The Interocitor

Missed opportunities

Watched the debate. Both candidates held their own, but I think Kerry did a little better, mostly on style. Bush isn't a public speaker, and doesn't have a good debate instinct. Kerry is, thankfully, only a bit better.

It bothered me, though, to see Bush miss several killer opportunities.

On the North Korean negotiations, with Kerry repeatedly talking about bilateral talks and downplaying the role of China and Japan, Bush missed the opening to say "The Senator complains, with respect to Iraq, that we didn't involve enough allies, but when it comes to Korea, he wants to tell China, Japan, South Korea and Russia -- the bordering countries -- to take a hike. Can the Senator tell us why allies are bad in this case?"

On Kerry's claim that Iraq was a diversion away from al Qaeda, and that "attacking Iraq was like FDR attacking Mexico after Pearl Harbor", the better reply would have been, "No, Senator, it's more like claiming that going to war with Nazi Germany was a distraction from the 'real war' with Japan, and that Germany "had never attacked us". We had to do both then and we have to do both now."

On the issue of bunker-buster nukes, which Kerry said he'd cancel "first thing", Bush should have claimed that "if we had to go to war against a nuclear-armed North Korea, those weapons might save a million South Korean lives. The Senator would be quick to blame me for not having that ability. Just like he blames me for our Iraq troops not having the body armour he also voted against."

On the allies question: Given that France and Germany never negotiated in good faith before the war, strongarmed Turkey into denying US troops transit rights at the last minute, and stated just the other day that they wouldn't fight in Iraq even under Kerry's leadership, how on earth does Kerry expect to get them on board?

And lastly, how does Kerry plan to work with Iraqi leaders after calling them puppets and liars?

See running commentary at: N.Z. Bear, Hugh Hewitt, The Corner, and Instapundit. Spoons, too.

Allah has the ultimate link list.

Bye, Bye Shelley

Via Bear and the Elephant, comes this SF Chronicle story about how Kevin Shelley broke the law by accepting a campaign donation in his state office, while the donor was lobbying on a tax matter. As the Chronicle suggests, you'd think Shelley would know the law, since it's his job to regulate elections.

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, in a possible violation of California law, accepted a $2,000 campaign contribution check in his state government office last year from a political supporter, according to the donor and a former top aide.

The donor, Suresh Patel of Santa Cruz County, said he met with Shelley in the secretary of state's San Francisco office to ask for Shelley's help in resolving a state tax matter. Patel said he also wanted to follow through on a previous campaign pledge by delivering the check.

"There was a commitment long before, and I never did send it to him," Patel said. "So I was over there and I said I'll drop it by.''

A former deputy secretary of state who spoke on the condition he not be named confirmed that Patel made the contribution to Shelley in his government office in June 2003. The former aide, who resigned earlier this year because of personal and professional differences with the secretary of state, said Shelley displayed the check and gloated about his fund-raising prowess after Patel left the office.

If Shelly was a Republican, he'd be out already, after his previous sleaze, but the Democrats are still slow about removing their own.

Hey, Dan Rather, here's a way to come up.

A Fine Hoax

Via AE Brain comes this link to the TransAtlantic Tunnel Project. A much better fraud than some recent ones. The "history" page is wonderful.

I wonder how long it is before 60 Minutes has a segment on it.

The Coming Blow-out

The Democrats, having learned nothing from the 2002 midterms, are going to suffer even greater losses in November, possible on the scale of 1994. The tools of their destruction will be their own shrill hatred of Bush, their increasingly transparent hopes for American disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their apparent joy at each and every economic downtick at home.

Oil prices up? Good. Osama captured? Political trick. Bomb kills 70 in Bahgdad? Bush's fault. Stock market tanking? Wonderful news. Etc. On days that there is nothing they can cheer about, they attempt to destabilize, such as Mr. Lockhart's pernicious comments about the only leader in the Arab world who is actually trying to hold free elections. They would prefer what? Arafat? Khomeini? Assad? But to the Kerry Democrats, any friend the US has in the Mideast must be a puppet or a crook, as no right-thinking person could support America.

As Chistopher Hitchens points out, the Democratic Party, or at least the Kerry campaign, has ceased being the "loyal opposition" in the minds of many Americans. Sure this will play well with their base, who've hated Amerikkka since 1965, but the center won't stand for it. The Democrats lost seats in the midterms (when history suggests they should have won seats) over a much milder anti-anti-terrorism stance. But the current campaign is a shrill as Michael Moore, and getting worse, and middle America still loves their country.

If Kerry's people persist down this line, they'll not only lose the election badly, but the party will lose every competitive race down the ticket. And they won't even understand why.

Kerry's Assault Weapon

So, John Kerry owns a "Chinese assault weapon"?

Stephen P. Halbrook, a gun rights lawyer who has argued several cases before the Supreme Court, said the most common Chinese assault rifles, known as SKS clones, were not among the 19 models banned under the 1994 law. But some SKS's have magazines holding more than 10 rounds, which violates a Massachusetts law against large-capacity weapons, Mr. Halbrook said. If the gun is fully automatic, Mr. Halbrook said, it is illegal in Massachusetts and would require a federal permit if Mr. Kerry kept it at one of his homes in Pennsylvania and Idaho.

Note the irony here: the folks like Kerry who call assault weapons "machine guns", call their own machine guns "assault weapons."

(via INDC)

Or maybe not. Is that a splash I hear?

Doves for Bush?

Former Senator and notorious Republican dove Mark Hatfield endorses Bush. He points out that as a senator (1967-97) he voted against every military bill than came along, and against both the Gulf War and Bosnia. But, well, let him tell it:

I know that this record will cause many to wonder why I am such a strong supporter of President Bush and his policy in Iraq. My support is based on the fact that our world changed on Sept. 11, 2001, a day on which we lost more American lives than we did in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

I know from my service in the Senate that Saddam Hussein was an active supporter of terrorism. He used weapons of mass destruction on innocent people and left no doubt that he would do so again. It was crucial to the cause of world peace that he be removed from power.

Having seen atrocious loss in World War II, I understand the devastation of armed conflict. We have paid dearly with American and Iraqi lives for our commitment, but we cannot afford the alternative. Nor can we afford a president who puts a wet finger in the air and turns over his decisions to pollsters.

President Bush has indeed taken heat for his resolve in pursuing the war on terrorism and efforts in Iraq. His steadfastness and resolve in the face of his critics are deserving of praise.

As terrorists continue to plot against our country and our interests, the American people must choose between action and inaction, between security and insecurity.

I believe the choice is clear. I will proudly cast my vote for President George W. Bush.

(via Powerline)

A Climate of Fear?

I work in Santa Monica, a town that will probably never elect a Republican to anything. The city council is controlled by a rent-control advocacy group -- their candidate list holds 5 of the 7 seats and has for some time. It is still common to see Kucinich bumper stickers around town, and it is just assumed that all right-thinking persons think Bush is stupid, evil or both.

Now, are there Republicans here? Certainly. But are there Bush bumper stickers to be seen? Not often -- more old Gore stickers, actually. I don't have one either, for reasons better expressed here.

Many Republicans are afraid to put Bush-Cheney bumper stickers on their cars or signs on their lawns because they are afraid of physical retaliation from angry liberals.

It is not just that one sees few Bush-Cheney bumper stickers and lawn signs - even in areas in which one knows his support is high. I do not have such a bumper sticker or lawn sign. In fact, most Bush supporters I have asked, even those who are fairly passionate on the topic, just don't think the risk of a key-scratch or broken home or car window, or much worse, is worth whatever benefit one receives from a partisan bumper sticker or lawn sign. There are just too many personal stories of cars and homes defaced and damaged.

The sentiment is not symmetrical: One sees plenty of Kerry-Edwards bumber stickers and lawn signs - even in highly Republican neighborhoods. Indeed,one sees plenty of such stickers and signs that express left-wing sentiments much more intense and partisan than mere support of the Democratic presidential ticket. Not infrequently these stickers and signs mention some form of violence or even death with respect to Republican officials.

Is Kerry Hoping for "Tet"?

It's really hard to understand the Kerry campaign's trashing of Allawi last week. Sure Kerry thinks Bush is incompetent, stupid and has led us into an unneeded war. Fine. As a candidate, it's his perfect right to say such. But to reach past Bush and to diss the new government in Iraq, to the point of calling Allawi a hand-puppet and a liar, is a new level of attack. What is Kerry thinking?

The only thing that makes any sense at all is that Kerry is hoping for disaster in Iraq, and soon. Not predicting it, not fearing it, but actively seeking a clear demonstration of failure in the next few weeks, so that he can say "I told you so" and win the election.

In 1968, Lyndon Johnson was seeking re-election, telling the country that the opposition in Viet-Nam had been beaten and the war would be over soon. He was, of course, lying. Then came the Tet Offensive, in which the Viet Cong launched multiple attacks against US bases and installations across South Viet-Nam. The attacks all failed, at great cost to the VC, but the damage was done. By simply dying in large numbers (~10,000), the VC proved that they still had large numbers, and Johnson's re-election was doomed.

Is Kerry hoping for an Iraqi Tet? Is he (oh so indirectly) calling for one? Sure does seem to be setting himself up for the event in any case. Someone should call him on it.

Update: Speaking of puppets, Kerry's sock-puppet Maureen Dowd can hardly contain her glee over the violence in Iraq.

Update 2: Former Prime Minister of Spain, Jose Maria Aznar expects Tet as well.

Tax Dodger Heinz-Kerry "Embarrassed" By Tax Cut

Teresa Heinz-Kerry says that she

was embarrassed to receive tax cuts advocated by Bush and supports her husband's efforts to roll them back for higher incomes and use those funds for education, health care and deficit reduction

Odd from a lady who a couple years ago made a killing when Ingersol-Rand moved to an offshore tax haven.

My suggestion to Ms Heinz-Kerry: If you really feel this way, give a few million here or here or here.

But since most of us pay a higher effective rate than you do after all the loopholes you exploit, leave us out of it, eh?

"Unimpeachable"

Time to calibrate your BS detector.

(link via Allah, the merciful)

I feel safer already

Apparently, Los Angeles's own homeland security czar ran afoul of airport security today, trying to take a loaded gun on board a plane. You would think that he'd know that was a problem, but no, apparently not.

The head of the Police Department's counterterrorism bureau was detained by federal authorities Thursday after trying to board a flight at Los Angeles International Airport with a loaded handgun in his carryon luggage.

John Miller, an ABC-TV reporter before he was hired for the security job, was off duty and heading to New York with his family when Transportation Security Administration officials discovered the .38-caliber handgun in his bag, TSA spokesman Nico Melendez said.

Miller is authorized to carry the weapon, but failed to disclose he was traveling with the gun.

Police Chief William Bratton said he spoke with Miller, who was "extraordinarily embarrassed" by the incident.

He should be extraordinarily fired. And, BTW, why does he get to take a gun onboard a plane anyway, when the pilots still can't?

Why Kerry Disses US Allies

Glenn and others are openly wondering why Kerry talks about how he'll restore our relations with old friends like France and Germany, while at the same time trashing our current allies like Australia and Eastern Europe. Today, it's the new Iraqi government's turn to be called names. It doesn't seem to make sense.

But it does. Over the last decade or so, international alliances have formed on the political axis, and these are now overriding previous national ones. Kerry is allying himself not with countries that share our interests, but with leaders who share his ideals. Socialist ones.

It really doesn't matter anymore which Republican is in office. Reagan, Bush -- it could be Gerald Ford for all they care -- the Social Democrats in Europe view the Republicans as beyond-the-pale rightists. Only Blair stands apart, still valuing Britian's close ties with America over Party -- to the extreme displeasure of many in his camp.

I'm pretty sure that Pat Buchanan could explain it better, but globalization is increasingly binding politics at the international level. While I would disagree with Pat on the advisability of globalization, he is entirely correct when he speaks of the uncoincidental approach of international government. WTO, WHO, the European Union, NAFTA and the attempts to make something meaningful out of NATO and the UN all point in this direction. While I would hope for some kind of loose democratic Federation rather than the bureaucratic model of the EU or WTO (or the idiocy of the UN), that's not what the socialist wing wants. They want a top-down bureaucratic state with weak Parliaments, and are well on the way to getting one.

So look for more of this -- these people see the future and are playing for keeps. Perhaps the only real response is for the Republicans to start allying internationally themselves with those remaining parties that still value free enterprise and small government. I just hope we don't run out of time.

Shelley Must Go, Says Bee

While everyone else has been focusing on the presidential race, the CBS memos and Iraq, the Sacramento Bee and SF Chronicle have been turning over rocks in Sacramento and not liking what they find. Today, the Bee calls for Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to resign or be impeached. Strong words for a Democrat officeholder from a Democrat-leaning paper. What's up with this?:

The case against Shelley has been building for weeks. It began with a series of articles in the San Francisco Chronicle. The stories revealed that state funds, which Shelley (then a member of the Assembly) helped steer to a San Francisco neighborhood group, may have found their way into his campaign coffers.

Shelley claims to know nothing about the true source of those contributions. Perhaps that is so, but his claim is curious given the fact that the funds in question were the biggest donations he received in his campaign for secretary of state. The FBI, the California attorney general and the city of San Francisco have all launched investigations.

Shelley also faces allegations that he sexually harassed and verbally abused members of his staff. He admits to being tough and has long been known to fly into tantrums, frequently letting loose with profanity-riddled tirades that have led to extremely high turnover rates at his office. Unfortunately, this problem is not limited to his treatment of his staff. County elections officials around the state complain about Shelley's use of intemperate language and his intimidating manner with them.

Most recently and most damaging, documents obtained by The Sacramento Bee reveal that federal Help America Vote Act funds Shelley administered have been used for blatantly partisan political activities.

Looks like the Quackenbush scandal all over again. It's pretty bad when Democrats accuse Democrats of violating "political ethics." I wonder what Senate candidate and former Secretary of State Bill Jones has to say about this.

(via California Insider, who also has this)

See also XRLQ and the LA Times.

Stonewalling, Lesson 5

CBS has completely run out of excuses not to bare all, fire Mapes, Rather and sundry accomplices, and detail just how far they got involved in the Kerry campaign. But they'd rather not. What do you do when you can't possibly find a reason to withhold the truth any longer? How can you possibly delay coming clean without looking like a gang of crooks?

Well, you can have the conspirators sue each other. Then, on the advice of lawyers, everyone shuts up "while the case is pending" (i.e. until the 12th of Never). They'd happily clear it all up -- and they will, once the process has run its course -- but right now their hands are tied. So sorry.

Jury Duty

I have jury duty tomorrow. Apparently my civic duty includes driving from the LAX area to Downtown LA, arriving at 7:45am for no pay. If I get on a jury, they'll pay me lunch money. I'll also get a dollar for gas (later, by check).

*grumble*

Every time this happens I think of starting an initiative drive for minimum wages for jurors. It's really pretty shabby.

The Illusion of Truth

Watching the 60 Minutes fiasco, and noting once again what Patterico points out: that the 60 Minutes trademark is hammering down one point of view to the exclusion of all else, I'm reminded of a Babylon 5 episode called The Illusion of Truth.

In that episode, the rebels of Babylon 5 are visited by the dictator's pretend news agency, who promise to let them tell their side of the story to "the people back home". Unsurprisingly, the resulting news piece -- quite clearly patterened after 60 Minutes -- is a one-sided hatchet job with all kinds of dishonest cuts and splices that portray Babylon 5's commander as a madman who wants to destroy humanity. The anchor's line at the end of the piece is classic:

"Our job," Randall concludes, "is to report the news. Not to make it, or guide it. But from this reporter's perspective, the situation on Babylon 5 is deteriorating quickly, and must be dealt with. The quarantine order will help prevent more humans from falling prey to this genetics program, but it's only a short-term solution. As for Sheridan, he does not deserve our scorn, our anger, or our contempt. He is a war veteran, and that should at least earn him our sympathy. We here at ISN hope he receives the best care possible so he can someday come back to us. This is Dan Randall at ISN. Goodnight."

Fade to black.

DU'ers leaving country?

By way of Allah, blessed is His name, comes this Democrat Underground thread. It seems that Dan Rather's fall is the last gasp of the Resistance and some DU'ers are talking about fleeing Amerika lest they become "Jews in Germany." My favorite so far:

I don't want to be left here like the Jews who didn't get out in Nazi Germany. I have a big mouth...it's hard for me to "blend in." I've already lost friends and family members because of Bush, so I know just like with Ann Frank's experience in Holland...I and my family would be turned in because I have an "aura" of Resistence. Folks can just tell about folks like me.

One year ago today

Last year about this time, Justene Adamec suggested that rather than comment on other people's blogs, I might want to start my own, and gave me a few suggestions about how to go about it. Since I'd already been thinking about it, this was the gentle shove I needed, and it finally got done September 21, 2003.

It's been a mixed blessing -- unlike some I don't have infinite time or infinite energy. People like Glenn seem to have all day to blog (or maybe "Glenn" is really a corporate front like Max Headroom -- who's to know?). For me 3 posts a day is a lot. And from time to time my energy winds down and I go a week with no posts. Which quickly translates to no readers. It will probably happen again.

But right now, that's not a problem. The election is heating up, the CBS scandal is just starting to unravel, and the Axis of Evil is making its last moves. Should be interesting for a while. All in all, thanks Justene. It's been a trip.

Confidential and unimpeachable? NOT!

INDC Journal reports on several breaking news items regarding the collusion between the Kerry campaign and CBS News producer Mary Mapes. Apparently, CBS was not only lying about the "unimpeachability" of their source -- a serial crank with an axe to grind against the TANG -- but was ALSO lying when they claimed that "journalistic ethics" prevented them from revealing their source.

It now comes out that CBS had no problem revealing Mr. Burkett and his "information" to at least one senior member (Joe Lockhart) of the Kerry campaign, even before their initial broadcast. A second campaign member (Former Senator and official Bush-campaign victim Max Cleland) also was contacted by Burkett. Which of course leaves any claim of "confidentiality" and "newsman's shield" in total tatters. What remains to be seen is how coincidental the Favorite Son ad campaign that featured the CBS 60 Minutes II charges was, given the close co-operation between the CBS producer and the Kerry campaign.

Somebody know McCain-Feingold well enough to know if the 60 Minutes II broadcast could be an illegal corporate advertisement? And given that the connections were hidden, whether it violates further disclosure statutes? Are CBS's owned & operated licenses in danger? Where does the 1st Amendment enter?

Seems to me that we've still just seen the tip of the iceberg, just that the iceberg got much, much larger. And now we know why they stalled. What did Dan Rather know, and when did he know it? Someone should subpoena CBS internal emails.

Colorado Electoral Initiative a Bad Mistake

XRLQ, among others, discusses the Colorado electoral vote initiative, to be voted on in November, and worries that the retroactivity of the initiative will be a point of challenge if the election is close. Considering that the initiative makes the result clear to all, I agree with xrlq that any challenge will fail, particularly one that claims that the People do not hold the ultimate Legislative power.

However, I strongly object to the underlying initiative. While it probably won't matter if a few states do this (I think two others split the electoral vote by legislative district (a truly bad idea)), if all did this the electoral college's bias towards making a decision would suffer. Strong third-party candidates would get electoral votes. Nader would have got some in 2000, and Perot would have got roughly 100 in 1992.

Worse, weak third-party candidates and roundoff will cause unallocatable votes to accumulate in some states. Don't laugh -- this is a real problem -- in Colorado in 2000 (see study below), there is an unallocatable vote. Nader rounds down to zero, but the majors don't round up to claim it. Who gets it? While the Colorado initiative does have a formula for 2004, it is quite untested.

In a close election these issues could prevent an electoral college majority. In 2000, according to the Ballot Access News study the result would have been:

Bush: 259
Gore: 257
Nader: 7
Votes not allocated by simple rounding: 15
Needed to win: 270

Even assuming you have solved the rounding problem, what happens at the electoral college? Do Nader's people vote for Gore, electing him? Or does it go to Congress, electing Bush? Note that never has the electoral college elected a President who did not go in with a majority. Can they really?

Says who?

Deceive, Inveigle and Obfuscate

In two articles in today's LA Times, the idea is floated that CBS was entrapped by the crafty-but-stupid Bush administration. On the front page is a story about how In the Rush for a Scoop, CBS Found Trouble Fast".

It was 11 a.m. on Sept. 8 — nine hours before "60 Minutes" was to air. But as news executives debated whether to broadcast a story on newly obtained paperwork offering fresh evidence about President Bush's National Guard service, a big question hung over CBS News' Westside headquarters: Were the photocopied documents real or fake?

Suddenly, the answer seemed to materialize, and from an unlikely source — the White House itself.

John Roberts, the network's White House correspondent, called to report he'd just completed an on-camera interview with Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. Bartlett, it appeared, had no quarrel with the authenticity of the documents.

That was the turning point.

"If we had gotten back from the White House any kind of red flag, raised eyebrow, anything that said, 'Are you sure about this stuff?' we would have gone back to square one," Josh Howard, the program's executive producer, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview Friday. "The White House said they were authentic, and that carried a lot of weight with us."

So, it was the White House that authenticated, and Rather trusted them, you see. As he always has. Down in the bottom of the story, of course, they do mention that the White House disputed most of the memo's "facts" and was non-committal about the memos themselves. But they didn't say they were fakes, so they must have been genuine, or so CBS claims to have thought.

The story gives quite a bit of internal detail to the CBS story preparation timeline, indicating that several sources at CBS contributed to the article.

The other story outs "Buckhead" as being a Conservative lawyer from the South who helped disbar Clinton, is a member of the Federalist Society, and (gasp) opposes affirmative action and McCain-Feingold. He even knows Kenneth Starr! Strange that a Freeper would be a conservative, as Patterico points out in some detail. And again, in the second paragraph, the meme of Republican Conspiracy is floated:

The identity of "Buckhead," a blogger known previously only by his screen name on the site freerepublic.com and lifted to folk hero status in the conservative blogosphere since last week's posting, is likely to fuel speculation among Democrats that the efforts to discredit the CBS memos were engineered by Republicans eager to undermine reports that Bush received preferential treatment in the National Guard more than 30 years ago.

Republican officials have denied any involvement among those debunking the CBS story.

Later they come right out and say it:

While bloggers and some conservative activists hailed Buckhead as a hero in their longtime efforts to paint the mainstream media as politically biased, some Democrats and even some conservative bloggers have marveled at Buckhead's detailed knowledge of the memos and wondered whether that suggested a White House conspiracy.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe even speculated openly to reporters that the whole thing could have been orchestrated by White House political advisor Karl Rove. The Bush campaign called the allegation "nonsense."

MacDougald is an outspoken conservative and a Republican active in local politics.

The damage control has started. Look for more of this innuendo on the pages of the national newspapers, possibly with calls for the White House to "come clean" on their involvement.

Deceive, inveigle and obfuscate.

Let them run it

Bob Dole demands that Kerry make MoveOn.org stop running its "Quagmire" ad that shows an American soldier "surrendering" to the quagmire of Iraq. Never mind that such contact between Kerry and MoveOn would be illegal "coordination", I think Dole is wrong on another count: the ad does Kerry no favors.

The anti-Bush Left has got blinders on. They think that what plays to them (Bush=Hitler, American soldiers as stormtroopers or helpless victims, the whole Night-Falls-on-America thing), plays to the center. It doesn't. If anything it repells.

So, Bring It On™. Perhaps an ad with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfelt & Ashcroft as vampires eating newborn black children. That ought to get votes in the middle, eh?

The Other Examiner

CBS has shown its memos now to 6 "experts" (one handwriting expert, three document experts, a former typewriter repairman, and a software designer). Of these, only three saw them before the first 60 Minutes broadcast. Two of the latter (both document experts) are on record as having declined to authenticate, with indications (that CBS disputes) that they suspected fraud. One, a handwriting expert says now that he only saw one document, thinks that the signature is valid, but has no opinion on the text or format of the one memo he authenticated.

Score before the show (from CBS's experts):
Handwriting: 1-2
Document: 0-2 with one abstention.

This is apparently convincing authentication.

After the show, three more people saw the memos. Two of them can say nothing about the signatures, one argues that somewhere in the world there was equipment in 1972 that could have maybe produced these memos, the other argues, well, hard to say, something about how you can't type a lower-case "L" on a computer, and how hard it is not to superscript a "th", whatever that proves.

The last, one James J Pierce, hitherto a Google virgin, reports yesterday that

As a result of my examinations and comparisonsm it is my opinion, based on the available evidence, that the balance of the Jerry B Killian signatures appearing on the photocopied questioned documents are consistant and in basic agreement.

In regard to the balance the same typed-written photocopied questioned documents, the same typed-face designs are strongly similar to corresponding samples that indicate the same typed-face existed prior to the date in question on the photocopied documents.

In my professional opinion, with what I know and have examined based on the photocopied questioned documents, the documents in question are authentic.
[link courtesy Beldar]

Translation: "The signatures, as photocopied, were sourced from actual signatures. I have no idea where they might have come from, however. The fonts are similar to fonts that exisited at the time. This is the limit of my curiosity. I guess they're authentic, but let me toss in as many weasel-words as I can just in case."

Score as of today (again, from CBS's experts):
Handwriting originated from Killian: 2-2, 2 abstain
Documents might have been created in 1972: 2-2, 1 abstain, 1 incoherant
Documents are judged authentic: 1-2, 2 abstain, 1 incoherant

Not mentioned by CBS are several amatuers who call the documents fakes: the chief font guy at Adobe, the forger Spielberg made a bl**dy movie about, the retired type-face guru of North America, and a few others of similar quality, not to mention the lady who asserts she would have typed them.

Tell me, would you buy a used car from Dan Rather?

Kick CBS out of the White House Pressroom

While CBS has the freedom of the press to air nearly any damn thing it wants, there is no requirement that anyone else accept them as an objective news agency. I may be wrong, but I doubt al Jazeera or the Weekly World News has a seat in the White House pressroom, Air Force One, or rotates onto the occasional press pool. So, a humble suggestion:

Kick them out until they apologize!

No questions at the press conference, no phone calls returned, no contact of any kind with the Administration. Freeze them out. Treat them as the pariahs they are. Their freedom to publish does not extend to anyone's duty to co-operate.

It's really sad to watch one man's bitter hatred and ego (and other people's fear) destroy the House of Murrow. Just proving one more time how much easier it is to destroy than build. And it's so unneccessary -- they could have retracted the documents as "possible frauds" and stood by the rest of the story. But no, they think they're some kind of Press Popes who cannot admit fallibility. The Office of the Anchor would be damaged, you see.

Suddenly, my facetious post below is seeming more likely.

Rather-ism

Herblock 5/7/54

(Via Instapundit and the Washington Post)

UPDATE: According to this site, December 2^nd will be the 50^th anniversary of McCarthy's censure. And, no, the fact that there were Communists in the government didn't justify McCarthy, either.

Put the shoe on the other foot

For those on the Left who find all this MemoGate stuff uninteresting, take a look at this post over at INDC Journal:

[I]t's not "the charges, stupid," it's the fact that a highly trusted media organization passed off fake documents in order to make those charges. Close your eyes, count to ten, breathe deeply, and try to focus your mind on what your reaction might be if John Kerry was accused of disobeying a direct order while in the military [by, say, Sean Hannity of Fox News], based on fake documents. Now root around a little deeper into the recesses of your ... brain and imagine that these charges were true to one degree or another. Now tell me: how you would feel about what the media organization did with those obviously fake documents? Wouldn't it be important? Can you grasp the implications for the well-being of the press and the function of our society as a whole, and how it could be a separate issue that's more important than John Kerry or George Bush?

LA Times Asks "The Question"

Given that the LA Times, not exactly a card-carrying member of the VRWC, editorializes that the CBS memos are forgeries, one has to ask who forged them, or at least who gave them to CBS and why did CBS run them in the face of warnings from their own experts? In fact, the Times asks just that:

But who fed a seeming ringer to CBS, and why did the network fall for it?

Well, Dan? What, where, who & why?

(via The Politburo Diktat)

Forgery for the Masses

From The Curt Jester, comes this stunning product news:

Introducing a new product in our Office line called Microsoft Forger. We have been copying other peoples software ideas for years, so who is better to provide you with a product that imitates other peoples style and signature. Microsoft Forger is the ultimate product for pundit-proof forgery.

I wonder if it has those East German manual typewriters in its database, just in case I want to forge something "from" Army intelligence (see below).

(Via Dean's World)

NY Post on a roll

Powerline links to several items in today's NY Post. One is a column by Ralph Peters comparing CBS to al Jazeera:

CBS won't name its source for those "incriminating" documents about President Bush's National Guard service. That would violate its high journalistic principles (although lying about our president does not).

Instead, we get poor old Dan Rather, the crazy uncle of network news, insisting that those documents could have been typed on an early-1970s super typewriter, that there might have been just the right outrageously expensive machine in that fly-specked National Guard office — and that an officer who had never used it before would use it for note-taking.

Let me share some reality with Uncle Dan. I served in our active-duty military five years after those documents purportedly were written. I was in Army intelligence. And only the big boss's secretary had an electric typewriter — one too primitive to create those documents.

I worked on a manual machine made in East Germany (swear to God). In 1977. In a front-line division. The National Guard got the junk we didn't want. CBS lied. The sad thing is that they just might be able to stonewall America.

That's network news, folks. Defend forgeries. Defend "journalists" who support terror. Let our soldiers die. Let the American people rot. And trash our president in wartime.

No wonder al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya get away, literally, with murder.

The other is a comment from Frank Abegnale, the true-life forger protrayed in Catch Me If You Can:

If my forgeries looked as bad as the CBS documents, it would have been, 'Catch Me In Two Days.'

Ouch.

CBS's "Expert" Unmasked

Via The Note, comes this NY Post article about Marcel Matley, CBS's go-to guy on document analysis. It's far worse than you think. The Post article, titled "CBS WRITING ACE HAS RATHER WACKY BACKGROUND" reports that Matley's experience and training are both limited and weird. But let the Post tell you:

The expert chosen by CBS to check Dan Rather's disputed National Guard documents got his start as a graphologist analyzing "Spirituality in Handwriting" and lacks recognized document training, The Post has learned.

Analyst Marcel Matley lists "Spirituality in Handwriting" and "Female/Male Traits in Handwriting" on the Web site for a foundation he serves as librarian. They were privately printed, but another analyst provided portions to The Post.

In "Spirituality in Handwriting," Matley assesses a woman's "libidinal energy" based on her handwriting....

In "Female/Male Trait in Handwriting," the San Francisco-based Matley said he could analyze a woman's handwriting "to show her how she can have her womanly qualities fully realized."

The article continued: "For your male client, you will be able to recognize the facade of machismo — and also recognize the hurt boy- child who uses that as a defensive hiding place."...

In addition, in a 1995 California court deposition obtained by The Post, Matley acknowledged that he had no formal training in a document lab, in identification of papers, inks or "machines, typewriters, photocopies." He also acknowledged he'd had no training from the U.S. Secret Service, FBI, U.S. Army, California Department of Justice or any other law-enforcement body.

CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius said the network regards Matley as a reputable handwriting expert but declined to say why they chose him.

The last might be answered by Matley's last big job: authenticating the Vince Foster suicide note for the Clinton administration. Matley's professional web site is linked here

UPDATE: Kevin of Smiling Kevin's notes in a comment that Matley's website has been scrubbed recently -- the Wayback machine has it here

I guess it's possible...

Here's a link to another ridiculous explanation involving documentary evidence. The only difference is that in this case Dan Rather made his name debunking it.

Hey, maybe she had one of those IBM Composers...

Who's an expert?

From the Washington Post:

In its broadcast last night, CBS News produced a new expert, Bill Glennon, an information technology consultant. He said that IBM electric typewriters in use in 1972 could produce superscripts and proportional spacing similar to those used in the disputed documents.

Any argument to the contrary is "an out-and-out lie," Glennon said in a telephone interview. But Glennon said he is not a document expert, could not vouch for the memos' authenticity and only examined them online because CBS did not give him copies when asked to visit the network's offices.

Thomas Phinney, program manager for fonts for the Adobe company in Seattle, which helped to develop the modern Times New Roman font, disputed Glennon's statement to CBS. He said "fairly extensive testing" had convinced him that the fonts and formatting used in the CBS documents could not have been produced by the most sophisticated IBM typewriters in use in 1972, including the Selectric and the Executive. He said the two systems used fonts of different widths.

So, who are you going to believe in an argument about fonts and printing: a former IBM technician who identifies as an "information technology consultant" [hey, you could claim that, too -ed], or the "program manager for fonts for the Adobe company"?

Now, this is cool

AP reports:

Talk show host Oprah Winfrey celebrated the premiere of her 19th season Monday by surprising each of her 276 audience members with a new car...

Winfrey said the audience members were chosen because their friends or family had written to the show about their need for a new car. One woman's young son said she drove a car that "looks like she got into a gunfight"; another couple had almost 400,000 miles on their two vehicles.

Somehow, I'd rather watch 100 shows like this than one "Apprentice".

Rather's Next Moves?

As I woke this morning, I had this hazy recolection of a dream about the future of the MemoGate scandal. All I can remember are a few bits and pieces:

• A statement is issued by CBS News management stating that they are 1000% behind Dan
• Rather blames a conspiracy of lies and innuendo by "outside agitators" trying to undermine the 1st Amendment and the integrity of CBS News
• After polls show that 78% of the public believe that the memos were forged, several of Rather's subordinates will resign "as the result of the most intensive internal investigation in CBS News' history"
• Meeting in an parking garage, one of Rather's staffers tells Sean Hannity that the scandal reaches "to the highest levels in CBS News" and to "follow the faxes"
• Fax and phone logs obtained by Fox show constant contact between Rather and Kerry's campaign
• Rather tries one last time to dispell rumors of his involvement, stating "I am not a crook"
• A thorough examination of Rather's home computer reveals fragments of early drafts of the forgeries, discussions of the timing of their unveiling with the Kerry campaign, and some odd ramblings about frequencies for contacting space aliens, under his Democratic Underground persona of "Kenneth"
• A delegation of reporters, led by Walter Cronkite and Daniel Schorr arrive to tell Dan it's time to go
• Rather resigns from CBS News, stating that "right-wing politicians won't have [him] to kick around anymore".

Unfortunately, I can't remember who won the election....

Occam's Razor

Which seems the simpler explanation?:

• Attempts to recreate the memos using Microsoft Word and Times New Roman produce images so close that even taking into account the fact that the image we were able to download from the CBS site has been copied, scanned, downloaded, and reprinted, the errors between the "authentic" document and a file created by anyone using Microsoft word are virtually indistinguishable.



• The font existed in 1972; there were technologies in 1972 that could, with elaborate effort, reproduce these memos, and these technologies and the skills to use them were used by someone who, by testimony of his own family, never typed anything, in an office that for all its other documents appears to have used ordinary monospaced typewriters, and therefore this unlikely juxtaposition of technologies and location coincided just long enough to produce these four memos on 04-May-1972, 18-May-1972, 01-August-1972, and 18-August-1973.

From a post by Dr. Joseph Newcomer (resume), an expert on computer typesetting.

UPDATE: Dr. Newcomer's ISP has requested he not chew up their bandwidth, and the post has been pulled, pending relocation. new link added above

Remembrance

CBS's Expert?

Well, here's the web site of CBS's handwriting expert Marcel Matley. As you can see, this is a world-class concern.

I especially like the "Qualifications" page.

The Stonewall

Of course Rather is stonewalling. Admitting fraud, he'd have to offer up his source, one way or the other. And that would lead right back to his masters at the DNC and the Kerry campaign. Which would effectively end Kerry's chances. The fact that it would end Rather's career is immaterial -- he'd resign in a flash over this if he could keep the Democrats out of it. But he can't.

So, like Nixon, they'll lie, attack, distract, bribe and threaten until they can get past the election with a fighting chance.

I wonder if Rather understands Nixon better now. I'm sure he will, in time.

Find a typewriter

On the off chance that the 60 Minutes II memos are legit, it really should not be hard to obtain a typewriter from the early 1970's that could produce a credible facsimile. I say this because:

• I posess an early 80's IBM Selectric, so they're not all gone;
• There are collectors of these things;

and
• Any typewriter capable of proportional spacing in 1972 would have been of a very advanced type, and therefore highly collectible.

I was going to link to the IBM Selectric Museum website, but they seem to have exceeded their bandwidth quite recently, and have instead posted this:

Please check back after the election.

For those who want my opinion...the documents appear to be done in Word, and then copied repeatedly to make them "fuzzy". They use features that were not available on office typewriters the 1970s, specifically the combination of proportional spacing with superscript font. The IBM Executive has proportional spacing, but used fixed type bars. The Selectric has changeable type elements, but fixed spacing (some models could be selected at 10 or 12 pitch, but that's all). The Selectric Composer was not an office typewriter, but apparently did use proportional spacing. These were very expensive machines, used by printing offices, not administrative offices.....

update: I dragged my Executive up from the basement, it's not working too well...but I did type some of the 19 may 72 memo. It doesn't fit on the page using a real vintage proportional spacing typewriter...and it looks different.

UPDATE: Here is the info on the IBM Composer line, which some claim might have typed the memos. Is this really something that one would find on a Texas Air Force National Guard base? And if so, would someone use it for memos? You decide.

Memo to Dan Rather

Dan--

Remember the lesson of Watergate: It's not the crime that gets you, it's the cover-up.

Regards,

The Blogosphere

NY Times, WaPo on 60 Minutes "Documents"

The NY Times has a straight-up piece, misleadingly titled Commander's Son Questions Memos on Bush's Service, which mostly discusses the apparent document forgeries. The Washington Post has this, and the Washington Times has an article discussing how the National Guard issue is being recycled.

No word yet from the LA Times, which ran the smear above the fold yesterday. Oh, wait, they have letters from the left.

Puppy needs better aim

This from the LA Times:

Puppy's Paw Puts an End to Man's Cruelty, Officials Say

PENSACOLA, Fla. — A man who was trying to shoot seven puppies was shot himself when one of the dogs put its paw on the gun's trigger, officials said Thursday.

Jerry Allen Bradford, 37, was charged with felony animal cruelty, the Escambia County Sheriff's Office said. He was treated at a hospital for a gunshot wound to his wrist.

Bradford said he decided to shoot the 3-month-old shepherd-mix dogs in the head Monday because he couldn't find them a home, according to the sheriff's office.

He was holding two puppies when one put its paw on the trigger of the .38-caliber revolver, discharging it.

Deputies found three puppies in a shallow grave outside Bradford's home, said Sheriff's Sgt. Ted Roy. The four others appeared to be in good health. Animal control officials plan to put them up for adoption.

Two Typewriters?

The following two documents were allegedly typed in the 1970's on government typewriters. Some say the second one is computer-generated. You decide.

(hat tip: Powerline)

Forged Document Scandal

For information on the apparently forged documents that 60 Minutes II, the LA Times and the NY Times used in their stories yesterday and today, please see LGF or Power Line. Most telling is this:

The "Memo To File" of August 18, 1973 also used specialized typesetting characters not used on typewriters. These include the superscript "th" in 187th, and consistent ’ (right single quote) used instead of a typewriter's generic ' (apostrophe). These are the sorts of things that typesetters did manually until the advent of smart correction in things like Microsoft Word.

And no, the White House did NOT confirm any of these memos -- they simply released copies which 60 Minutes had faxed to the White House the day before.

Now the real questions are: Will the media report on the forgery accusations, which appear to be valid? Will they stonewall the story? Will they hide their retractions on the back pages, or will the story of the forgeries run on Page One?

Your guesses are probably the same as mine.

UPDATE: Then there's the expert opinion that the font can only be Times New Roman, due to the "closed" shape of the number "4" which did not appear on any similar Selectric typeface of the era. Times New Roman first appeared on PCs.

UPDATE2: Then again, if it's as bad as it looks now, maybe Dan Rather will be joining Walter in retirement.

Zell Miller's Speech Transcript

Since I expect that Zell Miller's on-the-money speech will get "lost" soon, at least from the major media, I thought I'd post it here, just for fun:

Since I last stood in this spot, a whole new generation of the Miller family has been born: four great-grandchildren. Along with all the other members of our close-knit family, they are my and Shirley's most precious possessions. And I know that's how you feel about your family, also.

Like you, I think of their future, the promises and the perils they will face. Like you, I believe that the next four years will determine what kind of world they will grow up in.

And like you, I ask: Which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower and, yes, the backbone to best protect my family?

The clear answer to that question has placed me in this hall with you tonight. For my family is more important than my party.

There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future, and that man's name is George W. Bush.

In the summer of 1940, I was an 8-year-old boy living in a remote little Appalachian valley. Our country was not yet at war, but even we children knew that there were some crazy man across the ocean who would kill us if they could.

President Roosevelt, in a speech that summer, told America, "All private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger."

In 1940, Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee. And there is no better example of someone repealing their "private plans" than this good man.

He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time.

And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue.

Shortly before Wilkie died, he told a friend that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between "here lies a president" or "here lies one who contributed to saving freedom," he would prefer the latter.

Where are such statesmen today? Where is the bipartisanship in this country when we need it most?

Today, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief.

What has happened to the party I've spent my life working in? I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny. It was Democratic President Harry Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city.

Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Democrats and Republicans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter.

But not today.

Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.

And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.

Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from the Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers.

Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier.

And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.

For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.

It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom he abuses to burn that flag.

No one should dare to even think about being the commander in chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.

But don't waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking, America is the problem, not the solution. They don't believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.

It is not their patriotism, it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking.

They claimed Carter's pacifism would lead to peace. They were wrong.

They claimed Reagan's defense buildup would lead to war. They were wrong.

And no pair has been more wrong, more loudly, more often than the two Senators from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.

Together, Kennedy and Kerry have opposed the very weapons system that won the Cold War and that are now winning the war on terror.

Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security.

But Americans need to know the facts.

The B-1 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, dropped 40 percent of the bombs in the first six months of Enduring Freedom.

The B-2 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hussein's command post in Iraq.

The F-14A Tomcats, that Senator Kerry opposed, shot down

Gadhafi's Libyan MiGs over the Gulf of Sidra.

The modernized F-14D, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered missile strikes against Tora Bora.

The Apache helicopter, that Senator Kerry opposed, took out those Republican Guard tanks in Kuwait in the Gulf War.

The F-15 Eagles, that Senator Kerry opposed, flew cover over our Nation's capital and this very city after 9/11.

I could go on and on and on -- against the Patriot Missile that shot down Saddam Hussein's scud missiles over Israel; against the Aegis air-defense cruiser; against the Strategic Defense Initiative; against the Trident missile, against, against, against.

This is the man who wants to be the commander in chief of our U.S. Armed Forces?

U.S. forces armed with what? Spit balls?

Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than 20 weeks of campaign rhetoric.

Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are. How you vote tells people who you really are deep inside.

Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.

Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.

John Kerry, who says he doesn't like outsourcing, wants to outsource our national security. That's the most dangerous outsourcing of all. This politician wants to be leader of the free world. Free for how long?

For more than 20 years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure.

As a war protester, Kerry blamed our military.

As a senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harm's way, far away.

George W. Bush understands that we need new strategies to meet new threats.

John Kerry wants to refight yesterday's war. President Bush believes we have to fight today's war and be ready for tomorrow's challenges. President Bush is committed to providing the kind of forces it takes to root out terrorists, no matter what spider hole they may hide in or what rock they crawl under.

George W. Bush wants to grab terrorists by the throat and not let them go to get a better grip.

From John Kerry, they get a "yes/no/maybe" bowl of mush that can only encourage our enemies and confuse our friends.

I first got to know George W. Bush when we served as governors together. I admire this man. I am moved by the respect he shows the first lady, his unabashed love for his parents and his daughters, and the fact that he is unashamed of his belief that God is not indifferent to America.

I can identify with someone who has lived that line in "Amazing Grace" -- "was blind, but now I see." And I like the fact that he's the same man on Saturday night that he is on Sunday morning.

He is not a slick talker but he is a straight shooter. And where I come from, deeds mean a lot more than words.

I have knocked on the door of this man's soul and found someone home, a God-fearing man with a good heart and a spine of tempered steel, the man I trust to protect my most precious possession: my family.

This election will change forever the course of history, and that's not any history. It's our family's history.

The only question is: How? The answer lies with each of us. And like many generations before us, we've got some hard choosing to do. Right now the world just cannot afford an indecisive America. Faint-hearted self-indulgence will put at risk all we care about in this world.

In this hour of danger, our president has had the courage to stand up. And this Democrat is proud to stand up with him.

Thank you.

God bless this great country. And God bless George W. Bush.

Oscar and Tubby Riefenstahl

Dean notes the irony of Michael Moore's "holocaust revisionism" being considered for a best-picture Oscar.

Sad, but true. Whatever happened to "Never Again!"? I think it would be a good idea to obtain a parade permit for Oscar night in Hollywood.

Oxymoron

Des it strike anyone else as odd that the man who is most responsible for "Viet-Nam war hero" being considered an oxymoron is now basing his campaign on being a Viet-Nam war hero?

Maus Identifies the Real Fascists

Art Spiegelman (creator of Maus) has a new book out, describing the horror of 9/11. The REAL horror, mind you, not the phony, right-wing-media-hyped version you've been duped into accepting:



Lileks has more, including this gem from AP:

“This week’s bloodbath in Russia shattered the notion that innocents are taboo terror victims.”