Free Republic

Did anyone bother to turn the channel to see DAN RATHER!!! I got bored enough to do it at about 4am DST. Talk about a corpse! And right next to him was Father Death in the form of columnist Richard Reeves, spouting one liberal crock after another. How I hope their ratings sucked.

So they've decided they're going to keep it going for awhile and they have Dan Rather and his network with them (NBC and Fox give Bush 269 electoral votes while CBS was holding at about 242). David Brooks' column today was amazingly prescient as he talked about Kerry's selfishness. And now we have all the evidence. Fox reported (only once) that one of the daughters was seen walking into the Kerry Beacon Hill mansion and being consoled at the door, and Senator Kennedy arrived--and get THIS: "along with Mrs. Kerry" (this was around 2am DST, and someone pointed out yesterday on Fox that Mrs. Kerry hasn't been seen for DAYS) to talk about how they'd deal with the results. After Edwards punched the air a few times and strutted in front of the cheering crowd in Boston, it became clear that they needed time to decide how many more lawyers than the 3200 they already have in Ohio they will gin up to file lawsuits. At first I was sickened. Annoyed. Irritated.

And then it occurred to me. Go for it Kerry!!! Drag this out for eleven days. Torture the American people with a phalanx of trial lawyers and raise the negatives of lawyers higher than any other hated group; fuel support for tort reform, and in the process marginalize the Democratic Party for a generation. Let them rub our noses in it; let them exhaust the patience of the American people, make the Democratic Party the Party of Gore-Kerry, and in the next few days sear an image on the minds of average people that will not go away for generations.

I prepared all afternoon for a Republican defeat, and thought that MAYBE this would teach them that politics is hardball and they'd better learn to play it. Well this long year of lies and more lies--and the brazen collusion of the liberal press--still seems to me to require some rethinking among the surrogates and tougher elected officials in the Republican Party. Even if the Democrats appear to be headed for political suicide, Republicans can no longer sit by and allow Democrats to spew out a string of lies so long that no reasonable Republican spokesman sitting on a debate show or a balanced news show segment can answer one of the lies, much less all of them. The only thing to do, if the network anchor doesn't burst out laughing as the more or less moderate Shepard Smith did a night or two ago when he heard a minute of spin from perky young Tad Spokesperson, is for the Republican to refuse to deal with any single lie, but characterize ALL of them and call them what they are. If that doesn't work, then Republicans really have to introduce some lies of their own, speculation of their own, or a characterization of some piece of Democrat spin or weakness. In the last month, they could have said matter-of-factly that Kerry intended to bug out of Iraq the way he wanted the United States to leave Vietnam. Or Republicans could speculate that if Kerry were to be elected president so many people in the military would quit or fail to re-enlist that by the time Kerry had to replace them and add the 40,000 additional troops he wanted, that HE would initiate a draft with the purpose of turning the whole country against the military as it seemed to in the heady days when he was leading the anti-war, anti-military movement. But perhaps more subtle and at least as powerful would be something like this: Senator Kerry hates the drug industry so much he will either force American research out of business and delegate the search for a cure for cancer, aids, alzheimer's, and other major diseases to the bureaucracy, which would have the effect of ending a supply of new drugs and killing thousands of seniors, while causing their pension plans to lose money as the stocks owned in big drug companies would plummet in value. OR it could have been speculated, as it was on the internet, that the only reasonable explanation for John Kerry's refusal to sign form 180 which would release all his military records had to be his embarrassment over a dishonorable discharge, which was only overturned in the Clinton Administration. In other words, Republicans could make assertions like this and then say....I hope this isn't true, but it would appear to be true and the only thing that Mr. Kerry should do is refute it with evidence. There are many ways to force lying Democrats like Kerry to go on defense, but it won't happen if Republicans treat Democrat lies as misstatements of facts or exaggerations, and it will have to happen while most of the "impartial" anchors gang up on the Repulican. This is what Democrats have done for the last year, and it nearly worked--in fact it DID work in many ways because so many people think, for instance, that the economy is in the tank--which is a flat out lie. The President, of course, has to stay above these things, but the GOP desperately needs some operatives with the chutzpah of any number of Democrat operatives who can spin a web of lies so fast and with such a straight face it leaves both reporters and commentators speechless (or in agreement) while the hapless GOP surrogates make feeble efforts to use reason.

Well at least at this point, it looks like the Democrats, led by Senators Kennedy and Kerry, will poison the water so badly they'll be a minority party for a long time, and, one hopes, at least, cost Hillary Clinton any hope of another stay in the White House.

It's nice to know that God is on the side of President Bush--he'll need Divine intervention with the problems he'll face at home and in the world--and that Senator Kerry is left to the mumbo jumbo of various charms, superstitions, and other heresies that made him the perfect candidate for Hollywood and many parts of the East Coast. Maybe this will bring about a quick and well deserved suicide or even better a bloody civil war among Democrats.

However he brings it to an end, it appears that Mr. Kerry, guided by the coarse and hysterical Teddy Kennedy, is doomed to lead the plunge off the cliff. Americans who care about the future of their country can only hope that people like Senator Evan Bayh and Congressman Harold Ford will stand back for awhile and then have the will to rebuild the Democrat Party and leave the radicals and crazies to their own devices.

Sorry....I guess I don't know the difference. I'll just put everything in Vanity and leave it at that. Should the second or third posting of the Rasmussen results also be put in Vanity?

What I like is that he knows how to live off the land....or successively richer women. I wonder if his allowance gets cut off if he doesn't get Theresa the White House?

Fox News and most other news organizations still put the amount of missing exposives at 380 tons while the US military has destroyed 400,000 tons.

So why is Kerry becoming unhinged? Wouldn't 380 tons be just a "nuisance"?

No...wait....380 TONS would take a lot of trucks. Kerry knows Saddam could never have trucked that much stuff to the US to blow us up, right.....so I'm still not sure why he's ranting and raving.

Has Theresa told him his allowance will be cut off if he doesn't get her the White House?

What's the best site to watch for the news? Is a particular pollster about to announce this?

Did he allude to what it might be? Are they going to spill the beans on his dishonorable discharge or just hold a press conference and speculate about it?

Can't decide what would be best....that news or the rest of his wife's tax return with off shore trusts, an updated income figure (it can't be $5 million), ownership in certain big companies....

But maybe a bishop will get some fortitude and excommunicate him. That would stir things up with Catholics, although I'm not sure which way it would fall.

I'm still for the ad that shows Bush on the 9/11 rubble and Kerry testifying before Congress and throwing his medals (ribbons) away.

I have to agree. Chris Matthews used to be somewhat balanced....but he's so clearly partisan and his questions drip with bias that I can barely stand to watch him. McLaughlin went over the top several years ago and just recently I decided to check in on the show. Tony Blankly is the only sane person there, and he's clearly sick of trying to yell through the mess. McLaughlin makes NO pretense of being anything other than a Bush hater, and I noticed with this show he's now clawing at the most ridiculous threads (the trumped up flu vaccine situation) in order to bludgeon Bush.

I'd love to hear this former priest discuss whether Kerry is automatically excommunicated for advocating abortion, including partial birth abortion, or whether Bishops have to do it on their own. As a practicing Catholic, I don't know how the Church can exercise ANY ability to guide the flock of they keep letting Kerry take Communion. He flaunts his Catholicism and then speaks with great passion on behalf of abortion and wouldn't even vote against partial birth abortion.

Lawrence O'Donnell went ballistic today on The McLaughlin Report claiming that 9/11 was Bush and Cheney's fault. The Democrats were supposed to hold back on this one, so as far as I'm concerned, the doors are open. Time for recriminations. It WAS Bill Clinton's fault....and if HE didn't have "the stomach"--as Ed Koch puts it--then surely John Kerry won't. So as we see Palestinians and other Arabs dancing in the streets as Kerry is elected, Zarqawi and others will know that they can dodge the Kerry police and plan their next big attack on the US.

And of course what is never pointed out is how bad things COULD HAVE BEEN. Sure, we lost jobs on Bush's watch, but we've never been attacked like that before. The stock market could have gone into free fall--we could have gone into another great Depression; more attacks could have succeeded by now, all kinds of horrible things could have happened. But look where we are compared to where we COULD have been...or even where we were on September 12!!!!!

I said Tony Snow and meant Tony Blankley

we can only hope he's becoming unhinged because he knows Bush is going to win

What a great second ad for a 527 to do. Just show the rejoicing Palestinians on September 11....and just ask the question:

We know that SOME people will be happy if Kerry wins the White House.

The commercial wouldn't have to do much more.

BRILLIANT! Tough, but brilliant.

McLaughlin has become more and more anti-Bush of late, shouting all the louder, and throwing out wilder and wilder claims and stupid remarks. I can't take it anymore, so this was my last episode. McLaughlin spent the first half of his show trying to pin the flu vaccine problem on the Bush Administration, along with the help of the wild-eyed Lawrence O'Donnell, buying into all the ridiculous claims of the Kerry campaign. Tony Snow was so put off he refused to talk for awhile...and finally pointed out that the trial lawyers and Hillary's supposed fix have driven manufacturers out of the market. But McLaughlin and his friend O'Donnell have the answer....and it follows the Democrat playbook: create a problem with government meddling (like Medicare) and propose to solve it with even more meddling and more state control.

I've had enough.

If only a 527 Group would create one more ad--probably one that Bush/Cheney can't do (for some reason September 11 is supposed to be off limits)....But two images came to mind while listening to the Sunday talk shows that raised the question: Have Americans forgotten the September 11? Didn't everything change that day?

But the other question is this...Have Americans REALLY considered the man that Kerry is and that it's a straight line from trashing his fellow soldiers while protesting the war in Vietnam, through 20 years in the US Senate voting against most weapons systems and money for the CIA? All of this culminated in Kerry's vote against the first Iraq war. If he wouldn't go to war after Saddam had INVADED Kuwait and France joined a coalition to drive him out (they weren't bribed yet) along with the UN (they weren't bribed yet), then when will Kerry EVER go to war to protect American interests? It's truly laughable that he would assert that he "defended this country as a young man". If he DID it was for four months followed by years cutting his country off at the knees.

So the ad should do this:

Show Bush on the rubble at the World Trade Center....talking to the workers

Show Kerry testifying before Congress along with pictures of him throwing away his medals...

And end with Kerry's votes against defense and intelligence.

What could be clearer?

Can a majority of the American people POSSIBLY believe that John Kerry has the GUTS to wage war against Islamofascism? Can a majority possibly believe he wouldn't take office doing what he did in Vietnam--spending every waking hour trying to figure out how to bug out? Can a majority POSSIBLY believe that Kerry, whose faith in the UN is obviously greater than his faith in the Catholic Church, would do anything other than give a veto to the thieves and dictators at the UN? And finally, can the American people believe that a man who has "married up" TWICE and whose life of luxury could never be recreated by the earnings of a divorced former president, do anything other than launch a co-presidency far more damaging than the one Bill Clinton attempted with Hillary? Never has a billionaire been in the White House, and never has the billionaire been the First Lady--a woman whose primary conviction is that she knows better than anyone? If John Kerry were a man of backbone and conviction, one might not be concerned, but John Kerry has shown that no belief or conviction is worth holding if it will cost him votes.

And finally, as we hear him giving a political speech in a Florida church (he's reported to be planning two), shouldn't we wonder if this man of strong Catholic faith is going to Mass?

A few forbidden thoughts about Kerry. Got this from a friend who said it's still being worked on, but I was impressed:

It’s not that John Kerry betrayed his fellow Swiftboat officers, or that his testimony before Congress made life miserable for our prisoners of war, or that he threw away his “medals” (just his easily replaceable ribbons), or that he spent four months in Vietnam finding ways to leave and two years trying to undercut the American effort in Vietnam (ultimately succeeding in bringing down the South Vietnamese government and sending our desperate Vietnamese allies into the ocean desperately seeking freedom in boats much smaller than the one he skippered). All of this is important, but it’s just a beginning and to understand John Kerry and why he represents such a potent danger to the security of the United States one has to look at what he continued to do even after his work with the peacenik movement. He spent twenty years in the Senate voting to gut military budgets and weapons systems, not to mention the CIA budget, even after the first attack on the World Trade Center. With these consistent votes and his record by the non partisan National Journal which declare him the leading liberal in the Senate, how can Americans possibly believe him when he says in the midst of a desperate effort to add the White House to Theresa’s list of mansions, that he will fight anyone other than a Republican running for office? What is most telling is to read his speech on the Senate floor following the first Gulf War which sought to justify his vote against it, despite the fact that it met every criterion he now says he’d require before going to war in the future—even the French, Germans, and profoundly corrupt UN were behind us then. It is even more telling to watch his potential Secretary of State, Richard Holbrooke try to avoid tying himself in a pretzel and say in summary that Kerry’s position on that first war was “very complicated.” When one reads that speech, it becomes clear that John Kerry was so undone by four months trying to get out of combat in Vietnam by collecting purple hearts and other medals, that he has lost what Mayor Ed Koch so gingerly refers to as “the stomach” for war. And yet the United States IS at war…a war George Bush knew after September 11 would be a very different kind of war that would be fought in different ways on different fronts and over a long period of time. It is a war unlike any this country has ever fought. One could sense in Bush’s speeches that one of his greatest fears had to be whether the American public (and, really, the liberal American media) would have the staying power Ed Koch doubts many of his fellow Democrats hold . But still John Kerry tries to convince the American people that because “he defended this country as a young man”--using four months of his time in Vietnam, most of which involved efforts to game the system and get himself out, a metaphor for most of his life as a politician, and most of his time as the Democratic candidate--he will strongly defend the country as President today. By that reasoning, voters should feel confident voting for any man who spent at least four months in Vietnam and now claims he has what it takes to be the leader of the Free World.

But most politicians and commentators have been too polite to draw the line one must follow from John Kerry’s Vietnam service through his liberal Senate career to where he is today. Left out of the candidate’s resume we have before us is a lot of material most other politicians would or have released: his medical records, the information that would be revealed by signing form 180 in the military; the date of his actual discharge from the military and whether it was honorable; the papers of his first divorce (“fair game” for the Republican Senate candidate from Illinois); or his wife’s tax return. And this brings us to an unasked and probably unanswerable question. As the first president who has lead a life of extreme luxury by marrying rich women, and who would take office with a strong-willed billionaire, what effect would this have on his decision-making? To put it bluntly, what uncharted territory would the American people be entering by turning the White House over to a pair of high stakes consorts? Unlike the two for one presidency of Bill and Hillary where the power was fairly evenly matched, nothing John Kerry could do following his time in office would ever provide him with a billionaire’s life of multiple mansions and what every President always misses—a luxury jet that would keep Kerry from lining up at airports with the hoi polloi. Perhaps a man of great fortitude, will, and dignity could resist the demands of his billionaire wife, but nothing about John Kerry’s adult life, and most certainly nothing about his life as a candidate for president would lead one to believe he has anything like “the stomach” to take on the holder of his billionaire lifeline.

It was Noemie Emery who had the perspicacity to characterize Kerry as follows: “Add up the two marriages, and Kerry has been a consort for much of his life, a man whose wives signed the checks for the big-ticket items,” and while this has the ring of tapping Theresa’s finest crystal, it’s at least as accurate to see John Kerry as an opportunist, which covers being a consort and a having a political career as well. Whether it was signing up for a second tour of Vietnam that he didn’t think would be at all dangerous, or seizing an opportunity (however clumsy) to point out that Vice President Cheney has a lesbian daughter, or taking so many different stands on this particular Iraq war that his position is nothing short of incoherent, John Kerry has a deep character flaw which is probably best described as unbridled ambition. One can be embarrassed by his career ambitions after examining his Senate record, but positively giddy over his success finding rich women to write checks for his life of luxury.

We’ve heard through most of the campaign that Kerry’s Senate career isn’t much to write home about, but it turns out there’s nothing better to cure a depression (or perhaps cause one) than to look at some of the details of John Kerry’s years in the Senate. But it’s much better to lean back, and laugh like hell at what he claims to be a long series of Senate accomplishments (“I’ve actually passed 56 individual bills that I’ve personally written”) and that the Bush campaign claims to be just five bills (pieces of legislation that passed the House and Senate and were signed by a president into law). The Kerry campaign nodded to the five ( four passed between 1987 and 1994 and the fifth in 1999) and insisted that these left out such accomplishments as H. R. 1860 (S.856) which increased the maximum research grants for small business from $500,000 to $750,000 under the Small Business Technology Transfer Program (2001) and H. R. 1900 (S.300) which awarded a posthumous medal to Jackie Robinson (2003) and called for a national day of recognition. After the flurry of work between 1987 and 1994, the Senator rested, worked hard on the 1999 bill which authorized $53 million over four years to provide grants to woman-owned small businesses, and then rested again until 2001. One suspects that if he hadn’t decided to run for President and needed to secure the black vote, the Senator would have rested from 2001 until now. Lest we deprive the reader of additional belly laughs, the Kerry campaign goes on to add four joint resolutions that are not technically “bills” because they’re not signed into law by the president. Kerry was undoubtedly outraged that his hard work on these measures would be ignored: to make the week of Oct. 22-28, 1989 “World Population Awareness Week”; to renew “World Population Awareness Week for 1991; to make November 13, 1992 “Vietnam Veterans Memorial 10th Anniversary Day; and last but not least to make September 18, 1992 “National POW/MIA Recognition Day.” Not only do these add to his aggregate numbers but make his hard work period from 1987-1994 look positively heroic, and in line with a veteran who could collect three purple hearts, a bronze star, and a silver star in four short months

But this campaign began with members of his party throwing around the terms liar and hypocrite so often that if George Bush hadn’t raised enough money to counter the barrage and if the American people hadn’t had four years to learn in their guts that he’s neither, Bush might be in big trouble now. He’s certainly in a closer race than he ought to be. But with Kerry himself unleashing a string of denunciations and attacks in the last two weeks, it’s a good time now to scrutinize the opportunist’s penchant to drop all pretense of being Presidential and lie with impunity. He’s putting Al Gore to shame. We might find a good deal of information if, for instance, Mr. Kerry were not the hypocrite that he is and if he weren’t protected by the liberal media, and had released all of the information listed above No Republican candidate would get a pass on any of these, so Kerry has so far skirted the hypocrite label on a vast array of character matters. But in a show of desperation and, one might say, opportunism, Kerry’s string of lies in the final weeks are nothing short of stunning even for the Democratic Party, one of whose operatives, Bob Beckel, laughed cynically in the last month or so that you could count on his cohorts dragging out the social security issue to scare “grandma” in the final weeks of the campaign. So of course Kerry started with the claim that Bush would cut social security checks by 35% and went on to pretend that he’d reinstate the draft (a measure voted down even by its Democratic sponsor when offered recently in the House of Representatives). Of course he has played the race card by proclaiming the lie that black votes weren’t counted (in Democrat controlled Florida precincts) and that Republicans are conspiring now to keep them from voting in this election, mitigated somewhat by the fact that these are standard Democrat lies trotted out in more elections than this one. But he couldn’t stop there and accused Bush of a problem he and his trial lawyer friends created (de rigeur for liberal politicians): there’s not enough flu vaccine because they’ve driven American companies out of the vaccine business and Hillary Clinton’s “fix” provided the final nail in the coffin. Probably comforted in the knowledge that the vast liberal media are behind them, and in the best tradition of traveling preachers and snake oil salesmen, his running mate claimed that by electing Kerry people like Christopher Reeve would get out of their wheelchairs and walk, which would be hilarious if it weren’t so cruel. Despite the honest testimony of General Tommy Franks, Kerry has for months claimed that Bush “let Osama Bin Laden go”, when Franks said that during the Tora Bora campaign they had information placing Bin Laden in three or four different places—something that today might literally be true if bits of his DNA show up somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan. Count among the half truths and lies of a man who will say anything to be president, the denigration of the allies fighting with us in Iraq who’ve been called an “alliance of the bribed”, the description of the Iraqi prime minister as a puppet, and his refusal to count dead Iraqis as having sacrificed along with Americans and coalition partners who’ve died in Iraq. Along with alluding to a desire to move troops out of Iraq in six months and setting a deadline of four years, Kerry has endangered the lives of our soldiers and given hope to terrorists who surely believe that if they ramp up their attacks and hold on for Kerry, they will ultimately triumph. It makes one wonder what Kerry said and did to wind up a billionaire’s husband.

And then there’s the favorite mantra of Kerry and all the other Democrat candidates, still cited in speeches and talking head appearances: “George Bush is the first president to lose jobs in 72 years.” Now if one leaves out the household survey which would indicate a net GAIN of jobs and a profound change in the American economy during Bush’s first term, this would at least qualify as a typical campaign distortion rather than outright lie. But no commentator or reporter has pointed out that 72 years ago the United States didn’t sustain a devastating attack on the mainland that cost 3000 lives and hundreds of billions to the economy along with MANY jobs, and hasn’t since. And while we’re on the subject let’s take the gloves off and while we acknowledge that Bush inherited Clinton’s recession, he also inherited the results of Clinton’s fecklessness in dealing with Al Quaeda which an obviously agreed upon truce has resulted in few people placing blame where it obviously belongs.

As one thinks of Kerry’s September 10 mindset, and his constant embrace of conferences, summits, and UN yammering as the best instrument(s) of national defense, Kerry’s habit of bowing with hands together in prayer in the classical gesture of leading ladies in theater and of rock stars at concerts is a perfect metaphor for both his “lack of stomach” and his well developed sense of privilege that he pretends to forgo to win the fawning support of his hoped for subjects. Kerry’s foreign policy is perfectly designed to please the ghost of DeGualle or Chirac, Kofi Annan, and all the corrupt politicos of the UN and Embassy Row. Jimmy Carter must be on his knees an hour a day, seeing the election of Kerry as his one chance to rise up in the rankings of weak kneed American presidents.

In the debates, John Kerry created his own fog of war by rattling off a litany of dubious facts, fictitious claims, and positions on two sides of every issue uttered in a single answer or negated by the “but” phrase that frequently negated his initial claim of strength and power. His statements were so packed with contradictions that a serious debate was impossible and anyone but a sitting American president would have to choose derision as the only workable tactic in a situation Kerry’s verbosity creates.

We come now to the week before Election Day and the cynicism has just begun: Kerry has unleashed teams of trial lawyers to make claims of polling abuse ahead of time while preparing to throw the election results into question as quickly as possible.

What no one has proposed, and one can only hope for as an October surprise, must come from a distinguished group of Republicans (and Democrats like Ed Koch) who should come forward and point out to the American people, along with Putin and Berlusconi, that the best signal we can send to terrorists, our allies, and above all the struggling people of Iraq, is a landslide for George Bush. Let the mullahs of Iran and the little dictator of North Korea ponder something like that. And Zarqawi and Osama, if they’re still alive, will find themselves facing a lot more power on earth before whatever power it is they pray to for their 72 virgins in hell.

I'm just learning the ropes, and this isn't really a reply to my first post, but a friend sent this draft about Kerry that I think is worth passing around, even in rough form. Hope this is the place to put it:

It’s not that John Kerry betrayed his fellow Swiftboat officers, or that his testimony before Congress made life miserable for our prisoners of war, or that he threw away his “medals” (just his easily replaceable ribbons), or that he spent four months in Vietnam finding ways to leave and two years trying to undercut the American effort in Vietnam (ultimately succeeding in bringing down the South Vietnamese government and sending our desperate Vietnamese allies into the ocean desperately seeking freedom in boats much smaller than the one he skippered). All of this is important, but it’s just a beginning and to understand John Kerry and why he represents such a potent danger to the security of the United States one has to look at what he continued to do even after his work with the peacenik movement. He spent twenty years in the Senate voting to gut military budgets and weapons systems, not to mention the CIA budget, even after the first attack on the World Trade Center. With these consistent votes and his record by the non partisan National Journal which declare him the leading liberal in the Senate, how can Americans possibly believe him when he says in the midst of a desperate effort to add the White House to Theresa’s list of mansions, that he will fight anyone other than a Republican running for office? What is most telling is to read his speech on the Senate floor following the first Gulf War which sought to justify his vote against it, despite the fact that it met every criterion he now says he’d require before going to war in the future—even the French, Germans, and profoundly corrupt UN were behind us then. It is even more telling to watch his potential Secretary of State, Richard Holbrooke try to avoid tying himself in a pretzel and say in summary that Kerry’s position on that first war was “very complicated.” When one reads that speech, it becomes clear that John Kerry was so undone by four months trying to get out of combat in Vietnam by collecting purple hearts and other medals, that he has lost what Mayor Ed Koch so gingerly refers to as “the stomach” for war. And yet the United States IS at war…a war George Bush knew after September 11 would be a very different kind of war that would be fought in different ways on different fronts and over a long period of time. It is a war unlike any this country has ever fought. One could sense in Bush’s speeches that one of his greatest fears had to be whether the American public (and, really, the liberal American media) would have the staying power Ed Koch doubts many of his fellow Democrats hold . But still John Kerry tries to convince the American people that because “he defended this country as a young man”--using four months of his time in Vietnam, most of which involved efforts to game the system and get himself out, a metaphor for most of his life as a politician, and most of his time as the Democratic candidate--he will strongly defend the country as President today. By that reasoning, voters should feel confident voting for any man who spent at least four months in Vietnam and now claims he has what it takes to be the leader of the Free World.

But most politicians and commentators have been too polite to draw the line one must follow from John Kerry’s Vietnam service through his liberal Senate career to where he is today. Left out of the candidate’s resume we have before us is a lot of material most other politicians would or have released: his medical records, the information that would be revealed by signing form 180 in the military; the date of his actual discharge from the military and whether it was honorable; the papers of his first divorce (“fair game” for the Republican Senate candidate from Illinois); or his wife’s tax return. And this brings us to an unasked and probably unanswerable question. As the first president who has lead a life of extreme luxury by marrying rich women, and who would take office with a strong-willed billionaire, what effect would this have on his decision-making? To put it bluntly, what uncharted territory would the American people be entering by turning the White House over to a pair of high stakes consorts? Unlike the two for one presidency of Bill and Hillary where the power was fairly evenly matched, nothing John Kerry could do following his time in office would ever provide him with a billionaire’s life of multiple mansions and what every President always misses—a luxury jet that would keep Kerry from lining up at airports with the hoi polloi. Perhaps a man of great fortitude, will, and dignity could resist the demands of his billionaire wife, but nothing about John Kerry’s adult life, and most certainly nothing about his life as a candidate for president would lead one to believe he has anything like “the stomach” to take on the holder of his billionaire lifeline.

It was Noemie Emery who had the perspicacity to characterize Kerry as follows: “Add up the two marriages, and Kerry has been a consort for much of his life, a man whose wives signed the checks for the big-ticket items,” and while this has the ring of tapping Theresa’s finest crystal, it’s at least as accurate to see John Kerry as an opportunist, which covers being a consort and a having a political career as well. Whether it was signing up for a second tour of Vietnam that he didn’t think would be at all dangerous, or seizing an opportunity (however clumsy) to point out that Vice President Cheney has a lesbian daughter, or taking so many different stands on this particular Iraq war that his position is nothing short of incoherent, John Kerry has a deep character flaw which is probably best described as unbridled ambition. One can be embarrassed by his career ambitions after examining his Senate record, but positively giddy over his success finding rich women to write checks for his life of luxury.

We’ve heard through most of the campaign that Kerry’s Senate career isn’t much to write home about, but it turns out there’s nothing better to cure a depression (or perhaps cause one) than to look at some of the details of John Kerry’s years in the Senate. But it’s much better to lean back, and laugh like hell at what he claims to be a long series of Senate accomplishments (“I’ve actually passed 56 individual bills that I’ve personally written”) and that the Bush campaign claims to be just five bills (pieces of legislation that passed the House and Senate and were signed by a president into law). The Kerry campaign nodded to the five ( four passed between 1987 and 1994 and the fifth in 1999) and insisted that these left out such accomplishments as H. R. 1860 (S.856) which increased the maximum research grants for small business from $500,000 to $750,000 under the Small Business Technology Transfer Program (2001) and H. R. 1900 (S.300) which awarded a posthumous medal to Jackie Robinson (2003) and called for a national day of recognition. After the flurry of work between 1987 and 1994, the Senator rested, worked hard on the 1999 bill which authorized $53 million over four years to provide grants to woman-owned small businesses, and then rested again until 2001. One suspects that if he hadn’t decided to run for President and needed to secure the black vote, the Senator would have rested from 2001 until now. Lest we deprive the reader of additional belly laughs, the Kerry campaign goes on to add four joint resolutions that are not technically “bills” because they’re not signed into law by the president. Kerry was undoubtedly outraged that his hard work on these measures would be ignored: to make the week of Oct. 22-28, 1989 “World Population Awareness Week”; to renew “World Population Awareness Week for 1991; to make November 13, 1992 “Vietnam Veterans Memorial 10th Anniversary Day; and last but not least to make September 18, 1992 “National POW/MIA Recognition Day.” Not only do these add to his aggregate numbers but make his hard work period from 1987-1994 look positively heroic, and in line with a veteran who could collect three purple hearts, a bronze star, and a silver star in four short months

But this campaign began with members of his party throwing around the terms liar and hypocrite so often that if George Bush hadn’t raised enough money to counter the barrage and if the American people hadn’t had four years to learn in their guts that he’s neither, Bush might be in big trouble now. He’s certainly in a closer race than he ought to be. But with Kerry himself unleashing a string of denunciations and attacks in the last two weeks, it’s a good time now to scrutinize the opportunist’s penchant to drop all pretense of being Presidential and lie with impunity. He’s putting Al Gore to shame. We might find a good deal of information if, for instance, Mr. Kerry were not the hypocrite that he is and if he weren’t protected by the liberal media, and had released all of the information listed above No Republican candidate would get a pass on any of these, so Kerry has so far skirted the hypocrite label on a vast array of character matters. But in a show of desperation and, one might say, opportunism, Kerry’s string of lies in the final weeks are nothing short of stunning even for the Democratic Party, one of whose operatives, Bob Beckel, laughed cynically in the last month or so that you could count on his cohorts dragging out the social security issue to scare “grandma” in the final weeks of the campaign. So of course Kerry started with the claim that Bush would cut social security checks by 35% and went on to pretend that he’d reinstate the draft (a measure voted down even by its Democratic sponsor when offered recently in the House of Representatives). Of course he has played the race card by proclaiming the lie that black votes weren’t counted (in Democrat controlled Florida precincts) and that Republicans are conspiring now to keep them from voting in this election, mitigated somewhat by the fact that these are standard Democrat lies trotted out in more elections than this one. But he couldn’t stop there and accused Bush of a problem he and his trial lawyer friends created (de rigeur for liberal politicians): there’s not enough flu vaccine because they’ve driven American companies out of the vaccine business and Hillary Clinton’s “fix” provided the final nail in the coffin. Probably comforted in the knowledge that the vast liberal media are behind them, and in the best tradition of traveling preachers and snake oil salesmen, his running mate claimed that by electing Kerry people like Christopher Reeve would get out of their wheelchairs and walk, which would be hilarious if it weren’t so cruel. Despite the honest testimony of General Tommy Franks, Kerry has for months claimed that Bush “let Osama Bin Laden go”, when Franks said that during the Tora Bora campaign they had information placing Bin Laden in three or four different places—something that today might literally be true if bits of his DNA show up somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan. Count among the half truths and lies of a man who will say anything to be president, the denigration of the allies fighting with us in Iraq who’ve been called an “alliance of the bribed”, the description of the Iraqi prime minister as a puppet, and his refusal to count dead Iraqis as having sacrificed along with Americans and coalition partners who’ve died in Iraq. Along with alluding to a desire to move troops out of Iraq in six months and setting a deadline of four years, Kerry has endangered the lives of our soldiers and given hope to terrorists who surely believe that if they ramp up their attacks and hold on for Kerry, they will ultimately triumph. It makes one wonder what Kerry said and did to wind up a billionaire’s husband.

And then there’s the favorite mantra of Kerry and all the other Democrat candidates, still cited in speeches and talking head appearances: “George Bush is the first president to lose jobs in 72 years.” Now if one leaves out the household survey which would indicate a net GAIN of jobs and a profound change in the American economy during Bush’s first term, this would at least qualify as a typical campaign distortion rather than outright lie. But no commentator or reporter has pointed out that 72 years ago the United States didn’t sustain a devastating attack on the mainland that cost 3000 lives and hundreds of billions to the economy along with MANY jobs, and hasn’t since. And while we’re on the subject let’s take the gloves off and while we acknowledge that Bush inherited Clinton’s recession, he also inherited the results of Clinton’s fecklessness in dealing with Al Quaeda which an obviously agreed upon truce has resulted in few people placing blame where it obviously belongs.

As one thinks of Kerry’s September 10 mindset, and his constant embrace of conferences, summits, and UN yammering as the best instrument(s) of national defense, Kerry’s habit of bowing with hands together in prayer in the classical gesture of leading ladies in theater and of rock stars at concerts is a perfect metaphor for both his “lack of stomach” and his well developed sense of privilege that he pretends to forgo to win the fawning support of his hoped for subjects. Kerry’s foreign policy is perfectly designed to please the ghost of DeGualle or Chirac, Kofi Annan, and all the corrupt politicos of the UN and Embassy Row. Jimmy Carter must be on his knees an hour a day, seeing the election of Kerry as his one chance to rise up in the rankings of weak kneed American presidents.

In the debates, John Kerry created his own fog of war by rattling off a litany of dubious facts, fictitious claims, and positions on two sides of every issue uttered in a single answer or negated by the “but” phrase that frequently negated his initial claim of strength and power. His statements were so packed with contradictions that a serious debate was impossible and anyone but a sitting American president would have to choose derision as the only workable tactic in a situation Kerry’s verbosity creates.

We come now to the week before Election Day and the cynicism has just begun: Kerry has unleashed teams of trial lawyers to make claims of polling abuse ahead of time while preparing to throw the election results into question as quickly as possible.

What no one has proposed, and one can only hope for as an October surprise, must come from a distinguished group of Republicans (and Democrats like Ed Koch) who should come forward and point out to the American people, along with Putin and Berlusconi, that the best signal we can send to terrorists, our allies, and above all the struggling people of Iraq, is a landslide for George Bush. Let the mullahs of Iran and the little dictator of North Korea ponder something like that. And Zarqawi and Osama, if they’re still alive, will find themselves facing a lot more power on earth before whatever power it is they pray to for their 72 virgins in hell.

Bush can't talk about it and virtually no commenators mention it either...not even on Fox News, but some time ago I think it was George Will who pointed out that Bush could lose the presidency because the idiot Republican Governor of Ohio (another stupid member of the Taft family) voted to RAISE taxes (I think he ran on a platform promising not to, but I'm not sure). This ran business out of Ohio. Even when John Kasich talks on his Fox show he fails to mention that the current governor loused up the Ohio economy, unlike another Ohio governor that Kasich cited....James Rhodes, who was reelected for four terms precisely because he made jobs his number one concern and made sure that Ohio was hospitable to business. The rust belt states would do well to look south at union free, low tax states, and LEARN SOMETHING.

MANY thanks. Now I can sleep. That IS what I wanted, but I'm glad to read Kerry's weak-kneed speech BEFORE the war. Not sure which is more revealing, but what's clear is that Kerry believes in TALK.

John Kerry spoke on the Senate Floor to explain his vote against the first Gulf War. it's incredibly revealing, but I can't find a copy of it, although I have read it on line somewhere during the last month. I hope others have read it and agree that it's a very important insight into Kerry's character.