Free Republic

“I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls,” Obama told me. “If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me, right? Because the way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak! I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that? “I guess the point I’m making,” he went on, “is that there is an entire industry now, an entire apparatus, designed to perpetuate this cultural schism, and it’s powerful. People want to know that you’re...

With all these bogus registrations being submitted by ACORN, it's possible that the pollsters are oversampling democrats without realizing that significant numbers of those "newly registered" dems are Mickey Mouse and the Dallas Cowboys. They try to predict what percentage of each party will show up based on registrations, don't they? Just askin', (or maybe deramin')

"Despite assumptions that globalization is destroying forests, these researchers argue that in many parts of the world globalization and the policies that go along with it are in fact helping to create them. Migration from rural areas to cities or other countries, new markets for forest commodities, and even war are helping in some places to bring trees back. In other places the demand for diverse and far-flung products like rubber, tea, and açaí fruit, for example, is transforming existing forests and the lives that depend on them, often in unexpected ways. Perhaps most surprisingly, archaeologists and ecologists have discovered...

“Incredible lies” was the way House Majority Leader Tom DeLay described charges that some foreign workers on Saipan labored in sweatshops in the 1990s while others were forced into sex slavery. DeLay’s vehement denials come despite findings by two federal agencies and by congressmen from both parties that the charges were true. So why would a social conservative defend the goings-on in the garment factories, restaurants and bars of an island 12,000 miles away from his Texas district, which includes a large portion of Galveston County? The answer involves ideology, politics and money — and it could play an important...

I can't help seeing a connection between the election and the "GI Joe" hoax. In 3 days, the Iraqi attitude toward the "insurgents" has gone from fear to defiance to ridicule (assuming the hoax is getting the play over there that it's getting here.) That can't be good for recruiting. Meanwhile, Iraq's police and army seem to have turned a corner as well, in the opposite direction.

Early Sunday morning (2-3 AM eastern, I think) I saw a report on CNN from Ms Amanpour which surprised me, considering the source. She said a group of terrorists had stolen an ambulance and were using it to throw grenades at voters, whereupon the voters stormed the ambulance, captured the occupants and turned them over to Iraqi police. I heard nothing further about it. Did anyone else see this? Is it true, or was it retracted later?

I think it was in Feb or March of '03. I searched Google and CNN, but only found passing references & opinion columns. I'm looking for a hard news article from the MSM, to convince a doubting family member.

While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios matched the Kerry/Bush vote, and so did the optically-scanned paper ballots in the larger counties, in Florida's smaller counties the results from the optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking - seem to have been reversed. In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in...

Minutes after a piece of concrete block was thrown through a window at the Alachua County Republican headquarters early this morning, a man was arrested and told officers he was upset about the election. The incident occured about 3:15 a.m. today at 1212 N. Main Street in the Gainesville Shopping Center, said Sgt. Keith Kameg of the Gainesville Police Department. He said two people were inside the building watching election returns and saw the man walk up and throw the block. The people, Nicholas Biltz, 27, and Katherine Vitale, 19, both of Gainesville, were not injured. "They gave a very...

Gainesville, FL - In an effort to win votes, in the critical swing state of Florida, the Kerry/Edwards team has volunteered to replace fired coach Ron Zook for the remainder of the season. "When I played football as a young man in Vietnam, I did not hesitate to beat the Bulldogs and I won't now. Floridians are tired of this failed Zook administration. They continued to call the wrong play at the wrong time in the wrong game. It's time for them to come clean with this Gator nation." When asked what he would do differently, however, the senator replied...

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/special/president/showdown/FL/polls.html also on RCP

See Kerry Spot

CSPAN isn't working too well, even though I have a DSL connection. Anybody know of another live link?

...Pat Oliphant, who appears in the Washington Post and many other newspapers, offered a cartoon showing the Swiftees as Bush-backing deadbeats sitting round a bar bitching: "I never seen Kerry do nothing hee-roic," says one loser. "Damn right," says another. "You and me was right there in latrine maintenance. We orta know." The redneck spelling's a nice touch, ain't it? I wonder which of the anti-Kerry campaign's 254 Swift vets, including 17 of Lieutenant Kerry's 23 fellow officers, Oliphant thinks were in latrine maintenance. Maybe he's got in mind fellows like Paul Galanti, who appears in the latest anti-Kerry ad...

It's clear the US sided with Iraq in the Iran/Iraq War, and with good reason. What's not clear, and what's been trumpeted by hysterical leftwing websites for a while now, is the extent to which the US provided so-called "dual-use" components to Iraq during this period. I can't find much mainstream history on this, only the aforementioned leftwing links, which uniformly attribute sinister motives to the US in these transactions. Their claim is that Saddam got chemical and bio weapons from us. Can anyone provide me with the other side of this story?

A brief online survey of several maintream news outlets reveals the following: CNN, WP, NY Times and USA Today have NO links to the sarin story on their homepages, one day afer the story broke. Among the stories deemed more important: cultural debate over strollers in Kenya, cell phone rules change, man loses finger at zoo. ABC News, Fox and The Washington Times have prominent feature links to the Sarin story.

Kerry's main Iranian fund raiser sues the Movement SMCCDI (Announcement) Apr 29, 2004 " To sin by silence, when we should protest, makes cowards out of men. The human race has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised against injustice, ignorance and lust, the inquisition yet would serve the law, and guillotines decide our least disputes. The few who dare, must speak and speak again, to right the wrongs of many..." - ( Ella Wheeler Wilcox ) The primary Iranian supporter of Senator John Kerry and a subject of many controversies, Hassan Nemazee, has sued the "Student Movement Coordination...

LOS ANGELES -- John Kerry is going to have to decide who he wants to be when he grows up politically. His post-primary campaign has been so dramatically unfocused and ineffectual that -- even as George Bush has taken more serious blows to his credibility than any sitting president since Richard Nixon in the first years of his second term -- Kerry has not been able to open up a lead nationally or in the essential battleground states. Kerry is making moves to muscle up his Democratic presidential candidacy, with a $25-million let's-make-some-introductions advertising campaign, an effort to sharpen his...

From "60 Minutes:" The president still believes with some conviction, that this was absolutely the right thing, that he has the duty to free people, to liberate people. And this was his moment,” says Woodward. But who gave President Bush the duty to free people around the world? “That's a really good question. The Constitution doesn't say that's part of the commander in chief's duties,” says Woodward. “That’s his stated purpose. It is far-reaching, and ambitious, and I think will cause many people to tremble.”

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/