Scratch the itch, milk the cow...

... bust the dust. I just finished reading/listening to Primary Colors, the famous, mirror-image political novel about a certain 1992 Presidential race about a sex-hound southern governor who runs in the democratic primary. Now the book has me thinking like a Pol this evening rather than a scorpion.

Question: You're the Democratic nominee trying to sure up Wisconsin - a near electoral must-win - before the debates begin. You have had run ins with one of the state's biggest industries (milk) in the past. But now you need to turn the negative into a positive, or find another way to get the milk vote back. What do you do?

Well, if you've been paying attention recently, you could do this. Yes, the Challenger now claims the Administration has a secret plan to harm dairy farmers to be hatched only after election day. The Administration denied, but their denial, coupled with a complete lack of evidence, and an apparent need to harm dairy farmers should be taken as proof of the evil plot.

Too ironical

I've heard of dumping a story because of a lack of quotes, or because you got scooped. How about this one: CBS decided to dump a story about the Bush administration's decision to go to war. In the report, CBS would show how Admin. officials justified an invasion based upon forged documents. The irony here is clear.

I don't think I'll get much disagreement when I say that CBS shouldn't back off their story, at least not for this reason. Past mistakes should never keep you from doing your job. If the network has something relevent to tell voters before the election, let them report it, regardless of awkward it may seem. Who knows - CBS could even play it like this: "We know a little something about being duped by forged documents. It's easy. The administration fell for the trap too. Here's how..."

A Picture Share!

I didn't know what Charles Haley was doing with his life after the NFL until last night. Sure I knew the former Superbowl DE was living in the area -- I'd seen him at a Subway last year (he ordered the footlong Itallian BMT on honey oat). But last night, I discovered Haley is an assistant coach for the Episcopal School of Dallas.

This brings my count of seeing former Pro Bowlers live out retirement on the sidelines with a high school team up to two. Two years ago in Birmingham, I was walking past a kicker in preseason at a large public high school. He asked his coach something: "Coach Del Greco...?" Yep. Him too.

Feeling a draft?

(Another great Texan headline.)

As we all know, the source of any conscription talk is Charles Rangel, the Harlem Democrat. What people may not consider is the incredibly craven and ghoulish logic Rangel, and draft co-sponsor Jim McDermott, employ when promoting the reinstitution of the draft. Here's a breakdown of Rangel's logical sequence:

Rangel didn't support the war in Iraq. Rangel doesn't support it now. McDermott, the person who with Rangel co-sponsored legislation to reinact the draft, said he did it simply to "stimulate discussion." Rangel said he doesn't like the current state of the military because it disproportionately involves minorities (fair enough, but did Rangel ever seriously consider what it means to have an all-volunteer armed forces?). So why did Rangel promote this legislation - because he certainly wouldn't have voted for it. Two possibilities (post others if you can think of them):

-Rangel figures that Republicans might come around to his perspective only if some conservatives' kids get offed as a result of a draft. As a side note, this isn't so different than the logic Hamas employs when it blows up busses of kids or sends suicide bombers into Discos filled with young people: Maybe if we can kill our opponents children, their parents will come around to our point of view. Morally bankrupt.

-Politically, he knows that a draft is radioactive and has a good chance of scaring the mothers and grandmothers.

Either way, Rangel is pushing for something he doesn't believe in to cause mischief or to cause death (to make a point, presumably).

And one more thing - In the same Bloomberg article which quotes Kerry saying a draft is a possibility under Bush, Kerry denounces the draft. Kerry and Bush are saying the same things - why believe one and not the other? Straw man.

Flurry: Too much time

Here's an example of spare time + liberalism + vague religiosity = semi-serious weirdness. For the record, the eye of Frances came in at Port St. Lucie and went back into the Gulf after crossing the state.

Anyone interested in what Jayson Blair has to say about Dan Rather and CBS? Didn't think so.

What would a cartoon by Strong Mad look like? Strong Bad has the answer. And it ain't pretty.

Audible: back to scare tactics

Redonkulous.

Breakthrough in race relations

Solving the world's racial problems: This video.

Utter waste of time

You can do anything at Zombo.com, provided you have your speakers turned up. Welcome.

Everybody to the limit

This is definately worth it: Bush sings(?) U2.

Spy novel

CBS's document source Bill Burkett went on the record with USA Today and told his story of how exactly he obtained the now-infamous fake Bush guard memos. Burkett, a rancher and former Texas Air National Guardsman, says he was simply a conduit for the memos, saying he obtained them at a Houston cattle show (of all places). His story involves an anonymous phone calls, handoffs, burning files and cold storage – in other words, it's a spy novel. And now for the next big question: Who is Lucy Ramirez?

Exerpts from USA Today:

Burkett now maintains that the source of the papers was Lucy Ramirez, who he says phoned him from Houston in March to offer the documents. USA TODAY has been unable to locate Ramirez.

...

Burkett said Ramirez told him she had seen him the previous month in an appearance on the MSNBC program Hardball, discussing the controversy over whether Bush fulfilled all his obligations for service in the Texas Air Guard during the early 1970s. "There is something I have that I want to make sure gets out," he quoted her as saying.

He said Ramirez claimed to possess Killian's "correspondence file," which would prove Burkett's allegations that Bush had problems as a Guard fighter pilot.

Burkett said he arranged to get the documents during a trip to Houston for a livestock show in March. But instead of being met at the show by Ramirez, he was approached by a man who asked for Burkett, handed him an envelope and quickly left, Burkett recounted.

"I didn't even ask any questions," Burkett said. "Should I have? Yes. Maybe I was duped. I never really even considered that."

By Monday, USA TODAY had not been able to locate Ramirez or verify other details of Burkett's account. Three people who worked with Killian in the early 1970s said they don't recognize her name. Burkett promised to provide telephone records that would verify his calls to Ramirez, but he had not done so by Monday night.

An acquaintance of Burkett, who he said could corroborate his story, said he was at the livestock show on March 3. The woman, who asked that her name not be used, said Burkett asked if he could put papers inside a box she had at the livestock show. Often, she said, friends ask to store papers in her box that verify their purchases at the livestock auction. She said she did not know the nature of the papers Burkett gave her, and he did not say anything about them.

...

After he received the documents in Houston, Burkett said, he drove home, stopping on the way at a Kinko's shop in Waco to copy the six memos. In the parking lot outside, he said, he burned the ones he had been given and the envelope they were in. Ramirez was worried about leaving forensic evidence on them that might lead back to her, Burkett said, acknowledging that the story sounded fantastic. "This is going to sound like some damn sci-fi movie," he said.

After keeping the copies for a couple of days, he said he drove to a location he would not specify, about 100 miles from his ranch, to put them "in cold storage." Burkett said he took the action because he believed the papers were politically explosive and made him nervous. "I treated them like absolute TNT," he said. "They looked to me like they were devastating."

...

Burkett said he passed the rest of the documents to Smith [CBS Reporter] around Sept. 5, at a drive-in restaurant near Baird.

Patriot Games

In my never-ending search for information on Steven Seagal, I ran across this someplace, somehow:

Hair Salon Names That Would Also Work as Steven Seagal Movies
BY CHRIS STECK
• Shear Intensity
• Close Cut
• The Mane Objective
• Clip Joint
• A Good Day to Dye
• By a Hair
• A Cut Above
• Permanent Waivers

What confessions?

At least one has dismayed that my return to blogging was benchmarked by overtly-political rantings. It's just a sign of the times. What news junkie right now isn't burning one way or another about the impending election? Call it a quadrennial fever.

My interest in the CBS memo story draws mostly out of the fact that it's a media story. This obviously interests me. I want to know how the network got the personal docs if they didn't get it from his family. I'm interested to see how CBS defends itself against experts who claim the memos are forged. I'm fascinated with the Boston Globe's role in the story - Globe partnered with CBS to break the story, yet hasn't suffered much fallout. Still, the Globe is playing active defense, even misquoting poor Philip Bouffard who must feel like he's in Hurricane Ivan right now. If I'm calling Bouffard (and I am), hundreds of other reporters must be.

I want to see how all this goes down. Rather made his stand on Friday. Did he attach himself to a sinking vessel?

Memos avail

UPDATE: New link.

Download the four memos here.

The preponderance

Here’s the new news:

Marcel Matley, CBS’s document expert, says he only vouched for one of the four memos. On his network broadcast Friday night, Dan Rather said Matley vouched for all four. From the Los Angeles Times.

Dallas Morning News reports one figure in the memos wasn’t even in the National Guard at the time. In the Aug. 18, 1973 reads: "Staudt has obviously pressured Hodges more about Bush. … and Staudt is pushing to sugar coat it. …" Problem: Staudt was discharged from the Guard more than 17 months before the memo. From the Dallas Morning News.

So much for a preponderance of evidence.

Moving forward

Here's an update from ABC News:

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".

Just to review CBS news's sourcing on these four memos:

1. Obtained from a secret source.
2. Claimed to be from Killian's personal files, though not in possession of any family member.
3. Typed with: a) superscript b) proportional kerning c) times new roman font d)smart apostrophes e) perfectly centered type... And this isn't MS Word?
4. Rather goes on CBS news tonight and claims one big support for the memos came from Bobby Hodges who vouched for the memos.
5. Turns out CBS told Hodges they were handwritten -- when CBS must have known otherwise.
6. Killian's wife said her husband didn't type.

Unbelievable.

How desperate?

This desperate.

Kerry falls behind after the RNC, hires hitman James Carville and Paul Begala and goes on the offensive with the "Fortunate Son" campaign, attacking Bush's service record in Vietnam. Curiously, CBS's 60 minutes aired a story about Bush's service record based on new memos obtained from a dead Colonel's personal files (which, by the way, the dead Colonel's former wife and son had no knowledge of).

In round four of the Bush National Guard story (will it ever die?), seems like whoever was selling CBS the news story needed a little help making it's point. Their solution? Forge documents. Really - you can down load the memos here. Check it out and tell me you wouldn't just laugh if someone passed it off for a Nat'l Guard officer memo in 1972. How did this not raise red flags at CBS? Will the feckless media do their jobs and expose not only CBS for airing forged documents in the midst of a Presidential election, but also find out who pushed the docs and who forged them? Want a hint? Here's the coverage.

Links:

Washington Post, ABC News, Powerline Blog, New York Times, National Review, Boston Globe, American Spectator -- the story which links the forgeries to the DNC, New York Post, and Weekly Standard.

Cheney: Dead on

Have people really forgotten how nasty presidential campaigns can be? I can’t help but laugh when people get so pissed off at off-the-cuff remarks by the Vice President taken out of context. Just so everyone sees them, here they are:

"If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again – that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States – and then we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us."

Dick Cheney’s argument may seem extreme, but it’s not unprecedented. One of the most famous advertisements in U.S. political history employs a superheated version of the Cheney maxim. Here’s Lyndon Johnson’s ad which very graphically states that electing Republican Barry Goldwater will necessarily bring on multiple atomic explosions and nuclear winter. As a matter of degree, Cheney’s logic shoots spitballs compared to Lyndon Johnson’s.

CHENEY’S REMARKS

First thing to consider is what exactly is Cheney talking about? After reading the whole sentence – not the parsed media version – I think it’s clear Cheney is making an A+B=C argument. There are three elements:

1. Wrong choice – This obviously alludes to Kerry winning in November.
2. Hit again – a theoretical terrorist attack.
3. Fall back – after the theoretical attack, Cheney worries the U.S. under Kerry would fall back to pre-9/11 ideas about terrorism as a law enforcement problem rather than a military one.

He’s saying if you combine elements one and two, you get number three. He isn’t saying number one leads to number two. That interpretation fails to consider the "fall back" point he makes. Cheney makes this clear when you look at the last sentence: "I think that would be a terrible mistake for us." He’s referring to the "fall back."

HERE’S WHY THIS HAS BECOME A BIG DEAL:

1. It was sloppy. Cheney could have phrased it better. But if you look at what he’s been saying for the past few months, he’s made the A+B=C argument constantly. And it’s a valid argument, by the way. There’s nothing in Kerry that suggests to me that he would not backpedal and regard terrorism as a law enforcement problem, rather than a national security problem. Cheney has in effect been saying, Kerry is a 9/10 person. We’re 9/12 people. If this isn’t a valid point, I don’t know what this campaign could be about.
2. Kerry is behind and in trouble. I laugh when I hear Edwards tell us that the Cheney remark is a signal of desperation by the Bush campaign. Wrong.

It’s Kerry, not Bush, who is on the ropes. Here’s why: (A) After the convention Bush has opened up with the first real lead of the campaign. The Kerry plan of waiting for Bush to self-destruct won’t work (If it hasn’t by now, when will it?). (B) Kerry has allowed Bush to set the talking points every day. Think of a presidential race as a two-month long baseball series. You’re going to win some days, and lose some days. But in the election business, a big part of the thing is the day’s ballgame. The two candidates compete every day to control the message. Bush and Co. have been able to steer the national dialogue away from sensitive areas (economy, health care, etc.) and into more favorable waters (Iraq - go figure - and terrorism). As long as this is a foreign policy debate, Bush wins. Just look at the polls that show Bush has huge leads in perceived competency on foreign policy issues. (C) Kerry was a bad choice for the Dems. Why did the Democrats play with Howard Dean so long? Everyone knew he couldn’t win in the general, so why did the donkeys play around with that guy for so long? I’ll never know. Kerry arose from the fallout of Dean as an un-vetted, un-checked out, un-tested, and un-thought about candidate. He was the default. They didn’t bother to check his history (SBVfT or conflicts on Iraq or long and liberal senate career). He just rose from the Dean explosion like Luke Skywalker flying away from the Death Star. (D) Kerry has run an abysmal campaign. He’s made himself a big fat target of the age-old political attack: inconsistent voting record. He’s also run not on his two-decade Senate career, but rather on his 4-month tour of duty in Vietnam. Candidates can run on their biographies, but things like the Cambodia controversy really hurt Kerry. (E) And this is the biggest: He can’t nail down how he would deal with Iraq in a way that differs from Bush’s approach. It’s not enough to just say we needed more allies. When Kerry ADMITED he’d still support the war even knowing what he did about WMDs, he basically lost the Iraq issue. (F) The final reason why it is Kerry, not Bush, on the ropes: Kerry is the one bringing in old hands like Carville and Begala to try and inject life into the campaign. It’s Kerry who has pulled ad money out of Arizona, Colorado and Missouri, forfeiting them to Bush. It’s Kerry who has a dwindling number of battlegrounds to fight in. It’s Bush’s race right now, not Kerry’s.

And as a final side note, consider this: John Kerry’s job audition for President began when he basically clinched the nomination back in the spring. Since that time – and really, since the President turned to meet his opponent – Kerry has avoided conflict, obfuscated and caved in to pressure. When Bush challenged him on Iraq, Kerry admitted he’d do it the same way. When the Republicans challenged Kerry’s character (fighting words!) in Vietnam, Kerry ignored it hoping it would all pass over instead of fighting the charges. When Bush opened up the campaign’s first lead, Kerry reorganized his staff. He may be personally courageous, but during this campaign he’s flinched under fire. And don’t think Democrats don’t notice. The very things they hate about Bush – his self-assuredness and stark distinctions – are exactly what Democrats wish their candidate had.

Real scare tactics

Surely Democrats don’t use scare tactics, do they? Of course. There’s no greater example of scare tactics in action than the way Democrats everywhere have fought against the new prescription drug bill Republicans passed and the President signed.

You remember what happened? Democrats obfuscated seniors, telling them things like:

"The prescription drug benefit is very complicated and there's no effort in this bill to reduce drug costs for seniors or anyone else. Their biggest concern and mine is [that] it's going to force seniors out of Medicare and into HMOs. I think that will be disastrous for seniors and Medicare." – Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

"Let us not reverse the historic decision our country made in 1965. Let us not turn our back on our senior citizens so that insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies can earn even higher profits." – Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

"We could be doing a lot more with the money than providing big handouts to HMOs and the drug companies and to a lot of special interests. A big chunk of this money is not going to go to senior citizens, it's going to be bailouts to big business. … That means seniors are going to pay more." – Sen. Tom Daschle, D-Mass.

Seeing that Republicans accomplished a major Medicare reform in three years when Democrats couldn’t get anything done on the matter from the mid-1960s until the mid-1990s, they chose to debase the Republican plan. They’re main tactic: scare seniors into thinking they’ll loose coverage by switching to the Gov’t plan. Furthermore, make the seniors mad by making vague allegations of collusion between the GOP and pharmaceutical companies, all the while insisting no senior could benefit from the program.

Did it work? Yes and no. They couldn’t succeed in stopping the legislation, which became law around New Year’s. But the Democrats succeeded too. Seniors were so frightened of the plan, hardly any signed up. According to National Journal, in the first two months of the program, only 1.7 million people signed up on his own. A few million more were signed up automatically, while a big number of seniors didn’t sign up.

Why would seniors forfeit thousands of dollars in prescription drug savings? National Journal asked the same question. The public policy magazine found six seniors who had been reluctant to join the program. After a bit of time on Medicare’s 800-number and the website, NJ found five-of-six reluctant seniors would save money – some would save astonishing amounts. Here’s one:

Wayne Richards
Annual Income: $5,000
2003 Rx costs at list price: $2,210
What he actually paid: $1,548
What he could pay annually with the card: Approximately $100

From the article:

Wayne Richards, a 78-year-old Dayton, Ohio, resident, fits the "elated" category. Last year, he paid $1,548 for eight prescription drugs on an income of $5,000. This year, with a discount card, he’s likely to pay less than $100. "This is terrific," Richards said in an interview. "I got Lipitor for nothing. I near-about flipped."

Baltimore resident Ellie Tickner, however, doesn’t share Richards’s enthusiasm. The irate senior says she has no idea whether a discount card would save her money and isn’t going to find out. "I was tempted to call up, but then I saw a big article in the paper that the cards are not what they’re supposed to be," she roared in the recent telephone interview, before slamming the phone down in fury.

I’m not making this up. If you want the article, email me and I’ll send it to you. Democrats poisoned the water to such an extent, seniors won’t even see if they can save with the prescription card. Here’s another example:

Frank and Gladys Cannon could save more than $5,000 with the card. Currently, they pay face value for all their drugs (no generics), totaling more than $10,000 every year. From the NJ:

Despite their long list of expensive drugs, Gladys and Frank Cannon have decided not to look into the discount cards. They’ve just heard too many bad things from their friends about the cards, they say. "I just don’t like the card," said 77-year-old Gladys, who lives with her husband, 78, in West Covina, Calif. "They’re all for the benefit of the drug companies. We would get so little out of it. It’s not worth the trouble of getting it."

So little out of it? It would cut their costs by more than half! This is insanity!

Unlike Cheney’s comments, this kind of scare tactic brings consequences. Millions of seniors are spending significantly more on prescription drugs than necessary. Real consequences for real people.

Tongue tied

From today's New York Times. A must read.