Scott Hennen was sent this photo of Kerry in Iraq shortly before Christmas (go to link for full sized pic and entire story).
The photo comes from a soldier currently serving in Iraq who relates that Kerry dined alone, worked out in the gym alone and even canceled a press conference because no one came. In the midst of hundreds of those who should be his "comrades in arms", Kerry was shunned.
Guess that's what happens after a career of calling your comrades murderers, baby killers and uneducated morons.
Hat Tip to non-blogging Advised by Wolves.
Updated: There has been some questions about the authenticity of the photo. Michelle Malkin chased down a number of leads and exploded each in turn, and gathered more information from the troops on the scene. Bottom line is that the photo is "real and accurate":
If you believe the disputed Kerry photo was taken in England in January 2006, then you must also believe that: (a) Kerry wore the same shirt in England as he did in Iraq 11 months later; (b) the U.K mess hall had Christmas decorations hanging from its ceiling two weeks after Christmas Day, (c) those decorations were identical to those hung 11 months later in the American Embassy in Baghdad, and (d) the U.K. mess hall has the same lights as the American Embassy in Baghdad.
Kerry Watch: The hubris of a billionaire's self defense fund.
Economy Watch: US Steelmakers are expecting robust demand for the rest of the year, making it the third year in a row that demand has remained strong.
Tax Watch: It looks like Republican lawmakers will succeed in extending some of the tax cuts for another year or two.
UN Watch: U.N. peacekeepers, aid workers and teachers are having sex with Liberian girls as young as 8 in return for money, food or favors.
MSM Watch: The New York Times has once again been caught plagerizing.
Illegal Alien Watch: An Arizona sheriff is using an old tactic to find and arrest those entering our country illegally: posses.
Health Watch: Cancer resistant mice have been discovered. "When white blood cells from the mice are injected into other mice, they eradicate advanced tumours and provide lifetime protection against the disease. ... Even highly aggressive forms of malignancy with very large tumours were eradicated."
Looney Watch: PETA has launched an ad campaign in which PETA President and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk is quated as saying, "Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we'd be against it." [One supposes the same goes for cancer.]
Fun Facts for Lefties: Fidel Castro is apparently worth $900 million and ranked seventh on the Forbes magazine list of wealthy heads of state.
The Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation is a plaintiff along with Red, White, and Blue Productions, and Vietnam veteran turned journalist Carlton Sherwood, in a defamation action against current Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and Tony Podesta, who was Kerry's Pennsylvania campaign manager.The lawsuit, filed in Philadelphia, claims that Kerry and Podesta libeled, slandered, and caused financial harm to the plaintiffs as they sought to prevent the presentation of Sherwood's documentary movie Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal before the 2004 presidential election. ...
This may be the first time in American history that a presidential candidate was sued for actions taken by him and his campaign during an election. It may also be the first time that an antiwar activist was sued, if only tangentially, for allegations made about American military personnel.
“Ridiculous,” snorted a former CIA station chief from neighboring Laos, “That is the equivalent of delivering arms to the Viet Cong.” Robert Turner, an expert on North Vietnamese and Vietcong affairs at the embassy in Saigon at the time and now a professor at the University of Virginia says: “Kerry has gone delusional. This is hilarious.” When Kerry was in Vietnam in 1969 the estimate of Khmer Rouge strength was only 2500. They would have been hard to find, much less deliver weapons to, scattered around a country of 10 million almost the size of Oklahoma.There's more.
But more stunning is this statement:
"I won the youth vote. I won the independent vote. I won the moderate vote."Yeah, but you lost:
What a loser!
John Kerry is filing papers in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio in support of a recount effort in that state, reports Truthout.Update: Say Anything has more on this topic.At the center of the Kerry filing are motions to preserve and discover – expeditiously – information regarding the Triad Systems voting machines used in Election 2004.
No apology from the Senator has been forthcoming.
VETERANS’ DAY
How liberals do defy the mind
For nothing in theirs’ can we find,
That willingly will look with reason
At how their man committed treason,
Skulked off to Paris this effete
To grovel at the Madame’s feet,
Betraying his sworn officer’s oath
To become the turncoat we so loathe.
Our law is clear you shall not treat
With America’s foes nor their cadres meet;
Give aid nor comfort to enemy forces
Nor espouse a view from hostile sources.
Without a mandate from the state
Wherefrom your right to negotiate?
Was treason, John, and is treason still
To this very day your unpaid bill.
Don’t try to hide behind your youth.
You knew the law you knew the truth.
You knew your faux negotiation
Would further tear our war-torn nation
And all for what, John, your career
So you can shameless brazen here,
And claim now that you’re fit to lead
The very nation you made bleed?
And yet before us there you stand
With medals blazing you demand
Such treachery we must ignore
Your treason that lost us our war.
But hold on, John, we veterans say,
You had your turn, now comes our day.
You thought we slept, forgot your crime?
Oh no, John boy, it’s come our time.
Some say let you apologize
But that won’t do it in our eyes.
A man astride of each position
Could we believe your true contrition?
The vindication we’ll accept
In settling up this long-held debt,
Is each of us will do his best
To deny you, John, your lifelong quest.
Listen carefully John to what we say, November 2d is Veterans’ Day.
Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66
I have lost count of the number of times I have heard "not a mandate" in the last 12 hours. They clutch this tired rhetoric to their chest like a tattered battle flag, torn, dirty, dropped in the heat of a lost battle, but now recovered and serving as a symbol of their hoped-for relevance.
I find it fascinating that the party that so consistently celebrates diversity bemoans the fact that we don't all agree, but I digress.
It's time for Democrats to take a step back and evaluate what really happened.
On November 2nd, Americans:
Yet Democrats insist that Republicans in general and Bush in particular do not have a mandate from the American people. They say that the country is "deeply divided" -- more divided than ever.
This leads one to wonder just what is a "clear mandate"? How often has it been achieved? Just how united have we been in days past?
Since the popular vote started being recorded in 1824 there have been 46 elections (before that, only electoral votes were cast). Of those before the current election year, only 22 (roughly half) have been won with a larger margin than that of President Bush in 2004. The remaining 23 were won by even slimmer margins than the 51.4% achieved by the president yesterday.
Click graph for larger image
Clearly, the country has been divided throughout the history of this little federal republic experiment of ours. If you do better than half of the elections before you, you'd think that was a mandate. Perhaps Democrats don't, so just what is that magic number?
How about 55%? Would that be a "mandate"?
In our history there have been just 13 elections won by a margin of 55% or more, so less than a third of our elections fit into this category.
Can a country be effectively governed if the president can set the agenda only a third of the time? Maybe Democrats think so, but I certainly don't.
So the next time you are talking to some media-puppet who starts spouting Democrat talking points, explain to him or her just how divided this nation usually is. When they begin talking about how contentious todays politics are, invite them to do a little reading and educate themselves. And when they say Bush does not have a mandate, ask them who did. If you get anything other than gibberish or a blank stare please drop me a line. I'd really like to know.
Just for informational purposes, there have only been four elections in which the winner took 60% or more of the popular vote. All happened in the 20th Century spanning the years from Harding to Nixon.
Query: do you think Democrats thought Nixon had a mandate?
Data (including charts) in Excel 2003 format.
Data sources:
Update: Watcher of Weasels addresses this subject rather effectively with Mandate This!
Update: James Taranto notes that Bush received a higher percentage of the popular vote than any Democrat candidate for president has received in 40 years.
Update: Outside the Beltway theorizes that the markets are up today because of relief that the whole mess is over with, but if that were true then why the drop yesterday?
Investors know who is going to be more business friendly, who will reduce the tax burden (and who will increase it), and who will not call for over-regulation.
This seems to be repeated across the nation. Even though blue states remain blue and red states remain red, the popular vote will go to Bush because of the margin of victory in each state. Which should shut down any talk of "mandate".
But the DNC in Jersey appears to be making phone calls using Schwarzkipf's name with the implication that it is the retired general making the call:
"In 2000, I voted for George W. Bush, but this year I'm voting for John Kerry." The man goes on to say that Bush took his eye off the ball when it came to finding the people responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, which killed nearly 700 New Jersey residents.Schwarzkopf released a statement today saying the the DNC were making fraudulent phone calls and demanded that they stop."John Kerry has a real plan to make our military stronger and to go after terrorists wherever they hide," the man says on the tape. "We need a vote for change, a vote for John Kerry."
When you can't get the domestic endorsements and the foriegn endorsements seem to be hurting you, I guess you start making stuff up.
I'm betting this has the same effect as similar attempts to meddle in our political process: very little. Or, as one American responded a Brit who got his email via the Guardian:
“Real Americans aren't interested in your pansy-ass, tea-sipping opinions,” came one of many animated responses. “If you want to save the world, begin with your own worthless corner of it.”Right on.
A nice sentiment and one that I share, with one caveat.
If Kerry takes the oath of office in January (whether I am convinced that he won or was put there through litagtion, disenfranchisement of military votes, and or massive voter fraud) he will be my president as soon as he signs a Standard Form 180 and I know that he was not given a dishonorable discharge from the military for having performed treason against his country.
The evidence is mounting. First we found out about the ties between the communist regieme in Vietnam and the anti-war effort spearheaded by Kerry and his comrades. Now an ex-JAG officer rather convincingly questions the circumstances surrounding Kerry's departure from the military (and if this were about Bush the MSM would be all over it, but it's not and they're not).
I have suffered under poor presidents in the past (egads, how did Carter ever happen?) and will do so again. I will not call a traitor my leader. Ever.
A Kerry advisor issued this admonishment to PM Howard, "I would remind Australians that the same applies at home. Such comments about our politics are a little inappropriate."
Kerry has not, in turn, admonished his advisor. His continued silence is equivalent to approval of a policy statement, and thus if elected Kerry will already have damaged relations with one of our biggest allies before he has even taken the oath of office.
But such behavior is not surprising as it rather resembles French President Chirac's statement that representives of other countries in the EU had "missed a good chance to shut up".
John Kerry's stepson, Chris Heinz, 31, displayed his mother Teresa's famous lack of rhetorical restraint at a recent campaign event with a group of Wharton students.Philadelphia magazine reports: "Heinz accused Kerry's opponents - 'our enemies' - of making the race dirty. 'We didn't start out with negative ads calling George Bush a cokehead,' he said, before adding, 'I'll do it now.' Asked later about it, Heinz said, 'I have no evidence. He never sold me anything.'"
Heinz also reminded writer Sasha Issenberg of Pat Buchanan by saying, "One of the things I've noticed is the Israel lobby - the treatment of Israel as the 51st state, sort of a swing state." Buchanan was blasted as an anti-Semite years ago when he cited Israel's "amen corner" in Congress.
Another display of meaningless French presumptuous misbehavior. I wonder if the voters in Ohio are listening?
The paper suggested that was why the president's official biographers never traced the family tree beyond 1850....I've got news for the French: I think the vegitarian vote went to Kerry a long, long time ago.Americanising French surnames was commonplace in the early 1800s. Desrochers, became Stone and Auclair became O'Clair. Yesterday Le Figaro revelled in its discovery, suggesting that it could tip the election in Mr Kerry's favour.
"With a name like Boucher, Mr Bush may even lose the vegetarian vote," it said. Such is the climate of American francophobia after France's opposition to the Iraq invasion that any mention of the F-word could be damaging.
As for Kerry's French connection:
Mr Kerry has played down the fact that he has a French cousin, Brice Lalonde, who was the environment minister in Franois Mitterrand's government. He has been urged not to give interviews to US newspapers.Possibly the only thing Kerry has done right during his whole campaign.
Compliments of Protein Wisdom, INDC Journal and the Daily Recycler.
So the question remains, in a campaign of blunder after bungle, just why did Jonnie K pick Johnie E for a running mate?
Democrats had Clinton do a satellite feed to the party faithful and are sending $200,000 from the DNC and an undisclosed amount via MoveOn.org.
Update: Kerry send ex-VP Al Gore and daughter Alexandra to the islands:
Just one week ago, Kerry backers in Hawaii were spending their energy making telephone calls to mainland states where the battle between the candidates seemed tightest, including Colorado.All that has changed dramatically, with Democratic supporters suddenly finding themselves in the front lines of the battle for the White House.
Florida looks more and more like a lock for the president with a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll giving him a 51/43 lead and a Quinnipiac poll showing a 49/46 split favoring the president. However:
... among the 16 percent of Florida voters who said they had cast early ballots, Kerry received 56 percent of those compared to Bush's 39 percent.What in hell is the AP doing publishing the results of exit polls? Is this an attempt to influence the election?
While Gallup showed Kerry with a slight edge in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, on Thursday a Quinnipiac University poll showed Bush with a two-point edge.
Now to some surprises: Democrat strongholds New Jersey and Hawaii.
New Jersey remains "tantalizingly tight", encouraging Republicans to spend some effort there to capture what would normally be considered a lost cause.
Hawaii has only gone for Republican presidents twice (Nixon in 1972 and Reagan in 1984). Andy Blorn has an excellent column on the dynamics of the Hawaii race, and the part that Republican congressional candidate Mike Gabbard plays in it. Whatever the reason, Kerry must be concerned because the DNC is suddenly spending an additional $200,000 in television ads and MoveOn.org is sending additional funds as well. More than that, Kerry has called out the big guns: Clinton is campaigning for Kerry in Hawaii. Admittedly, it is via satellite, yet this is time spent not campaigning somewhere else.
Other surprises: Bush drawing support of more black ministers and Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, who urged viewers to vote for Bush at the end of an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America, will appear with the president in New Hampshire.
Now add that oil prices have plunged and mortgage rates hit their lowest since early April.
Even the French seem to have written off Kerry.
Prediction: November 3rd will see legions of disappointed lawyers as Bush wins 51 to Kerry's 48%, the Senate ends up 53(R)-45(D)-1(I) and the House at 232(R)-202(D)-1(I).
The dog that hasn't barked in this election is John Kerry's 1989 vote against the death penalty for terrorists who kill Americans abroad.Indeed.With less than a week to go before Election Day, I am stunned that this has not become a significant issue in the campaign. This vote not only underscores Kerry's liberalism on a policy most Americans favor, it also exposes his weakness on national security and the war on terror.
Two months after September 11th, Kerry told an interviewer the following: “I have no doubt ... about our ability to be successful in Afghanistan; the larger question is, what happens afterwards. How do we now turn our attention ultimately to Saddam Hussein?” Does this mean that Kerry, back then, favored deposing Hussein?
Pundit Dick Morris calls Kerry's latest antics the Kerry camp's last fumble, saying, " Once again, John Kerry shows his instinct to go for the capillaries, rather than the jugular."
Indeed. But an email from Advised by Wolves has a better lesson to be learned:
If you listen to what John Kerry says about this incident, you can make a reasonable prediction on how "a Kerry Administration" would run a war. It consists of one word, "Micromanagement".This is absolutely correct: again and again Kerry has told us exactly what kind of Commander in Chief and leader he would be.John Kerry emphatically states that he has learned the lessons of the Viet Nam War, but in reality he has learned all the wrong lessons. Instead of the Bush Administration's general guidance of the objectives for a conflict, John Kerry will provide detailed tasks to be accomplished such a securing ammunition dumps. Instead of focusing on the destruction of the enemy's capability and will to sustain the fight, John Kerry will advance in a slow and methodical fashion, allowing the enemy to regroup and dig-in.
Targets will once again be selected within the basement of the White House.
That's scary Kerry.
Personally, I'd rather trust the professionals.
The Sundance Channel is planning a November surprise of its own by airing the feature docu "Bush's Brain" on Monday, the night before the presidential election.I'm calling DirecTV to get these two channels removed. I don't care if it costs me extra. They're gone.The move follows the Independent Film Channel's push to air two other political docus -- Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11: A Movement in Time" and David O. Russell's "Soldiers Pay" -- also Monday.
Read John Kerry's Record over at Pardon My English and find out some facts about Kerry's real record.
Meanwhile, Serenity's Journal posts Kerry's Resume. Heh.
This president hasn't listened.The Washington Times has confirmed that according to the actual members of the Security Council, this simply isn't true:I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable.
I came away convinced that, if we worked at it, if we were ready to work and letting Hans Blix do his job and thoroughly go through the inspections, that if push came to shove, they'd be there with us.
But of the five ambassadors on the Security Council in 2002 who were reached directly for comment, four said they had never met Mr. Kerry. The four also said that no one who worked for their countries' U.N. missions had met with Mr. Kerry either.This is obviously in line with Kerry's view of the world: a coalition of 32 nations isn't a valid international effort because it doesn't include France and Germany. By extrapolation, meeting with just four of the other 14 members of the Security Council (China, France, Germany and the U.K.) is sufficient to meet the test of international will because the other guys are tiny and irrelevant -- just like the majority of those in the coalition.The former ambassadors who said on the record they had never met Mr. Kerry included the representatives of Mexico, Colombia and Bulgaria. The ambassador of a fourth country gave a similar account on the condition that his country not be identified....
Jean-David Levitte, then France's chief U.N. representative and now his country's ambassador to the United States, said through a spokeswoman that Mr. Kerry did not have a single group meeting as the senator has described, but rather several one-on-one or small-group encounters.
He added that Mr. Kerry did not meet with every member of the Security Council, only "some" of them. Mr. Levitte could only name himself and Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of Britain as the Security Council members with whom Mr. Kerry had met.
One diplomat who met with Mr. Kerry in 2002 said on the condition of anonymity that the candidate talked to "a few" ambassadors on the Security Council.
Update: Once again, I was scooped by Power Line who posted this first (by two hours, damnit!).
You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.So let's take a look:
-- Joseph Conrad in the novel Lord Jim.
In World War II the French officially folded and set up the Vichy puppet government to give the Nazis takeover credibility. Two years later U.S. and British forces tried to land in Northern Africa during Operation Torch, and French forces fired on us. French ground forces resisted for three days, causing about 3000 casualties on each side and the French navy stubbornly fought on behalf of their Nazi master for several days.
In modern history, the French were involved in bilking the U.N. Oil for Palaces program and acted to protect Saddam because of it. The only way that the French have managed to make themselves relevant are to (1) try to create a European super-state that they control by joining forces with their former conquerers (Germany) and a tiny country that wishes they could be France (Belgium, aka the "French Poodle").
Yes, the French public overwhelmingly back Kerry over Bush by a margin of 4½ to 1.
Germany: Once a nation grateful for our efforts in defending them from the communist menace, Germany now stagnates as it is gripped by internal socialist forces of its own. Unions and the welfare state (the U.S. versions of which also back Kerry, BTW) are ruining the current economy and destroying any hope of reviving it in the near-future.
In the pre-9/11 world, Gerhard Schroeder took the chancellorship from Helmut Kohl by spouting rabid anti-American rhetoric. After 9/11, Schroeder stood with Chirac to protect business interests rather than put an end to the murderous regime in Iraq. Is it any wonder that the U.S. is repositioning troops outside of Germany? Can you hear the howls?
Pictured is Gert Weisskirchen, the foreign policy expert for Schroeder's Social Democratic Party, who praised Kerry's commitment to multilateralism. Not surprising, as 69% of Germans want Kerry to win.
North Korea: Although no official word or endorsement has been given, it is reported that North Korean media is giving "glowing" reports of Kerry's movements and has even aired some of his anti-Bush speeches. (This must seem like old times to Kerry, what with people who are dying under brutal repression being forced to listen to his official hate speeches.)
Of course North Korea would want Kerry: he gives effusive praise for and wants to return to the days of diplomacy that gave us the Clinton Agreed Framework in 1994 that allowed Kim Il Sung to pursue nuclear arms and missile delivery systems with the additional bonus of getting 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil every year from America. This also diverted attention from the fact that Kim was engaged in a starvation campaign that led to cannabilism among his own people (shades of 1932 Ukraine!).
Three years later (1997) it became apparent that North Korea was testing nuclear weapons devices, so the Clinton appeasement squad negotiating team went down on their knees again back to the table. Negotiating at breakneck speed, by 1999 an agreement was reached.
In exchange for 500,000 tons of food (which North Korea obviously needed) we got to send in weapons inspectors (whoopee!). In all, the Clinton administration raised the amount of food and economic assistance for North Korea from zero to a total of almost a billion dollars over his two terms.
And what have we gotten with a negotiation through appeasement policy? In 1998 North Korea tested a multistage rocket over Japan. In 1999 Clinton eased economic sanctions. In 2000 North Korea again threatens to restart its nuclear program and in 2001 it begins work on creating missiles capable of reaching the United States with nuclear-sized payloads (and we think they already have two nukes).
With a history of smashingly successful conciliatory negotiations as these, is it any wonder that Kerry wants to return to these U.N.-esque tactics? They achieve nothing but they sure make us popular with those Euroweenies! Perhaps Kerry will be able to practice his French as they pat him on the back and give him a Nobel Pussy Prize.
Communist China: Staying in the Pacific Rim, we turn our attention to a brutal regime that persecutes Christians, has factories full of slave labor, harvests organs from criminals, and runs over protesting students with tanks in the town square. Yep, that's quite a friend ya got there, Johnny boy!
The state run "People's Daily" formally endorsed Kerry for president of the United States back in August.
Why, you ask? Because Kerry's internationally-known proclivity for the pursuit of "multilateralism" at any cost. Oh yeah, also because he opposes policies for the "containment of China".
Kerry voters, don't blame me when he's over there negotiating away our technology because there are nuclear missiles pointed at LA. Oh yea, and LA'ers, don't blame me when I vote for a president to replace Kerry that won't buckle under the threat of international blackmail even if it means you go up in a big mushroom-shaped cloud. I'll just hope the jet-stream takes the radiation over Canada (which is, after all, half French), bypassing Tennessee.
Iran: Returning to the Axis of Evil, Iran's state-run newspaper, the Tehran Times, said, "Kerry is exactly what the U.S. needs right now."
No doubt what they really mean is that Kerry is exactly what Iran needs right now to ensure that they will continue the brutal repression of democratic reform and the continued pursuit of nuclear WMD. After all, with Kerry promising to return to the wildly successful negotiation policies of the Clinton administration and the promises of nuclear fuel that Kerry has made. In fact, Iran is delaying any response to European proposals about their nuclear program until after the election. They know that their world will be vastly different depending on who wins.
Hint: click on the map for a closer look at the current state of Iran's nuclear program. Then reconsider whether you want Kerry to help them with the program (like we did with North Korea) or if you want Bush to get tough with them.
Just a hunch, but I think there are a lot of students over there fighting and dying in an effort to give democracy a foothold that would rather have Bush getting tough.
Palestinian Authority: Who can forget those gushing editorials with pictures of Bill Clinton and Yasir Arafat? Who can forget those weeping columns with pictures of Hillary Clinton kissing Suha Arafat on the cheek? Who can forget that it was a Democrat that allowed invited a known terrorist to sleep in the White House?
Yasir Arafat sure hasn't forgotten who his friends are.
After almost four years of marginalization by the Bush administration, Arafat wants to get back in the game - evidently embezzlement of aid funds just isn't fullfilling enough. After four years of Bush allowing Israel to successfully defend itself, Arafat wants to return to the good-n-bloody days of yore.
The PA is promising a more successful negotiation future if Kerry should win. One should remember that Clinton's negotiation with Arafat resulted in little more than a giant photo op, and yielded about the same results as his appeasement of North Korea.