Jobber of the Week

We must remain vigilent, or Cat Stevens will have won.

While your point is valid, your words are not. The only people they don't have to "prove" to are the people who thought they had an excellent, flawless four years. Well, there's some who would agree with that, and some who wouldn't. I wouldn't say it's end-all evidence that Kerry would weaken the military. You, yourself, just said that Senators sometimes vote for things they don't approve of when you talked about Byrd's pork. Okay, fine, I can't. Better? But just as I can't prove he did any better in the private meetings, you can't prove he did as worse. Bush's policies made us less safe. You cannot possibly be so blinded as to attempt to parse the statement. Alright, they're both scum. That's acceptable. When the Republicans in the Senate agree on something, it's basically a done issue. That was why Kerry voted no, because it woudln't have mattered either way because the spend-now pay-later plan had so much support from the so-called conservatives. Not exactly no possibility of co-ordination, but I don't think the Democrats knew the documents were fake. They probably found out that the documents had been passed to CBS and jumped on the story to be timely about it and it blew up in their face. The issue of the documents is mostly over and we're back onto moving on to real issues. The only people who won't get over the documents is Terry McAuliffe and friends who need to shut their mouth and realize that every day they spend rambling about how the real question is about somebody's Vietnam service that they're hurting their own campaign, and the Republican FreeRepublic conspiracy crew who won't stop until they can piece together some kind of a fantasy that makes this look like Watergate. It's not just pretend, but there's no doubt about it that CBS looks like f'n maroons here. I didn't want to watch 60 Minutes on Sunday night at ALL or for the future, but the other choices were college sports and "Titanic." I think it's pretty much over here because there's nothing left to see. There is no massive underground conspiracy, and even if there was, the American public is, to be frank, too stupid to pay attention to it. Any news that can't be delivered in soundbytes of 5 words or less are largely ignored as too complicated by the average voter.

It doesn't disprove it, it just puts it in proper context. You guys have been using this vote to paint him as some kind of pot-smoking anti-war flower child who loathes the military. The simple facts are that after the Cold War we didn't have anything on the level of the Soviet Union that present a threat to us. There was nothing out there that looked like it had the means of destroying the country. And so military manufacturing and development budgets were slashed, since we wouldn't need more arms when what we had left over was plenty enough. Again, PUBLIC meetings. His track record on the closed-door meetings is much better. That was saying that he was aware of the memo. We've discussed that to death. You said Bush didn't know what to do, I said he should have done something, anything other than "nothing." There's logic to both arguements and we simply have to agree to disagree. That's just one part of his profile that they've largely ignored while hammering on the rest of it. Is that the same as saying there'd be another attack? Again, he didn't pander to fear of another terrorist attack. He said they've generally left us less safe, which is interpreted by the listener, but I believe it to mean that anti-American thoughts abroad have increased in the past four years. I will point out that I'm not a big fan statement either, but it certainly less direct than the whole "we're gonna get hit again if he's elected" thing. Unless you can point out where he said that Bush has left us more likely to get another attack, in which case I'll withdraw this. Again you missed the point where his vote was simply symbolic and the measure had enough support to pass. That's it. You can no longer call me crazy for my Halliburton speculation. Naw, I just believe such a smear tactic would be, you know, harder to spot out. Yup, and I've fully realized now that he is both a hypocrite and a moron as well.

Actually, all-talk-no-action has probably done more to lowered peoples' views of a politician, IMO. Did you ever listen to the recordings from that military command post during 9/11? "So, you wanna scramble some jets?" "*sigh* I don't know." I don't blame Bush for sitting there, I don't know if going back and reading a book was a right move, but he had something heavy dropped on him like that and was probably trying to figure it out. I didn't understand what was going on either until I saw a TV screen. And how were things different before this? At least it got more people to register.

I'll disagree and say that honestly it should only make the kind of Police Blotter headlines that appear when any other teenager is arrested for the same thing. However, those kinds of standards disappeared long ago, and I'd say the American press' treatment of Bush's daughters is similar to any other nation that offers a free media. Prince William is practically followed around by a legion of reporters, and that story about him trying marijuana made headlines that, IMHO, made far larger headlines than it really deserved, but that's the situation of our society today. That said, partisan media generally tries to keep the family off-limits unless they're asking for it. Limbaugh later apologized to the Clintons for the Chelsea crack, although at first he flustered and came up with bullshit that he didn't know the picture appeared behind him (it was his late-night TV show.) Most Air America programs (including Al Franken, considered the world's biggest character assassin by Bill O'Reilly) keep the Bush family off-limits and chastize callers who make fun of them*. However, there is sometimes a setting where criticizing a family member is warranted, like when Laura started mouthing off like she was some sort of expert in stem-cell research. * I do admit to taking a guilty pleasure from one caller though, who when quizzed about whether the "our hamster didn't make it" line from the twins at the convention was a lie or a truth, replied with "Well, I'm gonna guess that was true because that hamster would die if you blew beer breath on it." Franken got on his case about it.

What an independent you are! I mean, instead of actually pay attention to the facts and come out with an independent analysis, you swallow talking points and soundbytes by Pro-Bush people. FactCheck took apart that whole arguement in their teardown of Zealot Miller's speech. Basically, everybody from Cheney to President Bush was cutting this spending after the Cold War was over. There was no threat to be seen and no need to keep manufacturing arms at the level that we were when we were fighting the Soviets. This was also taken apart long ago. The skipped meetings always mentioned are public meetings. His appearance at private meetings, where these matters and others are discussed behind closed doors, is much more reliable and it's not uncommon for Senators to miss public meetings going over things they've already heard before. They're busy people. I'm not sure about where all this slander came from. The most waves MoveOn made was calling for Rumsfeld to resign in the middle of the Abu Gharib firestorm. The way you talk about it you make it sound like the TV commercials shouted "GEORGE W BUSH EATS BABIES." I also thought it was bad to make a public spectacle of it because it distracted from the real issues. And Bush and Cheney haven't gone out of their way to disparage Kerry? "That's a lot, even for a Senator from Massachusetts." "America sees two John Kerry's." And let's not forget that Cheney politicized the issue of terrorism by saying, with the world (terrorists included) watching, that Kerry would allow terrorists of having an easier time. This after all that time talking about how we can't allow ourselves to show weakness and have to maintain a strong united front on terrorism and can't buckle under to fear of another attack because then the terrorists have won. And then they went and politicized it. The attacks come out to about a similar number, I'd guess, although Bush always uses "My Opponent" instead of a name when talking about Kerry. In other words, "I can't think of one so I'll just choose the one everybody makes fun of." That was a bad move, you'd actually have some ammunition here except that you chose the most deconstructed arguement of this election. President Bush voted against the $87 billion before he voted for it. He didn't want the money to come out of his precious tax cuts. That would have been a display of fiscal responsibility. Bush has a track record of prefering credit card economics where he can lower taxes and raise spending and just leave a clusterfuck behind for the next poor soul to clean up. He insisted they not come out of the tax cut, which Kerry was against but would have voted for if it needed his vote to pass. It passed easily, and since his vote was essentially worthless, he voted against it as a message against Bush's destructive economic policy.

And it was very stupid of CBS to run the piece without any further analysis. In other words, "I'm jumping to conclusions to craft a neat tale." That's very weak at best and doesn't hold water at worst. Here's how I see it: One of the situations happened: A) CBS receives documents, Kerry campaign has nothing to do with it: CBS looks really stupid for running news on forgeries. No harm done to Kerry campaign. B) CBS receives documents from Kerry campaign or DNC, which believes they're legitimate: CBS looks really stupid for running news on forgeries AND for trusting a political campaign without doing further analysis of their own. Negligable harm to Kerry campaign. C) CBS receives documents from Kerry campaign or DNC, which knows they're fake and intentionally passes them along to destroy President Bush: This is really fucking evil, and the document's flaws are so amateurish that I can't really imagine it happening because surely they'd have done better. CBS looks as stupid as they did in Plan B, and Kerry's campaign is dead. If I was to put money down on one of these, I'd bet on A with a side bet on B. C is just completely fucking ridiculous, but I know you'll claim that it's really the truth because you really want the Democrats to look bad.

It's not smarts, it's just common sense. The people you talk about jumping at the chance that this is more anti-Bush ammo is as non-sensical as the Freepers going on about how this is proof that the MSM was against us from the start, bitch bitch moan. Besides, it seems to me that most the American public has accepted that some sort of political trick was played to get Bush his spot in the National Guard. It casts a rather sinister shadow over the rest of his service, one that I don't feel Kerry needs to exploit.

Hold on, you're saying Kerry only got into government work because of his wife? Don't you possibly think voters decided that his experience as an attorney meant more than who he was married to? Or did you just drink so much of Rush's Kool-Aid that you can't see straight anymore? On the plus side, at least all the pain will go away...

#1 is a nice Republican fantasy but doesn't hold up to the journalistic process. #2 is much more likely. Here's a hint to make yourself less like MikeSC: Don't talk about "The Left" because there's a large spectrum of many opinions out there when you say that. I've been saying since day one that these papers don't say anything critical or even overly damaging to Bush. In fact, that was part of the reason why I was initially so critical of the claims that they were forged, because they weren't nearly damning enough for any forger, not to mention CBS News, to put their necks on the line for it.

Wow, you're real non-partisan. I'd compliment you on the Mike-esque title, except that it was too informative to count. But what you lacked in vague commentary you made up with acidic bullshit. I don't think this means anything, even if they passed them on directly to CBS, unless they knew it was forgeries.

Wow. It's like Pavlov's dog. I love how Talk Radio, Fox News, pundits, and others have made the word "flip-flop" so constant in political debate.

*starts folding you a tinfoil hat* "Nailed" him? The accusations in these memos aren't anything near any kind of a smoking gun that sink Bush's re-election chances. Even if nobody ever raised questions about their authenticity, all they would do is confirm what most people generally accept. And of course, it's up to the Kerry group to verify the documents and check Bush's record? Ah, I forgot, Bush did so much to aid Kerry during the baseless SwiftVets accusations, Kerry ought to be returning the favor.

Oh bull fuckin' shit. That doesn't even MATTER compared the number of lives that man destroyed.

Gallup leans conservative. I wouldn't be suprised up by 3 or even 5, but nothing over 7.

My bet on next to go is Funaki.

Does anybody know who owns that number anymore?

I got a great Zell Miller quote from a Nov 2003 issue of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: As a congressional candidate in 1964, Miller not only pledged to vote against the Civil Rights Act, he attacked those who were pushing it. He said President Lyndon Johnson "is a southerner who has sold his birthright for a mess of dark porridge." The GOP can keep this guy.

I say breaking unjust laws is alright as long as you're not hurting anybody. The war on drugs should have been abolished some time ago except it keeps a bunch of people employed. When DEA agents can kill someone who presents no danger because "OMG HE'S HIGH AND HE'S RUNNING UP TO US" I think it's going a bit far. Also, the terrorists will never win as long as you put a sticker of an American flag on your car.

At this point, I seriously doubt what the evidence is. Nobody's buying it now.

Gee, Slapnuts, thanks for posting a CNS article. That's filler.

Time for somebody to install SP-2.

I believe that people in college are generally much less assholes than people in Middle and High School. I was such a punching bag in Junior High that I escaped by basically begging my parents and school counselors about getting into a private school. I can walk around on a college campus without people trying to kill me. I assume if I approached people, they might actually talk back.

You gotta keep yourself up to date. It's news, damnit, from the same people who brought you "Dean can't win because some guy lost badly in some year decades ago" back in the era of 6 months B.S. (Before Scream)

Somebody did badly in the 1950s! Because of this KERRY IS DOOMED!