Author: N.Z. Bear

Kerry’s Campaign ‘Increasingly Confident’?

Via the Vet’s discussion forum, a brief piece from The American Spectator that alleges the Kerry campaign is confident the media will keep the Swifties quiet:
The campaign source said that the book was not considered a “serious” problem for the campaign, because, “the media wouldn’t have the nerve to come at us with this kind of stuff,” says the source. “The senior staff believes the media is committed to seeing us win this thing, and that the convention inoculated us from these kinds of stories. The senior guys really think we don’t have a problem here.”

Kerry Campaign Contributions Lack Disclosure

Just noticed something interesting when comparing campaign contributions against President Bush’s over at OpenSecrets.org. The OpenSecrets folks track the “quality of disclosure” associated with campaign contributions, described as follows:
“BEST EFFORTS” RULES: When making solicitations, candidates, PACs and party committees must make “best efforts” to obtain and report the name, address, occupation and employer of each contributor who gives more than $200 in a calendar year. In order to show that the committee has made “best efforts,” solicitations must specifically request that information and inform contributors that the committee is required by law to use its best efforts to collect and report it.
Most members of Congress fully identify the great majority of their donors’ occupations and employers

Now, it gets interesting

Yet another Swift Boat prediction: Unfit For Command on sale tomorrow. Expect the major media blackout to show its first significant cracks, if not outright crumbling, with stories timed to coincide with the release (either Sunday or Monday).
Also: I hadn’t noticed this page on the Swift Vets for Truth site before, but the deconstruction of the group-photograph Kerry used in a campaign ad is yet another devastating bit of truth…

Thought of the Morning

Perhaps the most satisfying element of blogging is the ability to indulge oneself; to expose ones inner emotions, demons, or angels, with full knowledge and confidence that the ice cream is free, damnit, and anybody who doesn’t like the flavor of the day can bloody well go elsewhere.

Blue Man Group: Exhibit 13

I had the opportunity to see Man Group on their Complex Rock Tour a ways back, and must say it was a most enjoyable show. Which is to say, it rocked.
Having now purchased the concert DVD, I’ve been enjoying it this evening, and it has the same wild goofy energy as the live show did.
With one exception. The group’s presentation of Exhibit 13.
It is nearly three years since that day, and I have to say I am surprised to see how little art has come from it. Not even bad art.
Exhibit 13, however. It troubled me at first. But having lived with it for some time, it seems right. It brought tears to my eyes, again, as I watched it this evening, in a quiet room.
It is a reminder, and sometimes, we need that.

Swift Boat Tracker #2

Kerry Swift Boat Meter Day 3
Today’s reading: steady at 2,430.
PS: We’re tracking Google News, not just a straight Google search; hence the commenters who noted previously that the number had jumped to 80,000 were looking at a different metric…

Swift Boat Tracker #1

Kerry Swift Boat Meter Day 1
And now, a new, perhaps regular feature here at TTLB: The “kerry swift boat” GoogleNews meter:
Today’s reading: entries found on GoogleNews when searching for “kerry swift boat”.
Stay tuned!

Kerry’s Swift Demise

I’m going to go on record and predict that the Boat Veterans kerfuffle won’t just be a major negative for Kerry: it will be a campaign-killer. One thing that those of us who spend far too much time hyperanalyzing politics and world events tend to forget is that for the general public, stories like this are absorbed only as vague and general impressions.
Up until now, Kerry has gotten a pass on his Vietnam time: the general impression has been “He talks about it too much, but he was some kind of war hero back in Vietnam”. Now, there’s an alternate perspective: “Not only does he talk about it too much, but he’s actually a liar.” From the 10,000 foot view of the average voter, the Swifties don’t have to prove their case in a court of law for Kerry to take damage: they just have to throw a bit of doubt onto the lily-white image he’s portrayed thus far. In that, they’ve already succeeded.
But it’s not that bad: it’s actually much worse. The biggest problem for Kerry is that the Swifties’ attacks confirm what we really want to believe about him anyway. He’s been so damned annoying about his Vietnam record that we secretly want to think the worst of him, and now the Swifties have provided a rational basis for that gut-level irritation that Kerry inspires when he blathers on about his war record. This isn’t just bad for Kerry, it’s disasterous: the amorphous negative that normal people have when exposed to Kerry’s “leadership, courage, and sacrifice” / “three purple hearts” mantra now has a core of fact — or at least, alleged fact — around which to crystalize.
Unless Kerry’s campaign manages to completely discredit the Swifties — which seems increasingly unlikely — the campaign is over; Kerry is done. And after Election Day has passed, I expect that anyone looking backwards will wonder why in the world the Democrats ever thought making Kerry’s Vietnam service a centerpiece was a good idea in the first place.

Senator Ted: People Suck

On a more serious note, I couldn’t help but pause when I heard this nugget from Ted last night:
“There’s a reason why this land was called ‘the American experiment.’ If dedication to the common good were hardwired into human nature, we would never have needed a revolution. If each of us cared about the public interest, we wouldn’t have the excesses of Enron. We wouldn’t have the abuses of Halliburton. And Vice President Cheney would be retired to an undisclosed location.”
Leave aside the tortured rhetorical right-turn into Cheney-bashing, and just focus on those first sentences. The good Senator expresses a rather grim view of human nature, doesn’t he?
If you truly believe that each of us has no interest in the common good; that we don’t care about the public interest — well, I guess some of the nanny-state policies so dear to the hearts of Democrats actually do start to make some sense.
Me, I’ll stick to believing that most people are basically decent, and that left to their own devices they’ll generally do just fine at behaving like moral people with some concern for their fellow citizens. And I’ll thank Senator Ted for the illuminating — if disturbing — glimpse into his own dark view of humanity — and himself.

And he means it, too

Kennedy, at the convention today: “We bear no ill will toward our opponents. In fact, we’d be happy to have them over for a polite little tea party. I know just the place: right down the road at Boston Harbor.”
Call me crazy, but is it really such a good idea for Ted Kennedy to be making vaguely threatening comments involving bodies of water?

Not that you asked, but…

Not to backseat-blog or anything, but here’s a bit of advice for my colleagues who actually travelled to the convention:
a) Get the hell out of “blogger alley”
b) Stop talking to each other
c) Stop pictures of each other
d) Stop simulblogging speeches that are being covered live by television.
e) Stop doing interviews with big media. (Yes, even fake big media).
This has been a public service announcement. Please resume blogging.