AP: Bush supporters start caravan to counter Sheehan war protest

AP on Monterey Herald ^ | 8/22/05 | Kathleen Hennessey - AP

[GloriaJane]

"He said, 'Don't dishonor me, don't walk on my grave,'"

I read that and it gave me chills. Cindy Sheehan should think about those words. I'm sure she doesn't realize it now but someday she's going to feel terrible for the way she has dishonored her son.

[SierraWasp]

Very nice coverage by Mark Williams filling in for Tom Sullivan on KFBK, today with a mention of FR, too!!! Tom Sullivan frequently fills in for Rush, but you knew that, I'm sure...

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

It isn't Cindy Sheehan - she's no more significant than I am.

The problem is the broadcasters who get her to stand on her son's coffin and use it for a soapbox.

And it isn't even the broadcasters, but the sheeple who would take offense at the idea that the broadcasters should lose their priveldge - not their right, but their privilege - to transmit at particular frequencies at particular places.

And the reason they should lose their privileges is that those privileges - denied to you and me but given to the government's pets for free - is that the FCC license proclaim that the FCC licensee is "more equal" than you and me. An FCC license makes the licensee's voice in politics louder than yours and mine, and proclaims that what the licensee says and does not say, and what the licensee shows and does not show, is "in the public interest."

But isn't that true? Aren't the broadcast journalists objective? Aren't they moderate? The burden of proof of that question properly lies with them. How can the licensees - how can the FCC - conceivably prove what is essentially an unprovable negative? It is impossible, and that is why the First Amendment ruled out governmental regulation of newspapers, books, or speakers. Because the objection is not to the fact that the broadcasters transmit radio signals, it is the fact that the government censors all but the few - and certifies the transmissions of the few as being "in the public interest."

But isn't it true? Aren't the broadcast journalists objective and moderate? It's certain that CBS spent 5 years looking for an excuse for proclaiming that President George W. Bush's TANG service had been criticized by his superiors. Mary Mapes looked for such an excuse for 5 years - and when the Burkett "documents" came over the transom they were too good to be true:

• First, since they weren't originals with original signatures, they would never have stood up in court. On that basis alone, proclaiming that the "documents" proved anything was not in the public interest.

• Second, the "documents" were not merely copies, but very poor quality copies - of the sort that are produced when the copy in hand is a copy of a copy of a copy, perhaps ten generations. That is suspicious because
  • the "documents" turned up only in 2004, ten years at least after their publication would have been political dynamite. How strange that people obtained copies and made copies from them, over many generations - yet only in 2004 did they surface at CBS.
  • some of the "documents" purport to have been produced only for file and would have embarrassed their putative author "I'll backdate but I won't rate" if seen by other officers.
  • the family of the deceased putative author, who would have had the decedent's effects, deny having had those "documents" - yet they did not turn up until ten years after they would have been highly valuable to Bush's opposition. But in 2004, the "documents" turn up at CBS - with no chain of custody.
  • poor copy quality - and no original - is routine for forgeries.

• minor anachronisms such as old address for GW Bush when the current address would have been known and its use de rigeur; nonstandard formatting of memos and nonstandard usage within them.

• The "documents" match perfectly the results of keying the same text into Microsoft Word operating at its default settings. This is amazing because:
  • USAF stationary of that time was not 8.5 inches wide; a memo typed on narrower paper would naturally tend to be laid out differently than the same memo typed on 8.5 inch wide paper.
  • among all four memos there was not a single hyphenated word at the end of a line, as would be common with the use of a typewriter.
  • the memos contain centered text - and Microsoft Word centers perfectly, down to the pixel level whereas typewriters center down to only the character level - an odd number of typed characters is not truly centered in the same way as an even number of typed characters because that would require adding a half of a space in the line.
  • Microsoft Word not only assigns differing character space widths to various letters - "w" being given more space than than "i" - but actually nests adjoining characters together if (for example) the hook of a "j" can fit under the top of a preceding "T". This is impossible on a normal 1970's vintage typewriter.
  • Microsoft Word automatically superscripts "th" if that character couplet follows a numerical character without an intervening space; the "documents" have an example of a superscripted "th" couplet immediately after a numeric character. The "documents" also contain a "th" couplet after a numeric character but with an intervening space - in which case the "th" couplet is not superscripted. Microsoft Word would not superscript the couplet under that circumstance, either.

• The claim is made that "typewriters" capable of closely mimicking Microsoft Word existed in the early 1970s, but no example of a routine TANG document formatted in such sophisticated way has yet been produced. Since the National Guard tends to get hand-me-down equipment from the regular military, since a machine capable of that sophistication would have cost as much as a new car at the time, and since it would have been gratuitously tedious to operate at that level of sophistication for the sort of document which these "documents" purport to be, that is hardly surprising.

Mr. Bush was running, not as a former Lieutenant but as a sitting commander-in-chief, so from the Republican perspective thirty-year-old TANG memos are merely quint. But Senator Kerry wanted scrutiny of that history because he was running as a former Navy Lieutenant. CBS gave Senator Kerry a pass on an amazingly thin record as a politician in the past thirty years but pursued the merest possibility of evidence of mal/nonfeasance by Lt. Bush in the distant past in a way resembling nothing so much as Captain Ahab searching the Pacific for the great white whale. The story of "Lieutenant Bush skipped Guard Duty" collapsed under the weight of the evidence of the fraudulence of the supporting "documents."

At that point CBS reverted to the "modified limited hangout." CBS created an "independent commission" to make a show of investigating the matter - and to conclude that it was not possible to conclude that those patent forgeries were forgeries and to conclude that CBS's fanatical pursuit of the flimsiest "evidence" for the Democrat and against the Republican was not politically motivated.

So much for the good faith of CBS; with malice aforethought they aired a vicious, fraudulent hit piece in an attempt to manipulate the electorate and produce the election result they favored. And when caught, they stonewalled shamelessly. No objective journalist could fail to know that that is what happened. And no journalist who wishes to be considered "objective" by establishment journalism - including but not limited to CBS - dares to state the obvious truth. Only a journalist like Rush Limbaugh - a journalist who is dedicated to the truth rather than to a staying in the good graces of go-along-and-get-along Establishment journalism - would tell the obvious truth of the matter. And the "conservative talk show host" journalists like Rush learned the obvious truth from the Internet. Ultimately, from Free Republic.

The conclusion is that the government was arrogant to create the broadcast bands by means of censorship, in direct contravention of the First Amendment. FCC licenses are actually illegitimate titles of nobility which the Constitution explicitly forbids. And the result of that creation of a commanding political height has been the promotion of socialism - of the importance of government. The Internet produces no such commanding height; it is the realization of a "poor man's soap box" with a nationwide reach. Print journalism and personal speech and assembly are constitutionally protected, and if anyone uses the Internet then everyone who wants to is entitled to. But broadcast journalism - arrogant, partisan "objective" broadcast journalism - is fundamentally illegitimate and should be banished from the airwaves.

Ironically, Air America is more legitimate than CBS News - at least Air America is openly liberal.