Kerry doomed, Fake docs and FR mention all on ABC's Notes.

ABC Notes ^ | 09-10-2004 | Various- ABC notes

[Smartaleck]

Excerpts....

The Kerry end is near? At this precise time every four years, the most media-savvy members of the Gang of 500 begin to think about their roles in the premiere post-election forum that revisits the actions and players of the presidential race.

But if nothing changes in the race as it now stands — with President Bush winning a decent-sized victory — much of the talk will be about the greater technical proficiency of the Bush-Cheney effort.

Democrats, who deny up and down that they had anything to do with the documents, tell ABC News that they plan to continue their push to question the president's Guard service, irrespective of the CBS situation.

Top Democrats vow to continue to lead the charge against Bush along these four lines

1. Bush allegedly got special treatment
2. Bush allegedly was suspended for missing his medical exam
3. Bush allegedly didn't fulfill his requirements
4. Bush allegedly didn't release all the documents he said he'd release

But they acknowledge that it might be more difficult to break through the clutter of questions surrounding the documents' authenticity. (Guess they won't heed BC's advice?)

ABC News' George Stephanopoulos said on "Good Morning America" that "a lot of Democrats think this might have been a set-up" by Republicans — a sentiment we are likely to hear more of in the days to come.

(ABC acknowledges Freepers broke the story...yeah boy)

We always favor looking at the content and substance over WHO is offering up the information, but in the war that will ensue about WHO gave CBS the potentially phony documents, it is interesting to Note that the right (Drudge, Fox, right-leaning blogs, others) led the way in pointing out the questions we have all been asking — and they were onto the questions, with remarkable detail, relatively soon after the documents were made public.

Here's part of how this story got here . . . from a little Marc Ambinder back-lurking on the blogs . . .

At 8:00 pm ET Wednesday night, CBS News does the story . . .

at 8:59 ET — before the broadcast is finished!!! — the documents come into question via a poster named Buckhead on the Free Republic Web site: LINK http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210662/posts

Buckhead seems well-read on his forensic document examination skills. "Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts. The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts. I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old."

Well, this is bandied about by dozens of Freepers, as they're called and is picked up at 8:30 am ET and added to by www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/ — this little green football guy is a very popular conservative blogger . . .

It's expanded upon by www.powerlineblog.com/ in the early morning:

and also by www.spacetownusa.com/hmmm

and here, at 10:36 am ET: www.allahpundit.com/.

snip The Boston Globe does not get into the debate about the documents, focusing instead on the full-throated DNC push on Bush's service. LINK

A New York Times editorial on the new documents and Bush's Guard service does include a reference to the documents' authenticity being challenged. LINK

The White House lobs claims that the Kerry team is behind attacks on Bush's military service record. The Washington Times ' Bill Sammon reports White House press secretary Scott McClellan describes it as desperate measures for desperate times. "You absolutely are seeing a coordinated attack by John Kerry and his surrogates on the president." LINK

And let us not be the last to point out that if a(nother) major corporation was withholding information related to serious allegations made against the president of the United States, "60 Minutes" would be all over them, demanding to know about their documentation and expert back up.

[tuesday afternoon]

:)

[FierceDraka]

Yep, Freepers may have just changed the course of history.

[Smartaleck]

:-) :-)

[ThomasMore]

Pardon my ignorance, but what does MSM stand for?

[Smartaleck]

MSM stand for?

This has become a shorthand on FR for Main Stream Media,
the usuals such as LA Times, Wash. Post, NYTimes, CBS, NBC, ABC etc.

[rintense]

I think Elizabeth Hasselbeck is a freeper.

[SauronOfMordor]

And military/government equipment was WAY behind what was in use in the private sector, so just because somebody from IBM says some very new Selectrics at that time "might" have had superscript capability, doesn't have anything to do with the matter.

Even if equiptment that could do that existed at the time (which I do not concede), it was top-of-the-line, very expensive, and took training to operate. I could see the Pentagon having something like that for composing offical documents: letters to Congress and cabinet officals, certificates for medals being awarded, promotion notifications for senior officers.

It is not within resonable probability that a TANG Lt Col would have such a machine in his office, nor that he would go to the trouble required to achieve perfect centering in the heading for a memo destined for just his personal files