Day: October 21, 2004

Be verwy verwy qwiet. I’m hunting wabbits.

Laura Bush blows off remark from Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Asked about Heinz Kerry’s apology Wednesday for what she said, Bush responded, “It didn’t matter to me. It didn’t hurt my feelings. It was perfectly all right that she apologized. She didn’t have to apologize. I know how tough it is. And actually I know those trick questions.”

Now THAT’S a First Lady!

Kerry’s election day strategy? 10,000 lawyers enlisted for battleground states. Six “SWAT” teams of political operatives situated across the country in fueled up jets awaiting orders to fly to contested states to mount legal fights.

“While the lawyers litigate, political operatives will try to shape public perception. Their goal would be to persuade voters that Kerry has the best claim to the presidency and that Republicans are trying to steal it. Democrats are already laying the public relations groundwork by pointing to every possible voting irregularity before the Nov. 2 election and accusing Republicans of wrongdoing.”

Read the full Fournier treatment here.

Bill Clinton wants to head the U.N. As much as I hate to admit it, the folks at Outside the Beltway have got it right.

Michelle Malkin has pictures of John Kerry and his little hunting trip today in western Ohio. This is yet another example of the Kerry campaign playing the electorate for fools. What, are we supposed to believe that Kerry is taking a break from campaigning so he can get a little rest and relaxation baggin geese? With less than 2 weeks until the election? Pppfffftttthhhh.

The Tampa Tribune decides to sit out the endorsement game this cycle. Their editorial board is so conflicted that they decided to publish an endorsement endorsing nobody (although they spend the majority of the print space slamming Bush).

So what? As I’ve said before in this blog, newspaper endorsements serve no purpose anymore. They’ve become extinct in their effectiveness due in large part to the age of 24/7 TV news, the Internet, and most importantly, BLOGS. We’ll see less attention being paid to print endorsements in 2008, and by 2012 (mark my words), they will be gone.

Bill’s got a great article out today focusing on Kerry’s unwavering support for the U.N. He cites an article from the WaPo, which is here.

Michael Barone of US News published an article yesterday with interesting insights into the varying poll results we’ve seen lately. He mentions a couple of things worth noting:

“It seems highly likely that Bush emerged from the debates a little bit ahead. Some Kerry backers argue that voters who are still undecided are likely to end up voting against the incumbent. But it’s also possible that many of these will just not vote. And in any case, Bush is bumping up against the magic number of 50 percent. The debates helped John Kerry but evidently not enough to put him ahead.”

I know this confounds most of the MSM. Stephen Green’s theory is that the polls are working from assumptions on voting patterns built from past elections. On this I agree. Pollsters haven’t adjusted their methodology in this post 9/11 world.

Barone goes on to include Steven Den Beste’s blog article containing a chart with poll trend lines. He notes that Bush’s trend line has consistently gone up, while Kerry’s has not.

“Bush’s most effective opposition this year has come not from Kerry and the Democrats but from Old Media, the New York Times and the news pages of the Washington Post, along with the broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC. Old Media gave very heavy coverage to stories that tended to hurt Bush.”

An interesting observation for sure, one that I’ve believed to be true. I haven’t heard anyone else from the MSM admit this.

“George W. Bush is not running this year as an incumbent in a time of apparent peace or, in public perceptions, a time of apparent prosperity. Actually, the economic numbers are about where they were when Bill Clinton was running for re-election in 1996, but Old Media consistently report economic news more pessimistically when Republicans hold the White House than when Democrats do.”

I’ve lamented the fact that there hasn’t been fair comparisons made between the economic numbers of the Bush administration and past administrations. It’s a shame that this specific relation between Bush and Clinton is just now being revealed by the MSM with less than two weeks before election day.

The full article is here.

Castro falls after leaving the stage following a televised speech Wednesday night.

“Maybe I broke my knee, and maybe an arm . . . but I am all in one piece. I will do what is possible to recover as fast as possible, but as you can see I can still talk, he said. Even if they put me in a cast, I can continue in my work.”

Can it get any more pathetic than that? An old, worn out leader dressed in a military uniform that doesn’t fit him, afraid to confess to his nation that he’s tired. His regime is failing and communism as a movement failed long ago. Every time his poor health is revealed publicly, you can practically hear the people of cuba praying that the guy will finally die. I can only imagine the power vacuum that will occur once he does pass away.

UPDATE: Catch Daily Recycler’s video here.