HunterByrd

Hugh Hewitt, one of the best center-right bloggers in America today, conducted an interview with Karl Rove, W's old friend and chief Presidential Aide. Rove has been the subject of many attacks over the years; he has been called, among other things, "Bush's brain". Not without reason. He is one sharp strategist. One topic in this concerns what we might expect on election day. Here is the question and the initial answer:

HEWITT: Yesterday, John Fund gave a little talk where I was at and he noted that the Democrats have already lined up with a division of about 10,000 lawyers – sort of a strike force and that the country should be prepared for not one but many Floridas. Do you agree with that assessment, that warning?

ROVE: I think Democrats have decided that they are going to try and effect in court the election. Yes, they’ve already begun filing lawsuits trying to knock down either Federal or state provisionsthat do things such as for example, provisional voting. This is where if a voter is challenged, they are as to whether they are able to vote, they can vote, but the vote is set aside so that it can be researched and a decision made as to whether or not that vote was cast by a person who was both capable of voting and was that person. They are trying to knock that out in states. In other states for example, in Missouri they are trying to get rid of the requirement that there be positive identification at the polls. You remember last time in Missouri Democrats went to a pet judge and got that judge to literally to allow polling places in certain parts in St. Louis City to be kept open after the time that state law requires polls to be closed. We had to go find a judge to enforce the law that said that all polls must close at a fixed time and the people that are standing in line at that point would be allowed to vote. It is clear that that Democrats have got an organized and deliberate effort to let’s say to extend and distort election laws in ways that would benefit them.

I hope this does not come to pass. We all remember well those awful days and weeks which followed Nov2000...near anarchy (it SEEMED), court shopping, and uncertainty about the future. Hewitt's recent book title says it the best: "If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat". Let's hope for a landslide of 1972 or 1984 proportions (but 1992 will do)...

Kerry Burke, staff writer for the New York Daily News has a story about anarchist activity surrounding the Republican convention. Radical Islamic militants have no monopoly on chaos. Terrorists are domestic, too.

But it's not all so bad, the anarchists and the more docile variety protesters. A.J. Drummond of Polipundit says:

Why am I so happy to see a bunch of unwashed hooligans, so reminiscent of a soccer gang or the French Legislative Assembly? Because the crowds of protesters in New York City this week, are doing exactly what John Kerry and John Edwards hoped to avoid. They are reminding the nation about the clear choice at hand.

Ohh yeah!

John McCain gave the first principal address of the evening. It included a memorable tongue-lashing of Michael Moore, who was there to write a column for USA Today (the same paper that hired, then fired Ann Coulter at the DNC).

Rudy Guiliani invoked the memories of Leon Klinghoffer (now there is something that should be seared-seared into the memory, John) and of the Isreali team at the 1972 Munich Olympics. He put a human face on W in the days following Fuggin’ 9/11, and Rudy pounded Kerry's 'flip-flop, flap-flip' (politely, of course).

It was a good night for the Republican faithful, and too soon for the MSM to craft the spin.

We should have seen this coming down the pike from a mile away.

It's new media v old. That's the extraneous story of this election cycle, regardless of who gets the most votes (on the record: it will be W). The old media is a brontosaur. The rodents and other feral mammals are nipping at its heels; it has incurred a fair amount of lacerating wounds in the past few weeks. Those warm blooded, strange creatures are here to stay. Neil Podhoretz, a main stream journalist himself has a few things to say about it.

Rich Lowry of National Review Online posts an article http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200408300804.asp of his own experiences yesterday. Would but that I could experience the wacky streets of Manhattan this week. All that energy! Excerpts interesting:

You have to admire the protesters' inventiveness — who knew how many ways there are to express your hatred of Bush and Cheney? . . .

Mostly, though, the whole thing seemed, as far as I could tell, to be motivated by an incoherent and sputtering animus toward Bush. Here is a brief recounting of my interactions with various marchers. They shouldn't necessarily be taken as representative. After each talk I had with someone my friend would say, "You know, there are reasonable people here too." Maybe. But it wasn't at all hard to find people who were not a great credit to the cause of peace and justice.

A kid was holding a sign, "Stop the war on youth, from here to Najaf."

"So," I asked, "do you support al Sadr?"

"I do as long as he's resisting U.S. imperialism."

"OK, so you support Islamic fundamentalism?"

"No," he said, walking away.

"Well, he's an Islamic fundamentalist," I said.

He came back up to me, "Just because you support the youth doesn't mean you side with an extremist."

"Sadr is an Islamic extremist, he's very clear about it."

"It's their mosque."

"He seized the mosque by force!"

"You're wrong," he said. "He supports elections."

"No, he doesn't! He opposes elections."

"Well," he said, walking away again, "they are U.S.-supported elections. Of course he opposes U.S.-supported elections."

Then, this goateed, cigarette-smoking little Chomsky walked off for good.

Next, there were the people holding mock American-flag-draped coffins made out of cardboard.

I asked a couple of women "pall-bearers" what they symbolized. They said it was an effort put together by an organization called 1,000coffins.org, and the coffins symbolized American and Iraqi deaths in Iraq and "all the dead people in the world."

"Do any of them symbolize victims of 9/11?" I asked, since they seemed to be casting a pretty wide net.

"I don't know," said one woman.

"You'd have to ask 1,000coffins.org," said another.

Further up the march route was a guy wearing a Yasser Arafat-style headdress and holding a sign reading, "Poland 1939. Iraq 2003."

"So," I asked him, "you think the invasion of Iraq was the same as Hitler's invasion of Poland?"
He went into a spiel about how both invasions were launched under false pretenses. I asked if he saw any differences in the natures of the Polish and Iraqi governments. "With any metaphor," he explained, "there are going to be imprecisions."

Oh, OK.

Onto the nice Asian lady holding a sign with pictures of Bush and Cheney on it, emblazoned with the word "Traitors!"

I asked whether she thought they should be tried for treason: "Completely. Of course. Its not even a question."

Should they be executed? "No."

"Well, why not? It's typically been a punishment for treason."

She said "no" again, and I left it at that.

Near the end of the march there was a guy standing in the middle of the street doing brisk business in T-shirts with Bush officials' names spelled with Swastikas. "Do you really think Rumsfeld is a Nazi?" I asked, since he was wearing a Rumsfeld shirt with the S as a Swastika.

"Oh, yes," he said, "absolutely."

He was briefly distracted by someone asking for a small in one of the shirts — I didn't catch which — and he had to say, "Sorry, that's all out in the baby-T." Then, he was ready to address my question again. He explained that Rumsfeld wasn't taking responsibility for Abu Ghraib, speaking to "a type of arrogance that is fascist."

He had shirts with Condoleezza's name spelled with two Swastikas. "Is Condoleezza a Nazi?" I asked.
He thought for a moment: "Condoleezza? Mmmmm. Not so much."

She is, I guess, only partly a Nazi, which is still enough to render her name in double Swastikas.

And so it went at the peace march.

At what point exactly, I asked several members of the Question Authority Brigade, is one group far enough in the minority that they become, well, dissenters? Sputtering, uncomprehending rage was all I got in response.

But considering the numbers and the fact that any small Republican counter-protest was immediately converged upon on by frothing-mouthed burst of vitriol and obscenity, it would seem those speaking truth to power (i.e., "dissenters") in New York City Sunday morning were Republicans.

Not once during the Democrats' convention did I see any large number of Republicans show up to chant, "DNC go home!" Not once did crowds of conservatives attempt to silence Democrats with obscenity or physical intimidation. Not once did Bush supporters question the legitimate right of a political party to gather for a convention.
Yet all of this is commonplace at the Republican event."This is what democracy looks like!" the crowd chants as they demand that Republicans' right to assembly and speech be beaten to a bloody pulp.

Read all about Shawn Macomber's excellent adventure amongst the teeming throng in his American Spectator article: http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7047. The MSM will play along, emphasizing the demonstrators. "We already won!" a New York City Councilman told the crowd. "There's already been more coverage of the protests than there has been of the convention."

We've got chickens aplenty. These birds are persnickety. I've had my fill of birds lighting on top of the nesting boxes and pooping. It smells (rank ammonia, friends)! So I resolved to move the roosting rails away from the boxes. In the waning light of day, I did.

My mental plan unfolded like a well-orchestrated symphony. Never mind that I had no level, plumb bob, or square. I got the job done in the nick of sun-set. Two, eight-foot rails at sixteen inches on center. You'd think that was sufficiently grand and plenty for a big old Rhode Island red Rooster, a white Amish hen, three juvenile Buff Orpingtons, and five young Aricana chicks.

The Rhode Island rooster and white hen rule the roost. It's geometric. They commanded 80% of the space. The other eight chickens bunched hard together. I stood in the gathering gloom and stopped a couple of young mavericks, who thought it best to jump to the top of the nesting box (where they could defacate, of course). Gently, I put them back on the weathered rails (gotten from an old chicken house). As the darkness had fallen, they stayed put.

"Ann Hansen," the purported author of this ‘round the net’ email claims, "The following is fairly sobering food for thought." Can’t say I disagree. Although I just received this from my good brother, JB, I have seen it before. Read it; it is inspiring. Then we’ll talk a little more about it below.

At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in the year 1787, Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at The University of Edinborough) had this to say about "The Fall of The Athenian Republic" some 2,000 years prior.

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it Simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From Bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."

Professor Joseph Olson, of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the most recent Presidential election:

Population of counties won by: Gore = 127 million; Bush = 143 million
Square miles of land won by: Gore = 580,000 ; Bush = 2,2427,000
States won by: Gore = 19 ; Bush = 29
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore = 13.2; Bush = 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare..."
Olson believes the U.S. is now somewhere between the "complacency" and "apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy; with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

Please pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake in this Election Year and that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.

Yes, all inspiring. However, in this age, one must be wary of information, so much the more so if you happen to agree with it. I took a bright step, and googled it. Sure enough, the email is not new; it appeared shortly after the 2000 election. The quote from "Alexander Tyler" is very likely fictitious, because there was no Alexander Tyler who wrote such a book. However, there was one Alexander Fraser Tytler, and he did write historical books, which touched upon the above. The quotes attributable to Prof. Joseph Olsen are not his (he was a mere recipient early on, and it appears his name was co-opted to lend a bit more stature, and it would appear that the crime rate statistics are rather skewed over the top. The actual difference is much, much closer.

In spite of its inaccuracies, it is generally correct. If not entirely fact-based, it is keen rhetoric.

Snopes.com -- http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp

Do we know the real John Kerry? We certainly don’t know the one from Vietnam.

Both event series will be great for political junkies and armchair pundits of all persuasions.

This post is a re-worked comment placed on Phillip von Bargen's Private Idaho blogsite 8/28/2004 03:30:49 PM.

This election cycle has brought about a paradigm shift. We haven't even gotten to the actual election, yet, and something just as important has come to pass. The immense, overwhelmingly powerful, traditional 'Fourth Estate' has begun to crumble. In the past, it has been said that the liberal, mainstream media's heft has been worth at least 15 percentage points in the election. No doubt the MSM retains great sway, but not like before.

The 'MSM' can be distilled to the major print outlets and services of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, Reuters, and UPI, together with the old-line TV News outlets ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN. The 'new' media is talk radio, the blogosphere, and the Fox News Network. The 'new' media largely consists of conservative voices.

The seminal news event which has put this new dynamic into play has been The Swiftboat Veterans for Truth story. While the MSM tried to bury the story, the 'new' media hammered away at relentless speed. Fact checking. Opining. The story would not go away. Finally, the MSM was forced to address it. They did so by attacking Bush, by attacking the Swift Vets, while ignoring the many factual allegations of the story itself.

As one blogger commented, what if, when DNC Chairman Terry McCauliff's called on the media to investigate Bush's attendance in the Alabama Air National Guard, the MSM had gone after McAuliffe instead? The 'new' media was absolutely undeterred, and then the story metasticized into a critique of the MSM itself. Amazing the revolution.

Bloggers got downright smart with the old line media (the truth hurts):

Blogs from Instapundit to The Belmont Club to Powerline were reveling in the demise of the old media and heaping scorn upon professional journalists. "I have been both a lawyer/law professor for two decades and a television/radio/print journalist for 15 years of those 20," Hugh Hewitt blogged. "It takes a great deal more intelligence and discipline to be the former than to be the latter, which is why the former usually pays a lot more than the latter. It is no surprise to me, then, when lawyers/law professors like those at Powerline and Instapundit prove to be far more adept at exposing the 'Christmas-in-Cambodia' lie and other Kerry absurdities than old-school journalists."

John Hinderaker, one of the bloggers behind Powerline, summed up the mood of the blogosphere by comparing journalism with brain surgery: "A bunch of amateurs, no matter how smart and enthusiastic, could never outperform professional neurosurgeons, because they lack the specialized training and experience necessary for that field," he said. "But what qualifications, exactly, does it take to be a journalist? What can they do that we can't? Nothing." See Jonathan Last's "The not-so swift mainstream media"

The bloggers drove the other components of the new media. Synergy was established, and with it, the struggle for the primacy of ideas was bumped up a couple of notches. None of this could have happened without the internet, and with it, the emergence of powerful search engines. Here is what the great commentator Mark Steyn observes (don't you love the man's incomparable gift for analogy?):

A few months back, I bought a DVD set of an old TV variety show, black and white but digitally remastered. A bit too digitally remastered, as it turned out. It would be ungallant to name the lady artiste in question, but in several alarming close-ups it's all too clear she's come back from lunch a little the worse for wear, and in one scene she looks as if she's just been woken up after sleeping in the park for a week.

Not her fault. The make-up guy was making her look good enough for 1960 monochrome UHF lines. He couldn't have foreseen that 40 years on they'd have big-screen satellite TVs and DVD players and technology that would make that little facial pimple look like Mount Krakatoa about to blow through your screen.

That's what happened to John Kerry. For 25 years, he told The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, the United States Senate, and all manner of other well-known saps about his covert Yuletide operations inside Cambodia gun-running to anti-communists with his lucky CIA hat. To verify any of this would have required a trip to specialist reference libraries, looking up stuff on eye-straining microfiche, etc. So it was easier to let the old blowhard yak away and just nod occasionally.

Senator Kerry couldn't have foreseen that Al Gore would invent the Internet, and there'd be this Google thingy, and all you'd have to do is tap in a few words and a nanosecond later it would all be at your fingertips – veterans memoirs, Cambodian history, declassified Johnson administration documents, previous Kerry "stretchers" (as Mark Twain called them).

The Kerry campaign has now conceded that, by his own contemporaneous account, the young lieutenant was nowhere near Cambodia in Christmas 1968 and, if he was ever on a covert gun-running operation across the border during his four months in Vietnam, he seems to be the only rookie Swift boat lieutenant to land in the territory and get entrusted with such a mission, and it was evidently so top secret that neither his commanding officers nor the men on his own boat knew a thing about it. [excerpted from John Kerry's real 'band of brothers' in The Jerusalem Post http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1093402928027&apage=1]

Yes, the MSM continues to fight off this (once) stealthy stab at its supremacy, but it has lost ground. One thing is for certain: its foe is yet an infant. The 'new' media has just arrived. It is not going to leave. It is only going to get better.

Former Senator and Presidential candidate recently unloaded his sentiments about Kerry's Vietnam War Record and post-action political maneouverings stateside. 'BobDole' came out of his corner swinging. He demanded that Kerry apologize to the vets (not the other way around).

Here are select quotes from an interview on MSNBC's Scarborough Country
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5820820/>">Link
yesterday:

So this time you’ve got a candidate named John Kerry who had a good record in Vietnam, came back from the service, denounced the war, in effect, trashed the Americans who were still fighting there. Went before a Senate committee in April of 1971, threw away his ribbons or his medals or whatever and now is standing before the American people and saying you’ve got to elect me because I’m this Vietnam hero.

And it’s kind of hard to reconcile all of these things. So it does sort of bring up focus that I don’t think we’ve had in the past. . . .

But this is after we’d had somebody called Vice President Cheney a coward. They’ve called Bush “a deserter” that he was AWOL, that he’s condoned torture, that he’s condoned poisoning of pregnant women. I mean, all these nasty, nasty, over-the-top attacks.

And they spent $65 million trying to defame President Bush. I told John Kerry on the telephone the next day. I said, “John, President Bush is my guy. And when I see all the people dumping on him, and all the misstatements and—and untruths, it kind of riles me up a little.” So maybe I expressed that on Sunday. . . ."

Dole also addressed the massive 527 and MSM support that Kerry has enjoyed:

". . . [Y]ou look at the number of stories written about or on the three big networks at night and “The New York Times,” “The L.A. Times,” “The Washington Post,” all the big newspapers. How many dozens of stories they’ve reported about George Bush and the National Guard, and now they had to rush to the defense of John Kerry.

“The New York Times” last Friday had a front-page story, trying to discredit all these other Vietnam veterans, some who’ve been wounded seriously, all of whom served honorably. And many were decorated. And they’re cast as a bunch of liars or paid off by the Bush people. And that’s the kind of coverage you would get from the so-called mainstream media.

President Bush is going to go out and rebut this, for the most part, with paid advertising. He doesn’t have “The New York Times” every day. if you added up the value of all “The New York Times” propaganda, it would probably be $3 or $4 million."

I agree with BobDole.

I took the test. Who would have believed that I would lead with my brain?



When you take the test, use the maximum number of questions (45). The site says it is unscientific (so much for Einstein).

We all know the majority of young folks cringe at the thought of the draft. Fear. Plain pure and simple. Once, I was captive to that primal emotion. As the months to my 18th birthday drew near...I watched the nightly news more closely than I ever had. The Paris Peace Talks were in full swing...and I sincerely hoped for a resolution to the Vietnamese conflict. I was young -- I'd seen one too many nightly casualty reports on TV... In my heart of hearts, I did not want to go! I did not want to be placed upon the precipice: Go with the law or flee north. I knew I would comply, heartwrenching as it may have been. I wasn't raised to flee in the face of fear. Too many brave hearts and souls, stuck to the American ideal of freedom stood in my way -- even if my young mind did not fully comprehend the blessings which enfolded me.

So, today, we have the Democratic Party playing on those same old fears:

Dems Use Draft Rumor to Scare Young People

One important story that has flown under the major-media radar is the peddling by Democrats of the claim that the Bush administration has a secret plan to re-institute the military draft.

That rumor is being spread to try to scare young voters into supporting John Kerry.

The Democrats' draft-rumor effort has now gone mainstream; the South Carolina Democratic Party has sent out a mailing that claims young voters are faced with induction if they don't vote for John Kerry:

The first page of the mailing shows a draft notice with orders to report to a military induction center. The next shows a helicopter with troops in the foreground beneath a headline that says "Officials in Washington are calling for more troops in Iraq." Below, the mailing asks "Which form would you rather fill out?"

It is hard to think of a more despicable campaign tactic. It hardly needs to be said that neither the Bush administration nor any other foreseeable administration has the slightest desire to re-institute the draft. The thought sends shudders down the spines of professional military men; America's all-volunteer army is without a doubt the best military force ever assembled. No one I know of supports the draft, except for Fritz Hollings, the Democratic Senator from--ironically enough--South Carolina. He introduced a bill to that effect. Not only did the Hollings proposal go nowhere; he couldn't even find a co-sponsor.

Democrats sometimes get upset when we say that they prey on ignorance. But this contemptible tactic is a perfect example of what we mean.

Posted by Hindrocket at 03:33 PM

Catch the above on Powerline.com.

Monday. There has been more seasonal heat the past few days. The increased temperatures have caused my ‘wonder vine’, originally containing no less than 28 cantaloupe melons, to ripen at an increased pace. For the record, those melons are some of the best I have had in my life. They are like warm, very sweet, semi-hard butter. All who have tasted have raved, and they have eaten with abandon. I have enjoyed more success with that single plant than in all previous endeavors. Earlier attempts just do not come close. I credit the superior, organic soil composites...

Ben, Sister, and I sat on the front porch this evening about 1715. It was raining. They had to go back to Murray after a return from ‘first day’ yesterday, for the sole purpose of enjoying 12 oz of good corn-fed-based NY strip steaks last night. Ben was waiting for UPS to deliver his new JVC single-disc DVD player. Jill, their taxi-woman, was waiting for a summer squall to abate before she ferried them east to campus.

CRACK! I was painfully deafened by thunder. The up-close phenomenon is nothing like the echoes we normally experience. The explosive burst of air pressure gave me a headache. It was a poignant reminder that, even minor, nature is profoundly awesome in Its power.

The central, front-yard pecan tree suffered another direct hit (the last, at best guess seven years ago). ‘Lightning never strikes twice in the same place’ is a wishful myth. "Those [wood strips] look weird," said Ben. These seven or eight pieces thrown to the ground were odd. "That’s because the bark never grew back from the last strike," I answered.

A brand new blog "Swimming through the Spin" by 'bkm' has just scored a big hit. Kerry's Vietnam and anti-war experiences have come to symbolize his self-aggrandizing personality. Plenty of folks had his number way back when:

An oldie but a goody...
Looks like these ladies had Kerry pegged a long time before others did.Meanwhile, Kerry is still calling for Bush to tell the Vets to stop the ads. What happened to "bring it on?" Now it's "MAKE IT STOP!" If he can't take dealing with his former comrades in arms in a simple political debate, how in the world is he going to deal with Al Queda in war?

UPDATE: Instapundit has just linked to this post. Only a day and a half on the web and I've hit the big time. I don't know what to say...I love you all...thank you..
# posted by bkm : 10:44 AM

Unfortunately, the image of the 1971 AP story didn't follow the text. So go to http://spinswimming.blogspot.com/2004/08/oldie-but-goody.html.

Here is an interesting nugget which casts more light on the dusty allegation that Republicans get their money from the rich, for the benefit of the rich:

Now that John Kerry and the Democrats have started denouncing section 527 committees, it's worth pointing out that of the twenty-five largest contributors to 527's, only one -- that's right, one -- is a Republican. The top two donors are Peter Lewis ($14,030,000) and George Soros ($12,600,000). Altogether, the 24 Democrats contributed $56,693,000. The lone Republican donated $1,020,000.
Courtesy of Little Green Footballs.

This is posted on www.powerlineblog.com 8-20-04.

My head is aflutter. Following the pertinant websites in the ‘blogosphere’ has been invigorating. I am of the firm opinion that I am a witness to the end of one age, the beginning of another, brought to you and me, compliments of the inevitable advancement of technology.

This Presidential campaign coverage is the dawn of a new day. No longer is an interested soul captive to the whims of mass print media or ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN. The internet has put an end to this. The internet, the bloggers, if you will, have shown a bright light on the old powers that be. It has exposed an innate, left-leaning bias prone, not only to cheering for the ‘home team’, but also to suppressing the roar of the ‘other side’.

At one time, our exposure to the ‘Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’ would have been a mere passing reference to a right-wing hack job for the benefit of the current Bush ‘junta’ or ‘regime’, as seen through the prism of the ‘main stream media’, now we see the entire landscape, blemishes and all.

That said, the conservative ‘bloggers’ have honed in upon the truth. Truth, as it were, cannot be changed by spin or inuendo. Kerry's Vietnam is well-honed, albeit imperfect, puffery.

The truth which emerges from SBVFT is that Kerry is a very shrewd, oh-so-self-serving liar. Bathroom grafitti truth: He who sups at the Banquet of Ego never leaves the table satisfied. John Kerry. I believe it 1000 times over. His appetite for mass love of power and acceptance is insatiable. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The silver that is the pure; the strain which emanates superiority over mass peers from the very moment one is able to comprehend. Ye of the elite, taken for granted in one’s own rarified circle, but not the rest of America!

Kerry filed a complaint today with the Federal Elections Commission. He claims that the Swift Boat Veteran’s, a bona fide 527 organization, is in league with the Bush campaign (which would be very much against ‘the law’) The organization and the Bush campaign vehemently deny it. He is desperate today. What do you do when you are faced with the truth? That would all depend upon you character, so his actions today speak of his character. Plain and simple!

My mother and father celebrated their 47th anniversary today. Jill was thoughtful enough to have gone to Walmart and picked up a dozen red roses for the occasion. We ventured over to their house this evening where we found Pa eating a bowl of marinated cherries, apples, and grapes. It was an odd sight. Grandma could not quit talking about her recent trip back to Interlochen in Michigan. She spent two summers there, as recently as 52 years ago. "It just doesn’t seem possible," she said.

As we backed away into the night, Pa followed the van down the driveway for a distance. Hundreds of moths fluttered around the overhead lights in the carport, and danced about him. He was dressed in an old green t-shirt that seemed two sizes too big. It made him look a bit too care-worn for my tastes. "Is it hard watching him grow old like that?" asked Jill. "Yes," I answered, "it is."

Hot August Blues, my behind!

Married 23 years. This particular anniversary marks a pivotal point: I have now been married longer in my life than I have not. In the life of a man or woman, that milestone brings a significant, profound realization. It mainly has to do with the passage of life through adulthood. It tends to bring home a final lesson about childhood, and that is it is fleeting and short. In terms of physicality, one’s ascendancy is all to short. Adulthood is all about a measured, slow decline (in the physical sense).

Congruently, I congratulate Jill and myself. We managed to stay very much together in a time when statistics are against us. We were married at a relatively young age, with not much of a saddles worth of maturity. We helped raise two very good souls in Ben and Elizabeth. I acknowledge Jill is my best friend. That is the truth. God blessed me, in spite of the hard fact that I do not deserve a 10th of what he gave me.

This August has been like no other since 1964, I am told. For days running, the weather has been as if it were mid to late October. Cool nights have dipped into the low 50's, and the days haven’t risen past the low 80's. We must not forget: August at this point traditionally carries the moniker ‘Dog Days’, which equates with stultifying, miserably hot and uncomfortable.

On the political front, I have yet to hear the patrician John F. Kerry substantively respond to mounting, blogospheric allegations that he has lied about his mythic, heroic Vietnamese past.

The day was like autumn all respects. Cooling temperatures, breezes, and no flying insects. Last year, the searing, wet heat was a prime argument for those who decry ‘global warming’! That whole argument is premised with the hue and cry of ‘humans (i.e., American capitalist pig-dog industrialists) are to blame! I am not a scientist, so I am incapable (without a smidgeon of effort) of citing authority one way or another (I am too lazy). Today, the earth first folk have been silent.

I spent four hours surfing through political weblogs in a never-ceasing attempt to remain informed about this year’s presidential election. I am a relentless conservative, but I will not shed open-mindedness. I am honest in my convictions, which means I don’t walk around with intellectual blinders on.

John Kerry lied about his Vietnam experience. He embellished it. Too many people treat his service as an untouchable shiboleth. "He served. That is honorable." Well, lots of people ‘served’, principally because they had no choice. Kerry could have avoided it, because of the rarified social class he was born to. He did not because of his ego. At a young age, he was possessed of a sense of grandeur and power. That is why he went to Vietnam. That is why he wound up on a SWIFT boat. I believe that when he volunteered for that branch of the Navy, he was not aware of the potential danger. Only after he was committed did he realize the danger. His four months ‘on the line’ was the amount of time it took him to ‘comply’ with regulations and obtain the three Purple Hearts necessary for his ticket out.

John Kerry filmed his experiences in Vietnam. This alone is not unusual. His contemporaneous recreations of combat are, however, not ordinary! He is unique in this aspect. He did it because of ambition. In my book, that is so egotistical it is manic. 1968 Christmas Eve trip into Cambodia? Gotcha! I totally concur with The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

A good friend of mine...we'll call him TJS...was busted for DUI 1st this Sunday afternoon. It saddens my heart. He is my age, less a few days. The police insisted on a blood draw; they believed his alleged impairment went farther than alchohol.

My friend committed a cardinal sin. He discounted the first, immutable law: Murphy's. He also forswore the cure to Murphy's Law, vis a vis driving, and that is -- utterly without fail -- NEVER get behind the wheel of a vehicle if you have recently imbibed. NEVER. Regardless of the circumstances. If you unflinchingly subscribe to the cure, you will never find yourself in TJS's situation, to wit, that of a middle-aged man with a reputation to lose in the community. A fellow who finds himself in this situation is at least 20 years behind the times...and placed under the public microscope of scrutiny. At 45, you get JUDGED. You are not 22 and impetuous, buddy!

My prayers go forth to TJS and his family: hang tough, and do the right thing, even if it means a guilty plea. Use the experience as a teaching tool for your family and others who are close to you. Also, now is the time to take stock of personal problems which might plague you...especially if it has gone on for more years than you can count. We love you for your sake alone. If you have a problem, deal with it now! Time is fleeting...

I am profoundly disturbed by JF Kerry's sick, Vietnam-era deceptions. JF Kerry, if the Swiftboat Veterans are amiss, set the record straight NOW. If, as they say, you are a rank gold digger, set the record straight! In my heart of hearts, I suspect you cannot...You have been exposed with ample evidence by people who have nothing to gain, except to expose you for what you are: an epic egotist. If it is true, you better back off from the presumption you are fit for command.

The only reason I started this was so I could leave a comment with a young soldier whose flair for writing in Iraq moved me.

I am a comfortable man, having moved inexhorably into his 'middle' years. I'm 45 years old, for a few more days. 'Middle' is a blessing-term of the times. 600 years ago, I would already have been possessed of a full life. I would have been an elder, old and wizened in the Black Forest of central Europe. Alas, this is the 21st Century. With so many billions of souls, that makes me, and you, infintesimal.

Most Oddly, from a microscopic view, I have found the simplest of experiential stories to be compelling. Individual folk are, to borrow the lexicon of the day, 'rockin'. Therefore, I have decided to add a second entry. Just for the heck. I cannot wait for the first 'reply'.

I have been reading loads of 'blogs'. If you are like me, you know we 'have turned the corner' once and forever. Internet technology has given us a fantastic way to stay 'informed'. We are no longer dependent on traditional forms of mass media. We are now, each of us, a part of 'mass media', even if the ramifications lead to an illusory diffusion of 'knowledge'. Diffusion is the essence of fog. As for me, I embrace the fog of truth, in lieu of carefully orchestrated 'smoke and mirrors'. If you want that, then tune to CNN...

Hurrah!

My first, quiet post in the night.

HunterByrd -- a believer, deep in red flyover country.