People fall for this crap.

My new favorite website www.factcheck.org

Let's set aside for a moment that the ad described below is just shitty politics. How dare they use the images of people dying on September 11th and the attack against Russian schoolchildren a few weeks ago for political gain.

Quoted from www.factcheck.org:
An ad by the Republican group "Progress for America Voter Fund ," mostly funded by wealthy GOP donors, suggests Kerry can't defend against terrorists "who want to kill us." It shows images of Osama bin Laden and the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The ad claims Kerry has "a 30-year record of supporting cuts in defense and intelligence," misleading charges that we've de-bunked before. It also accuses Kerry of "endlessly changing positions on Iraq," a claim that is without factual basis.

It begins by showing 9/11 plot leader Mohammed Atta, Osama bin Laden and other terrorists while the announcer slowly intones: "These people want to kill us."

It presents more images of the attack on Russian school children, the attack on a Spanish commuter train, and firemen in the smoking rubble of the World Trade Center after September 11, 2001.

...THE TRUTH...
"Since 1996, the John Kerry who once opposed the Apache helicopter and wanted to cut Tomahawk cruise-missile funds by 50% has evolved into a steady supporter of military budgets."

It's true that Kerry voted against the entire Pentagon appropriations bills in 1990 and 1995, and also voted against the Pentagon authorization bill (which provides authority to spend but not the actual money) in 1996. But in his nearly 20 years in the Senate Kerry has voted for Pentagon budgets far more often than he's opposed them, and hasn't voted against one for the past eight years.

Here's what Kerry said on the Senate floor before voting to give Bush the authority:

Kerry (Oct. 9, 2002) Let there be no doubt or confusion about where we stand on this. I will support a multilateral effort to disarm him (Saddam) by force, if we ever exhaust those other options, as the President has promised, but I will not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible under any circumstances.

That's consistent with Kerry's llater criticism of Bush for failing -- as Kerry sees it -- to secure enough help and support from other countries. And that's been Kerry's position ever since.

When the San Francisco Chronicle combed through 200 of Kerry's speeches and statements on Iraq, it found instances of "clumsy phrases and tortuously long explanations" that made Kerry's position difficult to follow. But it also found that "taken as a whole, Kerry has offered the same message ever since talk of attacking Iraq became a national conversation more than two years ago."

Why.

Why, when by all accounts the Swift Boat accusations have been proven false based on testimony from numerous sources including reports documenting events, do so many people believe what they said?

Why, when it is illegal for anyone from a policial campaign to be communicating with an organization like the one that put out the Swift Boat commercials, did Bush escape seemingly unscathed, when it was revealed a high-level member of his own campaign was directly involved with Swift Boat group?

Why was Bush rewarded with a bump in the polls when, according to current information available, his campaign was directly involved in perpetuating information which is generally accepted as false?

thanks CBS - for nothing.

You know what annoys me the most about this CBS nonsense? It's that nobody seems be paying attention to the fact that the available and undisputed facts seem to remain the same. Bush didn't show up for work for about six months and he failed to get a required medical exam to maintain flight status. In otherwords, at the very least, serving his country was not his top priority at the time. At the very worst, he may have been AWOL and clearly, allowed to get away with it. These documents, fake or otherwise, don't change that. Interestingly, every time Bush tries to answer these questions, his answer changes. I guess when George calles Kerry a flip-flopper, he is calling on the "takes one to know one" school of thinking.

CBS. Did they screw up, probably. They should have consulted a few more experts before they went public. But, that said, lets count how many ridiculously irresponsible stories were published in the 90's about the Clinton Administration. The press publishes first and fact-checks second. This has become standard operating procedure, thanks to the emergence of "news" sources like the Drudge Report and the American Spectator where facts, by all appearances, are not a priority. Conservative news sources seem to have perfected the art of throwing out whatever they can come up with to trash Democrats and when the truth comes out, not only do they manage to escape a sullied reputation (because their audience has no expectation of truth, only trash?) but they manage to do significant damage in the proces, regardless of being proven false.

Why do conservatives seem to be so good at this game and liberals so bad????

getting started.

hello. here it is, my first blog. exciting eh?