MichFan

Apparently not to a bunch of Vietnam-era veterans and POW's.

Why did anyone waste their time responding after they read this?

If it were that simple, Kerry wouldn't be having the problems he has now. If Kerry were a humble war veteran (the way 99.9% are) who blushed when others talked of his medals, who saw the real heroes as those who served with/under him rather than himself, and preferred to talk about today rather than 35 years ago, he would have a 10-point lead right now. But his self-righteous arrogance has landed him in a position where the Swifities wanted to and could damage his campaign.

In his case, the ratings aren't growing (btw - how pathetic is CNN ): FOXNEWS O'REILLY 2.0 [RATING] FOXNEWS HANNTIY/COLMES 1.8 FOXNEWS GRETA 1.6 FOXNEWS BRIT HUME 1.3 FOXNEWS SHEP SMITH 1.3 MSNBC OLBERMAN 0.6 MSNBC NORVILLE 0.6 MSNBC HARDBALL 0.6 MSNBC SCARBOROUGH 0.6 CNN LARRY KING .5 CNN AARON BROWN 0.5 CNN PAULA ZAHN 0.5 CNBC DENNIS MILLER 0.1 CNBC MCENROE 0.1

I enjoyed Matthews leading up to the election in 2000, and loved the SNL skit they did on him. He seemed to be pretty fair and balanced at the time. I can't even bear to watch his show now. He has become a partisan hack, barely more tolerable than Begala and Carville.

That's how I feel too, except there needs to be a way of ramping in on the lower end or else you'd be better off makng $24,900 than $25,000.

I endured great mental suffering and pain to watch Deborah Norville single handedly try to rehabilitate John Kerry on her show last night. Every question she asked of Thurlow and Gardner was in the vain of -- I know you're lying about Kerry so why don't you admit it. She actually had the gall to ask one of the vets (Gardner) if he was willing to apologize to all of the Vietnam veterans for dragging this issue back to the forefront and forcing them to relive the bad feelings of the era.

Rob Johnson?

Seems to me Bush dealt with plenty of smears about his National Guard record during the Dems primary season. Seems to me McAuliffe was the head cheerleader on this effort -- going to the point of accusing Bush of being AWOL. Seems to me none of the candidates told him to back off. Seems to me Bush opened up plenty of records in an attempt to support his service, right down to his dental records, but nothing was good enough for you libbies. Kind of sucks having to take your own medicine, doesn't it? Gavin gets a prize

I think the mayor's perspective was that you can't can't look at the national economic indicators and assume they fit all areas of the country. As much as the libs complain about a jobless recovery -- in the case of Youngstown they are experiencing something different.

I'm sorry for the loss of your brother, but I find it disgusting that you charge the reason doctors do the best job they can is to avoid lawsuits, and that this fear justifies the existence of trial lawyers who file frivelous lawsuits. When my son was born prematurely, I guarantee you the neonatal intensive care staff who assembled at a moments notice to take care of his first hours were more driven by compassion for a baby's life than fear of some lawyer.

Perhaps if you could offer specifically what the shortcomings of the current administration are that have led to this trend, and/or what the Kerry/Edwards administration would do to reverse it, there could be some intellectual discussion. The fact that LGB is in this so early is not promising, that's generally death bells for anything intellectual on this board. I thought it was interesting to hear what the Democrat mayor of Youngstown, OH -- who has endorsed Bush -- had to say about the economy in his rust belt town. He said that people mostly blame NAFTA for their loss of jobs and recognize that it went into effect under Clinton. The 9/11 tragedy had a significant effect on the economy that the Dems don't want to admit. Bush's economic policy is taking hold and because of it they have "turned the corner" in Youngstown. No matter how much the host tried to spin things on him in favor of the Dems, he had a deep conviction that Bush had things on track as far as his town was concerned. He also commented that under Carter their unemployment rate hit 30% and now they are at 10% under Bush, so things are looking up relatively speaking.

Congrats, gmac!

We and the media can debate he said/she said on this issue all we want but the bottom line that can't be changed is this: There are a lot of war veterans out there who felt dishonored and betrayed by what Kerry did when he got back from Vietnam. There are veterans who returned to be treated like peons, in their minds partly due to Kerry. There are POWs who faced torture to avoid making statements that Kerry so readily provided the enemy. These people absolutely HATE Kerry for what they went through. Anything the media or the libs put them through now is like a walk in the park compared to what they went through in the early 70's. These guys aren't going away. They are a permanent thorn in the side of Kerry's presidential efforts. That is unless Kerry finally steps up publicly and makes a decisive statement about the facts regarding the ciriticism he is facing. He doesn't seem willing to do this.

All Kerry's trumped up little freak show did yesterday was show how desparate the Kerry campaign is when it comes to the Swifties. You call it a political victory? Okay, I hope to see many more Kerry "victories" like this between now and November.

Weren't you the one citing polls in another thread today? Surprised you don't recognize that the ads have had an effect on Kerry's support among war veterans (split post convention, Bush has 20% lead now) and that something like 27% of "undecideds" polled say these ads have impacted their opinion of Kerry. But getting back to the point of this thread -- sending Cleland and Rasmussen to Crawford will work like scratching fingernails on a chalkboard to all but the most diehard Kerry supporters (which your polls would also show there aren't many who label themselves as such). It's a stunt that will probably make the average American turning on the news tonight face another day of something they wish would just go away.

For what it's worth, I saw O'Neil respond to accusations of bullet holes in the boats and he said the holes came from action they had faced the day before.

I think they are at the point where they know these ads are doing damage in a way no liberal 527 could harm Bush. The only way they can save any face on this is to try to motivate the hate-Bush base. The problem is that the undecideds probably want this either to end -- in which case he's irritating the heck out of them now -- or for him to just address the issues and move on -- which obviously he can't do because he's told too many stories over the last 30 years. The Swifties are not going away. This has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with a passionate hate they feel for Kerry. Just wait for the commercial that discusses all the changes Kerry has made to his story since they started exposing falsehoods in his stories -- it's going to be the cherry on their sundae.

I simply cannot believe that the Kerry campaign has allowed things to get to this point -- Max Cleland and Jim Rassman (the guy Kerry pulled from the river) are being dispatched to Crawford, TX to hand deliver a letter from Kerry to Bush calling for condemnation of the SBVT ads. I just can't imagine what in the heck they are thinking. This has got to be embarrasing for even the staunchest Dems. It will be interesting to see how Bush handles this, as there is a great opportunity to make the situation blow up in the face of the Kerry campaign. Hopefully they are ready with a wheelchair accessible media platform, pitcher of lemonade, and a letter documenting the veracity of the 527's that have lined up against Bush and the smears they have leveled at him. For Kerry to think he is above any criticism while Bush is nothing but a whipping boy is the height of arrogance. I thought it couldn't get any worse than Gore in 2000, boy was I wrong. I can only imagine what this indicates about Kerry's foreign policy tactics if he becomes president. I can just see it now -- widows of fallen GI's delivering a letter to Chirac asking for French involvement in Iraq.