Category — 2004 Election

Yesterday John Kerry implied that American troops are too stupid to get real jobs:

“Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard and do your homework and you make an effort to be smart you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Video is available here. Of course this shouldn’t surprise anyone since the man stepped on the backs of Vietnam Veterans to launch his political career.

John McCain responded today with this statement:

Senator Kerry owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country’s call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education. Americans from all backgrounds, well off and less fortunate, with high school diplomas and graduate degrees, take seriously their duty to our country, and risk their lives today to defend the rest of us in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

They all deserve our respect and deepest gratitude for their service. The suggestion that only the least educated Americans would agree to serve in the military and fight in Iraq, is an insult to every soldier serving in combat, and should deeply offend any American with an ounce of appreciation for what they suffer and risk so that the rest of us can sleep more comfortably at night. Without them, we wouldn’t live in a country where people securely possess all their God-given rights, including the right to express insensitive, ill-considered and uninformed remarks.

I’m sure liberals will be tempted to cry about how Kerry is being “swift boated” all over again but they would be wise to remember that McCain never supported the Swift Boat Veterans during the 2004 election.

As usual not a single prominent Democrat has called for Kerry to apologize to our troops.

Voters should remember that it was the Democrats who tried to toss military absentee ballots in the 2000 election and it is these same democrats who never find it in themselves to criticize one of their own when they go over the line.

From the can’t let it go file….

By DAVID HAMMER
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON

Sen. John Kerry didn’t contest the results at the time, but now that he’s considering another run for the White House, he’s alleging election improprieties by the Ohio Republican who oversaw the deciding vote in 2004.

An e-mail will be sent to 100,000 Democratic donors Tuesday asking them to support U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland for governor of Ohio. The bulk of the e-mail criticizes Strickland’s opponent, GOP Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, for his dual role in 2004 as President Bush’s honorary Ohio campaign co-chairman and the state’s top election official.

“He used the power of his state office to try to intimidate Ohioans and suppress the Democratic vote,” said Kerry’s e-mail.

Kerry, D-Mass., conceded the election when he lost Ohio and its 20 electoral votes. A recount requested by minor-party candidates showed Bush won by about 118,000 votes out of 5.5 million cast. But Kerry’s e-mail says Blackwell “used his office to abuse our democracy and threaten basic voting rights.”

Multiple lawsuits by outside groups were unsuccessful in challenging Ohio’s 2004 election. One case filed by the League of Women Voters is still in U.S. District Court in Toledo. It claims Ohio’s election system discriminates against minority voters.

Blackwell, who is black, says the election was run fairly, citing 1 million more votes cast than in 2000 and record turnout among black voters.

“People will say anything for money,” said Blackwell campaign spokesman Carlo LoParo. “Fortunately, the historical record contradicts Senator Kerry.”

Strickland spokesman Keith Dailey said the campaign welcomes Kerry’s support.

Give it up man.  it’s over.  You lost, he won. Try again if you must (that’s another post), but drop the “they fixed the election” drivel.  it’s not true, it’s not working, and no one cares!!!

It’s time for Sen. Kerry to Move on (.org)

The MSM is in anti-Bush overdrive and pulling out all the stops to push a Bush “Malaise” agenda that ousts the GOP majority come November. AND let’s face it, there is a feeling of malaise in America right now - Bush’s poll numbers are in the tank! But Democrats and their allies in the radical left-wing media might be popping the champagne corks a little early again. Consider this from May 2004:

The last time this many Americans disapproved of the direction of the United States it was November 1994, and the Republicans were about to take back the Congress after 40 years of domination by the Democrats.

These are the worst poll numbers of Mr. Bush’s presidency.

For those of you who didn’t follow the 2004 election, Sen. Kerry lost. While Bush and the GOP have a mountain to climb to keep Congress this mid-term, they’ve climbed it before. We all know the left has a habit of celebrating election results a little early. Why would 2006 be any different?

Hi everyone!!

I would like to say thank you for letting me be a guest blogger. I am very excited about this. I am an avid reader of many blogs and posted on many blogs but I have never been apart of a blog as a writer. I am looking forward to the experience.

Now about me. I am a born and raised NY’er. I love my state and I adore my city. I work in the city and live in the burbs.. the best of both worlds for me.

My fellow citizens annoy me to no end, but they are the best people in the world to me. I was at work on 9/11 and my fellow NY’ers were the people to be with at that time. We all chipped in and helped everyone and anyone who needed it. NY’ers are the best people in a difficult situation.

The city politics grates on my nerves but they are exciting and exasperating. I camp upstate NY, Rhinebeck, for the summer. And can I say, what a beautiful state I live in. Our NY mountains are breathtaking. That beauty allows me to enjoy my hobby, Astronomy. I am an avid amateur Astronomer. I have a great pair of binoculars that I used all the time. Last year I bought my first telescope. I have been having fun hunting thru the evening skies. I hope that you all don’t mind if I slip in an astronomy post every once in a while.

I am married and have 3 stepchildren. My stepson is in the Airforce and is currently stationed in Pensicola Florida. He is carrying on the fine tradition of his family… enlisting in the service to see the world… and never leaving the US. Three generations of stateside military men.

I have 2 dogs, pomeranians who are the little lights of my life. I dote on them and they are totally spoiled. I have had this affliction since childhood and I’m reconciled to treating my animals like kids.

Now for politics and related issues. I am an independent republican. I am surrounded by uber liberals and was the only one in my office who celebrated the consession speech by Mr. Kerry in the 2004 election. I do like President Bush for many reasons but I also have issues with a few of his policies - ie … border issues. I have written to him upon many occassions on my views.

I have written many letters to the editor in the NY daily news. I have had approx 20 letters published. I have written about things like the PTL scandal, the spat between NY & NJ over the statue of liberty, and various local issues (like Charlie Rangel.. ugh).

Feel free to send comments to cathymv@hotmail.com.

Thanks all
Cathy

You would think liberals would have learned to be careful when using Microsoft Word after the whole forged document fiasco before the 2004 election.

Apparently not!

RealClearPolitics tracked down an excellent quote from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) last night on Hardball:

“Well, I think this is the first time we’ve seen the specter of injecting religion in government and I find that very dangerous….Criticizing the court because you don’t agree with the decision I don’t think gets you anywhere. The courts are supposed to be independent. We’re supposed to do our job and they interpret what we do. If they find it unconstitutional, there’s room to appeal and go up to the Supreme Court. And that’s always been a final and respected judgment.

I would hate to see that change, because it’s really the first step toward doing away, I think, with or weakening a democracy that has been a very good thing for this nation over the past 200 years.”

I saw it - Matthews was actually very fair and showed footage of Kerry campaigning in black churches during the 2004 election. What Sen. Feinstein meant to say was that it’s only wrong for Republicans to mix politics and religion. As usual, the folks at RealClear read my mind:

…this is quite a revelation coming from a Senator whose party just spent four solid years trashing the Supreme Court. It’s a little hard for me to warm up to this newfound concern for the weakening of our democracy after Democratic party leaders and activists have made such a habit of running around waving a bloody shirt and calling President Bush illegitimate.

This is true on so many levels. If only the Supreme Court had let Gore steal the election - then, Democrats would have all their talking points straight. No word from Feinstein on whether or not Sen. Boxer’s “tears” the day the Ohio vote was certified weakened our democracy.

As NE Dilemma noted below, sore loser Senator Kerry is still whining about “voting irregularities” in the 2004 election. As usual he provides no evidence to back up his claims. If the Senator is so concerned with fair elections, maybe he should organize some hearings to look into the outright fraud in the Washington Governor’s race. Of course, I won’t be holding my breath!

Washington state has supplanted Florida as the leading example of the need for election reform. The Evergreen State’s voting system is so sloppy that you can’t tell where incompetence ends and actual fraud might begin. Three Washington counties just discovered 110 uncounted absentee ballots–including 93 from Seattle’s King County–in a governor’s race that occurred more than five months ago and was decided by only 129 votes. Officials in Seattle’s King County admit they may find yet more ballots before a court hearing next month on whether a new election should be called. Last Friday, they reported finding a 111th ballot.

The infamous 2004 governor’s race was finally decided seven weeks after the election, after King County officials found new unsecured ballots on nine separate occasions during two statewide recounts. After the new ballots were counted, Democrat Christine Gregoire won a 129-vote victory out of some three million ballots cast. Even as she was sworn in last January, King County election supervisor Dean Logan admitted it had been “a messy process.”

He wasn’t kidding. During the two recounts, Mr. Logan’s office discovered 566 “erroneously rejected” absentee ballots, plus another 150 uncounted ones that turned up in a warehouse. Evidence surfaced that dead people had “exercised their right to vote”; documentation was presented that 900 felons in King County alone had illegally voted and that military ballots were sent out too late to be counted. A total of 700 provisional ballots had been fed into voting machines before officials had determined their validity. In the four previous November elections, King County workers had never mishandled more than nine provisional ballots in a single election.

Slade Gorton, a Republican former state attorney general and U.S. senator, has joined with six Republican members of the King County Council in calling for a Justice Department investigation of the county’s handling of ballots. Records indicate that some election officials in King County knew that the absentee ballot report they filed in November was inaccurate because there was evidence at least 86 ballots had been misplaced. Ignoring the requirement that they count the number of ballots received, instead they simply added together the number counted and rejected.

“That’s appalling,” says Secretary of State Sam Reed, a Republican who has frequently drawn praise from Democrats for being evenhanded. “You just don’t do those things.” Even the office of Democratic County Executive Ron Sims admits that “an outside review is probably a good idea” if for no other reason than to address Republican suspicions about the 94 new King County ballots. GOP lawyers point out that two-thirds of the new votes were cast in King County precincts that Republican Dino Rossi won. Ms. Gregoire won seven in 10 King County precincts.

All of this means that the May 23 date set for a trial on a GOP lawsuit seeking to declare the election invalid and to hold a new one this November takes on added significance. Mr. Gorton points out that “a court [can] void any election where the number of illegal or mistaken votes exceeds the margin of victory.” In the case of last year’s race for governor the number of uncounted ballots unearthed just this April is fast approaching Ms. Gregoire’s margin of victory.

Read the rest here.

Former First Lady wannabe, Teresa Heinz, accused the Bush brothers of tampering with the 2004 election results so they could win:

“Two brothers own 80 percent of the machines used in the United States,” Heinz told a lunch for Seattle Rep. Adam Smith on Saturday, referring to the brothers as “hard right” Republicans….. She argued that it is “very easy to hack into the mother machines,” in quotes picked up by the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

Interesting that Teresa chose Seattle, Washington, the city where dead people turned out in huge numbers to elect Christine Gregoire governor, to trash Republicans as election thieves. She probably had too many mimosas with breakfast.

This edition of the link roundup includes links from last Saturday through Tuesday that I put aside but didn’t find time to post about. I’ll try and do another roundup tomorrow that catches up for the rest of the week.

• Despite liberal carping to the contrary, the NY Daily News reports that the Iraqi army is shaping up.
• On a related note, US News & World reports that the Iraqi Special Forces are becoming an elite fighting force that takes on the terrorists.
• The Washington Post says that since the election, more Iraqis are helping the police and army catch the terrorists in their midst. Remember, those elections never would have happened if Kerry and the other democrats had their way.
• The Weekly Standard reviews the Democrats’ week from hell. It is a good article with some funny lines thrown in. Here is the intro:
  

  In one comparatively short window of time, the Democrats managed to exhibit all of the class, grace, wisdom, presence, good sense, and strategic and tactical brilliance that had allowed them to move from absolute parity after the 2000 election to the loss of the House, Senate, and White House in the 2004 election, and left them apparently poised to lose even more.

• Michael Barone says George Bush is a transformative president.
• USA Today reports that Hollywood will finally acknowledge the War on Terror with positive movies and TV shows.
• Both Captain Ed and Michelle Malkin tell the truth about the democrat’s latest lie about how President Bush treats our veterans.
• Winds of Change has some questions for the anti-war crowd.
• Now for some satire. First we have this diary of the toy soldier kidnapped by terrorists last week.
• Last but not least, Iowahawk says “what happens in Davos, stays in Davos”.

The all knowing Polipundit breaks downs John Kerry’s performance on Today’s Meet the Press with lying leftist Tim Russert. It should also be noted that Kerry claimed to support parental consent on abortion - another outright LIE.

How will Kerry voters ever justify pulling the lever for this scumbag? The fact that Kerry still thinks he has a shot in 2008 shows how politically clueless he is. The GOP should punish Democrats for running such a schill by pushing Gov. Mitt Romney for President in 2008. Romney, another New England Republican, could bring dignity back to the state of Massachusetts and embarrass Democrats on their own turf. The irony in that scenario would be priceless.

Update by N.E. Republican: This quote from a NY Post editorial is dead on:

If anyone had any doubts about the wisdom of U.S. voters in keeping Kerry out of the White House, he provided it himself yesterday — in spades.

In an article, under the above title, at National Review Online today the editors of that magazine join in what has become an all too fashionable a criticism on the right: that the President’s Inaugural Address was rather too, to use their word, “unmodulated” at times. They write in the first paragraph that

the misunderstanding of the press corps was such that administration officials had immediately to give background briefings to say, “No, we aren’t going to cut off every undemocratic government on earth from relations with the United States.”

And they end with a final paragraph, which I read as kindly meant expectation lowering

Let us return to the example of Reagan. He too spoke with passion about the spread of freedom around the globe and harbored unrealistic visions — in his case, the elimination of all nuclear weapons. As it turned out, he fell short of these dreams. For the most part, he “only” spread freedom to the Soviet empire and some of its Third World outposts. And in collapsing the Soviets, he “only” made the threat of nuclear armageddon a thing of the past instead of abolishing nuclear arms altogether. But in those accomplishments he made the world a better place and the U.S. safer. If Bush “only” begins to transform the Middle East, he too will have an honored place in the history books. And the debate over his inaugural speech will seem so much nit-picking.

With the greatest respect it’s so much nitpicking now. And there wasn’t any “misunderstanding” by the press corps in the first place.

The left and the MSM are just setting themselves up to play their usual, intellectually dishonest game of gotcha. They know no-one is claiming that liberty will come to the world in a straight line, or even a monotonic one. And they know the President isn’t declaring the attempt to make that happen as his policy. But that won’t stop them pretending that every deviation from head-on confrontation with every lapse by anyone, anywhere is a mark of hypocrisy, inconsistency and self-evident failure.

They’ve already started, with the Washington Post in a simply dreadful news report (see Ed Morissey’s take to save yourself the pain) and its eminent columnist, E.J.Dionne in one of the worst articles of them all, in the vanguard. Now is a time for pouring scorn on the disingenuousness to which the left has been reduced, not joining the chorus.

Here are today’s links:

• No list would be complete today without a link to President Bush’s Inauguration Address. I won’t get a chance to read or see it until this evening but I am sure one of us will post more about it later.
• “Why the Democrats Keep Losing“, from the January edition of Commentary Magazine, gives an excellent review of the 2004 election. I thought this excerpt was especially fitting for today:
  

  But in November 2004, the fact that Bush’s second term would now be legitimate beyond any doubt seemed only to compound the hatred. Several of the President’s detractors hastened to suggest that his relatively narrow margin of victory—amounting to 3 percent of the popular vote—should not be taken as a “mandate.” Whether they would have said the same had Bush’s Democratic opponent won by a like amount is doubtful.

  The New York Times, for example, has regularly questioned the presence of a mandate in recent elections—but only when the winner has been a Republican. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan bested incumbent President Jimmy Carter by 10 percentage points, the paper’s editors observed that his “mandate,” a word they themselves put in suspicion-arousing quotation marks, had “little policy content,” a position they reiterated four years later when Reagan won reelection over Walter Mondale by a whopping 18 percentage points (a “lonely landslide” and “a personal victory with little precise policy mandate”). Nor could the 8-point victory by Bush’s father over Michael Dukakis “fairly be called a mandate,” asserted the paper in 1988.

  Whenever a Democrat has won, by contrast, the Times has perceived things differently. After Bill Clinton’s first victory (by 6 percentage points) in 1992, the editors commented: “The test now will be how quickly President-elect Clinton can convert his mandate into momentum.” When he won reelection (by 8 points) in 1996, it repeated the thought—“There can be no question about his mandate”—and added a little civics lesson: “The American people express their clearest opinion about what they want government to do through their choice of chief executive.”

• Don’t miss this article from a Lieutenant Colonel in Iraq. He does a great job of criticizing the media’s biased coverage of Iraq.
• Anchor Rising scored an interview with the Boston Globe’s lone conservative columnist, Jeff Jacoby.

Sticking Together

Democrats are more united than Republicans on base issues. But can progressives mount an effective opposition to the Rove machine?
by Eleanor Clift

They’ve got to be kidding! How on earth can Newsweek subhead Eleanor Clift’s article with such a piece of utter nonsense. “More united?” “on base issues?” The Democrats were split right down the middle on the war on terror and the war in Iraq, in contrast to the Republicans impressive unity. Are there any issues that are more “base?” Well, actually, there are, at least to the progressives for whom and about whom she’s really writing. Which, of course, is a major part of their party’s problem. Because, where they’re united with each other, they’re dramatically disunited from a large majority of the American people. What the Democrats actually need is an effective opposition to the progressives.

In the same week CNN’s “Crossfire” went off the air, the sparring shifted to the Capitol with Democrats forcing a historic debate over the 2004 election returns. Compare that to four years ago, when every Democratic senator sat silently as members of the Congressional Black Caucus challenged the voting results. Without a single senator to vouch for them, the complaint went unheeded and Vice President Al Gore certified an election everybody knew was rife with irregularities.

There was no sparring, there was no forcing, there was no historic debate. All that happened was a few loony left members of the House and one moonbat senator took advantage of rules devised for a different age to do a little either pure posturing or, worse, dishonest electioneering. In the senate only the moonbat voted in support of her objection to the Ohio electors. Ironically and deliciously the first Democratic speaker after her, himself a few departments short of a full store, simply and effectively decried the whole exercise. The only Republican speaker, appropriately from Ohio, contented himself with expressing what every sane and honest person in the nation felt: this was ridiculous futility, a waste of time, a discourtesy, another demonstration of the sheer lack of seriousness of the Democratic Party.

And that’s just the first paragraph. I was intending to go on, but the football just started and there’s a Rogue Imperial Ale to be sampled. Apart from which, you don’t need any help with this one, this is fisking 101 - no prior experience needed. But it is worth a read, because it neatly summarizes what is so deeply wrong with what is supposed to be the left’s thought leadership. Paragraph after paragraph is chock full of inaccuracy, misrepresentation and comment that leaves one with only the alternatives of incipient insanity or deliberate dishonesty as explanations for what is driving the writer.

Read it and, if you’re from the right, you’ll laugh. If you’re from the left, you’ll cry. If you don’t, check yourself in or get yourself a new source of news and opinion.

It is sad to observe of course, but the left still has a mindset formed by their former membership in the “Americong,” {remember, the domestic, self stylized, counterpart to the Vietcong}.

In my previous piece, “Jitters,” I did not include an analysis on the DOMESTIC consequences of the Iraqi election, because to do so would seriously lengthen the piece. And it is a subject that whole volumes could be written on. But the Democrats are between the proverbial rock and a hard place. For by their rhetoric they deem Allawi a puppet, a mere thing conjured up by power tripping neocons, {Jews…??? there is the antisemitic undercurrent here as well}. With Allawi they brand this entire new regime fraudulent and illegitimate. Any election resulting in a new and free government, which then ASKS the USA to remain and help them form a permanent free society puts the Democrats in a tough spot.

If the Dems say yes we will help the new Iraqi government, and stand shoulder to shoulder with them in this war, that means first they ACKNOWLEDGE there is a real live war going on out there, not one just conjured up by “Bushworld,” not some faux war made up to benefit the Republicans and Halliburton. Were the Democrats to do that, it is tantamount to supporting the war after the fact, if not before. Such an answer, even if belatedly given, puts them behind the WAR, makes them a proponent of the policy for the WAR, AND allies them with President Bush, {and the neocons too}. Such a position is ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE to VAST segments of their pacifist, 60s nostalgic base. Also, that position puts them at odds with many liberal columnists and the entire MSM, who the Democrats heavily rely upon, {as we all saw in the past election}. The MSM however, ALREADY has a vested interest in this entire campaign failing, and ignominiously failing. Those writers and pundits who predicted failure, have their egos and reputations on the line. That means they have a vested interest in failure, just as many of them did in Vietnam. I would like to say that they would put the interests of their country before themselves, but did their counterparts during Nam. Besides, this raises the whole issue of whether the MSM see themselves as an “American” news source, or whether they see themselves as existing above and apart from the country, dispensing news with supreme “objectivity” from some rarified height.

If on the other hand, the Democrats say to the NEW government, freely elected, with a mandate for action, if they say “NO, we don’t want to help you, and we aren’t going to help you fend off these assassins, and if you fall into sectarian violence, it does not concern us” to say that SHATTERS, COMPLETELY SHATTERS any remaining claim to being the party at the forefront of the struggle for human dignity and human rights. It shatters any claim to being concerned with the plight of women the world over, and reveals any feminist pretensions to be just that, a fraud, masquerading a sick fixation on one issue, abortion. Furthermore, it will forever, and I mean forever destroy any claim the Dems could make to being responsible on National Security. To bail out on this war means putting the safety of this country into the hands of the UN, into the hands of creatures like Kofi Anan. That too was what the past election was about.

The most recent election saw Democrats trying desperately to hide this internationalist attitude from the American people. That “global test” line from Kerry was not inadvertent, but Freudian. That is what he believed, and has believed for a long time, stretching back to Nam. And he is not alone in that party. The war pits Democrat against Democrat, which is why people like Zell Miller find themselves in agreement with someone as different as former NY Mayor Ed Koch. Here we see a Southern Conservative, and an old school New York Liberal, yet they see eye to eye on the supreme challenge of our times, and put their money where their mouth was by supporting President Bush, and not John Kerry, the titular leader of their party, the Democrat standard bearer. Lieberman faltered, and could not bring himself to support the President, he is still deluding himself that there is a Democrat third way, still trying to restore some vigor in the former Scoop Jackson wing of the party. News flash Joe, its dead and gone.

There is a reason that the domestic critics of the President seem even more determined than the enemy to STOP these elections, the Democrat party is on the verge of a division not seen since Nam. This split between Koch and Miller on one side, and the vast anti national security wing on the other, reveals but a portion of the demarcation going on. It is like the political equivalent to the biblic separation of the wheat, from the chaff. The leadership of that party is going to have to make decisions that cannot be papered over. The war ignites passions in that party not seen since the days of LBJ. But the war is a supreme challenge of our time, its stakes cannot be calculated. This is not like Vietnam whose justifications were offered in terms of “loss of creditibilty,” or the fear of “dominoes” toppling, one after a South East Asian other. This war flows from the events of 9/11.

It is indeed as Mayor Koch said, “the Democrats don’t have the stomach for this fight.” They want to fight the battle for abortion, for affirmative action, for homosexual courtship followed by nuptial, they want to fight the battle for socialized medicine, for the regulatory, heavily, bureaucratic state, they want to fight the battle for a progressive tax code, they want to struggle for increasing the powers of the UN. But one trenchline they can’t bring themselves to enter, is the one in the Great War on Terror. They can’t look their muslim enemy dead in the eye, and pull the trigger. They don’t have the stomach to let the trigger pullers, go out there and pull those triggers. From war, they run in post modern horror. It is almost as if they believe, that if they support this war, they have turned their back on the Enlightment. Their fervent secularism reveals them, as post christian, post modern and post heroic.

It is indeed as Mayor Koch said, they simply don’t have it in ‘em anymore.

Rossi leads by 74 votes with just three counties remaining. The hypocrisy of the MSM is unbelievable. There is no way a Republican would ever get away with trying to steal an election.

As I have mentioned before, a Gregoire win carries risks for Washington Dems, especially Sen. Maria Cantwell. Rossi could make the race competitive, but I won’t get my hopes up - Washington state has little judgement when electing senators. They just sent back Sen. Patty Murray (aka the “dimmest bulb” in the senate) in spite of her comments praising Osama Bin Laden’s “charitable works.” Washington voters seem more concerned with their right to a partial birth abortion than electing leaders with common sense and ethics.