on-air, if need be, the source explained from New York.

--Drudge Report

ABC News meanwhile has a good story up on the situation.

Marjorie Connell — widow of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the reported author of memos suggesting that Bush did not meet the standards for the Texas Air National Guard — questioned whether the documents were real.

"The wording in these documents is very suspect to me," she told ABC News Radio in an exclusive phone interview from her Texas home. She added that she "just can't believe these are his words."

First reported by CBS's 60 Minutes, the memos allegedly were found in Killian's personal files. But his family members say they doubt he ever made such documents, let alone kept them.

Connell said Killian did not type, and though he did take notes, they were usually on scraps of paper. "He was a person who did not take copious notes," she said. "He carried everything in his mind."
...
More than half a dozen document experts contacted by ABC News said they had doubts about the memos' authenticity.

"These documents do not appear to have been the result of technology that was available in 1972 and 1973," said Bill Flynn, one of country's top authorities on document authentication. "The cumulative evidence that's available … indicates that these documents were produced on a computer, not a typewriter:"

Among the points Flynn and other experts noted:

The memos were written using a proportional typeface, where letters take up variable space according to their size, rather than fixed-pitch typeface used on typewriters, where each letter is allotted the same space. Proportional typefaces are available only on computers or on very high-end typewriters that were unlikely to be used by the National Guard.

The memos include superscript, i.e. the "th" in "187th" appears above the line in a smaller font. Superscript was not available on typewriters.

The memos included "curly" apostrophes rather than straight apostrophes found on typewriters.

The font used in the memos is Times Roman, which was in use for printing but not in typewriters. The Haas Atlas — the bible of fonts — does not list Times Roman as an available font for typewriters.

The vertical spacing used in the memos, measured at 13 points, was not available in typewriters, and only became possible with the advent of computers.

--ABC News

Instapundit has a good roundup of the information.

Proportional spacing... superscripts... non-straight quotation marks... the fact that every line ends at the same word as it does in Word...

You have to admit, it doesn't look good for the folks at CBS questioning President Bush's Guard service.

These two results could simply be coincidence, but if they are, you have to admit that 1972-73 documents exactly matching documents typed up in Word today with standard 12 point Times New Roman font is a big enough coincidence to be worth noting.

A protestor at Kerry's Cincinnati speech was taken down by a sheetmetal worker in a not-so-friendly fashion.

The Kerry-Edwards '04 office floor plan via Wonkette.

This is Wictory Wednesday. Please volunteer to help the President win reelection. President Bush needs your support now more than ever to help counter the lies, untruths, and misleading spin being put out by the Left. You can also sign up to get e-mail from the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign. If you are an Ohioan who supports the President please consider joining the Ohioans for Bush-Cheney Yahoo! Group.

Living in the nearly 100% of America where Air America radio isn't broadcast I'd never heard The Al Franken Show prior to today. It's on the Sundance Channel now so I gave it a watch and oooh boy... I can't imagine those pre-scripted bits work all that well on the radio and they work even worse when you can see them.

It's the "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" but is in fact a part of the War on Terror.

''Today marks a tragic milestone in the war in Iraq; more than 1,000 of America's sons and daughters have now given their lives on behalf of their country, on behalf of freedom, the war on terror,'' Kerry said as he arrived in Cincinnati on a campaign stop.

--Boston.com

[Kerry] seemed to forget that Republicans have been tearing him down for months as a vacillating, indecisive, finger-in-the-wind politician of the worst order.

"Everybody told me, 'God, if you're coming to Canonsburg, you've got to find time to go to Toy's, and he'll take care of you,'" Mr. Kerry said, dropping the name of a restaurant his motorcade had passed on the way in. "I understand it's my kind of place, because you don't have to - you know, when they give you the menu, I'm always struggling: Ah, what do you want?

"He just gives you what he's got, right?" Mr. Kerry added, continuing steadily off a gangplank of his own making: "And you don't have to worry, it's whatever he's cooked up that day. And I think that's the way it ought to work, for confused people like me who can't make up our minds."

--The New York Times

Steve Verdon takes a look at the budget deficit figures and comes to the conclusion that when numbers are adjusted for inflation this year's deficit is only the 4th highest since 1940 and 17th highest when measured as a percentage of the GDP, and thus the cries of "record deficit" are a bit overstated.

(Make sure you do scroll down to the bottom, I am going somewhere with this.)

For Immediate Release

Convention Day 1
Bush is Good for Hispanics.

1. Fortuno: President Bush understands that that is why he believes in empowering Hispanics through improved education, better job opportunities, affordable health care and lower taxes.

2. Fortuno: And that's why President Bush believes in empowering the American citizens of Puerto Rico so that we can fulfill our aspirations regarding our political status.

Bush Funded Homeland Security for NYC After 9/11.

3. Bloomberg: I want to thank President Bush for supporting New York City in changing the Homeland Security Funding formula and for leading the global war on terrorism.

4. Kerik: “He was there for them as he was for us right here in New York City, inspiring a nation as he stood on hallowed ground, supporting the first responders.”

Lawsuits Are Driving Up Health Care Costs & Hurting Job Growth.

5. Melissa Brown: Thousands of lawsuits are driving up health care costs.

6. Geoff Davis: “I'll fight to stop the frivolous lawsuits that drive up health care costs…”

“… and hurt jobs.”

Bush Works Across Party Lines.

7. Triplett : President Bush understands that “teamwork is critical to success. President Bush understands that.”

Bush Good for Immigrants.

8. Fernando Mateo: Over the past four years, he has welcomed immigrants to our shores and given us more hope and opportunity to care for our families

9. Fernando Mateo: “Our President has proposed reforms to our immigration laws that will match willing foreign workers with willing American employers, when no American can be found to fill the job. The program will offer legal status, as temporary workers, to millions of undocumented men and women, allowing them to come out of the shadows and escape abuse and exploitation.”

Bush Has Done A Good Job With Our Allies.

10. Senator John McCain: “My friends in the Democratic Party and I'm fortunate to call many of them my friends assure us they share the conviction that winning the war against terrorism is our government's most important obligation. I don't doubt their sincerity. They emphasize that military action alone won't protect us, that this war has many fronts: in courts, financial institutions, in the shadowy world of intelligence, and in diplomacy. They stress that America needs the help of her friends to combat an evil that threatens us all, that our alliances are as important to victory as are our armies. We agree. And, as we've been a good friend to other countries in moments of shared perils, so we have good reason to expect their solidarity with us in this struggle. That is what the President believes. And, thanks to his efforts we have received valuable assistance from many good friends around the globe, even if we have, at times, been disappointed with the reactions of some.”

11. Senator John McCain: “Our President will work with all nations willing to help us defeat this scourge that afflicts us all.”

Bush Did It Right Going to War Against Iraq.

12. Senator John McCain: “However just the cause, we should shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us. But there is no avoiding this war. We tried that, and our reluctance cost us dearly. And while this war has many components, we can't make victory on the battlefield harder to achieve so that our diplomacy is easier to conduct.”

13. Senator John McCain: “After years of failed diplomacy and limited military pressure to restrain Saddam Hussein, President Bush made the difficult decision to liberate Iraq. Those who criticize that decision would have us believe that the choice was between a status quo that was well enough left alone and war. But there was no status quo to be left alone. “

Bush Economy is Humming Along & Creating Good Jobs.

14. Bill Manger: We revived an economy and are creating good jobs.

15. Marc Racicot: “Today, more people are working.”

16. Dennis Hastert: And we are proud of what the Republican Congress and the president have achieved together: historic tax reduction, which has helped create 1.5 million new jobs in the last year and has the economy growing again.

Republicans Are Protecting the Environment.

17. Bill Manger: “And finally, Republicans are following the inspiration of New York's own Teddy Roosevelt to ensure our natural resources are protected for generations.”

LIE: Bush Created Homeland Security Department

18. Bernard Kerik: “The President responded by creating the Department of Homeland Security, he enacted the PATRIOT Act and he has tripled our homeland security funding since 2001.”

19. Dennis Hastert: We have taken important steps to defend our people by creating a Department of Homeland Security to better coordinate our internal defense.

America Safer Under Bush.

20. Bernard Kerik: “Today, we live in a much safer world as a result of this President's strong leadership.”

21. Marc Racicot: Under President Bush, we have a safer, more hopeful America.

Bush Has Continually Supported Our Troops

22. Bernard Kerik: “It takes continued support for our troops and first responders, not votes against our military, our intelligence and law enforcement spending.”

Education Has Improved Under Bush.

23. Racicot: “Schools are focused on success, and children are learning.”

24. Hastert: And we are proud of what the Republican Congress and the president have achieved together …revolutionary education reform, which demands more accountability from schools and better results for our children;

Bush Leading the Global Fight Against Disease & Hunger.

25. Marc Racicot: We are leading the world in the fight to eradicate disease and hunger.

John Kerry “On the Wrong Side” on Taxes.

26. Dennis Hastert: He's on the wrong side of taxation.

John Kerry “On the Wrong Side of Litigation.”

27. Hastert: He's on the wrong side of litigation.

John Kerry “On the Wrong Side of Regulation”

28. Hastert: And he's on the wrong side of regulation.

Taxes, Litigation, and Regulation Lead to Job Loss.

29. Hastert: These [taxation, litigation, and regulation] are the job killers. They add costs to our products and put American workers at a disadvantage.

John Kerry Said He Would Raise Taxes on Businesses Creating Jobs.

30. Hastert: No, at his Boston tax party, John Kerry promised to increase taxes on the job creators.

John Kerry Voted For and Against the War.

31. Dennis Hastert: You know, he's voted for it, and he's voted against it.

John Kerry is Weak on the War.

32. Dennis Hastert: My friends, this is no time to pick a leader who is weak on the war

Health Savings Accounts Will Make Health Insurance More Affordable.

33. Dennis Hastert: And we are proud of what the Republican Congress and the president have achieved together …health savings accounts, which will give families more control over their health care and will make it more affordable.

Republican Convention Will Present a Positive Agenda.

34. Ed Gillespie: We will present a positive agenda for our future that will expand our Republican majority in the Senate, expand our Republican majority in the House, and expand our majority of Republican governorships.

John Kerry Has No Clear, Consistent Vision of Terrorism.

35. Rudy Guliani: President Bush sees world terrorism for the evil that it is. John Kerry has no such clear, precise and consistent vision.

Bush’s Refusal to Change His Mind Even When Facts Prove Him Wrong is Indicative of Leadership.

36. Rudy Guliani: President Bush, a leader who is willing to stick with difficult decisions even as public opinion shifts.

John Kerry Changes His Position Often on Key Issues.

37. Rudy Guliani: John Kerry, whose record in elected office suggests a man who changes his position often even on important issues.

John Kerry Voted Against Funding Troops.

38. Rudy Guliani: And then just 9 months later, he voted against an $87 billion supplemental budget to fund the war and support our troops.

John Kerry Said He Was an Anti-War Candidate, Then Pro-War.

39. Rudy Guliani: He even, at one point, declared himself an anti-war candidate. Now, he says he's pro-war.”

John Kerry’s Statement on the $87 Billion Indicates Inconsistency.

40. Rudy Guliani: My point about John Kerry being inconsistent is best described in his own words when he said, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

John Kerry Flip-Flopped on the Security Fence.

41. Rudy Guliani: In October, 2003, he told an Arab-American Institute in Detroit that a security barrier separating Israel from the Palestinian Territories was a "barrier to peace." A few months later, he took exactly the opposite position. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post he said, "Israel's security fence is a legitimate act of self defense."

John Kerry Will Pursue an Uncertain Course in the War on Terror.

42. Rudy Guliani: The contrasts are dramatic. They involve very different views of how to deal with terrorism. President Bush will make certain that we are combatting terrorism at the source, beyond our shores, so we can reduce the risk of having to confront it in the streets of New York. John Kerry's record of inconsistent positions on combatting terrorism gives us no confidence he'll pursue such a determined course.

John Kerry Would Appease Terrorists.

43. Rudy Guliani: President Bush will not allow countries that appear to have ignored the lessons of history and failed for over thirty years to stand up to terrorists, to dissuade us from what is necessary for our defense. He will not let them set our agenda. Under President Bush, America will lead rather than follow. John Kerry's claim that certain foreign leaders who opposed our removal of Saddam Hussein prefer him, raises the risk that he would accommodate his position to their viewpoint.

Regime Change in Iraq Was Part of the War on Terror.

44. Rudy Guliani: In any plan to destroy global terrorism, removing Saddam Hussein needed to be accomplished.

Reasons for Removing Saddam Were Based on More Than Just WMDs.

45. Rudy Guliani: But the reasons for removing Saddam Hussein were based on issues even broader than just the presence of weapons of mass destruction.

Convention Day 2

Bush Lowered Health Care Costs

46. Frist: He has won some huge victories to make health care cost less and be there when you need it. [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 8/31/04]

Bush Gave Prescription Drugs 40 Million

47. Frist: Thanks to his leadership, over 40 million seniors and individuals with disabilities will soon have access to prescription drugs. [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 8/31/04]

Bush Gave 4 Million Seniors Discounted Prescription Drugs

48. Frist: And right now, thanks to the President's action, this Medicare prescription drug discount card is providing 4 million seniors with immediate relief from the high cost of their medicines. Remarks [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 8/31/04]

Kerry is Against Prescription Drug Card

49. Frist: Now some of our opponents don't want seniors to get this card. [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 8/31/04]

Health Care Costs the Result of Medical Malpractice

50. Frist: Another reason health care costs too much is our abused medical liability system. [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 8/31/04]

Trial Lawyers to Blame for Health Care Costs

51. Frist: The culprits are personal injury trial lawyers. [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 8/31/04]

Kerry Mischaracterized Bush’s Stem Cell Policy

52. Frist: John Kerry claims that the President has put a "sweeping ban" on stem cell research. [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 8/31/04]

Health Care More Affordable Under Bush

53. Frist: My friends, I'm so proud of our President's record. He's making health care more affordable, more accessible. [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 8/31/04]

Kerry’s Health Care Plan to Cost $1 Trillion

54. Frist: We have a choice. John Kerry's trillion dollar government-run plan will place your health in the hands of others faraway. [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 8/31/04]

Bush Devoted Resources to Education

55. Paige: President Bush saw this two-tiered system as unacceptable! He proposed a plan High standards; measurable goals; real consequences and resources to get the job done. [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 8/31/04]

Schools Getting Assistance Under Bush

56. Paige: States, not Washington, set the standards. Schools that need assistance get assistance. [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 8/31/04]

Bush Increased the Pell Grant

57. Paige: President Bush also increased Pell Grants funding so one million more young adults can afford college. [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 8/31/04]

Kerry Flip-Flopped on No Child Left Behind

58. Paige: Our opponents voted for No Child Left Behind. They praised it then. Now they attack it. [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 8/31/04]

Bush committed record funding for AIDS

59. Brownback: "Here at home, President Bush has committed record levels of support to fighting the disease. He has called for a new focus on abstinence education and has established a new effort to develop an AIDS vaccine. Internationally, President Bush has marshaled an army of compassion to combat this disease. His Emergency Plan for HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and TB authorized a record $15 billion, which will treat 2 million people, prevent 7 million new infections, and care for 10 million orphans and others affected by AIDS."

Immigrants Welcome in Republican Party.

60. Schwarzenegger: “To my fellow immigrants listening tonight, I want you to know how welcome you are in this party.” [GOP Convention, 8/31/04]

GOP is the Party of Fiscal Responsibility.

61. Schwarzenegger: “If you believe your family knows how to spend your money better than the government does... then you are a Republican!” [GOP Convention, 8/31/04]

Bush Inherited Recession, Faced Attack on Homeland.

62. Schwarzenegger: “America's economy is moving ahead in spite of a recession they inherited and in spite of the attack on our homeland.” [GOP Convention, 8/31/04]

Tax Relief Helped All Families.

63. Steele: “He didn't just hope for economic recovery, he turned that hope into action by returning money to the people who earned it -- American families. Today, over 111 million taxpayers are keeping more of their own money.” [GOP Convention, 8/31/04]

Kerry Doesn’t Consider the Fight Against Terrorism a “War.”

64. Steele: “He also recently said that he doesn't want to use the word ‘war’ to describe our efforts to fight terrorism. Well, I don't want to use the words ‘Commander-in-Chief’ to describe John Kerry.” [GOP Convention, 8/31/04]

Convention Day 3

Bush Inherited a Recession

65. Cheney: “As President Bush and I were sworn into office, our nation was sliding into recession…” [Cheney Remarks, 9/1/04]

Economy is Good

66. Chao: “Thanks to President Bush’s tax relief, the economy is expanding, creating more than 1.5 million new jobs in the last eleven months. Today, the national unemployment rate is lower than the average for the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.” [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 9/1/04]

Bush is Making Healthcare More Affordable

67. Cheney: “Our nation has the best healthcare in the world and President Bush is making it more affordable and accessible to all Americans.” [Cheney Remarks, 9/1/04]

Bush Destroyed Terrorist Training Camps in Afghanistan

68. Cheney: “In Afghanistan, the camps where terrorists trained to kill Americans have been shut down…” [Cheney Remarks, 9/1/04]

Kerry Said He Would Only Deploy Troops at the Directive of the UN

69. Cheney: “Senator Kerry began his political career by saying he would like to see our troops deployed ‘only at the directive of the United Nations.’” [Cheney Remarks, 9/1/04]

Kerry Opposes Reagan Defense Initiatives

70. Cheney: “During the 1980s, Senator Kerry opposed Ronald Reagan's major defense initiatives that brought victory in the Cold War.” [Cheney Remarks, 9/1/04]

Kerry Spoke of a More “Sensitive” War on Terror

71. Cheney: “He talks about leading a ‘more sensitive war on terror,’ as though Al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side.” [Cheney Remarks, 9/1/04]

Kerry Foreign Policy is Designed To Please Critics

72. Cheney: “Senator Kerry denounces American action when other countries don't approve as if the whole object of our foreign policy were to please a few persistent critics.” [Cheney Remarks, 9/1/04]

Kerry Voted Against Body Armor for Troops

73. Cheney: “He voted against body armor, ammunition, fuel, spare parts, armored vehicles, extra pay for hardship duty, and support for military families.” [Cheney Remarks, 9/1/04]

Kerry Cut Intelligence Funding

74. Romney: If you want cuts in intelligence funding, then yes, send him. If you think that during the great national policy debate of the 1980’s Ronald Reagan was wrong and Ted Kennedy was right, then by all means send in John Kerry. Senator Kerry now tells us he has a clear position on the war on terror.” [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 9/1/04]

Bush Speaks Plainly and Means What He Says

75. Cheney: “George W. Bush is a man who speaks plainly and means what he says.” [Cheney Remarks, 9/1/04]

Kerry Voted For Tax Hikes 98 Times

76. Romney: “No, it’s John Kerry’s record in his nearly 40 years since Vietnam that’s the question. Study that record; if you want someone who voted for tax hikes 98 times, then yes, send him. [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 9/1/04]

77. Healey: “Why would he want to remind us that he voted 98 times for tax increases - or that he voted 126 times against tax cuts for American families, totaling more than 5.3 trillion dollars.” [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 9/01/04]

78. Healey: “John Kerry doesn't like to talk about serving as Michael Dukakis's lieutenant. And for good reason. Why would he want to remind voters of Dukakis' legacy of skyrocketing taxes, high unemployment and a plummeting economy?” [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 9/01/04]

Kerry Is The Most Liberal Senator Ever/ Out Of Touch

79. Healey: “The fact is, John Kerry can't win by telling us the truth. Because the truth is that John Kerry - and not Ted Kennedy - is the most liberal Senator in the United States.” [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 9/01/04]

Bush Has Strong Convictions/ Not Changing His Beliefs

80. Lingle: “He has turned our country around by following his strong convictions and doing what he believes is right, rather than changing his beliefs in response to the latest opinion poll.” [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 9/01/04]

AHPs Help Small Business

81. Lurita Doan: He's committed to making health care affordable for small business owners and their employees.

Bush Helped Reduce Bundling In Federal Contracts

82. Patricia Stout: This President laid out a strategy for reducing the size of government contracts so that small businesses would have a chance to compete.

Bush Allows Americans To Define Marriage

84. Santorum: George Bush has shown his compassion by… fighting to let the American people define marriage, not left-wing judges.

Kerry Doesn’t Stand His Ground

85. Romney: “He voted NO on Desert Storm in 1991 and YES on Desert Shield today. Then he voted NO on troop funding, just after he had voted YES. He’s campaigned against the war all year, but says he’d vote YES today. I don’t want Presidential leadership that comes in 57 varieties! I want a strong President who stands his ground.” [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 9/1/04]

Bush Ensured Quality Education

86. Chao: “He has opened doors of opportunity to millions of other Americans as well, by ensuring that quality education is available to everyone so that all Americans have the skills they need to compete in the 21st century economy.” [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 9/1/04]

Inherited Recession

87. Portman: “This President inherited an economy spiraling into recession, and already losing jobs in states like Ohio.” [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 9/1/04]We’re On Track For Economic Growth

88. Portman: “Yes, we have more work to do, but we are on track for economic growth.” [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 9/1/04]

Kerry Is An Isolationist

89. Portman: “This means opening foreign markets to the best goods and services in the world American products not retreating to economic isolationism that kills jobs!!” [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 9/1/04]

Kerry Ignores The Changing Economy

90. Portman: “This means giving workers the opportunity to build their skills to meet 21st century challenges, not false hope and empty promises that ignore the realities of a changing economy!!” [Remarks at the Republican National Convention, 9/1/04]

The Democrats Are Negative

91. Miller: “Now, while young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrat's manic obsession to bring down our Commander-in-Chief.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

The Democrats Are Politicizing The War

92. Miller: “Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

93. Miller: “But don't waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking America is the problem, not the solution.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

94. Miller: “They don't believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

Kerry Doesn’t Support Our Troops

95. Miller: “Together, Kennedy/Kerry have opposed the very weapons system that won the Cold War and that is now winning the War on Terror.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

96. Miller: “Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security but Americans need to know the facts.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

97. Miller: “The B-1 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, dropped 40% of the bombs in the first six months of Operation Enduring Freedom.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

98. Miller: “The B-2 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hussein's command post in Iraq.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

99. Miller: “The F-14A Tomcats, that Senator Kerry opposed, shot down Khadifi's Libyan MIGs over the Gulf of Sidra.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

100. Miller: “The modernized F-14D, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered missile strikes against Tora Bora.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

101. Miller: “The Apache helicopter, that Senator Kerry opposed, took out those Republican Guard tanks in Kuwait in the Gulf War.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

102. Miller: “The F-15 Eagles, that Senator Kerry opposed, flew cover over our Nation's Capital and this very city after 9/11.”

103. Miller: “I could go on and on and on: Against the Patriot Missile that shot down Saddam Hussein's scud missiles over Israel…”[Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

104. Miller: “…Against the Aegis air-defense cruiser…” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

105. Miller: “…Against the Strategic Defense Initiative…” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

106. Miller: “…Against the Trident missile, against, against, against. This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Speeutbawlls?”[Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

107. Miller: “Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations. Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

108. Miller: “For more than twenty years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure. As a war protestor, Kerry blamed our military.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

109. Miller: “John Kerry wants to re-fight yesterday's war. George Bush believes we have to fight today's war and be ready for tomorrow's challenges. George Bush is committed to providing the kind of forces it takes to root out terrorists.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

Kerry Will Weaken Our Military

110. Miller: “John Kerry, who says he doesn't like outsourcing, wants to outsource our national security. That's the most dangerous outsourcing of all. This politician wants to be leader of the free world.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

111. Miller: “As a Senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harms way, far-away.” [Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]

Bush Has Fought Crime

112. Sandoval: “While working diligently to prevent terrorism, our Commander in Chief has remained equally dedicated to the important fight against domestic crime, and his strategy is succeeding.” [Sandoval Remarks, 9/1/04]

113. Sandoval: “From Project Safe Neighborhoods to the President's fight against identity theft, from his anti-drug strategy to his plan to eradicate gun crime in America, this President has demonstrated an ability to lead. And deliver results. Violent crime at a thirty-year low. Teen drug abuse is declining across a wide front. Federal gun prosecutions have hit record highs. For America to fulfill its promise as the land of opportunity, each of us must be safe from crime. President Bush has made great strides in making America safer.” [Sandoval Remarks, 9/1/04]

Kerry Does Not Support Welfare Reform/Faith-Based Initiatives

114. Santorum: John Kerry's response -- he joined Senate Democrats in blocking the President's welfare reform and faith-based initiatives. He says he's "concerned" about the separation of church and state.

Kerry Does Not Support Families

120. Santorum: Senator Kerry should worry more about the separation of children from their fathers.

Convention Day 4

Bush Had a Record of Achievement.

121. Pataki: “I want to help voters compare President Bush's record of achievement with Senator Kerry's. That way they'll be able to see the difference, which is that President Bush has a record of achievement.” [Remarks at Republican National Convention, 9/2/04]

Bush Inherited a Recession.

122. Pataki: “He inherited a recession, and then came September 11th. But George Bush said he would turn around the economy and create new jobs.” [Remarks at Republican National Convention, 9/2/04]

Bush Eased Taxes on all Americans.

123. Pataki: “He said he would cut taxes on the middle class, and ease the tax burden on all Americans.” [Remarks at Republican National Convention, 9/2/04]

Bush Said He Would Get Seniors Drug Coverage.

124. Pataki: “He'd help our seniors get the prescription drug coverage they need.” [Remarks at Republican National Convention, 9/2/04]

Pataki Distorted Kerry’s Record.

125. Pataki: “Senator Kerry, on the other hand well, what can we say of Senator Kerry? He was for the war and then he was against the war. Then he was for it but he wouldn't fund it. Then he'd fund it but he wasn't for it. He was for the Patriot Act until he was against it. Or was he against it until he was for it? I forget. He probably does too.” [Remarks at Republican National Convention, 9/2/04]

Pataki Blamed Clinton Administration for 9/11.

126. Pataki: You know the history. Osama bin Laden declared war on America -- and then came the attacks -- the first World Trade Center, the embassies, the USS Cole -- hundreds dead, thousands injured. How I wish the administration at that time, in those years had done something. How I wished they had moved to protect us -- But - they - didn't - do -it. [Remarks at Republican National Convention, 9/2/04]

Pataki Questioned Kerry’s Commitment to Perusing Terrorists.

127. Pataki: Where does Senator Kerry stand on all this? In Boston, he said that in the future “any attack would be met with a swift and certain response”. Well, respectfully Senator, that's not good enough. We've already been attacked, time and again. [Remarks at Republican National Convention, 9/2/04]

Pataki Distorted Kerry’s Comment on War.

128. Pataki: Senator Kerry says, “America should go to war not when it wants to go to war but when it has to go to war.” Well, Senator: the fire fighters and cops who ran into those burning towers and died on September 11th didn't want to go to war, they were heroes in a war they didn't even know existed. [Remarks at Republican National Convention, 9/2/04]

Franks Distorted Kerry’s Comments About Fighting War on Terrorism.

129. Franks: “Some argue that we should treat this war as a law enforcement issue. Some say we should fight a less aggressive war -- that we should retreat into a defensive posture and hope that the terrorists don't attack us again.” [Remarks at Republican National Convention, 9/2/04]

Other Countries Making Substantial Contributions

130. Franks: “Some have ridiculed the contributions made by our allies, but I can tell you that every contribution from every nation is important.” [Remarks at Republican National Convention, 9/2/04]

Martinez Said Bush’s Policies Helped All Americans.

131. Martinez: “Not only does President Bush believe in the American dream, but his policies are helping people across our country to realize their own American Dream.” [Mel Martinez, 9/2/04]

Martinez Said Kerry Wanted to Raise Taxes.

132. Martinez: “President Bush wants to cut taxes, and John Kerry wants to raise taxes.” [Mel Martinez, 9/2/04]

Martinez said Bush Provided Seniors with Affordable Prescription Drugs.

133. Martinez: “…I am extremely thankful to President Bush for his leadership in providing affordable drugs for our seniors. For years, our seniors have been promised a prescription drug benefit under Medicare, and those promises fell empty. Now because of President Bush, seniors are finally getting help with the cost of their prescription drugs.” [Mel Martinez, 9/2/04]

Bush Says Seniors Are Getting Immediate Help With Prescription Drugs.

134. Bush: “Now seniors are getting immediate help buying medicine. Soon every senior will be able to get prescription drug coverage, and nothing will hold us back.”

Bush Says Medical Liability Reform Will Make Health Care Cheaper.

135. Bush: “To make health care more affordable and accessible, we must pass medical liability reform now.”

Bush Says Will Keep Promise Of Social Security.

136. Bush: “We will always keep the promise of Social Security for our older workers.”

Bush Asserts Kerry Opposes Medicare Reform.

137. Bush: “My opponent's policies are dramatically different from ours. Senator Kerry opposed Medicare reform and health savings accounts.”

Bush Says Kerry Wants To Dilute Education Reforms.

138. Bush: “After supporting my education reforms, he now wants to dilute them.”

Bush Says Kerry Opposes Medical Liability Reform.

139. Bush: “He opposes legal and medical liability reform.”

Bush Says Kerry Opposes Marriage Penalty.

140. Bush: “He opposed reducing the marriage penalty, opposed doubling the child credit, and opposed lowering income taxes for all who pay them.”

Bush Lies About Cost of Kerry’s Programs.

141. Bush: “To be fair, there are some things my opponent is for he's proposed more than two trillion dollars in new federal spending so far, and that's a lot, even for a senator from Massachusetts. To pay for that spending, he is running on a platform of increasing taxes and that's the kind of promise a politician usually keeps.”

Bush Lies About Kerry Vote Funding Troops

142. Bush: “Again, my opponent and I have different approaches. I proposed, and the Congress overwhelmingly passed, 87 billion dollars in funding needed by our troops doing battle in Afghanistan and Iraq. My opponent and his running mate voted against this money for bullets, and fuel, and vehicles, and body armor. When asked to explain his vote, the Senator said, "I actually did vote for the 87 billion dollars before I voted against it." Then he said he was "proud" of that vote. Then, when pressed, he said it was a "complicated" matter. There is nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat.”

Bush Lies About Kerry’s View of Coalition.

143. Bush: “In the midst of war, he has called America's allies, quote, a "coalition of the coerced and the bribed." That would be nations like Great Britain, Poland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, El Salvador, Australia, and others allies that deserve the respect of all Americans, not the scorn of a politician. I respect every soldier, from every country, who serves beside us in the hard work of history. America is grateful, and America will not forget.”

The amazing thing? This is an official Kerry campaign press release titled "The 2004 GOP Convention: Four Days Filled With Lies, Mischaracterizations, Distortions, And Half-Truths".

Look at that release again, there are exactly 4 entries (numbers 18, 141, 142, and 143) that couldn't be lifted word-for-word as a Bush/Cheney press release. They're not really trying to rebut what was said. They're not trying to prove they're lies. They're more than content simply to label everything a lie and move on.

This really illustrates a big problem with the Kerry campaign. When their opponents say something they don't agree with they don't rebut them. Instead they dismiss them as lies and attacks on patriotism/character and move right on to attacking back. That's not how debate works. When the other side says something you don't agree with you explain why they're full of crap and say something they're not going to agree with. You don't simply dismiss everything said against you as a lie/attack and try to stifle the dissent. That just makes you look like you think you're above being questioned. And more and more it appears that's exactly what the Kerry campaign thinks. "John Kerry served in Vietnam for 4 months so you're not allowed to say anything bad about him."

(hat tip Blogs for Bush)

--Update--
Looks like the Kerry team realized what they had on their hands and disappeared it. For the record, the only difference between the text in my blockquote and the actual release is that the Kerry site had the title "The 2004 GOP Convention: Four Days Filled With Lies, Mischaracterizations, Distortions, And Half-Truths" before "For Immediate Release" and the headers for each section were bolded.

--Update 2 (9/9/04)--
For any who may doubt the veracity of the text, Google still has cached copy of the page.

From an e-mail sent to Kathryn Jean Lopez over at NRO:

John Kerry came to Steubenville yesterday and quickly realized he was in the wrong city. Steubenville is a city where there are 6 Democrats for every 1 Republican, and the Steelworkers unions are alive and active. You would think this was solid John Kerry territory. The mob used to control Steubenville and now the unions think they do. Well, they are wrong.

The Kerry campaign first scheduled a visit to Steubenville two weeks ago but "scheduling conflicts" came up at the last minute. Oh, and did I mention that Kerry wanted to use a local gun range as a campaign stop, but the owner turned him down? And that the Fire Department Union President told the Kerry campaign that not only would he not organize the union to support Kerry at the rally, but that he was supporting President Bush! The Kerry campaign took for granted that this area was sown up. Mistake number one. So they rescheduled the campaign trip when Franciscan University was back in session. Mistake number two.

Before Kerry arrived there was a huge pro-life march led by Franciscan University students, 500 strong. "You can't be Catholic and pro-abortion", read some of their signs. Students and members of local Catholic parishes were full of energy and FoxNews reported that this was the largest protest against Kerry outside of the Democratic Convention. Just picture 500 pro-lifers marching from their college campus to meet Kerry. Where else but in Steubenville, Ohio! Though the Franciscan University did not organize the event, it is well known for its orthodox Catholic education which encourages students to put their faith into action. These students simply cherish their Catholic faith and could not stand to let Kerry use their faith as a political prop. I am proud of my alma mater.

….The Kerry campaign not only made a mistake in their timing, but they also chose to hold the rally in a public park which should be open to all the public. Mistake number three. The police chief, sheriff, and mayor all agreed with me that protesters and their signs would be allowed inside the Kerry rally site. Freedom of speech is alive and well here in Ohio. The Kerry campaign flipped out!

So, now add another 500 local Bush supporters to the Kerry rally. They tried to turn up the music but they could not drown us out. According to the Herald Star (local press), "The crowd, estimated by officials as 3,500 strong, was almost split in half with people for and against the Massachusetts senator." John Kerry must know he has a problem when over 15% of his audience was booing him. We were respectful and did not heckle him - but upon arrival and when he sought our applause he got something he didn't expect. As the press arrived a feisty nine year old little girl began shouting, "We want Bush!", and we all chanted along. The campaign staff was beside themselves. This is history in the making! Even places like Steubenville are not supporting John Kerry. He is in serious trouble.

My friends, John Kerry will not be coming back to Steubenville. Kerry was visibly shaken when he received boos from the audience.....

--The Corner on National Review Online

Professor Bainbridge sets them straight.

A Democrat Congressman says the Bush administration is taking America "into a snake pit of fascism."

Getting former astronaut and Democrat Senator John Glenn to trot out the Hitler comparison.

Three liberal protestors tried to disrupt Bush's convention speech (funny, I didn't see any conservatives trying to disrupt Kerry's speech to the DNC convention).

Liberal protestors who tie up city streets and inconvenience people just so they can satisfy their narcissistic jones.

A featured speaker at a NOW rally says Bush "savagely raped " women "over and over."

...

Democrat operatives working overtime to keep Ralph Nader off the ballot, thus besmirching the very name of their party.

The Democrat's media allies planning a 60 Minutes smear of Bush's National Guard service.

--Professor Bainbridge

Professor Bainbridge has more and the links to back them up so go check it out.

NEW YORK, NY, Sep. 4 (UPI) -- Top staffers in the Kerry campaign defend their recent tactics.

Tad Devine, Sen. John Kerry's senior advisor, told the Washington Times that he does not think that the Swift Boat veterans' ads, which attacked Kerry's Vietnam War record, have hurt the campaign.

"Fundamentally, I don't think they reshaped the race at all," Devine said. "If they did, the president would be 10 points ahead, not in a dead-heat horse race."

--Washington Times

*cough* *cough*

The latest Newsweek poll agrees with yesterday's Time poll.

President George W. Bush leads his Democrat opponent John Kerry by 11 percentage points according to a poll immediately after the Republican National Convention in New York, Newsweek magazine reported.

Bush is supported by 54 percent of the 1,008 registered voters surveyed Thursday and Friday, compared with 43 percent support for Kerry, a four-term Massachusetts senator. Independent candidate Ralph Nader polled 3 percent. The poll has a margin of error of 4 percentage points, Newsweek said.

--Bloomberg.com

Brian Griffin's been pointing out examples of violence at Democratic offices.

Just to ensure that people don't start thinking this type of stuff only happens to Dems... "Shot fired at Huntington GOP office during speech".

In a speech that was at once eloquent and substantive, sensitive and dynamic, profound and familiar, Bush has risen to a level few presidents have ever reached.

Sometimes a strategist just has to sit back and gasp. Occasionally, a seasoned political observer needs to realize that he has seen something extraordinary. Tonight, Bush made me feel like that.

The speech satisfied every single political need. He contrasted with Kerry without appearing negative. He demonstrated emotion without pandering. He rose to a level of substantive specificity without becoming wonkish.
...
I voted for Gore in 2000, as a true child of the Clinton era. But I decided to vote for Bush on Sept. 12, 2001 when I saw how he handled the threat we face. I used to back Bush because he offered safety; now I support him because he summons us all to an ideal. Before he spoke, supporting Bush was a duty one owed to the fallen. Now, it is an honor.

--New York Post

The latest Time Poll (via Instapundit) shows President Bush with an 11 point lead over Kerry.

AMONG LIKELY VOTERS, 52% WOULD VOTE FOR PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, 41% WOULD VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY,
AND 3% WOULD VOTE FOR NADER

New York – For the first time since the Presidential race became a two person contest last spring, there is a clear leader, the latest TIME poll shows. If the 2004 election for President were held today, 52% of likely voters surveyed would vote for President George W. Bush, 41% would vote for Democratic nominee John Kerry, and 3% would vote for Ralph Nader, according to a new TIME poll conducted from Aug. 31 to Sept. 2. Poll results are available on TIME.com and will appear in the upcoming issue of TIME magazine, on newsstands Monday, Sept. 6.

--Time

*Insert standard grain of salt reminder about polls here*

The latest Carnival is up over at Blogo Slovo.

Get over yourselves. The RNC was not filled with "negative personal attacks" on John Kerry. They did attack him, they were not personal attacks. Not everything said against him is a personal attack. They did not question his patriotism. They did not question his service in Vietnam.

They questioned his decisions. They questioned his record. They questioned whether he was the best choice to lead our country.

Serving 4 months in Vietnam does not exempt you from ever being questioned again. They do not automatically qualify you to be the Commander in Chief. You do not earn your right to speak by going to Vietnam. You are not entitled to be president.

Kerry and Edwards say they want to talk about the issues. At the RNC they did and all Kerry and Edwards can do is paint every thing said against them as attacks on patriotism and character. Whenever someone says they're wrong, that they're not the ones to lead the country they run to a microphone and whine that they're being picked on. It's pitiful.

Zell Miller says President Bush has "a spine of tempered steel". Try growing one yourselves Senators Kerry and Edwards.

Grow the hell up.

(One side note, you've got this big speech meant to rebut President Bush's acceptance speech... it's meant for a national audience... what the hell are you doing putting in a line about choosing between the Springfield North and Springfield South teams? And what kind of line is "If you think we're doing ok vote for him, if you think we're going in the wrong direction vote for us"? Shouldn't you instead be trying to persuade people that we're on the wrong track?)

Governor George Pataki: A very impassioned speech. A reminder of 9/11 and President Bush's leadership then and since as can only be delivered from a New Yorker.

The video voiced by former Senator and Law & Order cast member Fred Thompson I thought was very effective. It seemed very well put together compared to some of the other videos at the convention and ads on TV.

President George W. Bush: Wow, a great speech. The best speech I've ever seen him give. And amazingly enough the media seems to agree. It necessarily started out a little slow as he had to lay out his domestic agenda for the next four years, but the last 20 minutes at least were dead on. A surprising amount of emotion, both in President Bush and in the crowd. A very hopeful message, a visionary message.

A very well run convention overall, almost perfect.

(Note: A flag was shown within 100 feet of a Republican tonight so somewhere there's a liberal complaining that the Republicans think they own the flag and that it needs to be taken back.)

Some selections from Governor Pataki's speech.

PATAKI:...[Senator Kerry] has asked for a full and frank discussion. Well, let's start now.

(APPLAUSE)

I want to help voters compare President Bush's record of achievement with Senator Kerry's. That way they'll be able to see the difference, which is that President Bush has a record of achievement.

(APPLAUSE)

Almost four years ago, George W. Bush raised his right hand and took the oath of office. And from the first, he showed us something we hadn't seen in a while. When he said he was going to do something, he meant it. And then he did it.

(APPLAUSE)

PATAKI: Given recent history, that's amazing.

He inherited a recession. And then came September 11th. But George Bush said he would turn around the economy and create new jobs.

He said he'd do it. And he did.

(APPLAUSE)

He said he would cut taxes on the middle class and ease the tax burden on all Americans.

He said he'd do it. And he did.

(APPLAUSE)

He said he'd help small businesses, protect Social Security and expand home ownership.

He said he'd do it. And he did.

He said he'd apply tougher standards to our schools. He'd help our seniors get the prescription drug coverage they need.

He said he'd do it. And he did.

And George Bush said he'd fight to allow the power of faith to help our young and help our troubled.

He said he'd do it. And he did.

There's much more, but you get the point.
...
Where does Senator Kerry stand on all this? In Boston, he said that in the future "any attack would be met with a swift and certain response."

Well, respectfully, Senator, that's not good enough. We've already been attacked, time and again.

And President Bush understands we can't just wait for the next attack. We have to go after them, in their training camps, in their hiding places, in their spider holes, before they have the chance to attack us again.

(APPLAUSE)

PATAKI: Senator Kerry says -- Senator Kerry says, "America should go to war not when it wants to go to war but when it has to go to war."

Well, Senator, the firefighters and cops who ran into those burning towers and died on September 11th didn't want to go to war. They were heroes in a war they didn't even know existed. America did not choose this war. But we have a president who chooses to win it.

--Washington Post

And now vast swaths of President Bush's speech.

I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people.

BUSH: If America shows uncertainty or weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy.

This will not happen on my watch.
...
He's proposed more than $2 trillion in new federal spending so far, and that's a lot, even for a senator from Massachusetts.

(APPLAUSE)

And to pay for that spending, he is running on a platform of increasing taxes. And that's the kind of promise a politician usually keeps.

BUSH: His policies of tax and spend, of expanding government rather than expanding opportunity, are the politics of the past. We are on the path to the future, and we're not turning back.
...
My opponent recently announced that he is the candidate of "conservative values," which must have come as a surprise to a lot of his supporters.

(LAUGHTER)

Now, there are some problems with this claim. If you say the heart and soul of America is found in Hollywood, I'm afraid you are not the candidate of conservative values.

(APPLAUSE)

BUSH: If you voted against the bipartisan Defense of Marriage Act, which President Clinton signed, you are not the candidate of conservative values.

(APPLAUSE)

If you gave a speech, as my opponent did, calling the Reagan presidency eight years of "moral darkness," then you may be a lot of things, but the candidate of conservative values is not one of them.

(APPLAUSE)

This election will also determine how America responds to the continuing danger of terrorism, and you know where I stand.
...
BUSH: In Saddam Hussein, we saw a threat. Members of both political parties, including...

AUDIENCE: USA. USA. USA.

BUSH: Members of both political parties, including my opponent and his running mate, saw the threat, and voted to authorize the use of force. We went to the United Nations Security Council, which passed a unanimous resolution demanding the dictator disarm, or face serious consequences. Leaders in the Middle East urged him to comply.

After more than a decade of diplomacy, we gave Saddam Hussein another chance, a final chance, to meet his responsibilities to the civilized world. He again refused.

And I faced the kind of decision that comes only to the Oval Office, a decision no president would ask for, but must be prepared to make: Do I forget the lessons of September 11th and take the word of a madman...

AUDIENCE: No.

BUSH: ... or do I take action to defend our country?

Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time.
...
BUSH: Our allies also know the historic importance of our work. About 40 nations stand beside us in Afghanistan, and some 30 in Iraq. I deeply appreciate the courage and wise counsel of leaders like Prime Minister Howard, President Kwasniewski, Prime Minister Berlusconi and, of course, Prime Minister Tony Blair.

(APPLAUSE)

Again, my opponent takes a different approach. In the midst of war, he has called American allies, quote, a "coalition of the coerced and the bribed."

AUDIENCE: Boooo.

BUSH: That would be nations like Great Britain, Poland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, El Salvador, Australia, and others...

(APPLAUSE)

... allies that deserve the respect of all Americans, not the scorn of a politician.
...
America has done this kind of work before, and there have always been doubters. In 1946, 18 months after the fall of Berlin to allied forces, a journalist wrote in the New York Times wrote this: "Germany is a land in an acute stage of economic, political and moral crisis. European capitals are frightened. In every military headquarters, one meets alarmed officials doing their utmost to deal with the consequences of the occupation policy that they admit has failed," end quote.

BUSH: Maybe that same person is still around, writing editorials.

(APPLAUSE)

Fortunately, we had a resolute president named Truman who, with the American people, persevered, knowing that a new democracy at the center of Europe would lead to stability and peace. And because that generation of Americans held firm in the cause of liberty, we live in a better and safer world today.

(APPLAUSE)

The progress we and our friends and allies seek in the broader Middle East will not come easily or all at once.

BUSH: Yet Americans, of all people, should never be surprised by the power of liberty to transform lives and nations. That power brought settlers on perilous journeys, inspired colonies to rebellion, ended the sin of slavery, and set our nation against the tyrannies of the 20th century.

We were honored to aid the rise of democracy in Germany and Japan, Nicaragua and Central Europe and the Baltics, and that noble story goes on.
...
BUSH: You may have noticed I have a few flaws, too. People sometimes have to correct my English.

(LAUGHTER)

I knew I had a problem when Arnold Schwarzenegger started doing it.

(LAUGHTER)

Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called "walking."

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

Now and then I come across as a little too blunt, and for that we can all thank the white-haired lady sitting right up there.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

One thing I have learned about the presidency is that whatever shortcomings you have, people are going to notice them; and whatever strengths you have, you're going to need them.
...
To everything we know there is a season -- a time for sadness, a time for struggle, a time for rebuilding.

BUSH: And now we have reached a time for hope. This young century will be liberty's century.

(APPLAUSE)

By promoting liberty abroad, we will build a safer world. By encouraging liberty at home, we will build a more hopeful America.

Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom. This is the everlasting dream of America. And tonight, in this place, that dream is renewed.

--Washington Post

Boy, I wish I had access to a time machine like the Independent.

Portraying himself as a clear-minded and decisive leader, George Bush last night pledged that if elected for a second term, he would continue the fight against terrorists "not for pride, not for power," but to keep America and the world a safe place to live.

In his acceptance speech climaxing the Republican convention here, Mr Bush offered his country "clear, consistent and principled leadership," insisting he had a "clear and positive plan" both for international affairs, and to set his country right at home.

Mr Bush's speech to a wildly cheering audience at Madison Square Garden arena capped a four-day convention launching the President into the last 60 days of a campaign which will determine whether he achieves the second White House term that eluded his father.

Immediately afterwards he left to campaign in Pennsylvania, a key swing state, which Mr Kerry must carry to win the Presidency.

--The Independent

Meanwhile the Left continues to spout this kind of hatred and vitriol.

Poet Molly Birnbaum read aloud to a crowd of feminists gathered in New York's Central Park on Wednesday night, as part of a NOW event dubbed "Code Red: Stop the Bush Agenda Rally."

"Imagine a way to erase that night four years ago when you (President Bush) savagely raped every pandemic woman over and over with each vote you got, a thrust with each state you stole," Birnbaum said from the podium. (If something is pandemic, it affects many people or a number of countries.)

"A smack with each bill you passed, a tear with each right you took until you left me disenfranchised with hands shackled and voice restrained. Thanks for that night, Mr. President, I can barely remember my tomorrows," Birnbaum said to applause.

--CNSNews

U.S. Rep. Major Owens, a New York Democrat, warned a crowd of feminist protesters that the Bush administration is taking America "into a snake pit of fascism."

Owens also said the Bush administration "spits on democracy" and is leading the country down a path reminiscent of "Nazi Germany."

Owens made his remarks in New York City's Central Park at a National Organization for Women rally on Wednesday night.

--CNSNews

Here is a 1984 John Kerry campaign memo.

The Reagan Administration has no rational plan for our military. Instead, it acts on misinformed assumptions about the strength of the Soviet military and a presumed "window of vulnerability", which we now know not to exist.

And Congress, rather than having the moral courage to challenge the Reagan Administration, has given Ronald Reagan almost every military request he has made, no matter how wasteful, no matter how useless, no matter how dangerous.

The biggest defense buildup since World War II has not given us a better defense. Americans feel more threatened by the prospect of war, not less so. And our national priorities become more and more distorted as the share of our country's resources devoted to human needs diminishes.

--Kerry Campaign Memo

A sampling of what the memo says Kerry wanted to do to various weapons systems:

MX Missile	Cancel
B-1 Bomber	Cancel
Tomahawk Missile	Reduce by 50 per cent
AH-64 Helicopters	Cancel
Patriot Air Defense Missile	Cancel
Aegis Air-Defense Cruiser	Cancel
AV-8B Vertical Takeoff and Landing Aircraft	Cancel
F-15 Fighter Aircraft	Cancel
F-14A Fighter Aircraft	Cancel
F-14D Fighter Aircraft	Cancel
Phoenix Air-to-Air Missile	Cancel
Sparrow Air-to-Air Missile	Cancel

Remember, these cuts weren't proposed as a part of the "peace dividend", this was at the height of Reagan's fighting the Cold War. Thank God Kerry didn't get his way or there's a decent chance we'd still be fighting the Soviet Union.

There seems to be a pattern here. Every night so far it seems we have one person who just knocks it out of the park oratorically and one who makes a fine little speech in workmanlike fashion. In the first group fall Rudy, Arnold and Zell. In the second group are McCain, Laura Bush and Dick Cheney. Good or bad? I dunno. I'm not sure that you'd want a whole lineup of the first group.

Senator Zell Miller: The fiery orator of the night. He certainly went after his fellow Democrats. It was a speech that only he could give, a Republican wouldn't have been able to get up and give that speech.

Tonight we get to see just how inclusive the Democratic party actually is. Watch the claws come out.

Mrs. Cheney: Acquitted herself well. Nothing exciting about it, but nothing embarrassing about it. She got up there and acted like somebody capable of being Second Lady of the United States. Admittedly that pretty much just means that she managed to stand up there for 5 minutes and not commit a felony or cuss anybody out.

Vice President Dick Cheney: It was Vice-Presidential. It laid out the contrasts between President Bush and Senator Kerry. It's not going to be a speech long remembered but he got up there and did his job.

Additionally Michael Reagan managed to get up in front of the podium without pimping the memory of his father. His speech and the ensuing video were a fitting tribute to Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Selections from Zell Miller's speech:

In 1940, Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee. And there is no better example of someone repealing their "private plans" than this good man.

He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time.

MILLER: And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue.

(APPLAUSE)

Shortly before Wilkie died, he told a friend that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between "here lies a president" or "here lies one who contributed to saving freedom," he would prefer the latter.

(APPLAUSE)

Where are such statesmen today? Where is the bipartisanship in this country when we need it most?
...
What has happened to the party I've spent my life working in? I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny. It was Democratic President Harry Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city.

Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Democrats and Republicans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter.

MILLER: But not today.

(APPLAUSE)

Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.

And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.
...
No one should dare to even think about being the commander in chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.

(APPLAUSE)

But don't waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking, America is the problem, not the solution. They don't believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.

MILLER: It is not their patriotism, it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking.

They claimed Carter's pacifism would lead to peace. They were wrong.

They claimed Reagan's defense buildup would lead to war. They were wrong.

And no pair has been more wrong, more loudly, more often than the two Senators from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.
...
George W. Bush wants to grab terrorists by the throat and not let them go to get a better grip.

From John Kerry, they get a "yes/no/maybe" bowl of mush that can only encourage our enemies and confuse our friends.
...
[President Bush] is not a slick talker but he is a straight shooter. And where I come from, deeds mean a lot more than words.

(APPLAUSE)

I have knocked on the door of this man's soul and found someone home, a God-fearing man with a good heart and a spine of tempered steel...

(APPLAUSE)

... the man I trust to protect my most precious possession: my family.

--Washington Post

Lots of you noticed this, from last night:

Schwarzenegger said:

I finally arrived here in 1968. What a special day it was. I remember I arrived here with empty pockets but full of dreams, full of determination, full of desire.

The presidential campaign was in full swing. I remember watching the Nixon-Humphrey presidential race on TV. A friend of mine who spoke German and English translated for me. I heard Humphrey saying things that sounded like socialism, which I had just left.

But then I heard Nixon speak. Then I heard Nixon speak. He was talking about free enterprise, getting the government off your back, lowering the taxes and strengthening the military.

The facts? There was no presidential debate in that election. Nixon never debated Humphrey.

But it sure is a touching story, regardless of its truth.

--Daily Kos

The facts? Nowhere in Schwarzenegger's speech does he say he was watching a debate between Nixon and Humphrey. The word "debate" appears 0 times in Schwarzenegger's speech.

But it sure is a nice example of gotcha politics, regardless of its truth.

This is Wictory Wednesday. Please volunteer or donate to help the President win reelection. President Bush needs your support now more than ever to help counter the lies, untruths, and misleading spin being put out by the Left. You can also sign up to get e-mail from the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign. If you are an Ohioan who supports the President please consider joining the Ohioans for Bush-Cheney Yahoo! Group.

Apparently these blathering idiots, from Chris Matthews on down, are under the impression that diversity in a party means everyone agrees on the issue of gay marriage. That isn't diversity? Diversity means differing people with differing opinions gathered together under one roof. Do they agree on everything? No. But choosing the liberal cause of the day and claiming that total adherence to one side of the issue is the embodiment of diversity does nothing but demonstrate the extent to which the media and the liberals have hijacked the english language.

Remember, tolerance does not mean embracing things that you do notagree with. It means TOLERATING SHIT THAT PISSES YOU OFF, and remaining civil about the issue.

--Balloon Juice

Diversity is not simply accepting anything, no matter what it is.

"Surely you've seen through that particular stupidity. I mean the one that claims the pig is the symbol of love for humanity - the creature that accepts anything. As a matter of fact, the person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind. He expects nothing of men, so no form of depravity can outrage him."

--Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead

Diversity isn't "we'll accept you so long as you accept everything we believe in". There's room in the Republican Party for pro-choice people, there's room in the Republican party for pro-gay rights people. The Republican Party is not a single issue party. There is no litmus test.

That's not to say that anything will be accepted as policy. There will be debates, there will be fights over issues as there must be. Those are necessary if you're going to have true diversity. That's what I see in today's Republican Party.

Went back today and watched the last 10 or so minutes of Giuliani's speech and came to a conclusion. Until/unless a better option comes forward you count me me in the Giuliani '08 camp.

What little political career Alan Keyes had before he joined the race will be nonexistent come November 3rd.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: A VERY good speech. His delivery was off the charts. There were plenty of comedic moments, which will of course be taken far too seriously by many. The type of person that got their panties in a bunch over the girlie-men comment from a while back will of course be livid. The detractors are going to lambaste the "I'll be back" and "girlie-men" and "you're as good a politician as you were an actor" parts, but that's who Arnold is. He's not going to come out and give a 20 minute speech in the manner of Ferris Beuller's Ben Stein. He's going to crack jokes, and they're going to help the serious message go over better, and they did.

First Daughter Jenna & Barbara Bush: They didn't do too badly for people who don't do this type of thing for a living. The material wasn't that bad, but the delivery needed a ton of work. It didn't come anywhere close to sounding natural. Other people would certainly have given a more practiced and professional introduction, but ultimately I think they were there for the humanizing factor rather than to be prim and proper and polished.

First Lady Laura Bush: It wasn't spectacular, but I think it was certainly better than Heinz Kerry's speech at the DNC.

Ideally I suppose it would have been better to have Laura go first and then have Arnold close the night out.

From Schwarzenegger's speech:

Now, my family didn't have a car. But one day we were in my uncle's car. It was near dark as we came to the Soviet checkpoint. I was a little boy. I was not an action hero back then.

(LAUGHTER)

But I remember. I remember how scared I was that the soldiers would pull my father or my uncle out of the car and I would never see them again. My family and so many others lived in fear of the Soviet boot. Today, the world no longer fears the Soviet Union, and it is because of the United States of America.
...
The presidential campaign was in full swing. I remember watching the Nixon-Humphrey presidential race on TV. A friend of mine who spoke German and English translated for me. I heard Humphrey saying things that sounded like socialism, which I had just left.

SCHWARZENEGGER: But then I heard Nixon speak. Then I heard Nixon speak. He was talking about free enterprise, getting the government off your back, lowering the taxes and strengthening the military.

(APPLAUSE)

Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air.

I said to my friend, I said, "What party is he?"

My friend said, "He's a Republican."

I said, "Then I am a Republican."
...
In this country, it doesn't make any difference where you were born. It doesn't make any difference who your parents were. It doesn't make any difference if you're like me and couldn't even speak English until you were in your 20s. America gave me opportunities, and my immigrant dreams came true.

I want other people to get the same chances I did, the same opportunities. And I believe they can. That's why I believe in this country, that's why I believe in this party, and that's why I believe in this president.
...
SCHWARZENEGGER: My fellow immigrants, my fellow Americans, how do you know if you are a Republican? Well, I tell you how. If you believe that government should be accountable to the people, not the people to the government, then you are a Republican.

(APPLAUSE)

If you believe a person should be treated as an individual, not as a member of an interest group, then you are a Republican.

(APPLAUSE)

If you believe your family knows how to spend your money better than the government does, then you are a Republican.

(APPLAUSE)

If you believe our educational system should be held accountable for the progress of our children, then you are a Republican.

(APPLAUSE)

If you believe this country, not the United Nations, is the best hope for democracy, then you are a Republican.

(APPLAUSE)

SCHWARZENEGGER: And, ladies and gentlemen, if you believe that we must be fierce and relentless and terminate terrorism, then you are a Republican.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, there's another way you can tell you're a Republican. You have faith in free enterprise, faith in the resourcefulness of the American people and faith in the U.S. economy. And to those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: Don't be economic girlie-men.

--Washington Post

And Blogs For Bush scoops Hannity who had been teasing it all afternoon.

Senator John McCain: I imagine it read better than it sounded. Not the best job of oration. It had some good lines, but until the last couple sentences he never really seemed to give it much oomph.

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani: Everything McCain's speech wasn't. A very strong delivery. On paper McCain's probably looked better but Giuliani had an energy about him that really made him the star of the night.

You know, it's going to be awfully hard for the Dems to work the "They're only in New York to exploit 9/11!" angle when you've got Mayor Giuliani there talking about how 9/11 is such a big part of why President Bush should be reelected. If Rudy thinks it's ok, who is Terry McAuliffe to argue?

Between McCain and Giuliani they did a pretty good job of laying out the Republicans' perspective on 9/11, the war in Iraq, and the War in Terror. A few selections from their speeches...

Our choice wasn't between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war. It was between war and a graver threat. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

(APPLAUSE)

MCCAIN: Not our political opponents. And certainly... not a disingenuous film maker...

(APPLAUSE)

MCCAIN: ... who would have us believe, my friends, who would have us believe that Saddam's Iraq was an oasis of peace, when in fact -- when in fact it was a place of indescribable cruelty, torture chambers, mass graves and prisons that destroyed the lives of the small children inside their walls.

(APPLAUSE)

Whether or not Saddam possessed the terrible weapons he once had and used, freed from international pressure and the threat of military action, he would have acquired them again.

MCCAIN: My friends, the central security concern of our time is to keep such devastating weapons beyond the reach of terrorists who can't be dissuaded from using them by the threat of mutual destruction.

We couldn't afford the risk posed by an unconstrained Saddam in these dangerous times. By destroying his regime, we gave hope to people long oppressed, that if they have the courage to fight for it, they may live in peace and freedom.

--Washington Post

At the time, we believed that we would be attacked many more times that day and in the days that followed. Without really thinking, based on just emotion, spontaneous, I grabbed the arm of then Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, and I said to him, "Bernie, thank God George Bush is our president."

(APPLAUSE)

GIULIANI: I say it again tonight. I say it again tonight: Thank God that George Bush is our president, and thank God...

(APPLAUSE)

And thank God that Dick Cheney, a man with his experience and his knowledge and his strength and his background is our vice president.
...
And since September 11th President Bush has remained rock solid.

(APPLAUSE)

It doesn't matter to him how he is demonized. It doesn't matter what the media does to ridicule him or misinterpret him or defeat him.

(APPLAUSE)

They ridiculed Winston Churchill. They belittled Ronald Reagan. But like President Bush, they were optimists. Leaders need to be optimists. Their vision is beyond the present, and it's set on a future of real peace and security.

(APPLAUSE)

GIULIANI: Some call it stubbornness. I call it principled leadership.

(APPLAUSE)

President Bush has the courage of his convictions.

In choosing a president, we really don't choose just a Republican or Democrat, a conservative or a liberal. We choose a leader.

(APPLAUSE)

And in times of war and danger, as we're now in, Americans should put leadership at the core of their decision.

There are many qualities that make a great leader. But having strong beliefs, being able to stick with them through popular and unpopular times, is the most important characteristic of a great leader.

(APPLAUSE)

One of my heroes, Winston Churchill, saw the dangers of Hitler while his opponents characterized him as a war-mongering gadfly.

GIULIANI: Another one of my heroes, Ronald Reagan, saw and described the Soviet Union as "the evil empire," while world opinion accepted it as inevitable and even belittled Ronald Reagan's intelligence.

President Bush sees world terrorism for the evil that it is.

(APPLAUSE)

John Kerry has no such clear, precise and consistent vision. This is not a personal criticism of John Kerry. I respect him for his service to our nation.

(APPLAUSE)

But it is important and critical to see the contrast in approach between the two men: President Bush, a leader who is willing to stick with difficult decisions even as public opinion shifts and goes back and forth; and John Kerry, whose record in elected office suggests a man who changes his position often, even on important issues.
...
Frankly, I believed then and I believe now that Saddam Hussein, who supported global terrorism, slaughtered thousands and thousands of his own people, permitted horrific atrocities against women, and used weapons of mass destruction; he was himself a weapon of mass destruction.

(APPLAUSE)

GIULIANI: But the reasons for removing Saddam Hussein were based on issues even broader than just the presence of weapons of mass destruction.

To liberate people, give them a chance for accountable, decent government and to rid the world of a pillar of support for global terrorism is nothing to be defensive about. It's something for which all those involved, from President Bush to the brave men of our armed services, should be proud. They did something wonderful. They did something that history will give them great credit for.

--Washington Post

It's just a shame Rudy couldn't have spoken on a night when the networks were carrying the convention.

A quick ad suggestion for the Bush team: Just stick people like Rudy, and McCain, and Koch and maybe Ron Silver in front of the camera. Have them talk about how important the fight against Terror is. Have them talk about President Bush's leadership. Compare that leadership to Kerry's. Those are the commercials I want to see.

Wait, you mean it's the leftists attacking peaceful protestors? Then nevermind.

Abolish the Electoral College

When Republican delegates nominate their presidential candidate this week, they will be doing it in a city where residents who support George Bush have, for all practical purposes, already been disenfranchised.

Well there's some bleeped up logic. By that rationale, every person that votes for the person that loses the election is disenfranchised. Americans do not vote for president, they vote on how to allocate their states electors for president. To suggest that just because they vote for the losing side in their state they've been disenfranchised is simply asinine.

Barring a tsunami of a sweep, heavily Democratic New York will send its electoral votes to John Kerry and both parties have already written New York off as a surefire blue state.

Right... because it is.

The Electoral College makes Republicans in New York, and Democrats in Utah, superfluous. It also makes members of the majority party in those states feel less than crucial.

Awww... do da wittle voters feel bad. :(

The same could be said of an election where the issue is whether people should kick puppies. The clear majority is going to be against it but there's always going to be a couple sick bastards who think it's a dandy idea. The majority isn't going to feel important. The crackpots are going to feel "superfluous". That doesn't mean you give the crackpots more power just so everyone feels like it's a close race and their vote matters.

It's hard to tell New York City children that every vote is equally important - it's winner take all here, and whether Senator Kerry beats the president by one New York vote or one million, he will still walk away with all 31 of the state's electoral votes.

Every vote in the state of New York is equally important. No one person in New York has more input into how to allocate those electoral votes than anyone else.

The Electoral College got a brief spate of attention in 2000, when George Bush became president even though he lost the popular vote to Al Gore by more than 500,000 votes. Many people realized then for the first time that we have a system in which the president is chosen not by the voters themselves, but by 538 electors.

In other words, many people didn't learn squat in Social Studies. That's ok, lots of people didn't learn much in Social Studies. For instance, the New York Times Editorial Page seems to have missed the day when they were supposed to learn that the United States is a Republic and not a Democracy.

It's a ridiculous setup, which thwarts the will of the majority,

The will of the majority should be thwarted at times. Majorities tend to do stupid things. A few decades ago the courts thwarted the will of the majority in the fight for Civil Rights. Being the will of a majority doesn't make a decision right, and the founders knew that. They set up Congress so that, while the House gave more representation to the bigger states, the Senate protected the rights of the smaller states by giving every state an equal representation. The Electoral College does the same thing, for the same reasons. California and New York shouldn't be able to gang up and vote in a guy who's platform is "Let's screw the small states!"

distorts presidential campaigning

How exactly does it do this? It makes the candidates go where the people are undecided. I'd ask whether they thought candidates should fight for areas that are already decided, but this is the New York Times, what they really mean is that New York and California don't get enough attention while those damn little states like Arkansas and New Mexico get all the attention.

and has the potential to produce a true constitutional crisis. There should be a bipartisan movement for direct election of the president.

I really hope they explain that constitutional crisis bit later on, I'm sure it's a doozy.

The main problem with the Electoral College is that it builds into every election the possibility, which has been a reality three times since the Civil War, that the president will be a candidate who lost the popular vote.

This is bad why? Again, I'll point out that this is a Republic and not a Democracy. Pure Democracy can lead to very bad things.

This shocks people in other nations who have been taught to look upon the United States as the world's oldest democracy.

Those poor, misguided other nations. But you can't blame them, if the New York Times hasn't figured out the Republic thing, how can we expect Germany to have done it. The worst ideal pushed on newly free states is that majority rule, democracy, is enough to make a stable, workable state.

The Electoral College also heavily favors small states.

Damn right, and for a very good reason. I don't want to be repeating myself, but there need to be protections against tyranny by the majority. There need to be assurances that the states with 51% of the population can't kick around the greater number of states with the other 49%.

The fact that every one gets three automatic electors - one for each senator and a House member - means states that by population might be entitled to only one or two electoral votes wind up with three, four or five.

Oh look they did learn something in Social Studies!

The majority does not rule and every vote is not equal - those are reasons enough for scrapping the system.

No they're not. They're the very reason that the system was established. This is a noteworthy point they're making here. They're not simply arguing that things have changed since the nation was established. This is an argument against the very intent of our Founders. The lack of majority rule and voters in one state having more input in a presidential election wasn't an oversight by the Founders... IT WAS THEIR INTENT! They intended to protect the smaller states against the possible tyranny of the larger ones. They meant to ensure that majority rule wasn't the means for electing the president. They intended it to work this way and the New York Times thinks they were wrong.

But there are other consequences as well. This election has been making clear how the Electoral College distorts presidential campaigns. A few swing states take on oversized importance, leading the candidates to focus their attention, money and promises on a small slice of the electorate.

Of course they do, but abolishing the Electoral College isn't going to eliminate it, it'll just change it. Instead of focusing on states that are undecided they'll focus on the areas where they can reach the largest number of people. Getting rid of the Electoral College won't make the candidates go after everyone, it'll just make them go wherever there are the most people. Take away the Electoral College and Alaska and Georgia are not going to get any more visits from candidates. Places like Arkansas, Arizona, and New Mexico will be losing attention from the candidates and places with lots of people like California and New York will get a lot more.

We are hearing far more this year about the issue of storing hazardous waste at Yucca Mountain, an important one for Nevada's 2.2 million residents, than about securing ports against terrorism, a vital concern for 19.2 million New Yorkers.

So instead the issue of Yucca Mountain should disappear? You eliminate the Electoral College and the only issues that matter will be those in the big states. The Electoral College is meant to raise the issues that are important to those 2.2 million residents. It's meant to make them important. It's meant to make the candidates think about more than New York and LA.

The political concerns of Cuban-Americans, who are concentrated in the swing state of Florida, are of enormous interest to the candidates. The interests of people from Puerto Rico scarcely come up at all, since they are mainly settled in areas already conceded as Kerry territory. The emphasis on swing states removes the incentive for a large part of the population to follow the campaign, or even to vote.

So instead they'd prefer that the candidates focus only on the areas of high population and ignore those that don't.

Those are the problems we have already experienced.

They seem to be using the term "problems" very loosely.

The arcane rules governing the Electoral College have the potential to create havoc if things go wrong.

And prevent havoc if it goes right.

Electors are not required to vote for the candidates they are pledged to, and if the vote is close in the Electoral College, a losing candidate might well be able to persuade a small number of electors to switch sides. Because there are an even number of electors - one for every senator and House member of the states, and three for the District of Columbia - the Electoral College vote can end in a tie. There are several plausible situations in which a 269-269 tie could occur this year.

DAMN THOSE FOUNDERS! WHY DIDN'T THEY THINK OF A SOLUTION FOR SOMETHING LIKE THIS?!?!?!

In the case of a tie, the election goes to the House of Representatives,

Oh, look, they did.

where each state delegation gets one vote - one for Wyoming's 500,000 residents and one for California's 35.5 million.

Which, *GASP* is exactly what the Founders intended. See above RE: protecting the rights of the minority, Republic vs. Democracy, kicking puppies, etc... In the event of a tie the Founders ensured that the small states wouldn't be kicked around by the big states.

The Electoral College's supporters argue that it plays an important role in balancing relations among the states, and protecting the interests of small states.

What kind of crazy person would say that? Oh yeah... me.

A few years ago, this page was moved by these concerns to support the Electoral College.

Ok, so they were right at one point.

But we were wrong.

D'oh!

The small states are already significantly overrepresented in the Senate, which more than looks out for their interests.

And who decides what is an adequate level of looking out for their interests? The small states have their protection in the Legislative branch, why should they be stripped of their protections in the Executive.

And there is no interest higher than making every vote count.

--The New York Times

Again, just because you vote for a loser doesn't mean your vote didn't count. And likewise, even if your choice wins in a landslide your vote still counts. Your vote counts absolutely in choosing who your states electors go to. We cannot however fudge things so that everybody's happy and thinks "oh, it was a close vote, so my vote counted". In some places it's just a landslide and cosmetically changing things so that it doesn't seem like a landslide doesn't actually make the vote count any more or any less.

Oh, and one more feature of the Electoral College that the NY Times failed to mention is that it compartmentalizes the election process. They complain that there could be "havoc" in a couple of situations where the vote might end up going to the House. That's noting compared to the bedlam that might happen without the Electoral College. You saw the turmoil that was Florida 2000. Imagine if the President were elected solely on the popular vote and that vote were close enough to require a recount. That chaos we saw in Florida would be nationwide as every precinct had the possibility to influence a close election. Hmmm, bedlam in ever precinct in every state in the nation or the vote being decided in the House of Representatives. You can guess which I'd take. Which would you take?

RNCBloggers rounds up all the bloggers at the Republican Convention on one page.

But a funny thing has happened- I am starting to believe [the Swift Boat Vets]- at least some of the claims. The Democrats response of attack, retreat, sue, intimidate, malign has been unimpressive. The cripple stunts with Max Cleland have been uninspiring and seem like they are straight out of South Park. The worst has been the reaction of the press and other Kerry supporters (does Douglas Brinkley have any credibility left, whatsoever?), who have behaved like there is something to hide.

At any rate, the Democrats have given it all they have, and the Vets have held up. Meanwhile, I have learned the following:

- Kerry did not volunteer, per se. He tried for a deferment, but was turned down. Then he was given the option to volunteer for the Navy over the Army.

- Despite his campaign continuing to lie about it, Swift Boats were not as dangerous as they turned out to be when he volunteered to be on them.

- We have learned that Kerry clearly lied about Cambodia, including during SENATE TESTIMONY, in which the lie was used to INFLUENCE NATIONAL POLICY.

- Kerry has admitted the first purple heart was from a self-inflicted wound, and it is pretty clear that he gamed the system to get that first one (mind you- I don't begrudge him- how many others would have done the same thing- it was a fucked up war).

- We know that he has three different citations for his Silver Star, each one more glowing than the other, each written after Kerry became moreand more influential in Washington.

- We know that his Silver Star information on his DD 214 is incorrect or falsified.

- We know that in 2001, his record was again amended, this time adding 4 bronze stars for campaign service, when according to Navy Spokesmen he does not deserve two of them.

- We know that his records are inaccurate, and that he has only displayed certain records- cherrypicking, if you will, and refusing to release others.

- I know that his campaign lied about numerous aspects of the Swift Vets relationship with Kerry, including the ridiculous 'they weren't on the boat' meme.

--Baloon Juice

Some of the things the Swift Vets for Truth have said haven't been shown to be true, a good number of them however certainly appear to be true and the Democrats' continued attempts to smear the vets rather than argue what really happened doesn't help their case.

You want to show that the Swift Vets are nutjobs? Simply walking up to a camera, mic, or keyboard and screaming "THEY'RE NUTJOBS EXECUTING A SMEAR CAMPAIGN" doesn't cut it. Whining about nonexistent collaboration with the Bush campaign isn't going to cut it . You want to make them out as nutjobs? Show that Kerry was in Cambodia, or that he never claimed he was. Show that the first Purple Heart wasn't self-inflicted. Release all of Kerry's records. Show that Kerry hasn't played up his war record, that he was the war hero his convention made him out to be.

But it seems they're either unable or unwilling to do that. And that leaves many people no choice but to give the Swift Vets' stories some weight.

So why does Kerry want to be president?

The reason is almost tautological: John Kerry wants to be president because he is John Kerry, and John Kerry is supposed to be president. Hence his campaign's flummoxed and tone-deaf response to the swift boat vets. Ban the books, sue the stations, retreat, attack. Underneath it all you can sense the confusion. How dare they attack Kerry? He's supposed to be president. It's almost treason in advance.

It's not enough to believe you should be president. Clueless mortals need some hints. Is he motivated by a broad ideological agenda? There's no Kerry Doctrine, no Kerry Approach, no Tony-Blair-style "third way" gambit. There's just Lurch, lurching.

The war? He's said he would have gone to Iraq even if he knew then what he knows now — he just would have done it differently, whatever that means. He has endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war — but of course he would do it differently. It all seems to boil down to getting the French and the Germans on board so they can complain about the food and the quality of the sheets. He's pro-war when it counts, anti-war when it matters.

Inconsistencies are irrelevant, because he's consistently John Kerry. And he's supposed to be president.

--James Lileks

From Peter Kirsanow at NRO.

1. The Bush campaign maintains that you spent 20 years in the Senate with no signature legislative achievements. What do you consider to be the five most important pieces of legislation that you've authored?

a. What's the most important piece of legislation regarding intelligence you've authored?

b. What's the most important piece of antiterrorism legislation you've authored?

c. What's the most important piece of health-care legislation you've authored?

d. What's the most important piece of education legislation you've authored?

2. You'd agree that on paper, Dick Cheney's experience and qualifications dwarf those of your running mate. Why would John Edwards make a better president during the war on terror than Dick Cheney?

a. It's been widely reported that John McCain was your first choice as running mate. If true, why did you prefer Senator McCain to Senator Edwards?

3. Earlier this year you told Tim Russert that you'd release all of your military records, yet you've failed to do so and you refuse to release your Vietnam journal. Why shouldn't the public infer that the contents of these documents would undermine your credibility or otherwise damage your candidacy?

a. When will you release the documents?

4. You've stated that you believe that life begins at conception yet you voted against the ban on partial-birth abortions. At precisely what point is a life worth protecting?

a. Is there any limitation on abortion (waiting periods, parental notification) for which you'd vote? If so, what?

5. You've promised to repeal much of the Bush tax cut and while in the Senate you voted to raise taxes an average of five times per year. If current economic trends remain largely unchanged during a Kerry presidency, would you seek additional tax increases?

a. How would you raise taxes and what are the highest marginal tax rates that you'd support?

6. You opposed the 1991 Gulf War even though Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, had invaded another country, and France and Germany had supported the war. In the current conflict no WMDs have been found, France and Germany oppose the action, and Saddam hadn't invaded another country. Yet you recently stated that knowing what you know now, you'd nonetheless authorize the use of force — even though you voted against funding it. Could you please reconcile these positions?

7. You acknowledge meeting with representatives of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong in Paris in 1970. Afterward you urged Congress to accept the North Vietnamese proposals. Please explain how this wasn't a violation of the Logan Act and, if you were still in the Naval Reserves at that time, how it wasn't a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibiting unauthorized communications with the enemy.

8. In several speeches before black audiences you've stated that a million African Americans were disenfranchised and had their votes stolen in the 2000 presidential election. There are no official or media investigations that support that statement. What evidence do you have to support the statement and if you believe a million blacks had their votes stolen, why haven't you called for criminal prosecutions and congressional investigations?

9. Do you dispute the National Journal's assessment that you're the nation's most liberal senator? If you do, which senators do you consider to be more liberal and why?

10. Why did you propose cutting the intelligence budget by $6 billion in 1994?
...

--Peter Kirsanow on National Review Online

Go read the rest, they're serious questions that should be answered.

The response to Kerry after he trotted out a crippled veteran/former congressman to deliver his mail:

August 25, 2004

Senator John Kerry
304 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Kerry,

We are pleased to welcome your campaign representatives to Texas today. We honor all our veterans, all whom have worn the uniform and served our country. We also honor the military and National Guard troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan today. We are very proud of all of them and believe they deserve our full support.

That’s why so many veterans are troubled by your vote AGAINST funding for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, after you voted FOR sending them into battle. And that’s why we are so concerned about the comments you made AFTER you came home from Vietnam. You accused your fellow veterans of terrible atrocities – and, to this day, you have never apologized. Even last night, you claimed to be proud of your post-war condemnation of our actions.

We’re proud of our service in Vietnam. We served honorably in Vietnam and we were deeply hurt and offended by your comments when you came home.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t build your convention and much of your campaign around your service in Vietnam, and then try to say that only those veterans who agree with you have a right to speak up. There is no double standard for our right to free speech. We all earned it.

You said in 1992 “we do not need to divide America over who served and how.” Yet you and your surrogates continue to criticize President Bush for his service as a fighter pilot in the National Guard.

We are veterans too – and proud to support President Bush. He’s been a strong leader, with a record of outstanding support for our veterans and for our troops in combat. He’s made sure that our troops in combat have the equipment and support they need to accomplish their mission.

He has increased the VA health care budget more than 40% since 2001 – in fact, during his four years in office; President Bush has increased veterans funding twice as much as the previous administration did in eight years ($22 billion over 4 years compared to $10 billion over 8.) And he’s praised the service of all who served our country, including your service in Vietnam.

We urge you to condemn the double standard that you and your campaign have enforced regarding a veteran’s right to openly express their feelings about your activities on return from Vietnam.

Sincerely,

Texas State Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson
Rep. Duke Cunningham
Rep. Duncan Hunter
Rep. Sam Johnson
Lt. General David Palmer
Robert O'Malley, Medal of Honor Recipient
James Fleming, Medal of Honor Recipient
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Castle (Ret.)

--Blogs for Bush

It just so happens that, in its September issue, Details magazine is outing Hollywood GOP sympathizers. The magazine claims that, in order to address the celebrity deficit that the GOP currently has, the Republican National Committee has unveiled a list of stars who veer toward the Republican side of the aisle.

Some of the names, like Jessica Simpson and Shannen Doherty, are already known. But others are more unexpected, like Adam Sandler and Freddie Prinze Jr., although Prinze's wife Sarah Michelle Gellar has been known to lean right in the past.

In a related article, Sony producer Mike DeLuca has stepped up and acknowledged his Republican affiliation, describing the reaction in Hollywood as the equivalent of being “exposed as a serial killer.� DeLuca pointed out some lefty hypocrisy, saying, "They scream about the environment before they hop onto their private jets and blow 8,000 pounds of fuel getting to the Hamptons."

One of the celebs named in the Details article has responded to the outing incident via her publicist and has done so in an entertaining and quasi-historical manner. The star is Mandy Moore, and the New York Post has reported the response as, "Mandy is not, nor has she ever been, a Republican."

--Newsmax (Hat tip Michael King)

Try these.

This is Wictory Wednesday. Please volunteer or donate to help the President win reelection. President Bush needs your support now more than ever to help counter the lies, untruths, and misleading spin being put out by the Left. You can also sign up to get e-mail from the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign. If you are an Ohioan who supports the President please consider joining the Ohioans for Bush-Cheney Yahoo! Group.

Earlier today Mayor George McKelvey, Democratic mayor of Youngstown, Ohio, announced his endorsement of President George W. Bush in his reelection bid. ... "Although I have never publicly endorsed a presidential candidate, the significance of this election - an election which I view as the most important of my lifetime - has motivated me to acknowledge my support for President Bush.

"I support President Bush's proactive approach to the war on terror. He has demonstrated the strong leadership necessary to strengthen our national security. He understands that the war on terror is a war we must win to protect our freedom, for our children, grand children and great grandchildren.

"I support President Bush because I believe that our economy is experiencing a recovery, and that it will continue to improve. It is unfair, at best, to blame President Bush for the devastating impact 9-11 had on the American marketplace. Furthermore, I cannot agree with those who criticize a tax policy which allows the American people to keep more of their own money, allowing them, not the government, to decide how to best spend their money," McKelvey said.

He continued, "Senator Kerry reminds me of the traditional politician who will say anything you want to hear to get elected... This Democrat is proud to call President Bush his friend, and honored to have the opportunity to work with him on his reelection as president of the United States of America."

--GeorgeWBush.com

I suppose you could most likely add him to the list of "nonexistent" people who voted for Gore but will now be voting for President Bush.

--Addendum--

Brian brings us this lovely post in which he makes it known that anybody who doesn't support Kerry isn't welcome in his Democratic Party. Heaven forbid people should decide based on the issues and not simply pick the person at the head of your party's ticket. To quote The Simpsons, "The Leader is good, The Leader is great! We surrender our will as of this date!"

Chris Lynch sums up