Jack Kelly Sunday

Well it's about time. Almost exactly a month after his favored party and his favored candidate for President lost, and lost badly, in what he called an electoral "landslide," and six weeks after both her disastrous debate with Vice-President-Elect Joe Biden and her equally disastrous interview with Katie Couric, Jack Kelly finally speaks out about Sarah Palin.

Guess what? In this week's column, he endorses her for President in 2012.

No, I'm not kidding.

In the course of the column, he blames her bad luck and her bad press on the media. He begins:

The week before the election, the Obama campaign ran a television commercial attacking the Republican candidate for vice president. To my knowledge, this had never been done before.

According to the Washington Post, this is the ad:



But if you look at it, it's not completely about Governor Palin, is it? Strikes me it's more about McCain's bad judgment in choosing Palin than it is about Palin herself.

But again, look at Jack's text. WHAT had never been done before, Jack? A campaign ad critical of Sarah Palin or a campaign ad critical of a Vice-Presidential candidate? Or a campaign ad critical of a Republican candidate for Vice-President? It's not clear. And as it's from an experienced columnist at a major American Newspaper, shouldn't it be?

In either case, what difference does that make?

Next up, he blames the big bad media for her bad press:

Within days of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's selection by John McCain to be his running mate, there was speculation in the news media that maternal neglect was the cause of baby Trig's Down Syndrome; that Trig was really daughter Bristol's baby; that Sarah was a fundamentalist who believes dinosaurs and humans coexisted; that she once belonged to a secessionist party; that as mayor of Wasilla, she tried to have popular books banned from the town library.

None of this was true, but this was how the news media introduced Ms. Palin to people in the lower 48. No vice presidential candidate has ever been subjected to such a torrent of abuse.

It's difficult to argue against such statements. WHO IN THE MEDIA said that "maternal neglect was the cause of baby Trig's Down Syndrome"? Jack doesn't say. WHO IN THE MEDIA said that Trig was actually Bristol's baby? Again, Jack doesn't say. I know more than a few bloggers said it, but is Jack now lumping us all in with the Main Stream Media?

Jack's more than capable of quoting someone verbatim. He even does it in this very column. But by leaving it vague, he's left it to the readers to fill in the blanks with some imaginary "reporting" of such. ("I didn't read anything like this, but Jack Kelly says so, so it must be true. I must've just missed it.")

News to Jack: Sarah Palin is a fundamentalist. The church she attends was described in Newsweek this way:

Except for the national spotlight, Wasilla Bible Church resembles thousands of conservative evangelical churches across the country. Its statement of faith says its members believe that the Bible is the "inspired, inerrant word of God."

It's that last part: that the Bible is the "inerrant word of God" that makes her a fundamentalist. It was her husband who belonged to that seccessionist party - she just addressed its convention this year. Jack didn't tell you that, did he?

And Jack's spinning things just a tad in discussing the book banning. Jack writes:

...that as mayor of Wasilla, she tried to have popular books banned from the town library.

Not exactly true. While no books were ever banned, Palin did inquire (three times, as it turned out) whether the local librarian would be OK with "censuring books if asked to do so." When the librarian said "no" that librarian was duly fired for disloyalty. After what must've been a fierce public outcry the librarian was reinstated the next day.

Something else Jack didn't tell you.

And I gotta say that I found this paragraph unintentionally funny:

A star athlete and beauty contest winner who hunts moose and worked as a commercial fisherman, Sarah Palin has a remarkable personal and political story. But it's a story the news media largely ignored in favor of spreading malicious gossip.

I mean , given Jack's own history of spreading the gossip, it's high hilarity for Jack to suddenly see the light of journalistic fairness. For instance, did you know that William Ayers could easily have written Barack Obama's book "Dreams From My Father"? (Ayers's later autobiography and Obama's book share some nautical metaphors, so IT MUST BE TRUE.) Or that William Ayers and Barack Obama may have met at Columbia a full decade before either has admitted? (Obama was at Columbia in the early 80s and Ayers was at Columbia in the early 80s so IT MUST BE TRUE.) Both those bits of information came from the well-worn typewriter of Jack Kelly.

Neither has a shred of evidence to support it (beyond the rantings of the far right fringe). Can someone say to my friend Jack that he's also "spreading malicious gossip"

Please?

Jack Kelly Sunday

There's not much for me to disagree with in this week's column. Jack Kelly even calls the results a "landslide in the Electoral College" and as we all know, when Jack says something, it's gotta be true.

Right?

So Electoral College landslide it is. Thanks, Jack!

At one point, Jack writes:

I give the McCain campaign a C- at best. It often seemed a pudding without a theme. On the paramount issue, Mr. McCain didn't have a message that resonated until Joe the Plumber found one for him. And the way the McCain campaign mishandled its prize asset -- Gov. Sarah Palin -- was appalling.

All this may be true, but Governor Palin's own performance was no less appalling. National Review columnist Kathleen Parker way back in late September called for Palin to withdraw from the ticket. Parker wrote:

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

Then Jack writes this:

There apparently was more fraud in this election than in any other in the recent past. But because Mr. Obama's margins in key states were large, the votes of the ineligible and the dead didn't affect the outcome. Republicans weren't robbed. They were beaten, fair and square.

Of course Jack doesn't say where there was "apparently was more fraud in this election than in any other in the recent past" so we're left to fill in the blanks.

Ohio? Smooth.
Pennsylvania? Also smooth.
Florida? "Almost eerily quiet."

So where was this "more" fraud? Any reports of widespread voter fraud in any of the non-partisan organizations set up to watch for it? I couldn't find any.

But I wholeheartedly agree that the GOP was beaten (in Jack's own words) "fair and square." But then Jack immediately contradicts himself with the next paragraph:

Because Republicans cannot reasonably blame defeat on tactical mistakes by the McCain campaign...

Didn't he just give the McCain campaign a C- on its "pudding without a theme" (whatever that means)? So it's now unreasonable to blame the (Electoral College landslide) defeat on the campaign's mistakes? I don't get it.

Jack follows a few paragraphs later with that desperate last-ditch meme of the rightwing noise machine. Here's how Jack puts it:

Despite Mr. Obama's victory, I think America remains a center-right country. But the right cannot prevail if it alienates the center.

Uh, no. Tell me how, when more than 52% of the electorate votes for the guy the GOP branded as "a socialist" we live in a "center-right" nation. Mediamatters.org reports that Democracy Corp released poll numbers showing strong support for the policies outlined by now-President-Elect Obama. How then can we be in a "center-right" country? Michael Grunwald of Time, writing the night of the election, puts it this way:

The pundits are already warning that Obama could overreach, that Democratic congressional leaders are still unpopular, that this is still a center-right country. But it wasn't tonight. Obama will have the luxury of taking office at a time when the GOP is the AIG of electoral politics, when his predecessor has set the lowest bar since James Buchanan, when a supposedly conservative Administration just started nationalizing the banking system, when the public is desperate for change. What is it about tonight's results that suggests Obama should be afraid of progressive action on the cusp of a depression?

And reminds us of the national nightmare we're leaving:

Remember what eight years of Republican rule has wrought: missing weapons of mass destruction, the promises we'd be greeted as liberators, Jessica Lynch, torture, the disintegration of Afghanistan. Also: Enron, WorldCom, Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie and Freddie, GM, Chrysler, Social Security privatization, the $700 billion bailout. Also: Brownie, John Ashcroft covering up that bare-breasted statue at the Justice Department, Alberto Gonzales politicizing the Justice Department, Harriet Miers, the oil lobbyist who edited those global warming reports. Also: Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Tom DeLay, Ted Stevens. Also: the Vice President shot a guy, and the President almost choked to death on a pretzel.

The election was a mandate for change, an electoral college landslide and a clear repudiation of both conservative policies in general and the last eight disastrous years specifically.

Can We Get A Comment From Jack Kelly?

About this:


Please note which news source this is. Carl Cameron reports that the McCain folks told him that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent (she thought it was a country) and didn't know which countries were signatories to NAFTA (namely these THREE: USA, Canada and Mexico).

Given that Jack Kelly was Sarah Palin's biggest fan at the P-G, I wonder if he has a comment now about Governor Palin's obvious (and this is from Fox, remember) lack of general political knowledge.

Anything Jack?

Jack Kelly Sunday

One last chance.

Jack has one last chance to smear Senator Obama before the election and in this week's column he does his darnedest to cover at least most of the bases. To his credit he doesn't dirty himself (or the P-G) with the laughable "Ayers wrote Obama's book" meme or the embarassing "Obama's birth certificate is a fraud" meme.

No. He just goes for the jugular with this:

Less is known about Barack Obama than about any major party candidate for president in modern history. His public resume is thin -- eight years in the Illinois Senate, four in the U.S. Senate, with two of them spent running for president.

And no candidate for president has had more problematic associations. Barack Obama's first major financial backer was Antoin "Tony" Rezko, currently awaiting sentencing on corruption charges. For nearly 20 years Mr. Obama attended services where the Rev. Jeremiah Wright preached hatred of the United States, and of white people. The radical group ACORN has been committing voter registration fraud on a massive scale. Mr. Obama taught classes for ACORN organizers, and represented the group in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois. The most significant managerial responsibility Barack Obama has ever had was as chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a project conceived of by unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers.

These associations have been less explored by the mainstream news media than has Joe the Plumber's divorce and a tax lien against him.

All presented as statements of fact. And that's all they have left: Rezko, Wright, ACORN, and Ayers.

Guilt by association, the GOP way.

For the record, the corruption charges facing Rezko had nothing to do with Obama. Wright is long gone from the campaign and of him Obama has already said:

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Further, Obama was joined by the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE in that lawsuit against the State of Illinois forcing that state to comply with already existing federal laws intended to enhance access to the polls. They won.

And the "training" Jack trumpets? Two hours:

Lewis Goldberg, a spokesman for Acorn, said Mr. Obama conducted two leadership training sessions of roughly an hour each for Acorn’s Chicago affiliate over a three-year period in the late 1990s. He was not paid for that work, Mr. Goldberg said.

Two whole hours over three whole years! Ohmigod-ohmigod-ohmigod!

And that Chicago Annenberg Challenge? Left out of Jack's prose is the fact that the money for the Challenge was put up by the radical Walter Annenberg - founder of such radical publications as TV Guide and Seventeen magazine. Oh, and he was Richard Nixon's Ambassador to the UK. It was the radical Annenberg who introduced Ronald Reagan to Margaret Thatcher.

Ayers and TWO OTHERS; Anne Hallett and Warren Chapman came up with a draft of a grant proposal. That draft was then revised the draft into a formal proposal. The story is here.

Of course if you just read Jack the plan was COMPLETELY conceived of by Ayers. The reality, as always with Jack Kelly's columns, is much different.

One last chance to smear, Jack. How do you think you did?

Jack Kelly Sunday - An Update

Remember this posting?

In it, our friend Jack Kelly actually misrepresented a more-ridiculous-than-usual wingnut theory about Senator Obama. Namely that William Ayers ghost-wrote Obama's book, Dreams From My Father. Jack only pointed out that there were "coincidences." But coincidences, if they happen by definition happen "out of the blue." The allegation is that Ayers wrote Obama's book - how could that be "a coincidence"?

Well,there's an update to this story. This late in the campaign, in what has to be a most desperate hail-mary pass, someone in the GOP tried to get some more evidence to "prove" that Ayers wrote Obama's book.

Too bad for them it didn't work. Oxford Don Peter Millican sets the scene:

Last Sunday [October 26] I received an urgent call from Bob, a man close to a Republican congressman in the American west. He wanted to enlist my services to prove a scandalous allegation against Barack Obama, which would surely affect his prospects in the forthcoming election. Namely, that his famous 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, on which so much of his reputation was built, was in fact written largely by Bill Ayers, a Vietnam-era domestic terrorist.

On his website, Millican writes that he is totally confident that the story is false. He's got some of that reality based scientific evidence to back him up, too! Not that any evidence will convince the wingnuts at this point.

Go read it, Jack. It'll do you some good to get back to "evidence" and "reality."

And the rest of the story? The Republican who contacted Millican was willing to pay for the analysis, but as soon as Millican informed him; 1) that based some initial work the assertion was "very implausible" and 2) whatever his conclusion it should be made public, the Republican's interest waned.

Go figure.

Jack Kelly Sunday

You're not going to believe what's in Jack Kelly's column this week. It's the latest wingnut Obama-Ayers story and it's a doozy.

Let's get the preliminaries out of the way. It's another week, and still nothing from Jack about Sarah Palin's tumbling poll numbers, her abuse of power as Governor, her damaging interviews with Katie Couric - nothing. Truly surprising as Jack's been one of her biggest supporters for a while.

No, my friends, Jack Kelly's got yet another William Ayers story - one with "information" from yet another questionable news source. Last week the source was Newsmax, this week it's World Net Daily.

I'll ask it again - can someone tell me why a columnist from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is using such wingnut "news" sources for material? Anyone? Surely someone sitting at the P-G right now reading this can give me a hint. Even a teensy one. Please?

In a column filled with oily innuendo, Jack tries to make the case that the Ayers/Obama link is stronger than it's been presented so far. One example:

Mr. Ayers was in graduate school at Columbia University when Barack Obama was an undergraduate there in the early 1980s. Did they meet then?

According to his CV, William Ayers earned an MA from the Bank Street College of Education in 1984. It was presumably after that (fall of 1984?) that he began his studies at Columbia. He received two degrees in education from the Teachers College at Columbia University in 1987.

Senator Obama graduated from Columbia in 1983 with a degree in political science.

You do the math. Columbia currently has about 20,000 students. Even if it was half that 20+ years ago, what are the chances Barack Obama actually met William Ayers at Columbia? Especially since they were neither attending the same school or even the University at the same time?

I attended the University of Connecticut in the early 80s. So did Meg Ryan. What are the chances, do you think, that we met there? By Jack's logic, pretty good. IN REALITY, next to no chance at all.

Here's Jack:

Investigative reporter Jack Cashill has noted some intriguing coincidences between Sen. Obama's 1995 autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," and Mr. Ayers' 2001 book, "Fugitive Days," for which Sen. Obama wrote a dust-jacket blurb. Both books have the same lyrical style and are filled with nautical imagery, which would come naturally to Mr. Ayers, who spent a year as a merchant seaman, but which appear nowhere else in Mr. Obama's writing.

Excerpts from "Fugitive Days" and from "Dreams From My Father" both scored 54 on reading ease and a 12th-grade reading level on the Flesch Reading Ease Score, Mr. Cashill found. Scores can range from 0 to 121. Excerpts from "Fugitive Days" averaged 23.13 words a sentence. "Dreams" averaged 23.36 words a sentence. Excerpts from Sen. Obama's second book, "The Audacity of Hope," average 29 words per sentence, and a ninth-grade reading level, Mr. Cashill said. [emphasis added]

Please note the word "coincidences" in the first paragraph - it's very important and it's the key to Jack's dishonesty in this column. If you go take a look at what "Investigative reporter Jack Cashill" has to say about the Obama and Ayers books (this is the material Jack gets from World Net Daily), you'll find that he's NOT talking about "coincidences" at all.

What Cashill writes is the new wingnut story: William Ayers ghost wrote Barack Obama's book, "Dreams of My Father."

That's right. They want us to think that Ayers ghost wrote Obama's book.

Now go back to Jack. While he uses Cashill's "information" he describes it as "coincidence." But Cashill isn't talking "coincidences" is he? So Jack's actually MISQUOTING Cashill, isn't he?

Doesn't anyone at the P-G check this stuff?

There's some problems with this story, however. We'll jump to Cashill for some details:

Prior to 1990, when Barack Obama contracted to write "Dreams From My Father," he had written very close to nothing.

And:

Then, in 1995, this untested 33 year-old produced what Time magazine has called – with a straight face – "the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician."

Actually it was Joe Klein - in 2006, but that's a minor point. The thing is, Cashill spends a lot of time finding "similarities" between Obama's "Dreams of My Father" and Ayers's "Fugitive Days."

Someone should tell Cashill that "Fugitive Days" was published in 2001. Let's think for a bit. If the story is true, that Ayers ghost wrote Dreams of My Father, then it's also true that he plagiarized himself 6 years later, isn't it? This is what they want you to think.

This is how absurd the wingnuts have become. I long for the days when we were regaled of stories about the silent black helicopters and the foreign troops training on American soil who'll soon be forcing the US to join the "New World Order" of a newly formed totalitarian UN. By comparison to the "Ayers wrote Obama's book" story, it almost sounds rational, doesn't it?

By the way, I ran a Flesch test on Jack's column. It scored a 54.18.

Jack Kelly Sunday

Interesting.

As one of Sarah Palin's truest boosters (he was boosting Palin back in June), you'd think that Jack Kelly would have had something - anything - to say about this week's debate. The debate was Thursday evening, right? Surely on such an important occasion he'd want to get something on the record as soon as possible.

But check out his column this week - nothing. No chest thumping histrionics supporting the wingnut notion that Palin wiped up the floor with Joe Biden. No whiny allegations of "bias" about Gwen Ifill's book. No self-righteous charges of media sexism for bringing up Palin's many misstatements, distortions and lies.

No, this week Jack's on to Senator Obama's campaign contributions. It's always interesting what Jack doesn't say. Sometimes it says more than what Jack actually says.

While I could be wrong, this week's column seems to be a rehash of this column from Newsmax.com. (Note: Jack quotes from it so this is not a case of plagiarism.)

But Newsmax? Since when is Newsmax a credible source for P-G columnists?

For those who don't know, Newsmax's CEO is Christopher Ruddy. He's the "Vince Foster was killed" guy who also asserted that Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, whose body was found in a plane crash in Croatia, was actually killed by a gunshot wound to the head. No explanation for what happened to the gunman who would have conceivably died in that plane crash, as well.

Yea, That Newsmax.

This is how the rightwing noise machine works. Some goofy, half-baked (at best) idea gets burped up in the wingnut media and then conservative pundits complain that the story's NOT being picked up in more mainstream media outlets and then those outlets cover the controversy and BAM! the story's on everyone's desktop.

You can tell that that's what's going on when Jack writes:

If Mr. Obama were a Republican, the news media would be demanding he disclose the names of all of his donors...

He then points out that the McCain has already disclosed the names of all his donors (we'll get to this in a bit).

Let's start with the closest things to facts in Jack's column. The first:

Mr. Good Will -- who lists his employer as "Loving" and his profession as "You" -- has contributed 1,000 times to the Barack Obama campaign.

All the contributions have been in amounts of $25 or less. But they add up to $17,375 -- far more than the legal limit of $4,600 ($2,300 each for the primary and general election campaigns).

Jack tried directory assistance and found no info on Mr. Will. And the second:

Mr. Doodad Pro made 786 contributions for a total of $19,500. Like Mr. Good Will, Mr. Pro lists his employer as "Loving" and his profession as "You." Mr. Pro said he is from Nunda, N.Y. Directory assistance found no listing for him, either.

Michael Isikoff (a real reporter) also did some digging. Here's what he found:

"Good Will" listed his employer as "Loving" and his occupation as "You," while supplying as his address 1015 Norwood Park Boulevard, which is shared by the Austin nonprofit Goodwill Industries. Suzanha Burmeister, marketing director for Goodwill, said the group had "no clue" who the donor was. She added, however, that the group had received five puzzling thank-you letters from the Obama campaign this year, prompting it to send the campaign an e-mail in September pointing out the apparent fraudulent use of its name.

"Doodad Pro" listed no occupation or employer; the contributor's listed address is shared by Lloyd and Lynn's Liquor Store in Nunda. "I have never heard of such an individual," says Diane Beardsley, who works at the store and is the mother of one of the owners. "Nobody at this store has that much money to contribute." (She added that a Doodad's Boutique, located next door, had closed a year ago, before the donations were made.)

Gee, who would have thought that "Good Will" might mean "Goodwill"? Apparently not Jack Kelly. Isikoff follows that with this most important stuff:

Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said the campaign has no idea who the individuals are and has returned all the donations, using the credit-card numbers they gave to the campaign. (In a similar case earlier this year, the campaign returned $33,000 to two Palestinian brothers in the Gaza Strip who had bought T shirts in bulk from the campaign's online store. [emphasis added]

No where in the column does Jack even imply that the donations have already been returned. Don't you think he should have? I mean, isn't that was kinda important for the fabric of the whole column? Then Jack quotes Timmerman's column directly:

"In July and August, the head of Nigeria's stock market held a series of pro-Obama fund-raisers in Lagos," Mr. Timmerman said. "At one event, a table for eight went for $16,800. Nigerian press reports claimed sponsors raked in an estimated $900,000."

Uh-oh. In a column on illegal fundraising, we're left with the implication (aren't we?) that that $900,000 was funnelled into the Obama Campaign. Jack doesn't say it was and he doesn't say it wasn't. But the implication is there. That the seemingly fraudulent fundraisers took place in Africa and Senator Obama is an African-American must simply delight, uh, certain constituencies within Senator Obama's critics, no doubt.

Too bad the question of where that money went was answered a full month ago:

Hundreds of the city's high-society elite and business leaders paid up to £11,000 for a table at the glitzy fundraiser, but police intervened when it became clear that US laws prohibit overseas donations.

Staff from Barack Obama's campaign team said the Democratic presidential hopeful was in no way connected with the "Africans for Obama" organisation and added that no money from the group would be accepted.

The organiser of the August 11 event, Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, chair of the Nigerian stock exchange, was questioned by corruption investigators but was cleared of any wrongdoing on Sunday because no Nigerian laws were broken.

Oh well. In fact this pargraph follows directly:

She said in a statement that the money had never been intended as a direct donation to Mr Obama's campaign, but was to "mobilise and sensitise Africans" about his policies.

Something Jack doesn't tell you.

So Good Will's money's already been returned. Doodad Pro's, as well. The two brothers in Gaza and the Nigerian funds have all been returned.

Tell me again what Jack was talking about? And why he decided to write about THIS as opposed to cheering for Sarah Palin's debate performance?

The world is filled with mysteries.

Jack Kelly Sunday

Now that his shining hope for the republican ticket, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, has become a national joke, P-G columnist Jack Kelly can no longer credibly tout her qualifications as Vice President (as he does here and here).

So what's a wingnut to do? you ask. Simple: beat the "William Ayers" drum. Again.

And that's what Jack Kelly does in this week's column. He begins:

It's hard to put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it, so many are amazed the Obama campaign is employing this technique.

The fire that Sen. Barack Obama wants to douse was small until his aides arrived with gas cans. For months, conservatives have been trying to direct attention to the relationship between Mr. Obama and William Ayers.

Not really sure, but I think those two sentences contradict each other. And of course he doesn't list any of the "many" who are amazed referenced in that first sentence. In any event, as always what Jack leaves out is more illuminating than what he leaves in. And it tells us more about Jack than ever. Let's fact check. First, here's Jack:

Mr. Ayers was a leader of the Weather Underground, which planted bombs in the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon during the Vietnam War. He went on the lam after a nail bomb his group was building to kill soldiers and their wives at a dance at Fort Dix went off prematurely, killing three of the conspirators.

Mr. Ayers was never prosecuted because of FBI misconduct. He became a professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Jack fails to note, of course, that Ayers went underground in 1970 and turned himself in in 1980 and the "FBI misconduct" was (and there's no surprise that Jack doesn't mention it) COINTELPRO, that great and illegal surveillance program instituted by the patriots at the FBI.

Then there's this from the now-infamous 9/11 article on Ayer:

In 1970 came the town house explosion in Greenwich Village. Ms. Dohrn failed to appear in court in the Days of Rage case, and she and Mr. Ayers went underground, though there were no charges against Mr. Ayers. Later that spring the couple were indicted along with others in Federal Court for crossing state lines to incite a riot during the Days of Rage, and following that for ''conspiracy to bomb police stations and government buildings.'' Those charges were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.

He went underground with no charges against him. Something Jack doesn't tell you. Nor does Jack mention this from the Chicago Tribune:

Except for three comrades killed when one of the group's own devices accidentally exploded in a New York City townhouse in 1970, no one was injured by a Weatherbomb.

And from the same article, we learn this from former SDS member Todd Gitlin:

OK, let's give them a medal for not killing anybody besides themselves. But they wanted to be terrorists. They planned on being terrorists. Then their bomb blew up and killed several of them and they thought better of it. They were failed terrorists.

Failed terrorists who only killed their own. This is not, of course, to condone any acts of violence committed by the Weather Underground or their followers. Just trying to put things in perspective.

According to his CV (found here), Ayers became a professor in 1987. But you'd never know it from Jack. In 1999 (29 years after going underground and 19 years after turning himself in), he was named a "Distinguished Professor of Education" at U of I-Chicago. To read Jack, you'd think that the intellectual elites in Chicago rewarded Ayers with a professorship because of his radical past.

But what does Senator Obama think of Ayers' radical past? Something else Jack won't tell you. In a statement, the campaign said:

Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence. But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost forty years ago is ridiculous.

Something else Jack doesn't tell you. I'll write it again: Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weather Underground.

Then there's this old war horse of an argument:

"I don't regret setting bombs," Mr. Ayers told the New York Times in an interview published on 9/11. "I feel we didn't do enough."

The context is intended for you to think that Ayers meant "we didn't bomb enough." But is that really what he meant?

Uh, no. Jake Tapper has the statement from Ayers (via his blog):

It's impossible to get to be my age and not have plenty of regrets. The one thing I don't regret is opposing the war in Vietnam with every ounce of my being.

During the Vietnam war, the Weather Underground took credit for bombing several government installations as a dramatic form of armed propaganda. Action was taken against symbolic targets in order to declare a state of emergency. But warnings were always called in, and by design no one was ever hurt.

When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough s---."' But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement, it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.'

The war in Vietnam was not only illegal, it was profoundly immoral, millions of people were needlessly killed. Even though I worked hard to end the war, I feel to this day that I didn't do enough because the war dragged on for years after the majority of the American people came to oppose it. I don't think violent resistance is necessarily the answer, but I do think opposition and refusal is imperative.

Again, something Jack doesn't tell you.

A few more things. Jack asks rhetorically after posting Obama's statement that he was "only eight" when Ayers was bombing stuff:

Would you excuse a friendship with a Nazi war criminal on the grounds his crimes were committed before you were born?

Normally, this would automatically spring Godwin's law (or some corollary of that law), but gee, I dunno:

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

See? I can do it too!

I think I'll end it here.

Jack Kelly Sunday

You know I used to play a little game when I read Jack Kelly's columns. As I read, I'd count how long it took him to blame it all (or at least part of it) on the Clinton Administration.

Like this column where he pointed the finger at the Clinton Administration regarding 9/11:

We were reminded of the weakness of the law enforcement approach by the release last week of the executive summary of the report of the CIA's inspector general on the CIA's performance before 9/11. The CIA was hamstrung in its efforts to fight al-Qaida by severe budget cuts imposed by the Clinton administration, but then CIA Director George Tenet did a poor job of managing the funds he had, and never developed an overall strategy to fight terror, the IG report said.

Or this column where he pointed the finger at the Clinton Administration regarding 9/11:

The [9/11] commission concluded, you'll recall, that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon couldn't have been prevented, and that if there was negligence, it was as much the fault of the Bush administration (for moving slowly on the recommendations of Clinton counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke) as of the Clinton administration.

Able Danger has changed all of that.

Able Danger was a military intelligence unit set up by Special Operations Command in 1999. A year before the 9/11 attacks, Able Danger identified hijack leader Mohamed Atta and the other members of his cell. But Clinton administration officials stopped them -- three times -- from sharing this information with the FBI.

This week, he's gotten to the bottom of the current meltdown on Wall Street. And guess what? It's all Clinton's fault (with a little help from their friends in Congress). It's in the 6th paragraph:

Ostensibly to aid the poor and working class, the Clinton administration and Congress encouraged lenders to give mortgages to bad credit risks. The combination of easy money and the expansion of the number of borrowers unable to repay their loans sent housing prices through the roof, creating the bubble whose bursting has led to this crisis.

The next paragraph should be the kicker:

Congress in 1999 repealed the law that established a bright line between commercial and investment banks. This meant bad investments by banks could jeopardize depositors.

So this was 1999. History tells us that in 1999, the republicans held majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. That means, my friends, that what passed through both houses was only what the republicans allowed to pass through both houses. Certainly in Hastert's House.

The law that Jack mentions here is the "Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act" of 1999. Introduced in the Senate with no cosponsors by then-Texas Senator Phil Gramm (more on him later), the final versions of the bill passed each chamber with veto proof majorities (90-8 in the Senate and 362-57 in the House). So whether President Clinton signed it, it was going to become a law no matter what.

Phil Gramm, as we all know by now, is an economic advisor to the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain. The guy who drafted the initial legislation and sponsored it all by his lonesome in the Senate was also once (until he called America a "nation of whiners") the co-chair of John McCain's campaign.

Curious as to why Jack Kelly omitted that part of the story.

Do I need to say any more?

Jack Kelly Sunday

In this week's column, Jack Kelly dives into the whole (and increasingly important, doncha know) "lipstick on a pig" controversy.

The thing you have to remember, here, is that this is what Jack used his column space for: Lipstick on a pig. Not Governor Palin's ballooning of the Alaska budget ("fiscal conservative" anyone??) or her continued lying (yes, lying) about the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere." Or the jet that was sold ("for a profit" spake McCain) on ebay - except it wasn't.

No. We get the "lipstick on a pig" thing. And Jack isn't even spinning it very well. Take a look:

Speaking in Lebanon, Va., the day before, Mr. Obama said Sen. John McCain may claim he'll change Washington, but he's really just like President Bush.

"You can put lipstick on a pig," he said. "It's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after eight years."

The AP's Nedra Pickler said the remark drew "shouts and raucous applause" from his audience, whose members were "clearly drawing a connection" to the joke Sarah Palin told in her acceptance speech, that the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick. The McCain campaign demanded he apologize for the remark and rushed out a television ad criticizing him for making it.

Mr. Obama said Wednesday he meant no such thing. His profession of innocence would have been more persuasive if he'd attempted to disabuse his audience Tuesday of the notion he was referring to Ms. Palin, and if an Obama surrogate hadn't used remarkably similar language that day in referring to her.

First off, part his reporting is based on what Nedra Pickler wrote. It should be noted that Ms Pickler is not the cleanest of disinterested observers. As Mediamatters wrote:

In a February 24 Associated Press article about conservative attacks on Sen. Barack Obama's patriotism, staff writer Nedra Pickler quoted Roger Stone's assertion that "[Sen.] Barack Obama is out of the McGovern wing of the party, and he is part of the blame America first crowd." But Pickler identified Stone only as a "Republican consultant." She did not mention that Stone established the anti-Hillary Clinton 527 group Citizens United Not Timid which emphasizes its acronym on its website and on T-shirts...

My friend Johnny Mac's got a whole lot to say about Ms Pickler.

But, eventually and curiously, Jack writes:

I'm inclined to take Mr. Obama at his word, mostly because it would be really stupid to say such a thing deliberately. But the remark comes on the heels of unprecedented personal invective directed at Ms. Palin and her family from Obama supporters, and it does sound like a campaign meme. The video of Mr. Obama's remarks is on YouTube. Watch it and judge for yourself.

Ok...what? So he doesn't think Senator Obama called Governor Palin a pig? After using half his column space to write about it?

In any event, so here are the remarks on youtube:

Transcript:

Let's just list this for a second. John McCain says he's about change, too. And so I guess his whole angle is, watch out George Bush. Except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl Rove style politics, we're really going to shake things up in Washington. That's not change. That's just calling something, the same thing something different. You know you can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig.

Where, again, is the reference to Governor Palin? The WATBs over at the McCain campaign demand an apology for the unfair smear of their VP candidate. But for what?

And anyway take a cloooose look at the text. IF (and this is a long stretch - a very long stretch) the metaphor does revolve around Governor Palin, she's the lipstick. The McCain claim that it's "different" is what's the pig.

Jack even continues the conservative whining by complaining about some mean things coming from an Obama surrogate regarding Governor Palin:

Mr. McCain chose as his running mate "someone with zero experience in national government, zero experience in foreign affairs," Rep. Russ Carnahan said in his introduction of Sen. Joe Biden at an event in Missouri. "There is no way you can dress up that record, even with a lot of lipstick."

But take a look at it again. This is from the St Louis Beacon:

Also speaking was U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, a Democrat from Missouri's Third District, which includes the Mehlville area.

Carnahan ticked off a litany of what he described as Bush administration failures: the war in Iraq, the national debt, high gas prices, exporting jobs outside the U.S., record home foreclosures and record student loan debts.

"This the record John McCain bragged about," Carnahan said.

Carnahan called McCain's decision to name Palin to the ticket a mistake. "He buckled to the right wing," he said of McCain. "She has zero experience in national government, zero experience in foreign affairs. And there is no way you can dress up that record, even with a lot of lipstick." He was referring to Palin's joke at the Republican national convention in which she asked supporters whether they knew the difference between a "hockey mom and a pit pull.

The "record" (i.e. "the pig") being referred to is either the Bush administration's many failures (Carnahan even uses the same word) OR Palin's "zero experience in national government, zero experience in foreign affairs." If anything (and again this is a stretch), she's the lipstick.

Don't these folks understand metaphor?

I'll leave it here with something from Obama's response to this whole "controversy":

See it would be funny, it would be funny except -- of course the news media all decided that that was the lead story yesterday. They'd much rather have the story -- this is the McCain campaign -- would much rather have the story about phony and foolish diversions than about the future.

This happens every election cycle. Every four years. This is what we do. We've got an energy crisis. We have an education system that is not working for too many of our children and making us less competitive. We have an economy that is creating hardship for families all across America. We've got two wars going on, veterans coming home not being cared for -- and this is what they want to talk about! this is what they want to spend two of the last 55 days talking about.

This is what the whiners over at the GOP want to talk about.

Jack Kelly Sunday

I think I figured it out. Here's what the republicans do. They simply state, over and over again and with all the confidence in the world, stuff they want just enough voters to believe. They're hoping to have just enough, say, 50.7%, to win the next election.

And then they'll turn around and claim it as a mandate.

Doesn't matter that what they said isn't always 100% true. Or 100% complete.

That's what Jack Kelly's been doing with Sarah Palin. Note this week's column.

It's filled with fact-free sentences that sound like they have actual facts in them. Case in point:

Journalists last week cast aside the mask of objectivity to reveal they are so deeply in the tank for Mr. Obama most have grown gills. For six days, Sarah Palin and her family were subjected to a relentless barrage of innuendo. Journalists were trying to "define" her before she had an opportunity to introduce herself to the people in the lower 48. She was portrayed as an ignorant redneck from a hick town who should be home caring for her children instead of running for high public office.

Really. Who? Who said she should be home caring for her children instead of running for high public office? Which journalist portrayed her as an ignorant redneck? Until there's a quotation to support this allegation there's no way (and I suspect this is Jack's plan) to check if it's true. Who's barraging us with innuendo now, Jack?

Then there's this confusing pair of sentences:

Then Sarah Palin got her opportunity to speak, and her enemies learned firsthand why her nickname is "Sarah Barracuda."

Dismiss if you will the rapturous response to Ms. Palin's speech by the delegates in the convention hall and the posters on conservative blogs. The best testament to its power was the lame response of the Obama campaign. They noted she had the help of a speechwriter (the very talented Matt Scully) in preparing her remarks. Well, duh. Every major political figure has speechwriters. Sarah Palin works fine without a script. It's Barack Obama who ums and ahs without a teleprompter.

Actually, that's not exactly what the Obama campaign said. They said the speech was written by Bush's former speechwriter. Here's the response:

The speech that Governor Palin gave was well delivered, but it was written by George Bush's speechwriter and sounds exactly like the same divisive, partisan attacks we've heard from George Bush for the last eight years. If Governor Palin and John McCain want to define 'change' as voting with George Bush 90% of the time, that's their choice, but we don't think the American people are ready to take a 10% chance on change.

Jack would like to have us think that the speech Governor Palin gave was her own work and that she only got some "help" "preparing" it with it from a speechwriter. The "well duh"part is intended to blunt the point as being obvious. Turns out, though that the speech was written by McCain's speechwriters. In fact it was written before they knew Palin would be picked for VP. From the Washington Post:

There was a flutter of attention when McCain campaign manager Rick Davis told a group of Post reporters and editors yesterday that his team was having to rework the vice presidential acceptance speech because the original draft, prepared before Gov. Sarah Palin was chosen, was too "masculine." While we all wondered to ourselves what might make a speech masculine or feminine, no one batted an eye at the underlying revelation: that the campaign was writing the nominee's speech before knowing who the nominee would be.

So what was the point of Jack's barb? I'm not sure.

Jack continues spinning:

First, this race is no longer between a candidate who advocates change and the status quo, as Democrats would like to frame it. It's between two different visions of change, and between a ticket that's actually delivered reform, and a ticket that just talks about it. The argument that John McCain represents a third term for George W. Bush was strained to start with. It's ludicrous now.

Second, the Republican base is more fired up, and the party more united than it's been since Ronald Reagan ran for his second term. Conservatives see in Sarah Palin Ronald Reagan in a dress, the brains and backbone of Margaret Thatcher in a younger, prettier package. The Grand Old Party has a bright new face.

Since we're quoting The New Republic, here, I'll let Howard Wolfson take on Jack's first paragraph. He wrote it the day John McCain gave his acceptance speech:

McCain needs to refute this charge [that McCain has voted with Bush 90% of the time] tonight by making his differences with GOP orthodoxy clear to the American people. This will not be easy. First, the crowd of GOP loyalists doesn't want to hear it. These are Bush partisans who believe that their man has been a good president, and many remain deeply suspicious of McCain. Will McCain challenge his base?

Secondly, McCain's case on the merits is weak. During the Bush Presidency, McCain has moved steadily rightward, repudiating his own positions on issues like taxes and abortion. And he wears his support for the war in Iraq--a war the public associates with Bush--like an albatross around his neck.

Hardly ludicrous, Jack.

For ludicrous, I'd have to go with "Palin is Ronald Reagan in a dress" or "Palin as a 'younger prettier' Margaret Thatcher." Apart from the obvious sexism of both, the facts (remember those?) simply do not compare. Margaret Thatcher was first elected to national office in 1959, sixteen years before becoming leader of her party and nineteen years before becoming Prime Minister.

Nineteen years ago, Sarah Palin (though younger and prettier) was still three years away from joining the Wasilla City Council.

To compare one to the other is just, well, ludicrous.

Jack, when will you write about Sarah Palin's abuse of power? Her flip-flop on the "bridge to nowhere"? Her accepting a federal earmark that John McCain criticized? How about how she believes that the War In Iraq is a "task from God" or how her pastor believes that George Bush's critics would be banished to hell?

Nope - all we got was how Sarah Palin is "Ronald Reagan in a dress."

Hekuva job, Jackie.

Jack Kelly Sunday

In this week's column, Jack Kelly gloats:

I wrote a column back in June in which I said Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would be the ideal running mate for Sen. John McCain. But I never thought he'd pick her.

Here's the column from June and my analysis of it. Just as he pretty much lifted a whole chunk or two out of Fred Barnes' Weekly Standard article on Palin, he rewrites the June article into this week's column. Jack restates:

Ms. Palin is popular in part because of her personal qualities. She earned the "Sarah Barracuda" nickname as the point guard on her Wasilla high school basketball team, which she led to the state championship in 1982. Two years later, when she won the Miss Wasilla beauty pageant (and went on to be the first runner up in the Miss Alaska contest) she was also named Miss Congeniality. Fire and nice.

But it's mostly because she's been a crackerjack governor, a strong fiscal conservative and a ferocious fighter of corruption, especially in her own party.

Hmm. That last part's a little off. Why? Do you remember (the now indicted for corruption) Senator Ted Stevens' "Bridge to Nowhere"? Seems Sarah Barracuda was for it before she was against it. According to the New Republic she was asked about the bridges in October 22, 2006:

5. Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?

Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now--while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.

And:

[I]t sure looks like she was fine with the bridge in principle, never had a problem with the earmarks, bristled at all the mockery, and only gave up on the project when it was clear that federal support wasn't forthcoming.

Hardly the "ferocious fighter of corruption" Jack Kelly describes her as. Jack's next paragraph:

Ms. Palin touches other conservative bases, some of which Mr. McCain has been accused of missing. A regular churchgoer, she's staunchly pro-life. Her eldest son is a soldier. She's a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association who hunts, fishes and runs marathons.

But there's some of the stuff that I think even conservatives would be surprised to hear. From USAToday:

She stood up to the powerful oil industry, and with bipartisan support in the statehouse she won a tax increase on oil companies' profits.

Governor Palin's increased a tax on oil companies? I guess so. No wonder Jack didn't mention it.

From the Anchorage Daily News:

Gov. Sarah Palin is asking the Legislature to give every Alaskan $1,200 as energy cost relief.

"It's a one-time, special return of the vast wealth that Alaska has right now. We're returning it to the resource owners, the people of Alaska," the governor said Friday. "I am confident the people of Alaska can spend the surplus dollars better than state government is going to spend them."

And further down:

Conservative critics have attacked it as socialism, comparing Palin to Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

Ouch - that's gotta sting.

By the way Senator Obama's proposed something similar:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Friday announced an “Emergency Economic Plan” that would give families a stimulus check of $1,000 each, funded in part by what his presidential campaign calls “windfall profits from Big Oil.”

And of course Senator McCain responded:

Unlike Sen. Obama, I do not believe that raising taxes is the answer to our economic problems. There is no surer way to force jobs overseas than to raise taxes on businesses.

I wonder if he asked Palin about her oil company tax increase during their one meeting before she was announced as his running mate.

Despite the positive reviews by Radio talk show host Mark Levin (who by the way said that Bush's commutation prevented Scooter Libby from becoming a "political prisoner" - since when are obstruction of justice and perjury political issues? Just asking), the reviews have NOT been favorable to the former Miss Wasilla. From the Times Online:

Shannen Coffin, a former White House counsel to Dick Cheney, the vice-president, said choosing Palin seemed “desperate” and that it would be difficult to attack Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, on the grounds of inexperience.

Even though Jack tries:

But it will be difficult for Democrats to attack Ms. Palin on this without calling attention to Barack Obama's lack of experience. Ms. Palin is the undercard, not the top of the ticket. And her 18 months as governor (not to mention her two terms as mayor) is 18 months more executive experience than Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden have combined.

It's also more than John McCain has.

Indeed the word out of Alaska has been harsh (h/t to The Huffingtonpost on this). From the Fairbanks News Miner:

She has never publicly demonstrated the kind of interest, much less expertise, in federal issues and foreign affairs that should mark a candidate for the second-highest office in the land. Republicans rightfully have criticized the Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, for his lack of experience, but Palin is a neophyte in comparison; how will Republicans reconcile the criticism of Obama with the obligatory cheering for Palin? Or will everyone just be forced to drop the subject? That’s not a comforting possibility.

And:

Most people would acknowledge that, regardless of her charm and good intentions, Palin is not ready for the top job. McCain seems to have put his political interests ahead of the nation’s when he created the possibility that she might fill it.

It’s clear that McCain picked Palin for reasons of image, not substance. She’s a woman. She has fought corruption. She has fought the oil companies. She’s married to a union member. These are portrayals for campaign speeches; they are not policy positions.

Then there's the Anchorage Daily News:

Alaskans are delighted because the eyes of the world will be on Alaska as Sarah Palin campaigns for the vice-presidency.

And it's stunning that someone with so little national and international experience might be heartbeat away from the presidency.

And:

McCain picked Palin despite a recent blemish on her ethically pure resume. While she was governor, members of her family and staff tried to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the Alaska State Troopers. Her public safety commissioner would not do so; she forced him out, supposedly for other reasons. While she runs for vice-president, the Legislature has an investigator on the case.

For all those advantages, Palin joins the ticket with one huge weakness: She's a total beginner on national and international issues.

And then some of the Republicans up there have chimed in. State Senate President Lyda Green is quoted as saying:

She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?

Granted, Palin and Green have according to the Anchorage Daily News "fueded repeatedly" over the past two years, but still.

Stunning pick. Total beginner on national and international issues. Not ready for the job. Picked for reasons of image, not substance. Not prepared to be vice president or president.

When the newspapers and politicians in the candidate's home state are saying this, the criticisms can not be easily dismissed.

Congratulations, Jack.

And we haven't even started on Troopergate!

Jack Kelly Sunday

In this week's column, Jack Kelly swiftboats.

It's amazing to watch. One wonders what planet Jack inhabits. Certainly not the planet I inhabit. But perhaps that says more about me than about him.

Jack's opening:

Democrats begin their national convention with a queasy feeling in the pits of their stomachs. Barack Obama has plunged in the polls, falling into a statistical tie with John McCain. The election that was supposed to be in the bag isn't.

Democrats blame the plunge on negative ads. They plan to respond in kind. The first few days of their convention will feature nonstop assaults on the presumptive GOP nominee.

I guess it depends on what the definition of "plunge" is. There's no doubt that the race in the national polls is tightening. This is what the picture looks like according to pollster.com.

By my eye, it looks like Obama has "plunged" about 4 points over about a month and a half while McCain has "jumped" 2 (or maybe 3) over the same period. "Plunge" is a matter of opinion, I guess.

On the other hand, using the same polling data, pollster.com has a state-by-state chart which then awards those states electoral votes according to that data. The result? If the poll numbers are accurate and if people were to actually vote today the same way that the poll numbers suggest Obama would walk away with at least 260 electoral votes. Only 270 are needed for a win (fewer if you're a republican and can convince your dad's friends on the Supreme Court to stop the vote count - but I digress).

Jack continues the analysis. This is where it gets fun for me:

The Democrats' strategy is driven by what they think happened to John Kerry in 2004. His plans to run as a war hero came a cropper when 15 of the 23 officers who served with him in Vietnam declared him "Unfit for Command." Democrats believe Sen. Kerry's sluggish response to their charges is what cost him the presidency. Sen. Obama has declared he will not be "swift-boated."

Actually (and this is surprising) I'd have to agree with part of this. Kerry's tepid response probably DID do some damage to his campaign. When the charges hit, he was off windsurfing. My guess is that Kerry figured that the GOP would never stoop so low as to smear a war hero's war record. Something to understand about the current crop of wingnut republicans: if ever you think, "Oh I'm certain they wouldn't go that low." Rest assured, you're almost certainly wrong. They probably will and they probably already have. Oh and Obama DID say he won't be swift-boated.

A paragraph or so later Kelly delivers the goods:

The Swifties' charges hit home because they were credible and came from a credible source.

Credible? Both the charges AND the source? Really? Now Jack's credibility is on the line. Does Jack really want to defend Kerry's swiftboating? Especially when McCain is on record condemning their first ad as "dishonest and deplorable" and "very, very wrong." He also told the AP:

As it is, none of these individuals served on the boat (Kerry) commanded. Many of his crew have testified to his courage under fire. I think John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam.

Does Jack Kelly really think the charges are credible when the REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE DOESN'T? But perhaps McCain was wrong (wouldn't be the first time for a man who has no idea how many houses he owns). Isn't there anyplace on the web questioning the credibility of the swiftboaters' charges?

Why yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

New York Times:

The strategy the veterans devised would ultimately paint John Kerry the war hero as John Kerry the "baby killer" and the fabricator of the events that resulted in his war medals. But on close examination, the accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' prove to be riddled with inconsistencies. In many cases, material offered as proof by these veterans is undercut by official Navy records and the men's own statements.

FactCheck.org:

A group funded by the biggest Republican campaign donor in Texas began running an attack ad Aug. 5 in which former Swift Boat veterans claim Kerry lied to get one of his two decorations for bravery and two of his three purple hearts.

But the veterans who accuse Kerry are contradicted by Kerry's former crewmen, and by Navy records.

Maybe there's something wrong with the Navy. Oh if only some high ranking Naval officer were asked to look them over to see if there's anything funny about the procedures used to award Kerry the medals.

Wait a tic - there was one. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch, an Admiral DID take a look at the records. His response? Take a look:

In accordance with our established review procedures, we carefully examined the process by which Senator Kerry was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts in 1968 and 1969. We found that existing documentation regarding his medals indicates the awards approval process was properly followed. In particular, the senior officers who authorized the medals were properly delegated authority to do so. In addition, we found that they correctly followed the procedures in place at the time for approving these awards.

And then a paragraph later:

Our review also considered the fact that Senator Kerry's post-active duty activities were public and that military and civilian officials were aware of his actions at the time. For these reasons, I have determined that Senator Kerry's awards were properly approved and will take no further action in this matter. [emphasis added]

The penultimate part is important. You'd think that, considering Senator Kerry's "post-active duty activities" were known to all the folks who could have reviewed the process more or less as it took place, someone someplace would have said something back in, oh, 1970 or something. The fact that they didn't tells us there's no there there.

The conclusion is inescapable. The medals were properly awarded. Senator John Kerry was a war hero. The Swiftboaters' charges are not credible.

And neither is Jack Kelly.

A few after thoughts. Jack spins things here:

Whining isn't toughness, either. After Sen. McCain bested their man at Pastor Rick Warren's presidential forum last weekend, Sen. Obama staffers told reporters the old white guy must have cheated. Mr. Obama complained, falsely, to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Tuesday that Mr. McCain has been questioning his patriotism.

We've written about Rick Warren's presidential forum here. Jack's completely out of it denying McCain questioning Obama's patriotism. Oh really? When McCain mancrush Joe Lieberman questioned Obama's patriotism the McCain campaign endorsed it. From the New York Times:

One of the McCain campaign’s new themes, that Senator John McCain has always put his country first, has been seen by some analysts as a subtle suggestion that his opponent, Senator Barack Obama, has not.

But as he introduced Mr. McCain at a campaign event here on Tuesday, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut made the attack a lot more explicit, calling the election a choice “between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate who has not.’’

Then there's the whole, "he rather win a election than win the war." stuff. What's not just questioning his patriotism, that's accusing him of treason.

Sad to see the once (though I still doubt that) "straight talker" being so reduced to such obvious puddle of muddy lies.

Jack Kelly Sunday

It's been a few weeks. I've been busy these past few Sundays so sue me.

In this week's column, Jack Kelly points his focus at Georgia - the country, not the state - and the outcome is unsurprising. He praises John McCain, attacks Barack Obama and blames 9/11 on the Clinton administration (in a round about way).

After taking a swipe at the silence on the left of the "now that we have a genuine war of aggression" in Georgia (gee, isn't the Iraq war a "genuine war of aggression" too? - perhaps that's why the left is silent, it's focussed on our genuine war of aggression, not some other guy's. But I digress), Jack quotes a recent Washington Post editorial:

You might think, at a moment such as this, that the moral calculus would be pretty well understood, Russian troops are occupying large swaths of Georgia, a tiny neighboring country, and sacking its military bases. Russian jets have roamed the Georgian skies, bombing civilian and military targets alike. Russian ships are said to be controlling Georgia's port of Poti, while militia under Russia's control reportedly massacre Georgian civilians. Yet in Washington, the foreign policy sophisticates cluck and murmur that, after all, the Georgians should have known better than to chart an independent course.

He follows that paragraph is this slap at the left:

It is scandalous to liberals that terrorists at Gitmo don't have easy access to lawyers, but most don't care how many Georgians the Russians kill.

So you'd think the "foreign policy sophisticates" mentioned were left-leaning "foreign policy sophisticates, right?

I'd like you to take a look at the text immediately following the text quoted by my friend Jack:

"...Georgians should have known better than to chart an independent course -- and what was the Bush administration thinking when it encouraged them in their dangerous delusions?

By the way, please note how Jack Kelly frames the issue of Guantanamo Bay: Liberals are scandalized that terrorists don't have easy access to lawyers. Not detainees but terrorists. He's already determined that all those held at Gitmo are terrorists. But is that true? Is everyone held at Guantanamo Bay a terrorist?

Uh, no. According to Amnesty International:

Approximately 775 detainees have been held in Guantánamo since January 2002. As of late November 2006, some 345 had been released or transferred to around 26 different countries. The vast majority were never charged and are now at liberty.

So "a vast majority" were released without charge. Is Jack Kelly going to continue his rhetorical flourish and conclude that the Bush Administration released some of the terrorists?

No, I don't think so. Because not everyone there is a terrorist. But to admit that is to admit the US broke international law.

In fact, according to this report from Professor Denbaux of Seton Hall university, as of two years ago, a full 55% of those detained at Guantano Bay were "not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies."

That's the scandal, Jack. The USA, that shining city on a hill, has been detaining hundreds and denying them full access to legal representation even though they've already determined not to have committed any hostile acts against us or our friends. That's the scandal and it's shameful.

But let's move on.

Jack mentions (though not quotes) progressive writer Robert Scheer:

Columnist Robert Scheer speculated Wednesday that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili deliberately provoked the invasion to give John McCain a boost in our presidential election.

Here's the column. To read Jack, you'd think that all Scheer did was to propose the speculation with no supporting evidence. He doesn't. It's interesting to point out exactly what Jack leaves out of this reference that isn't a quotation. Scheer certainly asked the question whether Saakashvili provoked the invasion and then answers:

Before you dismiss that possibility, consider the role of one Randy Scheunemann, for four years a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government who ended his official lobbying connection only in March, months after he became Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser.

A paragraph later:

There are telltale signs that he played a similar role in the recent Georgia flare-up. How else to explain the folly of his close friend and former employer, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, in ordering an invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, an invasion that clearly was expected to produce a Russian counterreaction? It is inconceivable that Saakashvili would have triggered this dangerous escalation without some assurance from influential Americans he trusted, like Scheunemann, that the United States would have his back. Scheunemann long guided McCain in these matters, even before he was officially running foreign policy for McCain’s presidential campaign.

Interesting what Jack leaves out, isn't it?

But here's something he inserts. He follows his reference to Scheer with this:

Mr. Scheer is a moonbat. But his charge was echoed by Susan Rice, a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Barack Obama (and the woman who advised President Clinton not to intervene to stop the genocide in Rwanda).

"Barack Obama, the administration indeed and all of our NATO allies took a measured and reasoned approach because we were dealing with the facts as we knew them," Ms. Rice said on MSNBC's "Hardball" program Tuesday. "John McCain shot from the hip, very aggressive, very belligerent statement. He may or may not have complicated the situation."

Ms. Rice was trying to explain away Sen. Obama's initially tepid response to the Russian invasion, in which he expressed a moral equivalence between the aggressor and his victim. Mr. Obama's stance has since evolved into what might be termed "McCain lite."

Here's the transcript. Can someone show me in that interview where exactly she "echoes" Scheer's speculation? In fact, while Jack wrote that she was "trying to explain away" Obama's response, actually she was answering guest host David Schuster who asked to comment about this reponse from McCain:

My friends, today, the killing goes on, and the aggression goes on.

Yet, I know, from speaking this morning to the president of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, who I have known for many years, that he knows that the thoughts and the prayers and support of the American people are with that brave little nation.

I told him that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, today, we are all Georgians.

I'll ask again. Can someone please read through the transcript and tell me WHERE Susan Rice has "echoed" Robert Scheer?

If not, then Jack Kelly's just making stuff up.

I think I'll end it there.

Jack Kelly Sunday

Must've been a slow news week for our friend Jack. He's writing about Al Gore and climate change. Again.

Thing is, Jack doesn't have a very good track record when discussing Climate Change. Remember this column when he got the date of an important document he quoted wrong by 5 years and was forced to issue a correction? THIS correction:

Jack Kelly's July 2 column conflated references to two different Wall Street Journal op-ed articles by MIT professor Richard Lindzen. The first quote from Dr. Lindzen was from a June 11, 2001, piece, but it was incorrectly identified as being published last week. The second Lindzen quote was correctly attributed to his commentary last week (June 26). In addition, the Kelly column referred to a National Academy of Sciences report on climate change and a quote from CNN reporter Michelle Mitchell; they were both from June 2001, not this year. The column should have addressed the NAS report on climate change released June 22, 2006.

Jack should be careful when discussing Climate Change - that might include judging the sources he uses, just to see if they might be, you know, biased in some way.

That might be a good idea to do with this week's column. Paragraph ONE:

Former Vice President Al Gore and his entourage arrived at Constitutional Hall in Washington, D.C., July 17 for his speech on global warming in a caravan consisting of two Lincoln Town Cars and a Chevrolet Suburban -- not the most fuel efficient vehicles Detroit ever made. "The driver of the Town Car that eventually whisked away Gore's wife and daughter left the engine idling and the AC cranking for 20 minutes before they finally left," noted Mark Block of Americans for Prosperity.

Hmm. Who's this "Americans for Prosperity" then? According to their website:

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP Foundation) are committed to educating citizens about economic policy and mobilizing those citizens as advocates in the public policy process. AFP is an organization of grassroots leaders who engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets on the local, state and federal levels. The grassroots members of AFP advocate for public policies that champion the principles of entrepreneurship and fiscal and regulatory restraint.

Ok. Seems to be a straight forward libertarian think tank. But who funds them? According to the website Media Transparency, they've been the recipients of a little under $1.2 million dollars in grants over the years 2004-2006. The source of a million of that $1.2 is the Claude Lambe Foundation, which is one of the Koch Family Foundations.

And who are the Kochs?

David and Charles Koch, sons of the ultraconservative founder of Koch Industries, Fred Koch, direct the three Koch family foundations: the Charles G. Koch Foundation, the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation. David and Charles control Koch Industries, the second-largest privately owned company and the largest privately owned energy company in the nation

So you know they're going to be giving millions away to think tanks that will be completely fair and balanced when it comes to energy issues.

Something Jack didn't tell you.

Paragraph TWO:

Al Gore wants you to do as he says, not as he does. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research reported last month that Mr. Gore used as much electricity last year at his mansion in Nashville -- one of four homes he owns -- as 19 average American homes do. Mr. Gore frequently travels between his homes and to speaking engagements by private jet -- which, on a per passenger basis, emits four times the greenhouse gases of a commercial jet.

This part is true. However, it's also misleading. I am sure, for instance, my efficiency apartment uses less energy than the average sized house, but it's NOT an average sized house. And the Gore's house isn't an average sized house either. From Snopes.com:

A spokesperson for the Gore family responded by noting some mitigating factors, such as the fact that the Gores' Nashville residence isn't an "average" house - it's about four times larger than the average new American home built in 2006, and it essentially functions as both a residence and a business office since both Al and Tipper work out of their home. The Tennessean also noted that the Gores had been paying a $432 per month premium on their monthly electricity bills in order to obtain some of their electricity from "green" sources (i.e., solar or other renewable energy sources). Other factors (such as the climate in the area where the home is located and its size) make the Gore home's energy usage comparable to that of other homes in the same area.

The former vice-president maintained that comparing raw energy-usage figures is misleading and that he leads what he advocates, a "carbon-neutral lifestyle," by purchasing energy from renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and methane gas to balance out the carbon emissions produced in generating the electricity his home uses:

They use a lot of energy, reality shows, and they purchase it from green sources. So the amount is, and you should know this Jack, irrelevant.

Paragraph THREE:

In his speech at Constitution Hall, Mr. Gore called for a crash program to convert the entire U.S. electric grid to carbon-free sources of energy within 10 years. That's "ridiculous," said Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio.

No surprise that Senator Voinovich would be skeptical. He's the current Republican on the Committee on Environment and Public Works. Given the lockstep attitudes of Republicans in Congress, his use of the word "ridiculous" is hardly surprising.

Now let's do some fact checking. Jack's next paragraph (plus a little):

To get an idea of how ridiculous, consider this data from the Energy Information Administration. In 2006 (the last year for which complete data is available), 49 percent of our electricity was generated by coal-fired plants; 20 percent from natural gas, and 1.5 percent from oil. That is, more than 70 percent of all the electricity we have now is generated by the fossil fuels Mr. Gore wants to get rid of.

Of the remainder, two thirds is generated by nuclear plants (19 percent).

Now I'm confused. I checked the EIA and found this chart. It carries the title "Renewable Energy Plays a Role in the Nation’s Energy Supply (2006)" so presumably it contains data from 2006.