Posted on 09/10/2004 5:32:10 AM PDT by MindBender26
Last I saw Estrich was the other day when she was explaining the "shake-up" in Kerry's campaign.
I couldn't believe that she kept referring to one new guy in the campaign as Kerry's "handler". She said he was to be with the candidate on the plane, and at all times to keep him on track.
Made it sound like Kerry was a circus animal or a "trained" dolphin (could have said poodle, but dolphin is also appropo.)
Can do
This should be a good one today
http://www.wabcradio.com/
This is their program and schedule page
http://www.wabcradio.com/programschedule.asp
Hey, I'm trying to eat my breakfast
Having once been in a print news organization (but not broadcast), I'd speculate there was huge discussion about this story at CBS before they ran with it. Its potential gravity would have gained the attention of many senior editors, several top reporters, and perhaps even the management heirarchy at CBS (as a heads-up, but not to engage in the editorial discussion).
It's inconceivable that at least a few of these folks wouldn't have raised red flags about the authenticy of the docs. Some might even have been professionally livid about the apparent lack of even rudimentary vetting.
It would have taken one or more big guns to make the decision to run with the story, and by big guns you'd have to include Rather, since it's his rep that's ultimately on the line.
So under this scenario (which experience tells me is realistic), Rather discarded even the most basic and rudimentary exercise of news judgement to run with this story.
One can only attribute such a flagrant oversight to one thing alone: he's going senile.
I'm not so sure about that.
Remember Mary Matalin in that campaign saying, "Others might call Bill Clinton a dope-smoking skirt-chasing womanizer, but we would never do that (paraphrased)."
It's a way of getting something 'out there' and disclaiming responsibility.
Bush 43 used it to masterful efect in the 2000 campaign by letting the networks complain endlessly as they ran stories and showed those right wing 'attack ads' (for free) night after night.
That dried up old dingbat's 15 minutes were over DECADES ago.
He's just another stuck-in-the 70's libretard with NO credibility among mammals high up on the food chain.
Do you remember when you said this?
"My Democratic friends are mad as hell, and they aren't going to take it any more.
They are worried, having watched as another August smear campaign, full of lies and half-truths, takes its toll in the polls.
They are frustrated, mostly at the Kerry campaign, for naively believing that just because all the newspapers and news organizations that investigated the charges of the Swift Boat assassins found them to be full of lies and half-truths, they wouldn't take their toll. The word on the street is that Kerry himself was ready to fire back the day the story broke, but that his campaign, believing the charges would blow over if they ignored them, counseled restraint.
But most of all, activists Democrats are angry. As one who lived through an August like this, 16 years ago -- replete with rumors that were lies, which the Bush campaign claimed they had nothing to do with and later admitted they had planted -- I'm angry, too. I've been to this movie. I know how it works. Lies move numbers."
Just curious.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1211690/posts
"Anatomy of a Forgery" The Prowler
Just look at the "news" reports which were spawned by that 60 Minutes program. Just look at the words which need to be taken back today. Just look at the writers who used this report to scream shrilly that Bush was worse than SKerry. I hope they have to swallow their words and let their readers know that they were influenced by a forgery.
Oops my post was for Ramsbotham.
McCauliffe is a sleezebag whose transparent face is obvious to all but himself. Carville and the slimiest of all, Carville's boy, Paul Begala also were very much aware of, if not directly responsible for these memos. Count on it.
Good post, but this is a little over the top. Let's see if the story has legs. Will anyone even mention it during the Sunday talk shows?
He kind of said, "This isn't serious it, is it?" asking his crew. Charles responsed with, "A major network attacking the credibility and honesty of the President of the United States and the documents they use end up being forgered? Yes, it's big!". Don, in his usual understatement said, "Well, yeah, I guess it is."
"The trouble with Democrats, traditionally, is that we're not mean enough. Dukakis wasn't. I wasn't. I don't particularly like destroying people. I got into politics because of issues, not anger. But too much is at stake to play by Dukakis rules, and lose again.
That is the conclusion Democrats have reached. So watch out. Millions of dollars will be on the table. And there are plenty of choices for what to spend it on. I'm not promising pretty.
What will it be?
Will it be the three, or is it four or five, drunken driving arrests that Bush and Cheney, the two most powerful men in the world, managed to rack up? (Bush's Texas record has been sealed. Now why would that be? Who seals a perfect driving record?)
After Vietnam, nothing is ancient history, and Cheney is still drinking. What their records suggest is not only a serious problem with alcoholism, which Bush but not Cheney has acknowledged, but also an even more serious problem of judgment. Could Dick Cheney get a license to drive a school bus with his record of drunken driving? (I can see the ad now.) A job at a nuclear power plant? Is any alcoholic ever really cured? So why put him in the most stressful job in the world, with a war going south, a thousand Americans already dead and control of weapons capable of destroying the world at his fingertips.
It has been said that in the worst of times, Kissinger gave orders to the military not to obey Nixon if he ordered a first strike. What if Bush were to fall off the wagon? Then what? Has America really faced the fact that we have an alcoholic as our president?
Or how about Dead Texans for Truth, highlighting those who served in Vietnam instead of the privileged draft-dodging president, and ended up as names on the wall instead of members of the Air National Guard. I'm sure there are some mothers out there who are still mourning their sons, and never made that connection. It wouldn't be so hard to find them.
Or maybe it will be Texas National Guardsmen for Truth, who can explain exactly what George W. Bush was doing while John Kerry was putting his life on the line. So far, all W. can do is come up with dental records to prove that he met his obligations. Perhaps with money on the table, or investigators on their trail, we will learn just what kind of wild and crazy things the president was doing while Kerry was saving a man's life, facing enemy fire and serving his country.
Or could it be George Bush's Former Female Friends for Truth. A forthcoming book by Kitty Kelly raises questions about whether the president has practiced what he preaches on the issue of abortion. As Larry Flynt discovered, a million dollars loosens lips. Are there others to be loosened? Are you shocked? Not fair? Who said anything about fair? Remember President Dukakis? He was very fair. Now he teaches at Northeastern University. John Kerry has been very fair in dealing with the Swift Boat charges. That's why so many of my Democrat friends have decided to stop talking to the campaign, and start putting money together independently. The arrogant little Republican boys who have been strutting around New York this week, claiming that they have this one won, would do well to take a step back. It could be a long and ugly road to November. "
Someone pass Ms. Estrich the salt. It'll go down easier...
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