Bush calls for all outside ads to stop
Reuters story on YahooNews:
President Bush on Monday called for ads attacking John Kerry's record
in Vietnam to be stopped along with others run by independent groups,
and said Kerry should be proud of his war service.
"That means that ad and every other ad," Bush said when asked if he
wanted to bring a stop to commercials by a group called Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth, which accuse Sen. Kerry of lying about his war
record in Vietnam.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth followed up with their own statement [LINK
to WashingtonTimes article]
"It is
not a Republican or Democratic issue. If John Kerry was a Republican,
the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth would still run this ad."
New Bush ad: Kerry’s Yucca
[LINK
to ad] Today, Bush-Cheney '04 announced the release of the
campaign's newest television advertisement, "Kerry's Yucca." The new
advertisement highlights the divide between John Kerry's rhetoric and
his voting record on the issue of a nuclear repository at Yucca
Mountain. "Kerry's Yucca" will run in selected markets in Nevada.
The following is a transcript from the new ad:
Script: "Kerry's Yucca"
President Bush:
I'm George W. Bush and I approve this message.
Voice Over:
Listening to John Kerry, you'd think he'd been against Yucca Mountain
his entire career.
But Kerry voted to establish the nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain.
Kerry voted 7 times to make it easier to dump waste at Yucca and said,
"A repository for nuclear waste could be established there and be made
functional by 2015."
He even tried to speed shipment of nuclear waste from Massachusetts to
Yucca.
There's what Kerry says and then there's what Kerry does...
New
John Kerry Book:
A Child’s Eye View of John Kerry
It may not rival the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth book “Unfit for
Command,” but the new book out on John Kerry does promise to make you
laugh. Here’s the scoop, straight from the Ebay item for sale: [link
to book on Ebay]
“Brand new and hot off the presses!
"A Child's Eye View of John Kerry"
by Dougie is an illustrated humorous children's book
that creatively and mercilessly mocks John Kerry, his phony campaign,
and his dubious history. The book is for adults but is rated G and
is suitable for children.
It is written from the perspective of an irrepressible elementary
school boy who is looking at John Kerry in disbelief and wonders why
in the world anyone with even half a brain would be foolish enough to
vote for this man.
Some of the highlights (or lowlights, as it were) include Kerry voting
YES before voting NO, claiming it was his family's SUV, throwing the
ball like a girl at Fenway Park, being a ketchup boy gigolo for his
loony wife who told a reporter to shove it, and other amusing true
anecdotes about the man who helped the commies win in Vietnam. Yes,
Kerry is the candidate of choice for the Germans, the cheese-eating
surrender monkeys, and Osama bin Laden himself. In fact, if bin Laden
could sneak into Dade County, Florida, he would cast several votes for
his guy.”
Swiftees’ October surprise?
Dr. Jack Wheeler --
ToThePointNews.com -- says he’s got a scoop of devastating
proportions:
All indications are that the Swiftees’
offensive against Hanoi John is severely damaging the Kerry/Edwards
candidacy. The television ads by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and
the #1 bestseller on Amazon, Unfit For Command, have credibly
assaulted the basis for Kerry’s campaign: that his self-proclaimed
status as a “war hero” during 4 months in Vietnam qualify him to be
President of the United States.
However… in the famous words of Al Jolson: “You
ain’t heard nothin’ yet.” The Swiftees have prepared an October
Surprise for Hanoi John that is going to blow his candidacy out of the
water. I can’t tell you what it is, but I can tell you the television
and radio ads have already been taped, and they are going to have an
impact like an elephant sitting on a donkey.
The Swiftees have three things in abundance:
money, brains, and balls. They know exactly how to go for the jugular,
they have the dough to do it, and they are saving their best shot for
last. The Democrats will not know what hit them and will not know how
to retaliate. Get set folks. The Kerry Train Wreck is not going to be
a pretty sight.
Kerry campaign won’t
fire MoveOn staffer
This just in from
NewsMax.com:
The Kerry campaign is gloating this weekend over the resignation of
Bush Cheney volunteer, former Vietnam War POW Ken Cordier, who's
featured in the latest Swiftboat ad - saying it proves illegal
coordination between the Swiftvets' 527 group and the official Bush
campaign.
But Kerry has no plans to fire Zach Exley, a key campaign staffer who
served as the organizing director for MoveOn.org throughout the
presidential primaries. What's more, MoveOn, whose sole mission is to
defeat President Bush in November, maintains that Exley is allowed to
"communicate" with the 527 group even as he works for the Democratic
nominee.
"Col. Cordier did not inform the campaign of his involvement in the
advertisement," the Bush campaign said in a statement late Saturday.
"Because of his involvement [in the ad] Col. Cordier will no longer
participate as a volunteer for Bush-Cheney '04."
But there's no doubt that Kerry knew all about Exley's background when
he hired him.
In April the Kerry for President Web site proudly announced: "Zach
Exley joins the [Kerry] Internet team as Director of Online
Communications and Online Organizing. He was previously the director
of special projects for the MoveOn.org."
Exley claims he won't communicate with MoveOn until after the
election, but when he teamed up with Kerry, MoveOn's executive
director, Eli Pariser, acknowledged that Exley will be able to make
use of "what he's got in his head."
And a statement issued by MoveOn when Exley signed on with team Kerry
insisted, "federal election rules permit some forms of communication"
between Exley and the liberal 527.
As for the ideas that Exley has "got in his head" and will now be
sharing with the Kerry campaign, his past credits include a political
parody site that portrayed Bush as a crack user.
Character counts
Michael Barone, in today’s
U.S. News, writes of Kerry’s Christmas in Cambodia story and
concludes:
Character counts. On the Christmas story (which even the
pro-Kerry New York
Times admits Kerry has not "put to rest"), perhaps Kerry was
just confused about dates, or perhaps he convinced himself that an
untrue story was true, as people sometimes do, and had no intent to
mislead. A more unsettling possibility is that he consciously leapt
the bounds of truth to make his experience seem more spectacular or to
score political points. Those are not the sort of things most people
want in a president.
Will Kerry's evidently untrue statements about Christmas in Cambodia
raise doubts about his as-yet-uncorroborated stories about later
Cambodian missions? Will they undermine his credibility and bolster
the charges of his swift boat critics? Not clear. Most of Kerry's boat
mates testify to his heroism; most of those serving on other swift
boats in the unit take a different view. So far as I know, all served
honorably and are entitled to respectful attention; some may have
political motives, in both directions. Battlefield memories inevitably
and understandably differ. But character counts in presidents, and
some of Kerry's statements over the years -- not all, but some --
count against his character.
Village Voice’s Hentoff:
Kerry war records coverup
NewsMax.com’s Steve Walzberg reports that the left-wing
publication “Village Voice” is sounding the alarm regarding John
Kerry’s refusal to release all his military records through columnist
Nat Hentoff:
Longtime civil libertarian and columnist for the left-wing Village
Voice, Nat Hentoff charged Sunday that the Kerry campaign is engaged
in a transparent cover-up of the Massachusetts Democrat's war record
and an attempt to muzzle freedom of speech.
In an interview with WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg, Hentoff noted that
the Pentagon has responded to a Washington Post Freedom of Information
Act request for Kerry's full military file by turning over just six
pages of their 100-plus page Kerry dossier, with a spokesman
explaining that Kerry himself wouldn't authorized the release of the
full file. Kerry has also refused to turn over diaries that the
candidate kept during his Vietnam service, with the campaign insisting
that an exclusive agreement with Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley for
his 2003 book "Tour of Duty" prevents any further disclosure.
But Hentoff said he wasn't buying that excuse, telling Malzberg, "I
have done biographies of John Cardinal O'Connor and A.J. Muste and
I've never heard of that kind of agreement."
"The question is, what is Kerry trying to hide?" said the Village
Voice writer. "He claims he's interested in the truth. If he's
interested in the truth, then release the records."
Hentoff said he's astounded at the media's response to the Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth, whose eyewitness accounts have catapulted the
issue of Kerry's war record to the top of the campaign agenda.
"I can't recall ever seeing such distortion of the motivations and the
witnessing of these more than 200 Vietnam veterans," he complained.
Of Kerry's efforts to muzzle the Swiftvets by threatening lawsuits
against TV stations who carry their ads, Hentoff said, "This tells you
something about how a President Kerry is going to handle dissent."
MSNBC: the other Kerry persona
Referring to the newest Swift Boat Veterans for Truth TV ad (featuring
John Kerry’s testimony excerpts from his 1971 Senate Foreign Relations
Committee Hearing testimony), writer Tom Curry of MSNBC News dishes up
some reality: [LINK
to story]
Kerry built much of his campaign persona on the image of being a
Vietnam combat veteran. The Democratic convention in Boston last month
was a celebration of Kerry’s four months in Vietnam.
But Kerry never gave equal time — or any time at all in his ads — to
his other identity as an anti-war crusader who said Americans had
"personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads..."
Referring to Kerry’s come-from-behind win in the January Iowa
Caucuses, Curry writes:
He did not remind voters in Iowa that he told senators in his
testimony that those alleged war crimes were “not isolated incidents
but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of
officers at all levels of command.”
Curry quotes Denver pollster Floyd Ciruli as saying:
Ciruli said that since the new Swift Boat ad uses Kerry’s own voice,
it is more powerful than the first one and undermines his determined
efforts to woo voters who are military veterans. "I see this as a big
problem for him," he said.
He draws
an intriguing parallel: “To the extent the Michael Moore documentary
has power, it has less to do with hearsay and more to do with Bush’s
own presence on the screen.” So too, he said, with the new Swift Boat
ad.
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