A Usenet search through old posts related to John Kerry shows that Kerry was amongst the conspiracy theorist’s “good guys”, largely due to Kerry’s perchant of actually exposing real honest-to-gosh conspiracies. (It ceases to be a ‘conspiracy theory’ when it indeed turns out to be a ‘conspiracy fact’.)

To this day, Michael Ruppert will say that Kerry “took these things as far as someone in power could take it.”

During the nomination process, Kerry, having to come up with a line to attract the Democratic primary voter, did allude to these things — taking on Richard Nixon and taking on Ronald Reagan. It tended to come across as defensive and a bit too much of a reinvention for someone selling himself as the “responsible one”, thus he ultimately backed up to “Did you hear that I served in Vietnam?”

So, what do we get from Kerry, that appears to have receded into the background likely never to be seen again as Kerry aims to become the monster of powerful interests that he once fought against?

Start with the testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, APRIL 22, 1971.

Jump on over to Iran Contra.

When you hear Oliver North hold forth against John Kerry, keep this in mind: with him, it really is personal.

His notebooks, later obtained by Congress, were peppered with notations of concern about Kerry, his staff, and their freelance investigation. On April 18, 1986, North wrote: “Sen. Kerry trying to get evidence linking RR [Ronald Reagan] to La Penca,” the location of an attempted assassination attempt against a contra leader by hardliners in the movement.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he busted the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.. Years before money laundering became a centerpiece of antiterrorist efforts…

… which was a blow to powerful bi-partisan interests… and, if you read carefully as to who used the bank and to what purpose, which brings out the tinfoil hat-wearer in all of us.

Of course, this begs the question: what have you done for me lately? And would you transfer these moments into a John Kerry administration? (Some innovation and “other ways of handling problems” would do wonders to a “War on Terror”.)

Judging from the phrases that direct people to this blog (and the blog has had a huge jump in “hits”), and because of a trend I’ve noticed over the several months whenever a political figure gets his/her fifteen minutes of fame, I feel it is my duty to provide the researchers and curiosity-seekers with answers to various questions.

Zell Miller is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Bill Clinton is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Al Gore is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Lyndon Larouche is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Alan Keyes is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Barack Obama is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Steve Forbes is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Richard Perle is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Dick Cheney is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Ralph Nader is not a member of Skull and Bones.
George Pataki is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Howard Dean is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Ronald Reagan is not a member of Skull and Bones.
John Edwards is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Gerald Ford is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Jimmy Carter is not a member of Skull and Bones.
David Brooks is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Neither of George Bush’s daughters are members of Skull and Bones.
Iraq does not have Skull and Bones on their new flag.
Michael Moore is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Jeb Bush is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Karl Rove is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Sean Hannity is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Walter Mondale is not a member of Skull and Bones.
David Frum is not a member of Skull and Bones.

Just to be on the safe side:
Gordon Allen Pross is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Clyde Lewis is not a member of Skull and Bones.
Jed Smock is not a member of Skull and Bones.

A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that if a person did not attend Yale University, he (or, starting with the 90s, she) cannot be a member of Skull and Bones. This is not to say that these individuals might not have met with or worked with, above, or under, or be manipulated / influenced by members of Skull and Bones, and this does not mean that these individuals necessarily aren’t members of other organizations of renown (the Council of Foriegn Relations or the Trilateral Commission, for example).

On the other hand:
John Kerry is a member of Skull and Bones.
George Bush is a member of Skull and Bones.
George W Bush is a member of Skull and Bones.
Henry Morgenthau is a member of Skull and Bones.
Gary Trudeau is a member of Skull and Bones.
Percy Rockafellar is a member of Skull and Bones. Nelson Rockafellar isn’t.
William Russell is a member of Skull and Bones.
William Howard Taft is a member of Skull and Bones.

I do not know where the aliens fit in with Skull and Bones. Nor do I know how John F Kennedy fought Skull and Bones. This is how the Skull and Bones killed Kennedy, allegedly.

An attempted full listing of Skull and Bones members is started here… we have A, B, and C. A more complete list is found here.

And, I’ll have to get back to you with the answer to the question for the number of bones that are in a baby’s skull.

I missed the “Duck and Cover” training of paranoid yesterday. Apparently, I was just a couple of years off from the redux retro-version of this classic organization of a more orderly Cold War Nuclear fall-out freakout… was there even a watered-down version during the early 80s? Whatever… my parents enjoyed it the first go-around… Bert the Turtle working to hammer a fear of Kruschev into them.

In the last two years of high school, we did have two varieties of interesting, somewhat contradictory drills. We learned that in case of a school shooting, everyone should walk en masse to the Track field. There, the principal would make a few comments about the necessity of these things, citing recent news of some kid in Idaho who nearly pulled something off. The two or three times we went through this, it was, indeed, some kid in Idaho that he referenced — why some kid in Idaho, I do not know, nor do I know if there really was some kid in Idaho.

The other procedure? We practiced school lockdowns… generally if I wasn’t told that the school had been locked down, I can’t say that I’d notice, but I guess it’s good to know that in case of emergency, if the school authorities don’t decide that we run en masse over to the track field, everyone’s safely in the classroom while my nutso peer is running around in the hallway with a sawed off shotgun… ready for the security guard to tackle, I suppose.

I’m going to have to think hard into the past to figure out if any of my schools implemented a drill in case of gang violence. The tide of gang – presence in the public schools (or, better to say — wannabe gangs) ebbed dramatically in the middle 90s.

The watershed moment that posited the next formation of school drills came when that kid flew an airplane into a skyscraper down in Florida… impressionable kid, he. Bill Maher posited that at the time that if this were three years ago, he’d be seeking to shoot his students… and he’s right. That fad is over. Media space has moved on completely to other … things.

These are the days where we read about Russian terrorists taking hostage a batch of young students… attempting to further their cause for Chechnan Separatism.

Thus, here are the drills that are being practiced in schools these days, in small town America:

Dressed in camouflauge, helmets, bulletproof vests, and armed with special weaponry, Grandview’s Special Incident Response Team fall into stick file behind a shield and enter Harriet Thompson Elementary School to confront a parent who’s barricaded himself in a classroom full of children.

At least once a month, the police participate in training that helps them prepare for situations that are “outside the typical law enforcement realm” here locally, says Detective Mitch Fairchild. A subject barricaded inside of a classroom is not at all typical in the area. It falls under the umbrella of high risk special circumstances and it’s those situations that the SIRT team must practice in order to identify the team’s strenghts, as well as areas they need to work on.

I assume that the actual students of Harriet Thompson aren’t involved here. They might become a little scared.

Here’s part of Gordon Allen Pross, candidate for the Republican Nominee for US Senate from Washington,’s plan for managing the salmon in the Columbia River:

AS THE SALMON MAKE THERE WAY FROM THE OCEAN RUNNING UP STREAM AS THEY APPROACH THE NEW BYPASS THEY WILL BE COAXED UP THE BYPASS BY THE PLAYING OF RECORDED AUDIO SOUNDS OF THE FORMER SALMON BEING FEASTED UPON BY THE BIRDS.

THEN WHEN THE SALMON ARE RUNNING BACK TO SEA, I SUGGEST AN ELECTRONIC FIELD UPSTREAM, PLACED AT AN OBLIQUE ANGLE SO AS TO DIRECT THE SALMON THROUGH THE BYPASS, MUCH AS A CATTLE RANCHER WOULD USE A CHUTE TO FUNNEL LIVESTOCK FOR BRANDING, SEPARATING, OR TRANSPORT

An interesting proposal. Scare the salmon with noises of birds eating them, driving the salmon in the other direction. It’s bears a striking resemblance to the overall Bush / Cheney campaign strategy:

“It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States,” Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting in this Iowa city.

Vote Gordon Allen Pross / Dick Cheney!

My first reaction upon seeing Bush’s twelve point Time Magazine Poll lead was “outlier”, an anomolie. It was amongst a sea of polls that showed Bush with a four point lead. Then, there it was: Newsweek with the same twelve point lead. Therefore, it’s not a polling anomolie. It’s, somehow or other, a real result that shines light on reality somewhere and somewhen and somehow. The chattering classes love this poll bounce, and it’s all over the place.

But then I get this posting from Joshua Micah Marshal. The Bush and Kerry campaign both have Bush ahead by four percentage points. Bush working conservatively and Kerry in a case of wistful hope? Don’t know. But, since they both have that result and both are working as if that is where the election stands, and since it happens to comply with a lot of other polls… It’s, somehow or other, a real result that shines light on reality somewhere and somewhen and somehow.

My working theory goes like this: we have a viewer of the conventions, eight percent of the electorate, a male chugging beer and dipping chips into cheese dip while he watches. He high fives somebody when The Terminator says “Don’t be ecomonic girlie men”. He raises his fist when the bullhorn moment is invoked by Rudy Giuliani. He’s ready to kick ass!

But, this eight percent of the electorate sleeps on it. He goes to his part time job at 7-11 the next morning, after waiting for five hours by the phone to see if the job he recently applied to after being downsized at the local factory. Then it dawns on him, “Did Schwarzenegger call me an economic girlie man?”

And all of a sudden, he envisions the image of Zell and thinks “Wow! He’s worse than Dean!”

We can toss in a few of those phantom “Security Moms” in that eight percent of the electorate — this is the desired transformation that of voting patterns that the Republican Party hopes from from the old “Soccer Moms”. Egad, politics is littered with faddish fifteen minutes of simplications.

The anniversary of 9/11 is right around the corner — the reason that the Republican Convention was scheduled so late in the first place, to segue a momentum from the convention to 9/11… bullhorn imagery is much in vogue.

Never mind though. I think the Republican Party might have opened up a sixteen point lead in Time had they had Lynne Cheney read some of her descriptions of hot girl on girl action! Perhaps it would alienate some of the religious right base — but they were pretty well placated by the platform. This is about getting to the male demographic… perhaps they could’ve scheduled it for that halftime show Peter Jennings had during that Monday Night Football Preseason Game.

(Note: curiously enough, the name of the book does not appear on the official biography page for Lynne Cheney.)

I’m reading this post, and I realize that it is horribly written, and the message that I was trying to get out does not come through.

So I’m redoing it, and updating it.

John Kerry’s campaign took off when he selected John Edwards as his vice presidential candidate. He toured the nation for a while, received a good deal of good press, and saw his fortunes rise in the polls.

This lead us into the Democratic Convention. Despite all protestations to the contrary from the denziens of talk radio and such who continue to this day to point to the one poll that served their purpose out of several polls that didn’t serve their purpose, Kerry received a “bounce”.

Kerry continued the momentum from there with a successful post-convention tour, and it is at the high point at the end of this successful tour that we can guage the far-perimeters of Kerry’s potential victory.

There was a controversy back in June about the possibility that Kerry might delay to September acceptance of his nomination. A fluke campaign finance laws that stops a candidate from fund raising to his campaign stash when he accepts nomination… or something to that effect. Since the candidate needs to keep a bulk of campaign money for the stretch club, Bush had the funding advantage through August. You will notice that the Kerry ads you saw in August were from various 527s (and the Democratic National Committee) and not from the Kerry/ Edwards Campaign. (They ended up reluctantly releasing some campaign ads for theirownselves to respond to a certain well-coordinated Republican 527…)

It is in this atmosphere that the Swift Boat Veterans for Obfuscation released their advertisement attacks. And it is here that Kerry got stuck in a morass of goo. The natural flow in momentum toward the Bush campaign going into the convention was probably bumped up by roughly a week with this advertisement and ensuing controversy. How large a negative this has inflcited upon Kerry remains to be seen.

The convention is over, and we now get a good glimpse of the outer perimeters of a Bush victory. There are a series of polls out, and the Bush partisans have a couple of polls to support them, and their Kerry partisans have a few polls to support a contention that Bush’s “bounce” is modest.

In the meantime, the conventional wisdom amongst the arbiters of such have shifted from a tight-50/50 type race, started peaking toward “wow… it kinda looks like Kerry” — despite his inherent weaknesses, and is probably about to be set to “Bush victory.”

Charles Cook has continuously contributed the contrary view… when it was starting to look like Kerry, he posited it toward Bush, and when the swing started going toward Bush, he remarked on the fickleness of the arbiters of conventional wisdom who have their finger in the wind, he’s moved toward Kerry.

Is Kerry’s campaign in trouble? This is the natural ebb point to his campaign, but beyond that… I don’t really know. I see what looks to me like inherent weaknesses in his campaign. Also, I must say, if I were Kerry I would not have capitulated to John McCain on the anti-Swift Boat attack ad that used his image (McCain saying to Bush at a debate when the camera was off “Why are you doing this to me?”, Bush replying “Hey! It’s just politics.”) to drive home the greatest truth of the Swift Boat ad. It should be noted, after all, that John McCain is a Bush partisan. On the otherhand, there are limits to what some of the Kerry partisans want: “go on the offensive”, sure, but there is a line that the partisans sometimes just aren’t fully aware of.

And, on yet another hand, you can stare at his primary fight. Written off for dead, you will remember… the latest in a long series of campaigns where he earned the label of “strong closer.”

The horse race dynamics of the Reagan – Carter race, it should be said, was middling all the way to October. Not that anyone can seriously expect anything of that magnitude. Some convention notes from 1980: Carter’s convention speech belies the belief that he needed to tear down Reagan, and should Kerry win, history will record Bush’s speech in the same breath as Carter’s.

Remember too that through 2002 nobody could make heads or tails of the Senate race dynamic until the weekend before the election — when it became clear the war in Iraq would corral a modest, but easily construed as major Bush-coattail effect. Laura Bush has just said that the war wasn’t popular when Bush made the decision — the story of the Bush decision with Bush fretting over it is a lie, mind you. But hold on a minute there! That was the storyline of the anti-war faction: the polls showing an even split for the idea of a war in Iraq until it became clear that it was inevitable and “support the troops” became paramount and the media loves it, you know? At the time, the hawks would argue that America knows they need this war. I guess the storyline changes by convenience to fit into the “steady leader, won’t waver in the face of any trouble” storyline.

Never mind.

We’ll see if Bush successfully makes Kerry unacceptable to the one exurban underemployed Ohio resident who is the elusive swing voter. Bush has largely mailed in domestic affairs — all go to the base — and is selling himself on the “War on Terror”, shouting into a bullhorn, and the idea of “steadfast leadership” versus “wavering and flip flopping”, meaning “even if you disagree” (and polls tend to show an increasing slim majority believe it to be a mistake) “you know where I stand.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jenna and Barbara Bush, and Zell Miller: three different styles; three different freakshows; three affirmations of my biases.

I assume that Arnold played well with the swing-voter, and at least he gave some persona of optimism.

I see this suggestion that Jenna and Barbara Bush might have had some appeal to parents who see in them their own tweens. Tweens are that marketer’s demographic segment of 9 to 14 year olds. Jenna and Barbara Bush are twenty two years old. It appears that it was Karen Hughes’s idea to give fuel to the sterotype of spoiled rich immature Bushes.

As for Zell Miller… The keynote speech is supposed to outline a political party’s philosophy with a flair of eloquence. In that vein, do we dare compare Barack Obama with Zell Miller? I suspect he worked in the way that negative campaigning works — the memes perpetuated. I hope he at least had the common courtesy of deleting some of the “chain email. Otherwise, the persona of Zell Miller… the verdict is in. I never thought we’d get from a staged major political party convention a primetime speech like Pat Buchanan’s 1992 harbinger. I was wrong. Expect Zell Miller to continue to make the rounds on the Sean Hannitys of the world; expect him to disappear from the Meet the Presses of the world.

Perhaps better to realign the speeches to better compare with the Democratic Convention speeches. Zell Miller’s speech thus sits next to Edward Kennedy’s as the “red meat for the partisans” speech. I don’t have to look back to say that Zell Miller’s was more bilous.* Arnold Schwarzenegger better sits next to Barack Obama’s speech. The theme is about the same: personal life story as party message as meaning of America. Where does that leave us with the Bush twins? Why, remember that cutesy “Kid for Kerry” who said that “Bush needs a time out”? (In four years, he’s going to be in his adolescence, brooding over whatever the then version of Black Sabbath is, thoroughly embarassed by his prior electoral political activism.)

What do I make of the Rudy Giuliani and John McCain speeches? McCain provided a lackluster speech, but that was enough… whatever extent that he gives Bush coattails is in play by his very presence. Giuliani provided a speech that probably better than McCain set the themes and tone: nostalgia for 9/11, a storyline from 9/11 straight to Iraq, and bash John Kerry. More importantly for Giuliani’s courtship of the conservative base for the 2008 election — endear himself with at least what he has in common with them: muscular military policy indeed.

It’s remarkable how quickly the storyline changed. At first, it was supposed to be the Moderates Stepping Up to the Plate — the most popular politicians in the nation (Giuliani, McCain, and Schwarzennager) — the backstory for the media to discuss about the fight between the moderates and the conservatives showing the “big tent” for the party. But that all changed fairly quickly, and excellerated with Zell Miller and Dick Cheney. This convention will be remembered for its negativity.

….
* Updated: the Democratic Convention speech that comes closest to Zell Miller’s is probably Al Sharpton’s speech, where he ventured astray from his prepared and vetted remarks… and which was outside of primetime.

The camera pans around. We have a man dressed like Abraham Lincoln. We have Rudy Giuliani. We have George Bush Sr.

And, we have a black couple.

……….

I picture Tony Blair after George Bush mentioned his name, saying “Ixnay on my me-na.” Bush ain’t too popular over there, you see, and his negative coattails are dragging Blair’s numbers down.

……..

Bush’s delivery on the first half, the domestic policy, was slow as moleasses and overtly deliberate.

What do you suppose that signifies?

When George Bush I was introduced at the convention, the screen showing him walk in to his seat, the conventioneers played in the background some snippets from Van Halen’s “Jump”. A tribute to his hobby of jumping out of airplanes.

I’m trying to find confirmation for this, but Zell Miller was introduced with…

The devil went down to Georgia
He was lookin’ for a soul to steal
He was in a bind
‘Cause he was way behind
And he was willin’ to make a deal

[Instrumental to end]

I’m trying to figure out what Zell Miller’s career is going to be in retirement. Should Bush be re-elected, I guess he’s done… unless he decides to zig-zag again, and goes off to speak before Moveon.org crowds. Should Kerry be elected, I guess he’ll continue speaking on the right-wing circuit.

Supposedly, the theme for the night was “Land of Opportunity”. Indeed, that would match Zell Miller’s 1992 speech before the Democratic Convention. The 2004 speech offered… no hope. The curious thing about the RNC Convention speeches, with the exception of Schwarzeggar: How hard is it to stick some rhetoric into speeches that smack of hope? And is it just me, or has Bush Campaign just decided to wave domestic issues altogether?

Well, I guess, let’s… listen to this voice.

In 1940, Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee.

And there is no better example of someone repealing their “private plans” than this good man. He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time.

Hold on a minute. Is this an endorsement for the return of the draft?

Now, while young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrat’s manic obsession to bring down our Commander in Chief.

I find it curious. Shouldn’t it be un-American to think that the nation is so weak that it cannot handle politics — politics in the true and most noble sense of the term, ie: differences of opinion? Yet, there we have it. Some think that America is weak, weak, weak.

It was Democratic President Harry Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city.

Sure. It was Democratic President Harry Truman who also decided it was a bad idea to overthrow the Nationalistic freely elected president of Iran Mossadegh. It was the British Prime Minister Churchill who bid his time until some more acceptable president would do so, so that Great Britain could again enjoy a free flow of oil. It was the Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower who was sold on the idea that we should overthrow him for the sake of defeating Communism. And it was the Democratic President Jimmy Carter who got the blame for it when the Iranians revolted against this, and gave themselves a crappy repressive fundamentalist Islamic regime. (And I’ll tie this in with a later Zeller Miller comment.)

It was also the Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower who stopped (technically stalled) the Korean War… before we liberated every last Korean, and for that matter every last Chinese.

Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Democrats and Republicans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. But not today.

My point being, time after time Democrats and Republicans looked at the price-tag, saw that these things were counter-productive to the overall goal, and moved on. Or, time after time Democrats and Republicans decided “liberation” wasn’t a worthy goal, alternating roles.

It was the Republicans who opposed the Democrat Bill Clinton’s “liberation” of Kosovo.

Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today’s Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.

And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.

My opinion, your opinion, his opinion, her opinion does not matter here. The question of whether “American troops are occupiers or liberators” belongs to… IRAQIS. And, for the sake of fighting nationalistic guerilla warriors… not even necessarily very many of them.

Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers.

You know… we occupied Germany. We occupied Japan. In fact, we can consider those two America’s most successful occupations.

I’ll get to Reagan in a minute, but question: what nation did our troops “liberate” during his reign? Grenada… I guess, though that was pure “wag the dog”. (In the case of Latin America, he let native fascists do his dirty work… therefore we didn’t occupy them. In the case of Europe — diplomacy as the Soviets disintegrated, largely due to overreach.)

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.

You can never go wrong bringing up the dirty spector of “flag burning”. I might as well add this: the reason the coffins come home draped in flags is because otherwise they looked too depressing.

No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn’t believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.

“And they were happy — they’re not happy they’re occupied. I wouldn’t be happy if I were occupied either. ” — W, April 13, 2004.

But don’t waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking America is the problem, not the solution.

They don’t believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.

Things are rather complicated. Nuanced, if you will. Why, take Eisenhower and Iran, for instance. I don’t think Superman is even pure good… is he?

Beyond which, I’m not going to dwell on a red herring straw man that is the second sentence.

It is not their patriotism — it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking. They claimed Carter’s pacifism would lead to peace.

Carter was a pacifist? Huh? He started the military budget buildup after the Committee on Present Danger told the public the world of the growing Soviet threat… the military buildup that Reagan merely accelarated. His administration aided the Afghan Holy Warriors… in fact, according to , Brzezinski… nay, that can be too easily construed to fit the “America is the problem” canard.

They claimed Reagan’s defense buildup would lead to war.

Well, in the old “guns vs butter” debate, we have, as Zell Miller put it in 1992: without a government that is on their side, those children have no hope. And when a child has no hope, a nation has no future. But never mind.

Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security but Americans need to know the facts.

Pointless to go down his list. Most of them come from a few votes, which if we want to put in historical context, I’ll just say go dig up George Bush I’s 1992 State of the Union speech where he proposes, at the behest of Dick Cheney, a “streamlined military”. John Kerry was joined by Dick Cheney, who requested more cuts… during the 1980s as a congressman he had this crazy, insane concept of “balancing the budget”. Don’t you hate career Senators who make compromising votes?

Besides which, here’s a campaign slogan: John Kerry: Fighting Against Bloated Pentagon Pork. Thanks for reminding me!

As a war protester, Kerry blamed our military.

Depends on how you define “military”. He blamed the government. The government deserved blame.

As a Senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harms way, far away.

He actually did vote for the bill. Before he voted against it. Actually kudos to Al Franken for his phrase on the matter– Kerry trying to rescind some tax cuts so as to– pay for it: The Republicans were actually against that vote, before they were for it. Spread that meme!

George Bush understands that we need new strategies to meet new threats.

No. Not really “new”.

I have knocked on the door of this man’s soul and found someone home

Kind of like Bush looking into Putin’s eyes and catching a glimpse of his soul?

Now, let’s listen to this voice on Chris Matthew’s show (past the roundtable composed of a batch of Republicans). Zell Miller seems to not understand the idea that Democrats offering “spitballs in combat” is the same cartoonish version of reality as Republicans “starving the kids”, and thus… challenges Chris Matthews to a duel.

MILLER: I wish we lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel.

….

MATTHEWS: Well, that was unexpected turn of events.

Yes, looking over the blogosphere, he has his rightwing partisans, and it might be added that part of Zell Miller’s doofusness may be a little overblown because of the noisy environment Miller and Matthews were in… We’re stuck in a sort of la-la land.