Archive for September, 2004
« Previous Entries Next Entries »John Kerry in a “Fighting Mood” now… Ooooooh, I’m really scared…
Tuesday, September 21st, 2004Okay, how many times during this campaign do we have to hear John Kerry tell us he’s “a fighter,” “just starting to fight,” “taking off the gloves,” or most recently, in “a fighting mood?”
Name your cliche, John Kerry has probably used it on this campaign, as if to warn everyone that he’s really hasn’t thrown any punches and is about to go on the offensive…
One speech may not a campaign make, but John Kerry and his top advisers are pumped up and in “a fighting mood” after the Democratic candidate’s aggressive attack on President Bush’s handling of Iraq.
The Massachusetts senator, lagging in opinion polls six weeks before the Nov. 2 election, seems to have kicked a habit of pulling his punches at the last minute and showed a new willingness to mix it up with his Republican rival.
From a scathing address in New York on Monday detailing Bush’s “arrogance and outright incompetence” on Iraq, to a Democratic fund-raiser and on to a Tuesday morning television talk show where he charged that the president was “in denial,” Kerry seems to have found a new lease on political life.
“These guys, they’ve got me in a fighting mood,” Kerry said to roars of approval at a Monday night campaign rally in New York.
Yeah, Kerry, we’re sooooo scared… You’ve been pulling the “fighter” line for months now… I’ll let you know when I flinch.
“Many people have said this was a speech you needed to give,” said Mike McCurry, a Kerry adviser and former White House spokesman for President Bill Clinton. Several Democrats outside the campaign called it a turning point that would force Bush to play defense.
Ah, yes, the “turning point.” Kerry must only now be getting serious right? He’s just now “found his voice,” or something like that.
Ironically, Kerry’s own message hasn’t “pumped up” his camp… it’s his criticism of George W. Bush. What does that say about my senator?
Teresa Heinz-Kerry said of the speech, “There’s a time for everything and it was time for him to take off the gloves.”
There go those gloves again!
It was a welcome change for the Democratic faithful who privately feared their candidate lacked fire, and vindication and for a cadre of new advisers who urged Kerry to land some punches instead of simply shadow boxing with Bush.
So, what has Kerry been doing since primaries? The truth is, the Kerry campaign wants to paint this speech as a turning point in the campaign in order to justify Kerry’s recently dropping poll numbers… Kerry does have to start fighting though, he has to fight to gain back his base, which he has been losing support from for weeks. This is not the turning point of his campaign, it’s the point of no return. Kerry is desperate and this is just the latest strategy to try and save his failing campaign.
South Korea’s “Extracurricular Activities” with the Kerry Campaign
Tuesday, September 21st, 2004More trouble for the Kerry campaign?:
A South Korean man who met with John Kerry’s fund-raisers to discuss creating a new political group for Korean-Americans was an intelligence agent for his country, raising concerns among some U.S. officials that either he or his government may have tried to influence this fall’s election.
South Korean officials and U.S. officials told The Associated Press that Chung Byung-Man, a consular officer in Los Angeles, actually worked for South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
A spokesman for the South Korean consulate office said Chung was sent home in May amid “speculation” he became involved with the Kerry campaign and Democratic Party through contacts with fund-raiser Rick Yi and that his identity couldn’t be discussed further.
The Kerry campaign of course denies knowing these connections…
The department believes Chung’s contacts with donors and fund-raisers, if accurately described in reports, were “inconsistent” with the 1963 Vienna Convention that prohibits visiting foreign officials from interfering in the internal politics and affairs of host countries, a spokesman for its legal affairs office said.
Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton said the campaign did not know Chung was an intelligence agent or that Yi, one of the campaign’s key fund-raisers in the Asian-American community, was meeting with him until it was brought to light by the AP.
The AP first reported this spring that Yi and other Kerry fund-raisers and donors had met with Chung, but at the time Chung was only identified as a diplomat. Yi resigned from the Kerry campaign after the story, and Kerry returned $4,000 in donations he had solicited because of concerns about their origins.
AP was alerted to the meetings and Chung’s identity as an intelligence agent by Democratic donors and fund-raisers who said they were uncomfortable with the activities.
U.S. officials said Chung’s activities raised concern that he or his government were trying “to influence the fall presidential election through ‘extracurricular activities.’”
Business as usual for the Kerry campaign? Seems like the Kerry campaign reacted after Chung’s connections came to light in the press, but do we really know the Kerry campaign was unaware of this man’s connections?
Blogs Get Their TIME in the Spotlight
Monday, September 20th, 2004Would you believe that TIME Magazine has a story on blogs today?
Clearly, the explosion of the RatherGate scandal has generated new interest and attention towards bloggers, perhaps in a bigger way than the DNC and RNC credentialling bloggers this year.
“Blogs are what talk radio was a few years ago,” says Bush campaign
communications director Nicole Devenish. Her staff members regularly write, along with the message for the talk-radio circuit, the one that will go out to blogs and websites that link to the Bush campaign site. Bush staff members rely on technorati.com and truthlaidbear.com, which track political blogs and websites to see what items in local papers, on websites and in blogs are getting the most hits. “If a story moves up through the rankings and linking, we can know,” says one of the Bush staff members assigned to alert the rest of the team about which stories are moving through the blogosphere. “We get indicators about stories before they break elsewhere. It’s like an early-warning system.”
You must be a suscriber to read the whole story.
Kerry Stops Fighting In Several States
Monday, September 20th, 2004John Kerry appears to be giving up the fight in seven states by pulling TV ads… another sign of a faltering campaign…
Senator John Kerry, who was advertising in 20 states earlier this summer, had hoped by now to be playing on a broader canvas that included more states that President Bush won in 2000.
But advertising data gathered for The New York Times by Nielsen Monitor-Plus shows that from Sept. 7 through last Thursday, Mr. Kerry was running advertisements in just 13 states. He had pulled back in seven that he had tried to make competitive, including the crucial battleground of Missouri.
Mr. Kerry actually projected a bigger television presence than his advertising buying suggested because the Democratic National Committee was augmenting it with significant purchasing of its own.
Still, there were fewer Kerry and Democratic Party advertisements in that period than spots bought by President Bush and the Republican National Committee, and they ran in fewer states. Mr. Bush was advertising in 18 states.
What the Kerry campaign calls “reserving resources” Bush-Cheney strategist Matthew Dowd says shows “that [the Kerry campaign’s] options were narrowing.”
“They’re in a thread-the-needle strategy now,” Mr. Dowd said. “They wanted to expand the map into our states.”
But the battle is now largely in states that Vice President Al Gore won in 2000, with exceptions like Florida and Ohio. The spending data provides a snapshot of the campaigns’ thinking as they were forced to make tough decisions because their spending was now limited.
…
The spending cap has forced the campaigns to start picking and choosing where they will advertise, where they will send the candidates and his surrogates, and where they will concentrate on the so-called ground game of getting out the vote.
Television advertising is one of the most revealing measures of a campaign’s strategy.
“Where their advertising dollars are going is competitive and where they aren’t going, it’s not competitive,” said Kenneth M. Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which analyzed the Nielsen data.
And I thought Kerry was “a fighter.”
Poor Little Kitty
Wednesday, September 15th, 2004
It’s Wictory Wednesday
Wednesday, September 15th, 2004It’s Wictory Wednesday, help support candidates to strengthen the Republican majority in congress!
Leadership
Tuesday, September 14th, 2004Three years ago today, Bush visited Ground Zero. I remember watching it on TV. It was my senior year of college, and absolutely everything had changed because of what happened a few days earlier. I was definitely a supporter of our President before then, but I found myself inspired by leadership in the wake of 9-11 in a way that has since influenced many of my actions since, including starting this site to help him get reelected.
That being said, his leadership in those hours and days of uncertainty and fear were comforting, and I believe it had an impact on all of – certainly it did on me.
I remember learning that Bush would be visiting Ground Zero and was worried that it might not be the safest place for him to be, but I think it was important for him to be there.
We’d been glued to the TV for three days straight. In my apartment on campus we all watched the coverage, wanting to know everything that was going on.
Life certainly wasn’t normal those days, some of us wanted to see as much from our Commander-In-Chief as possible. We wanted to be reassured that he would rise to the occasion. He had told the nation that our resolve was being tested, and assured the world we would pass that test.
I can still hear him say those words today.
None of us knew what to expect of his visit to Ground Zero. We saw him on top of the rubble with the rescue workers, clinging to our seats, wondering what he was going to say to them.
It was clear some people couldn’t hear Bush speak, when someone finally shouted, “I can’t hear you,” Bush spoke into the bullhorn and said, “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
The rescue workers cheered. My roommates and I jumped from our chairs and cheered. The rescue workers began chanting “USA! USA! USA!” and we chanted with them.
I was beyond proud of our President that moment. For months he had been mocked by his adversaries for not being a “slick talker” and in this off-the-cuff moment, he said the right words that needed to be said, and just what everyone at Ground Zero and the rest of the nation needed to hear.
That moment is still with me today.
I am grateful George W. Bush was our president during such a turbulent time in our history. His steady leadership in times of change taught me a lot. Because of that, I am continuing to work as hard as I can to keep him in office for four more years.
Maybe Kerry Should Have Given Back His Medals
Tuesday, September 14th, 2004To be honest, I couldn’t give a damn about Kerry’s service in Vietnam - it has absolutely no bearing on his ability to be President. Liberals, Democrats, and Kerry “supporters” know this, and before Kerry locked the nomination, they even openly agreed with it. Kerry has spent his entire campaign avoiding the issues, and now, because he’s made Vietnam his campaign theme, it’s coming back to haunt him.
Besides the other allegations made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that have proven true, today, we learn that another Kerry lie alleged by the Swift Vets is based on truth.
For more than 30 years, Kerry has portrayed a heroic version of a life and death struggle — of staring down a suspected guerilla who was about to fire upon Kerry’s swift boat. It was kill. Or be killed. At least, that’s the version Kerry tells.
Eyewitnesses offer a far different account. They allege Kerry shot a wounded teenager retreating from battle.
Kerry has made public, hundreds of pages of official Navy documents to bolster his many claims. Conspicuous by its absence is the official after action report of what actually happened that day. The after action report written by John Kerry, himself.
In an exclusive, The Point has obtained this document from U.S. Navy archives (you can see it here). The pertinent section reads:
“PCF 94 beached in center of ambush in front of small path when Viet Cong sprung up from bunker 10 feet from unit. Man ran with weapon towards hootch. Forward M-60 machine gunner wounded man in leg. Officer-in-charge, LTjg Kerry, jumped ashore and gave pursuit while other units saturated area with fire and beached placing assault parties ashore. Kerry chased VC inland behind hootch and shot him while he fled — capturing one B-40 rocket launcher with round in chamber.”
So there you have it. The official record — written by John Kerry — supports what the critics have alleged rather than the John Wayne Kerry version the Massachusetts liberal has been telling.
Who served and how doesn’t tell us what kind of a leader you will be as President. However, 30+ years of lying about it, portraying yourself as a hero over embellishments and lies speaks volumes of ones character and moral clarity to lead a nation.
Can we talk about the real issues now?
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