Let's Punch a Few More Holes into the Left's Rapidly Deflating Worldview

Punch Punch Punch!

Air National Guard Colonel Denies Bush Got Preferential Treatment

"He presented himself well. I'd say he was in the upper 10 percent or 5 percent or whatever we ever talked to about going to pilot training. We were pretty particular because when he came back [from training], we had to fly with him."

(.....)

Records show Bush stopped flying F-102As in April 1972. He has said he moved to Alabama to work on the Senate campaign of a family friend. Staudt retired from the Guard in March of that year and said he was never contacted about Bush's performance.

"There was no contact between me and George Bush … he certainly never asked for help," Staudt said. "He didn't need any help as far as I knew."

He added that after retiring he was not involved in Air National Guard affairs. "I didn't check in with anybody — I had no reason to," he said. "I was busy with my civilian endeavors, and they were busy with their military options. I had no reason to talk to them, and I didn't."

If CBS had done even a preliminary investigation into those Bush memos, they would have known they were bullshit. But, knowing as we do that CBS and Dan Rather were looking for any angle possible to hurt President Bush, it should come as no surprise that basic background checks were ignored and quick checks were not completed.

Just another nail in the coffin. At this point, there's more nails than wood left in that thing.

Hat tip to Powerline.

All the proof you need

You want proof that California should be allowed to break off and float away? Think about this.

Smoking in a privately owned business was banned in California LONG BEFORE outlawing the practice of having sex with a corpse was even considered.

'Nuff said.

And the illness continues

I must apologise to my dear readers, but I'm still coughing up stuff best not described at all.

This virus is kicking my ass. And that's AFTER I brought on the spice.

Thank god that Tim and TVE are kicking ass and taking names, because I can't do squat. I think that's the best part about a group blog - you don't have to fire on all cylinders all the time. When Tim or TVE is on vacation or just too busy, I can blog, and when I'm too sick to do more than lift my head off my pillow, they take over.

Just another reason to visit Four Right Wing Wackos every day! (/salespitch)

Anyways, I'm just sticking my head up so you know I'm still alive. Hopefully I'll bet better with a bit more rest. And more spice. And more gin.

I know, gin might not be the best medicine, but it makes me not care that I'm sick for a while, so gimme my small pleasures!

Follow Up

Power Line, unlike most Pajamahadeen, haven't totally dropped the lies of the Associated Press.

Before there was Dan Rather, there was the Associated Press. We reported here and in several follow-up posts on one of the biggest media scandals of this campaign. On Sept. 3, there was a Bush rally in West Allis, Wisconsin. President Bush announced to the crowd that he had just learned that former President Clinton had been hospitalized. There was a moment of near-silence in which a slight murmur of concern was audible. Then Bush said that his thoughts and prayers were with the Clinton family, and the crowd cheered and applauded loudly.

But that's not what the AP reported. Under the by-line of reporter Tom Hays, the AP said: "Bush's audience of thousands in West Allis, Wisconsin booed. Bush did nothing to stop them." That was a lie, plain and simple. Audio and television tapes show that no one booed. No one.
.
.
.
The AP issued a corrected version of the story on the rally that omitted the false claim about the booing, and Bush "doing nothing to stop it," but hundreds of newspapers and television stations had already picked up the story. The AP has never made any explanation of what happened, nor, to our knowledge, has Lindlaw been disciplined in any way for deliberately filing a false news story.

Power Line: Associated Press Continues to Stonewall

TVE said it quite nicely: The Ivory Tower is Bugged, though I think its traditional inhabitants would prefer the term "infested".

If you click the link below, you can ask the AP just an itty bitty question about why Scott Lindlaw still works for them.

Info@AP.org

And yes, he is still at work:

As Bush peered into each car's passenger window, a Secret Service agent leaned into the driver's side, keeping a close eye. White House aides hovered nearby, ensuring that a mob of journalists captured the scene of the president as empathizer in chief.

Yeah. He really must have gotten his hand slapped.

Bradenton.com

Ummmm "Frog March"? Yeah!

Ok. I've been doing a whole bunch of reading! This is the article that spurred me back to blogging ---> Link

Bill Burkett has previously been all-too-willing to speak to the press. He's done so on numerous occasions, and he's written political columns for the internet under his own name.

Why is he suddenly so camera-shy that CBS News must protect his identity and treat him as an anonymous source?

Is this Bill Burkett's idea?

Or has this been Dan Rather's decision all along? Should Burkett's prior history and extreme political partisanship be revealed to the press, the story would be immediately condemned as irresponsible and baseless; but, as stealth techonology teaches, you can't hit what you can't see. Perhaps better to hide away this source, lest he whither in the light.

There is one final point to be made. I don't know who provided Dan Rather with his shoddy forgeries. It could have been anyone.

But if, hypothetically, Bill Burkett did provide those documents to Rather -- something, again, that Burkett's lawyer repeatedly refused to deny, but for which there is no genuine evidence -- then this would be a grave indictment of Dan Rather's integrity.

For here we would have a man who, for four years, has been making these very same allegations against George Bush, only to be dismissed by the press as lacking credibility. And yet we would have to believe two things:

1) That all along -- all the time since Burkett first "ruffled through" Bush's files in 1997 -- he actually had copies of those files all along, but has never once mentioned them before now; and

2) That Dan Rather actually believed Burkett's ludicrous claim, and was untroubled by Burkett's surprise announcement that he'd been secretly hanging on to the files for seven years.

If Bill Burkett is the source of the documents, it should have been plain to any reporter that they were forgeries; a man trying to prove an allegation doesn't wait five years to reveal he's had the proof all along.

You wouldn't need technical typographical analysis to determine that they're forgeries; you would just need a dollop of common sense.

But if Burkett was the source, and yet Dan Rather went along with this transparent hoax anyway, then he is guilty of something much worse than negligence.

Either way, it seems that Rather had good reason to want to hide his Unimpeachable Source away from the world, and away from prying eyes, and away from nosey questions.

And away farthest of all from all those conservative critics who just can't be trusted because they -- they! -- have a political agenda at work that makes them inherently untrustworthy.

Read the whole thing!

I will add that Jerry Killian's Bush-hating Secretary has stated that:

She did not type them.
Jerry did not type.
Neither typewriter she used could have produced them.
And that she considers them forgeries.

The forgeries came from Kinko's in Abilene, Texas....twenty miles from Burkett's house. He has an account there. He was there last Tuesday.

Have I mentioned that 2 of the 4 CBS document experts they cited to substantiate these documents did not authenticate them despite CBS claims to the contrary or that they raised issues with the documents only to be broomed by CBS as "peripheral"?

How about Ben Barnes? He said he got Bush into the Gaurd. His daughter called him a liar. He's raised massive amounts of money for Kerry. All the people who could coaborate his statements are dead. He has given previous contradictory testimony on the subject under oath.

Kitty Kelley? The source for her "Bush used cocaine" allegation denied she told Kelley that at all. Kelley's response? She says the notes she took show she did.

John Kerry's campaign started a new attack theme against President Bush this week called "Operation Fortunate Son" (or something the like).

That's an excellent case for coordination between the Kerry Edwards campaign/DNC, CBS, Kitty Kelley, and Ben Barnes. This has to stop. They are willing to go to any lengths to regain power. They would justify ANY means to achieve their end goals. They are filling a portion of the citizens in our country and those of others with a fairy tale world designed to lift themselves to the top of our society and keep their political opponents marginalized.

We've got News for them. Their Ivory tower is bugged.....or should I say "Blogged"! It's time to turn up the heat!

Power Line

One of the best features on the web

FARK: Photoshop a celebrity endorsed food item for your local grocer

Thieves Rob Bus Full of Policemen

Forty-six Brazilian policemen traveling to a sports competition were caught with their guard down this week when four Brazilian thieves robbed the bus carrying them to the event.

Yahoo! News

In Economic News...

...inflation is minimal, oil is volatile, and unemployment ticks up.

Poetry from the Pajamahadeen

All your memos are belong to us.

h/t Instapundit

Krooked Kofi Sez:

"I hope we do not see another Iraq-type operation for a long time — without U.N. approval and much broader support from the international community."

and

"From our point of view and the UN Charter point of view it was illegal."

More

More, More, More - - - How Do You Like It, How Do You Like It?

Into the Time Machine We Go

Bill Burkett, now rumored to be the author of cBS' faux memos, authored this piece in March of 2003.

Witnesseth:

What do you do? Watching the sunrise on a beautiful morning, I used to feel hope. Before my illness, I felt exhilaration at the prospects of the day. After my illness, I felt hope that I might work hard to live. Now I feel sickness that today another massive group of people, held worthless by this anointed king, will be trampled upon like grapes. But their blood will not be rendered into wine. It will be spilled into the sands of this desert or another, or on the streets of Washington, or in the halls of the US Congress, or in the courts.

But there is a difference from any phenomenon previously faced by a spoiled American populace. With Teddy Roosevelt, we badgered and dented him into listening; with Franklin Roosevelt, we tenaciously talked until he listened; with William Jefferson Clinton, we crippled him through deceit and his own frailties. But none were anointed as king.

We must now revert to the history of Europe to discern what to do. We must study the nemesis of France and how Napoleon was felled before understanding the damage a tyrant does to a nation and society. We must examine the ruthless and dictatorial rise of yet another of the three small men—one whose name is not spoken out of fear of reprisal, but his name was Adolf. We must examine history, in order to not repeat it, and to understand the mesmerism of a public to a murderous scheme. Three small men who wanted to conquer . . . and vanquish. Each created a need for a balancing throng; history then recorded the damage from a far better perspective.

The three small men: Napolean, Hitler, and You-Know-Whom.

One last tidbit:

We must be credible.

Oy!

What do you say?

UPDATE: Burkett's attorney has one heckuva resume. And check out what his Daddy said.

There's a new insurgency in town

The Pajamahadeen

Bwah!

What appears below was submitted by a Dear Reader. I treasure our Dear Readers.







Classic. Just Plain Classic.

Oy!

Flashbunny

Top Of The List

Unfit for Command

That's a link to The New York Times. Don't forget to wash your hands after clicking.

Still Sick

Hacking and coughing, the whole bit. I'm a germ factory right now. So guess where I am?

If you guessed "At home in bed", you lose. If you guessed "At work, because there's nobody to cover your shift", give yourself a silver star.

I'm hunkered in my office, hoping that my contact with staff and visitors can be kept to a minimum. My immidiate supervisor went home sick, I'm actually covering for someone on vacation in Europe, other staff is busy with family emergencies, and I'm the only one here. Gah. I do NOT need to be spreading my virus around the workplace. I wonder if I can find some mask to cover my mouth with......

Oh my

Beldar is pissed. And he has reason to be.

But Dan Rather and CBS News had become co-conspirators by the time of their broadcast. ABC News has revealed that two of the experts whom CBS News consulted before running the broadcast — Emily Will from North Carolina and Linda James of Plano, Texas — could not and would not authenticate the fraudulent Killian memos, and expressly told CBS that.

So CBS had been told that the memos were fake... and ran with the story anyways.

America needs to see a cloud of pink slips coming from CBS headquarters.

The other side of the du Toit family

Mrs. du Toit has written a damn fine essay regarding fear and gun ownership.

I never knew another way. I never knew there was any other option. I remember having scary moments like that with my mother—hearing a noise outside and cowering in fear, or holding the telephone, ready to dial 9-1-1. I remember putting a chair under the door handle of my apartment. I remember buying a baby’s toy, that rattled when it moved, and putting that by the door, too. It becomes normal, common, the way you deal with life. You don’t think about these things after they’ve happened. You just continue on, as if nothing happened. It just didn’t occur to me that all women didn’t go around dealing with all of this, but never actually thinking about it.

Until I became armed.

It happened, literally, the day I left the range for the first time. I knew how to fire my own gun. I knew how to defend myself—and was “equal” to the strength of any man with that gun. It didn’t matter that it was a small caliber. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t an expert marksman. I knew I had a better than fighting chance and it was a feeling I’d never had before.

Exactly. My girlfriend is one of the strongest women I know. We met in the SCA, and she has literally stood side by side with me, swinging a stick and fighting just as hard as I was. Female heavy fighters are few and far between. Fear to her is not a common occurance. I've seen her get tossed ass over teakettle, and then get right back up and into the fray. But as tough as she is, she knows that when it comes to physical strength, she's overmatched by many males. No amount of toughness or guts can save you when you're outweighed by 100 pounds or more and the person wants to do you harm.

The one thing that sets her apart from the majority of women in the Puget Sound area is the fact that she has the tools, and the knowledge to use them, in order to protect herself. She doesn't have to worry about where she goes, or at what time. She can protect herself from anyone who tries to hurt her. And the tool she uses to protect herself is a .38 Special revolver.

Having a Pit Bull mix dog who would chomp on anyone who attacks her doesn't hurt either.

So tell me again....

What political party uses dead soldiers as political tools?

Oy!

Did John Kerry Coerce Vietnam Vets Into Lying About Atrocities?

You Decide

The Council Has Spoken!

The winners in last week's Watcher of Weasels council vote are It's Not the Thought, It's the Dream That Counts by Ubique Patriam Reminisci, and The Bush Doctrine by Citizen Smash - The Indepundit. You can find all the results here.

Rathergate

So by now, everybody and their brother knows that the memos used by Dan Rather in his wildly partisan attempt to smear President Bush are bogus. Here's what my father and I discussed over a beer -

How in the name of all that is holy did SOMEONE in CBS not pull in a former military member, and have them look the memos over? If you sat my father down and handed him that memo, he would have taken one look at it and tossed it in the trash. Memo For File? Never never NEVER used. CYA? If you were covering your ass in the military, you NEVER announced that fact. And you would NEVER put "CYA" on any piece of paper that you were going to put in someone's record.

Two glaring mistakes that someone with a military background would key on right away. And yet we're supposed to believe that CBS vetted those memos? Yeah, right.

CBS put those memos out in an attempt to hurt President Bush. And they didn't care if the memos were real or not. They also didn't expect people to out them in 12 hours.

Just look at the way Dan Rather reacted to the blogosphere's charge. "How dare you question me! I'm Dan Rather!" 'Ol Danny Boy was so used to people just accepting what he said as the truth that he can't handle any criticism. More to the point, he didn't expect any. Nobody in the old media does, even though people around the country have been waking up to the fact that the old media, by and large, is full of shit. When I read a news story, and then I'm force to look for other reports of it to find out what actually happened, I no longer trust the people putting that news story out. I can see a story on the nightly news, but when I read the accounts of people who were actually there and find out that the news story only contained 25%-50% of the information needed, I no longer trust the media. A perfect example? The anti-war protests before the invasion of Iraq.

Anybody remember those? All the major media markets zoomed in on the protesters shaking their signs, shouting their slogans, and waving their red flags around. But what did they NOT show? If they had zoomed their cameras out, the viewer would have seen the anti-protesters, the people in support of the President, who were literally RIGHT ACROSS THE LAWN from the protest.

But you never EVER saw the whole picture. The mass media would never show the whole picture. They only put out what they wanted you to see. And then they claim that they're objective? Right. And monkeys might fly out of my butt.

So this meltdown that Rather is having is, in my mind, the result of a shift by people finding other methods of getting news. I can't imagine CBS getting this level of scrutiny four years ago. And it's obvious that CBS can't imagine or handle this level of scrutiny now.

If CBS wants to regain any level of journalistic integrity, heads need to roll, and they need to start rolling right now. Start with Dan Rather, and start chopping. Whoever got the memos to begin with, fired. Whoever allowed those memos on the air, fired. Whoever was associated with those memos seeing the light of day, fired. We need to see a huge portion of CBS staff holding pink slips. Otherwise, why should we ever trust CBS again?

Well, those of us that trusted them in the first place, that is.

Hagged Out

I feel like absolute ass today. The Raging Girlfriend and I have adopted the motto "We'll sleep when we're dead" for the past couple of months, and it's starting to bite us in the ass in terms of our heath. As I was coming home from my drill, I got nailed by a nasty head cold that is now moving down into my chest. Ug. Nothing says fun like constantly sneezing while driving over Snoqualamie Pass at 80mph. At two in the morning.

However, the first drill went smoothly. Mostly inprocessing for the first day. Get your gear issued, meet the Company commander and 1SG. Fill out buttloads of paperwork, hear all the briefings and speeches, yada yada yada. The second day I was able to sit in on some of the training classes that they were giving; Traumatic Brain Injury, Proper use of Restraints, and Blood Transfusion. I was surprised by how much of this information I already know, but then again I do work in a hospital. I'm just not medical staff. Yet.

It was somewhat odd stepping into BDU's again for the first time in years, but I got used to it real quick. Much of what the military pounds into your head stays there for the rest of your life. Drill and Ceremony is one of those things. Fall in. Dress Right Dress. Stand At Ease. Orders barked out that you react to almost out of instinct, even after a four year absence.

I also found out when I'm most likely leaving for the 91W training, which means I have a date for leaving Seattle. When I go to that course, I'm leaving this city and never looking back. Both the Raging Girlfriend and I are ready to shake the Seattle dirt from our shoes and leave. We're now one step closer.

Life is changing, and it's changing for the better. Now I get to catch up on all the news I missed.

Gone Golfing

But hey, the saga at CBS continues, and the Comments at your click destination are simply magnificent.

This cartoon...

...leads my mind into all sorts of directions.

Every Picture Tells A Story

This is one scary person.

Professors fund liberal candidates

Most money from contributors goes to Leftist politicos. Go figure...

To computer science professor Andrew Appel, who has given $4,000 to Kerry this year, the imbalance is not unexpected.

"Does it surprise me that smart people should be supporting Kerry?" Appel said. "No."

Oy!

Tomorrow: Dog Bites Man.

The Daily Princetonian

Regarding September 11th

The Eleventh passed pretty quietly here. I thought of blogging a couple times on Saturday, but I knew I'd have little of value to say, especially since there are innumerable other places online to read about how people regard the events commonly referred to as "9-11".

I reckon my reluctance to even try to memorialize the day is the result of a couple things, key of which is that the whole event seems remote to me, ancient, surreal. I think that in large measure that's because I worked through that day. I was second in command at a small company at that time and the CEO asked me, roundabout 1130, "Should we go home?"

I replied: "No. We should keep going."

I'm not sure why. Maybe I wanted to be defiant in some incredibly small way, though "incredibly small" doesn't really cut it when the insignificance of my day that day is compared to the days other had.

---

I will never forget PRECISELY where I was when I heard the first news. I was driving, about three miles away from work, listening to FM Y-100 out of Philadelphia. They came out of a song and the morning guy said: "We've news of an incident in New York. It seems a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. We'll keep you posted."

Then they played "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana.

I could tell you EXACLTY where the front tires of my 1994 Honda Accord were when he said that.

---

I drove faster. I wanted to get to work and surf the news. When I arrived, everyone else there was oblivious to what was happening.

The Internet was jammed. Fox News, CNN, NBC, every news dot com was inundated. I finally got a look by crossing the pond to BBC. I said to my coworker Bob, asking him over the cubetops, "Bob, have you seen the news?"

And he said: "What news?"

That was probably about 0900. Roundabout 0945, my friend Don started calling every fifteen minutes, saying "Oh my God. Are you watching this? Are you seeing this??" At first he was incredulous. He calls back, almost breathless, when the Tower Two collapses. Ditto Tower One. Roundabout noon he calls again. He’s babbling, undoubtedly, I think to myself, at least halfway through a fifth of Jim Beam. Don probably opened the bottle at ten that morning, breaking the tax seal of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, pouring over ice, then downing it. Repeat until incredulity is muted, then repeat again.

When he called at noon, he just pretty much read the TV screen to me, blathering manically like an excited schoolboy to whom the cute girl in class has just said hello. I heard Don, but today I cannot remember a word he said.

I just remember going out back of the building to catch a smoke, and looking up at the sky, neither seeing planes nor hearing them. I remember thinking that was unusual, since the business park where I worked was on approach to Philly International. On normal days, it was plane after plane overhead, with traffic copters interspersed early and late in the day. But on 11 September 2001, it was void and silence. I remember my hand shaking as I reached into my pack of Parliaments after deciding to smoke two in a row.

---

So I missed the event when it was happening. It was all like a video to me, in a way, surfing all morning and afternoon then arriving at home about 1800 to watch the replays on TV. To this day it seems surreal. Some people have criticized Condi Rice for saying that the idea of deliberately flying planes into buildings was "unimaginable". Well, I still cannot imagine it. Seriously.

What kind of mind does that sort of thing?

But I’d like to not get started on that topic, and I think most readers at 4RWWs know the answer, anyway.

---

Ah, well. I think I felt no great urge to write on Saturday because I feel removed from the event, as if I have no connection to it. Almost, anyway. There’s one component of 9/11 that does impact me, that causes me to stop and stare blankly into space, to put my chin on my hand and ponder, feel my eyes fill a bit, as I imagine the event as it occurred and marvel at the strength of the human spirit and what the human spirit will do when confronted with a seemingly impossible situation. I marvel at how seemingly ordinary men and women and can rise up together to fight something they neither asked for, nor deserved, nor were trained in any way to deal with.

Dave Barry explains it, better than I could hope to, here.

That's it.