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The Boston Globe is obviously working for Hillary

We've been blogging around the edges of this for some time, but now here comes The Boston Globe, liberal paper of record in these New England States, reporting possible FEC violations at the Kerry camp.  Says blogger Perry on Politics:

Since his campaign is very low on cash, he is having to rely on his friends to run ads for him, namely Bush-haters George Soros and MoveOn.org.  According to the Globe:

The Bush campaign and the Republican National Committee said they would file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing Kerry and pro-Kerry groups of violating a campaign law that broadly bans the use of ''soft money'' corporate, union and unlimited individual donations to influence federal elections.

In a highly unusual move, the Bush campaign and RNC plan to ask the FEC to dismiss the complaint immediately so they can file a federal lawsuit to block the activities and force the groups to pay for presidential ads and get-out-the-vote drives with limited donations from individuals rather than soft money. Usually complainants pursue FEC action before going to court, but it can take months or even years for the commission to resolve complaints.

The GOP cited at least three factors it says prove coordination: links between people involved in some of the soft money groups and the Kerry campaign during the same election cycle; the timing of media buys in the same states and media markets; and TV stations receiving a Media Fund ad on Kerry's economic plan before Kerry publicly released the economic plan.

The ends justify the means to these people. Soros has already stated that he would give up his billion dollar fortune to get rid of President Bush.

Our i-mail correspondent couldn't believe the Globe would be turning on a Democratic candidate:

She:  The GLOBE can't turn face this fast . . . they must have something HUGE on Bush and are trying to get this nastiness out of the way early, so they appear "fair and balanced". . .

We: They're obviously working for Hillary.

[via InstaPundit]

Got my mind made up*

"When a year-old piece on Richard Clarke by the Village Voice’s George Smith recently hit the web anew, its lefty author found himself subject to anti-Bush rage . . . and pro-Bush friendliness, reports Tim Blair from down under:

From both sides of the political spectrum, the missives of my fellow citizens showed no grasp of the fact that my column was written over 12 months ago . . . As a consequence of their aphasia, it was clear I was obviously a Bush administration fixer — "vermin . . . coming out from under . . . rocks to smear [Clarke]." Or, if you stood on the other ridge, I was an honest fellow, laboring to get the real story past the spinmonger Lesley Stahl and the perfidious "60 Minutes."

Comments Tim: "One difference: the right-wingers usually have better spelling." Or, as our i-mail correspondent would put it, "better speling." But yes, how interesting. It puts the lie to the CW we were dissing in the last post re the media's assumption that public opinion is easily jerked around by the Bush administration's or anyone else's attack machine. Other than the mushy middle, aka the "swing voters," it just ain't so.

*"Got my mind made up" by Bob Dylan and Tom Petty:

Don't ever try to change me,
I been in this thing too long.
There's nothin' you can say or do
To make me think I'm wrong.

Design should simplify and facilitate our everyday life

You know what? Lots of weblogs out there are so unappealing visually that we just click away the minute we find ourselves in one. They make our eyes hurt and make us feel claustrophobic. That's why we're reposting Douglas Bowman's philosophy of design:

Design plays a primary role in the interpretation of a message. It creates the crucial persistent impression. It encourages examination and generates interest. Accessible, understandable information and beauty of form can engage observers and arrest their attention.

A confusing, poorly designed message will miss its target almost every time. In a world where information flows abundantly, our minds have developed filters to sift through the overflow of useless data. While design must appeal to the aesthetic, it must not stand in the way of delivery, cause complications, or introduce stumbling blocks. Rather, the presence of design should simplify and facilitate our everyday life.

Rumor mill bumps and grinds to a halt

'Just noticed this, posted two days ago by Wonkette:

"We have it on semi-reliable authority that the Bush administration's next attempt to discount Richard Clarke's credibility will consist of alleging that he's a big gay. We have a little trouble figuring out how being gay makes you unable to assess threats to a country's national security -- after all, we trust them to tell us what to wear.

Clever and coy, yes, as an Inside-the-Beltway Gossip Maven should be, BUT:

1. At least in the olden days, being a closeted homosexual made a person vulnerable to blackmail, dontchaknow.

2. We don't buy the CW that the citizenry is made up of passive vessels waiting to be filled with the goods on Clarke via Bush administration attempts to discount his credibility. In fact, we and all those OTHER smart people blogging their hearts out for Bush picked up on Clarke's anti-Bush agenda from the start, without any help from our friends in the Bush administration. Concession: CW may apply to the great unwashed "swing voter."

3. We agree with InstaPundit's prediction that "Now that it's obvious that this story isn't moving the polls against Bush, it will fade from the radar screen."

4. If the rumor IS true, you saw it here first: We blogged last Thursday about a possible closet skeleton the Clinton Machine might be holding over Clarke's head: "You remember the hundreds of sensitive FBI background files on previous White House employees that 'accidently' turned up in the Clinton White House and may or may not have been inadvertently downloaded into Hillary's computer?"

Hillary! out to lunch when it comes to outsourcing

New York Senator Hillary! as Wellesley senior in 1969 and University of Chicago Political Asst. Prof. of Political Science Daniel W. Drezner today as Blogosphere Outsourcing Wizard

"I don't know what reality the Bush administration is living in, but it's certainly not the reality I represent, from one end of New York to the other," commented Hillary! the other day, responding to remarks by Treasury Secretary John Snow that outsourcing can be good for the economy:

Asked in an interview whether he thought outsourcing of jobs to other countries made the U.S. economy strong, Snow replied, "It's one aspect of trade and there can't be any doubt about the fact that trade makes ... America strong."

Hillary probably didn't have time to take "Economics 101" at Wellesley . . . too busy taking notes at the knee of her mentor, Saul [ends justify the means] Alinsky.

"Funny thing, though," says the blogosphere's Outsourcing Wizard, Daniel W. Drezner. "Snow appears to be right, according to this CNN report":

The outsourcing of prized information technology jobs overseas has created tens of thousands of new jobs in the United States, according to a recent study commissioned by the information technology industry . . .

According to this study, these benefits "ripple" through the economy, leading to about 90,000 net new jobs through the end of 2003. This effect, the study said, should produce a total of 317,000 net new jobs through 2008.

Don't confuse Hillary! with economic reality. Remember, as Marc Jacobs International President Robert Duffy said: "Senator Clinton is smart, compassionate, fair, and knows how to work with everyone in the interest of getting things done." Everyone except the economically savvy, it would seem.

Are you a wimp or a warrior?

"It's obvious to me that this country is rapidly dividing itself into two camps -- the wimps and the warriors," said Sen. Zell Miller,* D-Ga, Tuesday in a speech on the Senate floor. AP reports:

The ones who want to argue and assess and appease, and the ones who want to carry this fight to our enemies and kill them before they kill us . . .

[Miller] also denounced former Bush counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke, who has criticized the president as being slow to act against the al-Qaida terrorist network . . . "The vindictive Clarke has now had his revenge, but what kind of hell has he, his CBS publisher, and his ax-to-grind advocates unleashed?" Miller said . . . The Sept. 11 commission's public quarrels with the Bush administration could "energize our enemies and demoralize our troops.

We enjoyed this comment from LDotter uno:, referring to this Drudge Report headline: CNN loses half of audience from year ago:

If CNNs massive loss in viewership is any indicator at all, I'd say the Warriors have it!

[via Lucianne]

*Zell had this to say at the recent Democrats for Bush rollout:

In this election, I’m on George Bush’s side because he’s on the side of the American people. I’m grateful for his service to America, and I’m confident that he’ll be re-elected in November.

Ted and Tom count their chickens

"Senators Edward M. Kennedy and Tom Daschle face stiff fines for their 'excessive celebration' over news that the Bush administration had succumbed to pressure to allow National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to testify under oath before the 9/11 commission," reports ScrappleFace:

"Rather than politely welcoming the Bush decision to allow Rice to testify," said an unnamed expert, "Kennedy and Daschle did a virtual Snoopy-dance in front of the reporters. The Senate is supposed to be the more deliberative body of the bicameral legislature. Daschle and Kennedy are out there high-fiving each other, doing that break-dance head-spin thing and simulating two-handed pistol fire. What kind of example is that to set for junior Senators like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton?"

Mr. Daschle's office acknowledged that, upon hearing the news, the Senate Minority Leader had "leaped into the mosh pit of reporters and was passed around over their heads for some appropriate interval."

A lot of folks on the other side of the aisle are doing a little celebrating of their own. Mitch McConnell is telling "Fox & Friends" that executive privilege in this case is "a lawyers' argument lost on the general public":

People couldn't understand why Condi wasn't going to go before the 9/11 commission, and now she is . . . She's an extraordinarily effective spokesman for the administration, and she'll have a much larger audience now.

Meanwhile, Michael King at Ramblings' Journal is having a little fun at the expense of liberals who think they know better than black citizens themselves what's good for them:

Conservative and black? Then you're fair game. Political cartoonist Joe Heller from the Green Bay Press Gazette figures it's OK . . .

Because she's conservative! She had the audacity to stroll defiantly off the plantation! And when the obahseeyahs began to yelp at her? They're expecting her to bow and scrape and go "Yassuh, boss" to the liberals on the commission, now that the White House is letting her testify.

They've got another think coming. Just wait for it . . .

We're waiting for her to pull an "Ollie North" and leave Ted and Tom and John and Hillary wondering what hit them.

One of the "greatest broadcasters of all time"

Alistaire Cooke, who died in New York at the age of 95, was hailed by Tony Blair as one of the "greatest broadcasters of all time".

"Cooke was a brave exception to the BBC rule during the war to liberate Iraq," writes Andrew Sullivan in "A 'Cynical Sentimentalist,'" an appreciation of Alistair Cooke, who died yesterday:

He understood what America experienced on 9/11 and he never descended into the mire of knee-jerk anti-Americanism that consumed the BBC in the last few years. He did this as an old-fashioned FDR-style liberal. Beneath his urbanity, you see, there was steel.

Cooke was "a real idol to me in many ways," says Andrew.  "He came to America, as I did, on a Commonwealth Fund fellowship, was absorbed by the theater, as I was, and fell in love with America, as I did, while traveling across the entire country."

For ourselves, coming of age in the seventies and eighties when Cooke burst upon the American television scene with his unique brand of "encyclopaedic knowledge expressed in seemingly casual style," first in "America:  A Personal History of the United States" and then in his introductions to "Masterpiece Theater," he was a revelation.  His presentations were the metaphoric hearth around which the family gathered of a Sunday evening. We agree with William Farish, US ambassador in London, quoted in the London Telegraph obit:

For many Americans, he will always be associated with the best of Britain. He had a poised and effortless manner, a first-class mind and a sincere interest in all things American.

NOTE.  Telegraph requires brief registration.

Those who lie down with dogs

"The answer, of course, is not to give in or appease," writes Andrew Sullivan:

It's war, democratization and law enforcement . . . to fight back boldly with the military, create a democratic space in the Muslim Middle East, and work to foil terror quietly, subtly and powerfully behind the scenes.

So far, so good, but we couldn't disagree more with what follows:

The strongest argument for Kerry is that we have already gained as much as we can for the time being with hard power and war; he won't pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan; he won't be able to duck a serious response to another terror attack; but he might help ease some of the hatred of the United States that this president has -- undeservedly, in my view, but still undeniably -- ratcheted to unseen levels.

It's that pipe dream about a President Kerry's -- or any US President's -- being in a position to "ease some of the hatred of the US" that we aren't buying. We would refer Andrew to the work of historian Bat Ye’or as cited in a FrontPage article by Robert Spenser of Dhimmi Watch and blogged here yesterday:

This new Euro-Muslim entity — which she has dubbed “Eurabia” — has been consciously intended to become "a counterweight to American power" on the world stage . . .

To deflate American power and assure themselves a steady supply of oil, European leaders accepted "the traditional cultural baggage of Arab societies, with its anti-Christian and anti-Jewish prejudices and its hostility against Israel and the West."

Moving closer to home, Andrew is rightly concerned with goings on in his native rural England, where, the Guardian reports, authorities have thwarted a bomb plot being planned by a group of young, viciously anti-western Muslims: "Security sources suggested that the motive of the alleged planned attacks was anti-western but not dictated by anyone in the al Qaeda hierarchy."

These thugs would appear to exemplify the "new breed of Islamic warrior" being recruited in housing projects and prisons by groups like the Takfir wal Hijra, who "openly advocate using immigration as a Trojan horse to expand jihad."

Carnival of the Cutups

A little over a week ago, we warned our readers:

The fact-twisters are coming soon to a TV screen near you.

Keeping our remotes handy, we tuned in and tried to determine which was the real Richard Clarke? The one who staunchly defended the Bush administration's al Queda policies two years ago or the one who now says GW "ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something"?

Clarke's body language made the little hairs on the back of our neck bristle, and the obsequious stroking of their star witness by partisan commissioners Bob Kerrey and Richard Benveniste made our toes curl. In our blog posts we kept asking the rhetorical question, "Why don't people pick up on the body language?"

As the media fawned, Tim Russert tossing Clarke softballs during "Meet the Press," our blood boiled, and our blood pressure rose, but the blogosphere's outrage had charms to soothe this savage breast. A sampling of quotable quotes that kept us LOL:

I would like you to take the paper your apology was written on and stick it up your ass.

-- Michele Catalano

I thought perhaps we could blame, oh . . . al Qaeda?

-- Michele Catalano

The natural "little boy" response is "Hey, what about me!"

-- Roger L. Simon

One shudders to think what might have happened without Dick Clarke's resolute leadership.

-- ScrappleFace

Mr. Clarke would seem to be channelling Leslie Nielsen's deadpan doctor in Airplane!

-- Mark Steyn

In my view it was not an act of humility, but an act of supreme arrogance and manipulation.

-- Bill Frist

"Hmmm, did I demote this guy far enough?"

-- Ann Coulter

With all due respect, that's a load of hooey.

-- New York Post

Polemical, partisan mean-spiritedness . . . lies at the heart of Clarke's book.

-- Time Magazine

I wasn't AT that meeting.

-- Donald Rumsfeld

Clarke's evaluation of presidential performance is directly correlated with how well those presidents treated Clarke.

-- Daniel W. Drezner

It remains to the blogosphere and the competent opinion journalists to do the work that the mainstream media refuse to do.

-- The Big Trunk at Power Line

You've got a real credibility problem.

-- John Lehman

[Our findings] put the spotlight on a severely disfunctional bureaucracy.

-- John Lehman

A giant ego in a small job.

-- Newt Gingrich

[Some journalists are] letting their Bush-hatred trump their patriotism.

-- Glenn Reynolds

He is a self-regarding buffoon.

-- John Podhoretz

Well, he wasn't in the loop, frankly.

-- Dick Cheney

We felt up till that point much of what had been done vis-à-vis al Qaeda had been totally ineffective.

-- Dick Cheney

He told me he was "tired of swatting flies."

-- Condoleeza Rice

A softheaded liberal who seeks to understand the terrorists.

-- George Neumayr

Absolute nonsense what he is putting out there.

-- Mansoor Ijaz