SC Veteran FIRED for Speaking Truth of Kerry Military Record

The courage of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, more than any other single organization, brought the truth of John Kerry's military record to the American People. Now, we find out that one of the men on Kerry's boat who dared to speak out, a citizen of South Carolina, is being punished for doing so. Folks, this is an OUTRAGE! !


How Kerry Whistleblower Suffered for Truth

This is the story of a military veteran whistleblower. He spoke out against someone he thought was dangerous for the nation, talked to local newspapers, and appeared on talk shows. In return, he was vilified by reporters, threatened by a political operative, fired by his company, and now he's broke.

His name is Steve Gardner. He's also known as "The 10th Brother," as in Band of Brothers. He's one of two members of Sen. John Kerry's 12 Vietnam swift boat crew members who refused to stand with Kerry at the Democratic Convention. The other man remained silent.

The first interaction I had with Karl Rove was when I was serving in the White House Political Office under President Reagan and he was running congressional elections in Texas. He's come up in the world since then. Take a look at the following Newsweek article to find out what Karl is up to next. The photo here was taken at a Beaufort County, GOP luncheon in Bluffton, SC in April 2002. At the time, Bush was compromising left and left with the likes of Teddy Kennedy. Had questions and answers been part of the format for that meeting I would have told Karl "All will be forgiven if you take back control of the Senate and get the Presdident re-elected." Karl: all is forgiven. (photo by Michael Miller)

Karl Rove's Next Move: Cement Victory

MSNBC - Rove Unleashed: "Rove Unleashed
For the past 30 years he's focused like a laser on George W. Bush. What does Karl Rove do for an encore? The plans for a permanent GOP majority"

Bush-Hate Still at Pathologic Levels

You would think that an election where a President gets more votes than ever before in American History; a victory which encompassed an increasing share of Hispanic, women, African-American and union household votes that the virulence of the Bush haters would be put to rest.

I'm sorry to inform you that the haters are still at it. Some readers may not be aware of the absolute garbage and bile these people are capable of. I would share with you a few of the web sites where they propagate their nastiness, but I doubt you would want to read it. Not content with spewing their poisonous goo back and forth to each other, they spread the malice our way.

Here's a rather tame example from an anonymous post to this site (since deleted): "Bush sucks and so do you. Enjoy your glimpse of the sun it will soon be time for you bottom dwellers to return to the deep."

As a consequence I have disallowed "anonymous" posts to this site. I would encourage any reader who wishes to interact with the comments section at the bottom of each post to register and do so. It's all free. However, I would recommend for privacy reasons that if you create a viewable online profile (see: http://www.blogger.com/profile/5320264 for mine) you do NOT include your email address or use a free email address available from most online services.

Oh, a note to our Bush hater: We won in 2000. We won in 2002. We won in 2004. You lost, you lost, you lost... In my book that makes you a LOSER!

Kick the U.N. Out of the U.S.

Here's an issue that's been considered on the "kook fringe" of conservatism for years, but seems to be gaining ground. Personally, I would like nothing better than to tell Kofi Annan and the rest of the corrupt thugs that run the U.N. to "get out of here." But, as a practical matter, it's probably not the best idea. However, signing the petition posted on this web site (click screen image) may help focus attention on the need to make the U.N. live up to it's charter and become more accountable. It wouldn't hurt to cut our contribution to the organization as well. Let some of those despots who run the place foot the bill with the loot they have stolen from their own people.

Hillary for '08?

Excerpt from Jonathan Chait "Dean, Clinton and Kerry: No, No, No for 2008" in the L.A. Times (site requires free registration):

Dean, Clinton and Kerry: No, No, No for 2008: "A secular Yankee like Dean is about the worst possible candidate.

Unless, of course, the alternative is Hillary Clinton. OK, maybe she wouldn't be worse than Dean. But she surely would go down in flames if she won the nomination in 2008. President Bush owed his victory in large part to cultural division. If there's anybody who incites cultural divisions, it's Hillary Clinton.

Her advisors point out that she's religious and speaks the language of Scripture. That's nice, but nobody seemed to notice it during her eight years in the national spotlight. She's painfully uncharismatic. Her only political accomplishment is that she won a Senate seat in an extremely Democratic state, where she ran six percentage points behind Al Gore. Clinton's supporters like to note that she's not as liberal as people think. That's exactly the problem. I can see the logic behind nominating a liberal whom voters see as moderate. Nominating a moderate whom voters see as liberal is kind of backward, isn't it?

Probably the only worse option than Dean or Clinton, short of nominating Paris Hilton, would be to renominate John Kerry, who, reports have suggested, inexplicably harbors ambitions of running again in 2008. In a previous column I compared Kerry's contribution to his own campaign to an anchor's contribution to a boat race. In retrospect, I seem to have given him far too much credit."

A Grateful Nation This Thanksgiving

There is so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving:

• Most of all, we should be thankful today, and everyday for the brave men and women in our military. They sacrifice so much to defend our freedom and protect us from harm. Today as you eat your meal and take a nap, remember that many of them are in harm's way, living and sleeping in rough conditions far from home and family.
• Over sixty million thanks for the voters, who saw through the distortions and deceptions offered by our political opponents and re-elected a good man, our President.
• A very, VERY special thanks for the two million, seven hundred ninety-six thousand, one hundred and forty-seven voters in Ohio. As it used to say on the license plate, Ohio: The Heart of it All.
• So many thanks for President Bush. His calm, steady and determined leadership at one of this nation's most difficult hours has made the difference in keeping us safe and working to build a better, freer world.
• Thanks for the four new GOP Senators and four new GOP members of the U.S. House of Representatives. We'll need their help in the years ahead.
• and I am also VERY THANKFUL that we sit here at Thanksgiving having to put up with the griping about Condoleezza Rice taking over as Secretary of State. While I don't like the unfair criticism and blatant racism of her detractors, imagine what today would be like if you turned on the news to hear the latest cabinet announcements from President-elect Kerry.
• Finally, thanks to you charter readers, especially those who have learned the not so tricky method of adding a comment by clicking on the tiny link underneath this post. The effort to create and do a blog like this is only worthwhile if people read it and interact... So here's to you.. the reader: HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Dolphins Protect New Zealand Swimmers from Shark

I couldn't resist passing this along:
Yahoo! News - Dolphins Protect New Zealand Swimmers from Shark: "Dolphins Protect New Zealand Swimmers from Shark Mon Nov 22, 9:52 PM ET Science - Reuters WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A pod of dolphins circled protectively round a group of New Zealand swimmers to fend off an attack by a great white shark, media reported on Tuesday.

Lifesavers Rob Howes, his 15-year-old daughter Niccy, Karina Cooper and Helen Slade were swimming 300 feet off Ocean Beach near Whangarei on New Zealand's North Island when the dolphins herded them -- apparently to protect them from a shark. 'They started to herd us up, they pushed all four of us together by doing tight circles around us,' Howes told the New Zealand Press Association (NZPA).

Howes tried to drift away from the group, but two of the bigger dolphins herded him back just as he spotted a nine-foot great white shark swimming toward the group. 'I just recoiled. It was only about 2 m away from me, the water was crystal clear and it was as clear as the nose on my face,' Howes said, referring to a distance of 6 feet.

'They had corralled us up to protect us,' he said. The lifesavers spent the next 40 minutes surrounded by the dolphins before they could safely swim back to shore. The incident happened on October 30, but the lifesavers kept the story to themselves until now.

Environment group Orca Research said dolphins attacked sharks to protect themselves and their young, so their actions in protecting the lifesavers was understandable. 'They could have sensed the danger to the swimmers and taken action to protect them."

Hillary 2008 Presidential Campaign Gets Big Arab $$$ Donation

So Bush is supposed to be up to his eyeballs in dirty dealings with the Saudis and other Arab states? What aboutThat big party in Little Rock for the Clinton library which was part Bill nostaliga/propaganda, part launch of the Hillary 2008 presidential campaign (See Dick Morris item below). Guess who chipped in millions to make it happen?

Inside Politics - The Washington Times: Inside Politics - November 23, 2004:
Friends of Bill. President Clinton's new $165 million library in Little Rock, Ark., was funded in part by gifts of $1 million or more each from the Saudi royal family and three Saudi businessmen, the New York Sun reports. The governments of Dubai, Kuwait, Qatar and the deputy prime minister of Lebanon all also appear to have donated $1 million or more for the archive and museum that opened last week, reporter Josh Gerstein said. Democrats spent much of the presidential campaign this year accusing President Bush of improperly close ties to Saudi Arabia. The case was made in Michael Moore's film 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' in a best-selling book by Craig Unger titled 'House of Bush, House of Saud,' and by the Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry. Perhaps as a result, the Saudi donations to the Clinton library are raising some eyebrows. Mr. Unger said he suspects that the Saudi support may have something to do with a possible presidential bid by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008. "

Liberals: Lovers of Diversity, Champions of Tolerance and Intellectual Freedom

Since we're talking about the lovers of diversity and tolerance today, thought I would include this article from John Fund at the Wall Street Journal online. As someone who was politically active for the GOP in college (see "Bush WON Ohio" below) I can attest to the intolerance of liberal professors. At Ohio Wesleyan University, I was walking to class one day and as I passed the Political Science building, the most liberal member of the Poly Sci faculty, a gentleman who resembles Michael Moore in MOORE ways than one, spoke in a very loud voice, intending to be overheard: "You know all Republicans are buffoons" he said. If I had said something similar on a different occasion it would have meant a trip to the Dean's Office.
MM

OpinionJournal - John Fund on the Trail: "Robert Brandon, a Duke University philosophy professor, is one liberal who has at least made an effort to explain why conservatives are seldom seen in academia. 'We try to hire the best, smartest people available. If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire. Mill's analysis may go some way towards explaining the power of the Republican Party in our society and the relative scarcity of Republicans in academia.'

But Mr. Klein says a better explanation of liberal dominance is the theory of "groupthink," which holds that insular groups tend to adopt a set of uniform beliefs and then act to exclude anyone who doesn't hold those views. "

Foreign Press Not All Looney Left

Here's an example from faraway New Zealand that offers proof that not every member of the foreign press is a Bush basher and America hater. You can bet there are more like-minded people out there, but probably afraid to express their view since the dominant McCarthyite left has a way of punishing anyone who dares stray too far from the reservation. So much for tolerance and diversity.

MM

condensed from: New Zealand News - Dialogue - Paul Thomas: Hear ye, hear ye, doomsday is nigh, yet again:

'Tis the season of the wolf. Crying wolf, that is. According to World Conservation Union officials, we're on the brink of the sixth mass extinction in the history of Planet Earth, with nearly 16,000 species in danger of disappearing.

Dr Helen Caldicott, Aussie Nobel Peace Prize nominee could be described as the doom mongers' doom monger and, as befits a big cheese in the End-of-the-World industry, she doesn't deal in centuries, or even decades.

Eat, drink and be merry, folks, because it could be all over in four years.

Naturally, it's all the fault of those horrid Americans for re-electing a fascist hell-bent on world domination. Nuclear Armageddon here we come. A hard rain's gonna fall and wash away every last one of us. We might get one more crack at the Rugby World Cup but if you were saving to go to the Beijing Olympics, forget it.

It's not that I'm cynical, but I am a little doomed-out. There's always an expert out there predicting apocalypse tomorrow. The thing they have in common is that they all know better than the elected politicians and a hell of a lot better than the great unwashed.

Back at the time of the first oil shock, the experts told us the world would run out of oil by 1995. Or was it 1985? Then there were the 300-odd economists who wrote a letter to the Times predicting that Margaret Thatcher's free-market economic policies would reduce Britain to a post-industrial parking lot roamed by starving mobs.

Bizarrely, Britain's unemployment rate is now lower than in the good old days when trade union barons exercised the right of veto over economic policy on behalf of their membership and at the expense of the community.

Dr Caldicott is even more devastated by Bush's re-election than she was when Ronald Reagan won a second term, which was devastating for me as I was heavily involved in the anti-nuclear movement.

No doubt back in 1984 she was painting a grim picture of what the world could expect from four more years of Reagan. After all the USSR, or the Evil Empire as the old simpleton called it, was nuked up and ready to rumble.

But Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev negotiated the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the first arms control treaty that eliminated nuclear weapons. The INF treaty effectively ended the arms race and signalled the end of the Cold War.

You'd think Dr Caldicott would be less eager to rush to judgment these days, but one way to sustain a black-and-white world view over the long haul is to avoid testing it against events.

If you keep predicting disaster, chances are you will eventually be proven right. But if your predictions have been frivolous or hysterical, you'll find, like the boy who cried wolf, that when you do have something to shout about, no one will take any notice.

Bush WON Ohio

Intro by Michael Miller

I wouldn’t expect my readers to spend much time reading anything from the New York Times. But I couldn’t resist condensing the following from a very long, over 6,500 words, essay entitled “Who Lost Ohio� in the Sunday Magazine.

It chronicles the activity of Americans Coming Together, or ACT, one of the big money, liberal elite 527 groups with strong ties to the Clintons (Dick Morris warned of this over a year ago: Clinton's Replacing the Democratic Party) .

They blew into Ohio in private jets and rental cars; an army of union organizers and a cadre of full time professional political operatives. Oh they worked hard, very hard, spending millions and hiring an army of paid staffers and attracting Hollywood celebrities and liberal volunteers from out of state to come in and take the prize they felt would guarantee the defeat of President Bush. But their elitist arrogance kept them blind to the new reality of politics that Ohio represents.

I saw them at work firsthand when I was in Ohio in October. A car with Illinois plates (blue state) carrying large Kerry Edwards signs around Bowling Green.

The paragraphs regarding Delaware County, where I attended Ohio Wesleyan University and where my name was first on the ballot for a seat on the GOP Central Committee were especially gratifying, as was the outcome.

My comments added in red.

Condensed fromThe New York Times > Magazine > Who Lost Ohio?
By MATT BAI
Published: November 21, 2004

In ACT and its partners, Democrats told me, they were building the most efficient turnout machine in political history. I returned to Ohio in the final days of the campaign to see the power of this grass-roots behemoth in action. ACT had evolved into something glamorous, a kind of sleek new political vehicle for the Volvo-driving set. Perhaps because they supported other liberal groups aligned with ACT, like Emily's List or the Sierra Club, or perhaps because ACT had a certain outsider cachet, thousands of volunteers from New York, New England and California chose to work for the organization in Ohio instead of the Kerry campaign; among them, I met a book editor from Manhattan and a massage therapist from Santa Barbara.

A few nights earlier, in Cleveland, Bouchard and I visited a basement-level phone bank where the ACT volunteers included the actors Matt Dillon and Timothy Hutton. Bouchard had molded an impressive, almost military operation. He took over Ohio from a previous director last April, after running field operations for Bob Graham and then Wesley Clark in each man's failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. So the guy has a track record of working for LOSERS!

Rosenthal, ACT's chief executive officer and Bou-chard's boss, had been lent a private jet for the closing days of the campaign by one of the group's wealthy donors.
Rosenthal, the former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and a labor department official in the Clinton administration, who was known inside the party as a brilliant, almost legendary field strategist.''For the life of me, I can't see how we could lose Ohio,'' Rosenthal had told me over lunch in Washington the previous week. ''The only way they win Ohio is to steal it like they did Florida four years ago.'' Some of these folks really do need therapy. No wonder they don’t get it!

The Dem strategy: This is how white Democrats have always won elections in close states like Ohio -- by cajoling every last black urban voter to go to the polls. In Ohio, Republicans have been able to count on winning somewhere around 75 of the state's 88 counties in any statewide election. Except this time around, Bush took the highest percentage of black votes EVER for a Republican…

What gnawed at Bouchard was that nowhere we went in Franklin County, a vigorously contested swing county, did we see any hint of a strong Republican presence -- no signs, no door-knockers, no Bush supporters handing out leaflets at the polls. This seemed only to increase Lindenfeld's (pro union hack) confidence. He didn't believe in the Republican turnout plan. ''What they talked about is a dream,'' he told me at one point. ''We've got the reality. They're wishing they had what we've got.'' For Bouchard, however, the silence was unsettling. How could there be such a thing as a stealth get-out-the-vote drive? Turned out to be a dream alright! A NIGHTMARE for you!

As night fell, we reached the city of Delaware and found a polling place at a recreation center. The only people in the parking lot were a drenched couple holding Kerry-Edwards signs. Inside, the polling place was empty. ''Look at this,'' Lindenfeld said to me triumphantly. ''Does this look like a busy polling place? Look around. There's no one here.'' He repeated this several times, making the point that turnout in the outlying areas was tailing off, while voters were lined up around the block back in Columbus. ''Do you see any Republicans?'' he asked me, motioning around the parking lot.

In fact, a quick investigation of the voter rolls, taped to the wall outside the voting area, indicated that the polling place was dead for a less encouraging reason: most of the voters in the two precincts assigned to the recreation center had already voted. The officials in charge told me that 1,175 of the 1,730 registered voters on the rolls had cast their ballots. In other words, turnout in those precincts was up to an impressive 68 percent, and there were still two hours left before the polls closed. (When it was over, Delaware County as a whole would post an astounding turnout rate of 78 percent, with two out of three votes going to Bush.) Way to go Delaware… In your FACE OWU (my alma mater) liberal professors!

But Ohio, like much of the country, was undergoing a demographic shift of historic proportions, and Republicans were learning to exploit their advantage in rapidly expanding rural areas that organizers like Lindenfeld, for all their technological innovation, just didn't understand. In shiny new town-house communities, canvassing could be done quietly by neighbors; you didn't need vans and pagers. Polling places could accommodate all the voters in a precinct without ever giving the appearance of being overrun. In the old days, these towns and counties had been nothing but little pockets of voters, and Republicans hadn't bothered to expend the energy to organize them. But now the exurban populations had reached critical mass (Delaware County alone had grown by almost one-third since the 2000 election), and Republicans were building their own kind of quiet but ruthlessly efficient turnout machine.

This effort wasn't visible to Democrats because it was taking place on an entirely new terrain, in counties that Democrats had some vague notion of, but which they never expected could generate so many votes. The 10 Ohio counties with the highest turnout percentages, many of them small and growing, all went for Bush, and none of them had a turnout rate of less than 75 percent.

Oh Cry Me A River

The volunteers huddled around the computer thought they were watching two thoroughbreds race neck and neck to the final yard, but for a seasoned campaigner like Bouchard, it felt more like watching his horse fade down the stretch. The window of opportunity for Kerry appeared to be closing. It was around 1 in the morning when Brokaw painted Ohio red. ''It is now hard to see how George W. Bush is not re-elected president of the United States,'' the anchor intoned. A quiet disbelief descended on the room. You could hear the creak of a folding chair, a ringing cellphone, the intermittent sob. ''This is the end of the United States of America,'' I heard one man declare as he left the room. Hey… I hear Sudan is nice this time of year!

For Democrats, this new phenomenon on Election Day felt like some kind of horror movie, with conservative voters rising up out of the hills and condo communities in numbers the Kerry forces never knew existed. ''They just came in droves,'' Jennifer Palmieri told me two days after the election. ''We didn't know they had that room to grow. It's like, 'Crunch all you want -- we'll make more.' They just make more Republicans.

I would also suggest the article be re-titled. It’s not so much who LOST Ohio, that was Kerry… But it should be abundantly clear to all but the most delusional leftist that BUSH WON OHIO!!!

Anything Goes in Little Rock These Days

Dick Morris: Clinton Library Launch for Hillary 2008 Campaign

New York Post Online Edition: postopinion: "YESTERDAY'S events in Little Rock had less to do with a library retrospective of the Bill Clinton years than a campaign launch for the prospective presidency of Hillary Clinton.
Doubt it? Then why it was Hillary, not Bill, who appeared on all the talk shows? It's his library. But it's her candidacy. So she did all the softball TV interviews, not him � reminding voters of her availability for 2008 while seeming to talk about the '90s.
The timing is perfect: Democrats demoralized by John Kerry's defeat get to behold hope for the future.
It also re-launches Hillary as a red state kind of girl. Needing to live down her recent New York pedigree, Mrs. Clinton gets to renew her identification with Arkansas so she can avoid being labeled a bi-coastal liberal. "

ScrappleFace: Daschle Filibuster Blocks His Departure from Senate

ScrappleFace: Daschle Filibuster Blocks His Departure from Senate: "Daschle Filibuster Blocks His Departure from Senate
(2004-11-20) -- The departure from the U.S. Senate of former minority leader Tom Daschle, D-SD, was blocked for a short time Friday when the Senator, who lost his re-election bid to John Thune, refused to yield the floor.
'Sen. Daschle began to filibuster his own retirement,' said one unnamed Senate aide. 'It was a touching moment, recalling his legacy of blocking Bush-appointed judicial nominees.'
Upon hearing of the filibuster, Republicans and Democrats returned to the largely empty chamber and quickly invoked cloture on a vote of 99-to-1.
As he left the Senate chamber for the last time, Mr. Daschle hailed his own accomplishment of bringing the two parties together for that final vote. "

Inside Politics - The Washington Times: Inside Politics - November 19, 2004

Inside Politics - The Washington Times: Inside Politics - November 19, 2004: " Racist cartoons
The Independent Women's Forum has denounced as blatantly racist several editorial cartoons featuring Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser and President Bush's nominee for secretary of state.
These cartoons clearly draw upon centuries of deep-rooted, wicked and indefensible portrayals of black women, the organization said.
'The depiction of Dr. Condoleezza Rice by Jeff Danziger, Pat Oliphant and Garry Trudeau as an ebonics-speaking, big-lipped, black mammy who just loves her 'massa' is a disturbing trend in editorial cartoons,' said Michelle D. Bernard, senior vice president of the Independent Women's Forum. 'These cartoons take the racism of the liberals who profess respect and adoration for black Americans to a new level. It is revolting.'
She added: 'One must ask, where is the outrage of the nation's civil rights leadership, feminist organizations, and the so-called liberals who only seem to embrace black America in election years?' "

White House insider relies on aid of 'allies' - The Washington Times: World - November 17, 2004

White House insider relies on aid of 'allies' - The Washington Times: World - November 17, 2004:

Condi Rice's View of Allies:

"She spelled out her definition of a true friend: a country that does not 'put a check' on American power but stands firmly with the United States in its effort to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction and other modern ills.
'Why would anyone who shares the values of freedom seek to put a check on those values?' Miss Rice asked, adding that Europe and democracies worldwide should follow Washington's lead instead of trying to balance it with competing policies.
'Power in the service of freedom is to be welcomed, and powers that share a commitment to freedom can and must make common cause against freedom's enemies,' she said in the June 2003 speech.
Miss Rice, who is one of Mr. Bush's confidants, dismissed a vision of 'multipolarity' advanced by French President Jacques Chirac and others, calling it 'a theory of rivalry, of competing interests,' which 'only the enemies of freedom would cheer.'
'We have tried this before,' she said. 'It led to the Great War, which cascaded into the Good War, which gave way to the Cold War. Today, this theory of rivalry threatens to divert us from meeting the great tasks before us.' "

In a nutshell:

A famous phrase that was attributed to Miss Rice last year: "Punish France, ignore Germany and forgive Russia."

OpinionJournal - Featured Article

OpinionJournal - Featured Article: "Put yourself in that Marine's boots. He and his mates have had to endure some of the toughest infantry duty imaginable, house-to-house urban fighting against an enemy that neither wears a uniform nor obeys any normal rules of war. Here is how that enemy fights, according to an account in the Times of London:
'In the south of Fallujah yesterday, U.S. Marines found the armless, legless body of a blonde woman, her throat slashed and her entrails cut out. Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the U.S. Navy Corps, said that she had been dead for a while, but at that location for only a day or two. The woman was wearing a blue dress; her face had been disfigured. It was unclear if the remains were the body of the Irish-born aid worker Margaret Hassan, 59, or of Teresa Borcz, 54, a Pole abducted two weeks ago. Both were married to Iraqis and held Iraqi citizenship; both were kidnapped in Baghdad last month.'
When not disemboweling Iraqi women, these killers hide in mosques and hospitals, booby-trap dead bodies, and open fire as they pretend to surrender. Their snipers kill U.S. soldiers out of nowhere. According to one account, the Marine in the videotape had seen a member of his unit killed by another insurgent pretending to be dead. Who from the safety of his Manhattan sofa has standing to judge what that Marine did in that mosque?"