Michael Moore still has no clue

USATODAY.com - The GOP doesn't reflect America

Please permit me another direct-to-blog response to High Prince Fool (Michael Moore).

You can read his column at the link above. My favorite quote is this:

I asked one man who told me he was a "proud Republican," "Do you think we need strong laws to protect our air and water?"

"Well, sure," he said. "Who doesn't?"

I asked whether women should have equal rights, including the same pay as men.

"Absolutely," he replied.

"Would you discriminate against someone because he or she is gay?"

"Um, no." The pause — I get that a lot when I ask this question — is usually because the average good-hearted person instantly thinks about a gay family member or friend.

Hey, Mike, let's see what happens if you ask the President the same questions:

Mr. President, do you support strong laws to protect our air and water?

- Sure! I like to breath and drink, too!

Do you think women should have equal pay as men and equal rights?

- Absolutely! That's easy because they already do!

Would you discriminate against someone because they are gay?

- Of course not! I'm on the record saying that numerous times.

Hmmm. I wonder if Mr. Moore is, as usual, pretending to ask one question when he is really asking another one.

You know, like the environmental question is really: "Do you support the radical environmentalist agenda, or are you a Nazi hate monger?"

The trick is that he hears this question when he asks the other one, and then acts like that's what the interviewee is answering.

"Do you support radical feminism, or are you a Nazi hate monger?"

"Do you support the radical gay agenda, including gay marriage that most Americans oppose, or are you a Nazi hate monger?"

I contend that any american would answer Mr. Moore's questions the same way as the guy in the article. That's the way they were designed. This is yet another of Mr. Moore's party tricks. His personal world view depends on being the friend of the little guy, so, statistics and actual facts aside, he has to believe that Americans are liberals.

Dream on, Mike.

RMR

Kerry's Book "The New Soldier" FREE online

John Kerry wrote a book as a part of his role with Vietnam Veterans Against the War. This book, "The New Soldier" is hard to find (my understanding is that Kerry has chased down and purchased every copy, but I can't confirm that). It contains his full Senate testimony and lots of other information that the Kerry campaign doesn't want you to know about his service and his behavior afterwards.

It is now available free online as a PDF at www.freekerrybook.com

Read it and decide who should be commander in chief.

RMR

YAWWWWWN!

National Review Online

This article so vexed me as to require an immediate blog comment from your fearless author.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

First, I'm not saying that the points made aren't valuable and all that. The point is, is this really worth our time when crazy people are trying to kill us and the worst qualified person in the universe to stop them is only 2 percentage points behind! (That's Kerry for the Aggies out there)

We are going to screw up our convention worse than the Dems screwed up their own with this kind of bickering. If we have to bicker, can we keep it out of the conservative journal of record?

Please?

We're trying to WIN here. Lives are at stake.

Get on the team!

RMR

Remember the BIG ERROR?

Well...it looks like your faithful writer was correct about the dem's Big Error at their Convention - running like they were ahead and not tied. The big Swift Vet blow up is exhibit A. Kerry has stepped in all of this because he has hung his entire candidacy on his four month stint in Vietnam.

Cristopher Hitchens has a great point about this today: in what possible way does Vietnam service equip anyone to deal with the war on terror? Especially a lieutenant! Does service in a war that Kerry himself calls unjust and poorly waged add to his resume? Kerry's flip flopping on his own bio only serves to weaken the one quality that he could wring out of this part of his life, that he has character for having served.

The apoplectic press has only served to strengthen the Swift Boats case, as you can read in this smackdown of Kerry in the London Daily Telegraph. The treatment of these folks by Serpenthead (James Carville) and Meathead (Chris Matthews) only serves to show the weakness of these partisan's cases.

Anyway, as polls show, Bush is getting a PRE convention bounce from all of this.

How sweet it is. Remember, as long as Kerry stays as "generic democrat" in the polls against Bush, he'll do ok. It's when he opens his mout that he's in trouble.

RMR

The Talking Points Press

Sorry I haven't posted much this week: school is starting and this is just a hobby!

Read this transcript of Lehrer News Hour to see the treatment that the Swift Vets are getting now that this story has cracked the National Press blackout. It's basically the host and the counter guest challenging the Vets' veracity and snootily issuing...Kerry campaign talking points.
I used to watch McNeil/Lehrer every night.

Back when it was real journalism.

The pathetic job of the mainstream press on this issue is chronicled on Media Research Center's web site. You should check this site fairly regularly if being lied to by overpaid journalists bothers you. Also, NewsMax has a great article detailing the huge amount of collaboration between 527's, the DNC, and the Kerry Campaign.

RMR

Around the Web

On the Web today there is a new Kerry Swift Boat controversy and an article USA Today refused to run because it was pro-Bush about the myth that Bush is dumb. Also, we hear from the brilliant Bob Novak on the Swifties and Peter King debunks the idea that 9/11 families hate Bush.

Also, more on taxes: Rush reports on a bad Times story. Here are the real numbers.

Why the Swift Boat Vets for Truth Matter

Before you go any further in this post, take a look at Tim Graham in National Review, Byron York , this article on Kerry's shifting position on Iraq and Tony Blankley. Also, our hero Ann Coulter has a great column on the issue.

Then, go to http://www.kerryoniraq.com/ and watch the brief video there.

The reason the Swift Boat Vets matter is that a guy who would lie about being in Cambodia on Christmas Eve of 1968 is the same guy who would make numerous contradicting statements about the war in Iraq. It's a guy who would literally say anything to get elected.

For a senator from a liberal state, not the end of the world.

For the President of the most powerful nation on earth, a recipe for total disaster.

What Tony Blankley has to say is perhaps the most disturbing of all the articles above. He describes a book with extensive documentation, footnotes, signed legal documents, and more. This is a case that, even if false, deserves to be investigated and answered by the Kerry campaign.

And what has the press done? NBC News bemoaned 527 groups that can run these kinds of ads. Never mind that 527's, all funded by Democrat operatives, have been hammering the President for months. It's only when Kerry is under fire that they notice it's wrong.

Where is the real journalist that will confront Kerry about all this information? Unfortunately for the modern American, they are only on Fox News. What happened to tough, unbiased reporting? Is the agenda so important that the press won't perform one of their most basic jobs?

Can we survive with a president like John Kerry? He claims he can do diplomacy, but not if our allies can't trust what he says. Even if they dislike Bush, they know he's consistent.

The Swift Boat Vets for Truth argument goes to the heart of what's wrong with John Kerry. It's not being reported, so make sure you find out for yourself.

RMR

More on Moore and Other Stuff From the Web

There is a great article today that deals with "Michael Moore Is a Big Fat White Man", a new book documenting his numerous distortions in various films. Also, this great joke from Leno:

"For the first time, John Kerry (news - web sites) has criticized President Bush's reaction on 9/11. John Kerry said if he were reading to children at that moment, he would have told them he had something important to attend to. Let me tell you something — if John Kerry was reading to children, first he would have to wake them up. 'Kids, I gotta go now. Kids?! Kids?!'"

Also, for more on the Swift Boat Vets for Truth, read this article from the UK and this one from David Limbaugh. The most interesting thing to note about this controversy is that the Kerry surrogates are attacking the Swift Vets and not rebutting the facts laid out in their book. For the experienced political observer, this usually means something...

The Swift Boat Vets Back Up Their Claims and USA Today Declares Kerry MIA On Iraq

USA Today smacks Kerry around on his lack of a real Iraq policy today in a really painful critique. This goes back to my repeated point about Kerry's stealth candidacy. I am starting to think that his poll numbers are really "generic democrat" numbers and not specifically related to him personally. After all, what is a Kerry supporter for? He won't even tell us!

Also, the Swift Boat Veterans back up their recent controversial add with a lot of info on their website. Here's a RightMakesRight tip for you: the one calling the other one names (like right-winger shill) is probably wrong rather than the one with all the evidence backing up their point.

Michael Novak has a great column today referring to his earlier claim that Bush will win by three or four points. He deals with the BIG LIE that Bush "lied" about Iraq.

And finally, be sure to read this National Review article about Bill Oreilly destroying Paul Krugman in a debate. The transcript is quite a read.

In the News

Our hero Ann Coulter has a new column today about Sandy Berger, and the editors of National Review make a compelling argument about Kerry not making a case for his being president. There is also this article about Nixon's, I mean Kerry's, "secret plan" to deal with the war in Iraq, and this one indicating that economics will propel Bush to victory. Read here to see George Will's great questions he'd like to ask Kerry.

This article and this one on Drudge deal with the controversy over Kerry's Vietnam service. He apparently is trying to stop veteran's groups from running ads against him. What is he afraid of? You can check out the vet's site at www.swiftvets.com.

Kerry "Won't Be For Big Business"

This post is in response to this article now appearing on foxnews.com. I will try to quote accurately for those of you who can't bring yourselves to surf over there for fear of "conservative cookies".

The article opens with a standard Dem attack line from Kerry's convention speech. Since ratings indicate that no one listened to the speech, I'll let you know that Kerry said "My vice president of the United States will never meet secretly with polluters who want to rewrite the environmental laws." This is liberal-ese for having meetings on energy policy with (gasp!) the energy industry. One can imagine that if the chicken industry were in a crisis and the veep needed to meet with somebody, one of those people would be from Tyson or KFC. Also, apparently according to Kerry every one of the thousands of Americans that work in the energy field is a polluter.

The big problem is that, again, rather than debating the administration's proposed energy policy, which is publicly available, liberals would rather obsess about how they came up with the policy. Who cares who said what at what meaning, doesn't the law itself reveal what the administration wants to do on this important issue?

If the energy policy had been implemented three years ago when it was proposed to head off our current energy crisis, an airport sized oil field in a national preserve the size of South Carolina would be pumping out a million barrels of oil a day and driving a stake right through the heart of our current problems. Those problems involve supply. The chinese and indian economies are growing and demand is way up, and current oil reserves aren't meeting demand. Also, a working large field not under OPEC control would stabilize oil prices. 700,000 jobs would have also been created in the energy industry. Not to mention cheaper gas at the pump.

But, we don't talk about policy, remember? We just say "Cheney" and "Haliburton" in the same sentence a whole lot and hope that Americans vote against the Republicans. Never mind that Cheney no longer has a financial interest in Haliburton or that Haliburton is an oil equipment company and not an oil company.

Well, I guess there's always hope that Americans are smarter than that. Personally, I think that they are.

RMR

In the News

Take note of a few interesting news stories/columns on the web today: For some truth on the American record in Iraq, check out this column on National Review Online, or, on the same site, this article about Dem's saying "nice" things about the President or this article about the late Clinton recession of 2000. In an amusing bit of irony, this article from the NY Daily News and this one from Slate were posted next to each other on a website (they pretty much are saying the exact opposite things). This article by David Broder dates back to my "Big Error" column. Byron York has several great comments about one element of Kerry's convention speech as well.

RMR

Correction

To all our readers I want to offer babybison an unqualified apology for accidentally erasing her post yesterday. She has thoughtfully resubmitted it (or I would have). You can read more about it in the comments under the Big Error.

Her comments are welcome and I thank her for contributing her thoughts.

RMR

Only the Rich Pay Taxes

Truth on Taxes

One of the few policy proposals that John Kerry has actually proposed this campaign season includes “rolling back Bush’s tax cuts for the rich”. To translate, that means raising taxes. There is a lot of talk about the “rich” paying their “fair share.” This naturally begs the question, who are the rich? Who pays taxes?

According to the IRS, the top five percent of wage earners pay 53.25% of all income taxes but only earn 31.99% of all income. The top ten percent pay 64.89% and earn 43.11% and the top twenty-five percent pay 82.9% and earn 65.23%. Are you sensing a pattern? The top 50% pay 96.3% of all taxes and earn 86.19%. Sounds like someone’s already paying their “fair share”.

So what about the bottom 50%? You do the math: they only pay 3.97% of all income taxes.

The point is, if you are going to give a tax cut, who do you give it to except those that pay taxes? Bush’s cuts were for every tax bracket, and the lower brackets received a larger percentage rate cut. Sure, the rich received a greater number of dollars back, but this is a consequence of how much more they pay in the first place. The simple fact is that, on a percentage basis, they received a smaller cut.

Another important point: the much lamented difference between the rich and poor in this country over the nineties and into the 2000’s has not been caused by an increase in the amount of poor people. It’s because more and more citizens, millions in fact, have moved into the wealthy class. We are the only country in history to have such a large group of wealthy people that did not inherit their fortunes.

So look out. When they say tax the rich...they might mean you.


RMR

Others chime in on Kerry's "negative bounce"

For more on the Big Campaign Error, see this article at USA Today, Dick Morris' column in the New York Post, or this column in the Washington Times.

UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer (sp?) chimes in to agree with your fearless writer.

RMR

Since Angela has declared your fearless writer to be a bald old man, we must correct this and other mistakes in her posting. 

The Big Campaign Error of 2004

The opening statement of this right swerving blog will deal with what I call "The Big Campaign Error of 2004". What is it? Running the Democratic Convention like you are 15 points ahead instead of tied.

What were they thinking?

The answer is actually not that complex. After all, when everyone you knows hates Bush, hates the war in Iraq, and thinks tax cuts are "code words" for racial discrimination, it's easy to assume that the rest of America thinks so, too. This monocular world view led the Kerry campaign to come up with the Big Idea of their convention: Just Don't Screw Up and Say "Strong" alot. The theory was, "everybody already wants to dump Bush, we just have to not scare them off."

The entire convention was infomercial fluff with no real big ideas, no bold plans, no over-arching policy themes. Important issues to Americans from guns to gays, abortion to education, taxes to health care were either not discussed at all (gays and abortion) or talked of in the broadest possible terms (everything else).

The result? The first convention since 1950 that did not provide their candidate with a poll bounce of any kind. You have to argue to persuade. You have to stand for something to convince. Saying "strong" three hundred times and showing thirty-five year old Vietnam footage doesn't show that you can be Commander in Chief. Vision does. Policy does.

The Big Error was underestimating Americans. They can handle it if you actually treat them like adults and make your argument. Why should partial birth abortion be legal? Why is the death penalty wrong? Why do we need universal health care? Why do we need France and Germany's approval for military action? Kerry supports all of these ideas, but chose to not make an argument for them. This begs the question: are the arguments weak, Mr. Kerry?

RightMakesRight