Okay, I do NOT understand this!

[vraiblonde]

Hot on the heels of the forged document debacle, the Kerry campaign wants to KEEP harping on Bush's Guard record. After John Kerry himself came out and said he wanted to quit talking about Vietnam (because of the SBV debacle), they want to KEEP talking about Bush's Guard record.

Then Kerry gives an interview with TIME and says "What Bush bounce?"

What the hell is going on with these people???!!! This HAS to be a set-up. There's NO WAY experienced campaign managers would be so stupid.

 

[SamSpade]

The only thing I can think of is, Kerry has on board at least three guys who haven't the greatest record. The Drudge page refers to Bob Shrum as "0-7", and there's Begala and Carville, whom Clinton wisely dumped by '96.

From some of the reading I've done lately though, it's probably too early to be dancing over the "bounce". After a week, some of it has faded. Secondly, there's wide differences in the way some polls get their data.

For example, as was pointed out on the www.electoral-vote.com website, Missouri recently went from a 14% lead to a 2% lead. How is this possible? Well, for one thing, DIFFERENT polls.

Many polls rely on polling 'likely voters', since it's pointless to simply randomly sample the whole country - half the people won't be showing up no matter who they like. So you have to choose from actual voter lists. Many of these polls differ, because they take different proportions of Republican, Democrats and others. Take a higher proportion of Repuiblicans (as was the case in some of the more recent popular polls) and you get a big 'bounce'. Make them even, and you get a tight race. Not long ago, the L.A. times was excoriated for having a poll with a HUGE proportion of Democrats.

The question then is, well, what's the REAL proportion of likely Republican voters versus likely Democrat voters? Nobody really knows. Most pollsters are using data from the last national election, but they don't know how accurate the data are.

My 'guess' is that it's still closer than we're hearing. At the electoral vote site, the writer mentions also the millions of votes cast from overseas ballots, not all them military - in fact, not even a large portion of them. He says there are at least 5 million of voting age and there's evidence they're registering in HUGE numbers - my experience from non-military overseas is that they are hugely Democratic and against Bush.

So it ain't over yet.

 

[Sharon]

Just wait until Kitty Kelley's book comes out tomorrow. The circus will be in full swing.

 

[vraiblonde]

So now here's the Kerry dude on Fox (paraphrasing)

Kerry Dude: It's important for the Kerry campaign to let the people know that George Bush shirked his duty while supposedly in the National Guard.

Bush Dude: If my candidate had failed to show up for x% of his Senate votes, I'd be hesitant to start throwing that stone.

KD: The SBVs started it. And Bush wouldn't specifically denounce those ads.

BD: The President said that Kerry served admirably and that he was against ALL ads of this nature.

KD: But he didn't specifically denounce the Swift Boat ads.

BD: No, he denounced all ads like this.

KD: See? He didn't denounce the ads! :smug:

This whole thing is just crazy.

 

[Larry Gude]

I'm telling you...

...Kerry is not suppossed to win but he IS suppossed to put up a fight to keep the passions simmering.

The ONLY result of Kerry beating this dead horse endlessly is that sooner or later the major media will have to come back to the Swifties allegations and the more we see young Kerry denouncing his nations military in his Senate testimony, the worse he looks. That and the questions about his service will resurface as well.

Unless of course, you people that have not made up your mind are now liking Kerry better because of all this?

 

[Bruzilla]

I think the reason is the simple fact that the Dems were counting on Iraq and the economy to bring Bush down, and they aren't. Then they were hoping to gain ground themselves on the anti-terrorism thing, and Kerry's "kinder-gentler" remarks and opineing about France and Germany, have caused him to fall wayyyyy back on that issue. So, what have the Dems got left?

There's the Assault Weapons Ban, which was all over the electronic and print media, but no one much seems to care about despite the alledged 60-70% support it had (yeah right.) They don't want to talk gay marriage as that works against them, and education does them so service either.

So really, all they have left to talk about is Bush's NG service, disenfranchising black voters, and the "stolen" election... and I think that moderates are about tired of hearing those BS items too.

 

[Larry Gude]

I have no idea...

and I think that moderates are about tired of hearing those BS items too.

Are they???

From my own biased view Kerry is so deeply mired with the flip flop label that he has absolutely no chance. I said earlier that he was the ONLY major candidate the Dems could choose that could NOT win; he stands for nothing.

Every single thing he says can be contradicted, with his OWN recent words. The Sunday shows showed him bashing Bush last week on the $200 bil wasted in IRaq and THEN played an INTERVIEW, on the same show, of him before Dean came to the fore saying that we have to spend whatever it takes, no matter what it takes, to make things work in Iraq.

He's got nowhere to turn and he's stuck hoping the economy fails, which even if it does, it's to late to show statisticaly, and/or real disasters in Iraq in order for people, to me, to even begin to go for the Democratic game plan; ABB.

Because that's all he is now; 'any body'.

 

[Penn]

I think the reason is the simple fact that the Dems were counting on Iraq and the economy to bring Bush down, and they aren't. Then they were hoping to gain ground themselves on the anti-terrorism thing, and Kerry's "kinder-gentler" remarks and opineing about France and Germany, have caused him to fall wayyyyy back on that issue. So, what have the Dems got left?

There's the Assault Weapons Ban, which was all over the electronic and print media, but no one much seems to care about despite the alledged 60-70% support it had (yeah right.) They don't want to talk gay marriage as that works against them, and education does them so service either.

So really, all they have left to talk about is Bush's NG service, disenfranchising black voters, and the "stolen" election... and I think that moderates are about tired of hearing those BS items too.

Bruzilla has it about right; none of the expected bomb-lobbing seems to have any effect, they're not gaining any ground, so it's back to the NG attack mode, forged documents be damned!

Outside of the fact that both men were honorably discharged from their respective services, whoreally gives a rats @zz about it.

Some people are going to see it as the conservatives responding to the far left's hate mongering, and the other side is using the perception that Pres. Bush did not specifically denounce the Swiftboats ads. It's a loser either way.
Unless Kerry decides to put an end to this muckthrowing, many Americans won't hear his message, and I think he's going to lose.

Heck, maybe he's already come to that conclusion, and just wants to do as much damage as he can muster to the president's image.

He's a pretty sad fellow, if that is true.

 

[vraiblonde]

The Kerrys were harping on Fox this morning something about Bush "disappearing" during the last year of his enlistment. I assume where they're going with this is trying to dig up some accusation that he was coked out or drunk and higher-ups covered for him. I think that because several Democrat pundits have recently written columns about how the Dems need to get "mean" and paint both Bush and Cheney as a pair of alcoholics who could go off on a binge and nuke the world. Or something like that.

Of course, this will backfire on them in a spectacular fashion. We've been watching George Bush for 4 years now and the image of him as a partying frat boy just isn't coming together.

 

[Larry Gude]

Penn...

...the thing is both parties have solicited a ton of money and, according to the Post, it's a lot less corporations, who want to get along with whomever wins which means they won't support excess vitriol and more money coming from individuals who want a fight for their cash.

We constantly hear from the left, from the moment Gore and his 20,000 lawyers left Florida that MORE fight is necessary.

That means, by definition, less about policy, less about being one nation and more...fighting.

They could care less that Clinton won because we has likeable, that Reagan won because he was likeable, that GHW Bush won because the Duke looked like a dork and that W won because he is likeable.

Kerry is a dork and, unlike Dukakis, Kerry is not likeable.

 

[Larry Gude]

As a matter of probability...

to dig up some accusation that he was coked out or drunk and higher-ups covered for him

W likely did NOT do that last physical because it would reveal drug use.

The thing KerryCo does not seem to get is that W has been approved AFTER the allegations of coke use and after the DWI.

He said he was young and dumb and people like that better than Kerry's "Old and dumb" routine.

There is no way 'W: have some coke and a smile' stays as an issue without "Kerry: do it yourself military resume' as a issue.

W ####ed off.

Kerry, meeting with the Vietnamese in Paris, his Senate terstimony, his medals, ####ed up.

 

[Bruzilla]

Excellent point Vrai! After all that's happened since 2001 the drunken fratboy attack is finished.

 

[ylexot]

W likely did NOT do that last physical because it would reveal drug use.

Except that they weren't doing drug testing in the military yet.

 

[Ken King]

Except that they weren't doing drug testing in the military yet.

Really,the Navy Drug Screening Lab at San Diego was established in 1971 and the Air Force Lab stood up at about the same time, if not slightly earlier. This was due to the many members returning from Asia that had addiction problems.

 

[Bruzilla]

Except that they weren't doing drug testing in the military yet.

I had several Navy flight physicals in the 1970s, and I was never tested for drug use. The only drug testing that went on had to be, and I think continues to be, random in nature. We got checked a couple of times a year in sweeps or when your number was called, but never as part of a physical.

 

[Kyle]

Really,the Navy Drug Screening Lab at San Diego was established in 1971 and the Air Force Lab stood up at about the same time, if not slightly earlier. This was due to the many members returning from Asia that had addiction problems.

Kerry returned from Asia, right about then, didn't he?

 

[xusnret]

In 1972 I was deployed on a ship in the Med and we were ordered to conduct a unit sweep. After everybody wizzed in a bottle we boxed them all up and sent via reg mail to the testing lab in Jax, Fl. Four months later when we returned to Norva guess what we got back in the mail, yeah thats right our original boxes of 240 bottles of well aged pizz. The lab hadn't been stood up yet and nobody there to accept the mail.

 

[Penn]

Except that they weren't doing drug testing in the military yet.

My recollection is that is right. I was in the Air Force, stationed in Phoenix at the time, got there in early 1974, and we weren't subjected to drug testing it seemed until the 1975-76 timeframe.
Regular flight physicals, such as I had to undergo, as an Intercept Controller, which BTW, was one notch lower that a pilot's physical, in that we didn't have to be tested for depth perception(you can't see "into" a radar console!), did not include a test for illegal drugs, or so I was informed.

It did include testing for alcohol abuse, but that was it.

Use of coke and the weed were not, or had not come to the forefront yet.

 

[Larry Gude]

Well...

...I was playing devils advocate as certainly there is SOMETHING to the claims and I assumed that pilots were blood tested as a health issue.

My bad.

 

[Penn]

...I was playing devils advocate as certainly there is SOMETHING to the claims and I assumed that pilots were blood tested as a health issue.

My bad.

No, if you think about it, there may be something to the idea of testing military personel returning form Asia; of course it was all rumors, stories we heard from the guys that came back from Thailand, VietNam, Okinawa and other places, but maybe there was more usage going on over there than here in the states, at the time.

The military would have surely known which soldiers, airmen and sailors that were returning from SE Asia, so there could have been a program in effect at that time. I wasn't subjected to a random test until after 1975 or '76, if I remember correctly.

Later on, throughout the '80s it was once or twice a year.