FactCheck.org Republican-funded Group Attacks Kerry’s War Record

Ad features vets who claim Kerry “lied” to get Vietnam medals. But one accuser quickly recants, and other witnesses disagree.

Summary

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. However, one of the veterans who appears in the ad has already recanted his principal accusation against Kerry, in an interview with the Boston Globe .

Some other veterans who accuse Kerry are contradicted by Kerry’s former crewmen. One of the accusers says he was on another boat “a few yards” away during the incident which won Kerry the Bronze Star, but the former Army lieutenant whom Kerry plucked from the water that day backs Kerry’s account. [mjh: follow the link further analysis]

Scotsman.com News – International – Kerry attacked on Vietnam record

The Republican senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, has stepped into the war of words, calling the advert “dishonest and dishonourable” and urging the White House to condemn it as well. The White House has declined.

“It was the same kind of deal that was pulled on me,” Mr McCain said, comparing the anti-Kerry advert to tactics in his bitter Republican primary fight with President Bush.

The Right Wing Attack Machine, which so successfully destroyed McCain’s campaign in 2000, gears up just in time for a new attack book by one of the people involved with this commercial. These punks are scared. mjh

MSNBC – A Baby Bounce?

July 31 – Coming out of the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Sen. John Kerry now holds a seven-point lead over President George W. Bush (49 percent to 42 percent) in a three-way race with independent Ralph Nader (3 percent), according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll The poll was taken over two nights, both before and after Kerry’s acceptance speech. Respondents who were queried after Kerry’s Thursday night speech gave the Democrat a ten-point lead over Bush. Three weeks ago, Kerry’s lead was three points.

Capitol Hill Blue: Sullen, Depressed President Retreats Into Private, Paranoid World By TERESA HAMPTON & WILLIAM D. McTAVISH, Capitol Hill Blue Staff
Jul 29, 2004, 09:08

A sullen President George W. Bush is withdrawing more and more from aides and senior staff, retreating into a private, paranoid world where only the ardent loyalists are welcome. …

Bush’s erratic behavior and sharp mood swings led White House physician Col. Richard J. Tubb to put the President on powerful anti-depressant drugs after he stormed off stage rather than answer reporters’ questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay, but White House insiders say the strong, prescription medications seem to increase Bush’s sullen behavior towards those around him. …

Among cabinet members, only Attorney General John Ashcroft, a fundamentalist who shares many of Bush’s strict religious convictions, remains part of the inner circle. White House aides call Bush and Ashcroft the “Blue Brothers” because, like the mythical movie characters, “both believe they are on a mission from God.” …

“Too many make the mistake of thinking Dick Cheney is the real power in the Bush administration,” says one senior Homeland Security aide. “They’re wrong. It’s Ashcroft and that is reason enough for all of us to be very, very afraid.”

[Thanks to Bruce H. mjh]

Bush Yoga – Yoga Poses by George Bush – Virabhadrasana I

Funny and enlightening. Namaste. By was of Jas. and wonkette.com.mjh

Bush camp solicits race of Star staffer By C.J. Karamargin, ARIZONA DAILY STAR

President Bush’s re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Star refused to provide the information. …

Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the president’s re-election campaign, said the information was needed for security purposes.

“All the information requested of staff, volunteers and participants for the event has been done so to ensure the safety of all those involved, including the vice president of the United States,” he said.

Diaz repeated that answer when asked if it is the practice of the White House to ask for racial information or if the photographer, Mamta Popat, was singled out because of her name. He referred those questions to the U.S. Secret Service, which did not respond to a call from the Star Friday afternoon.

[Thanks to newmexiken.com]

Feminism a threat to families, church warns

The Vatican yesterday denounced feminism for trying to blur differences between men and women and threatening the institution of families based on a mother and a father.

The drive for equality, the Vatican said, makes “homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent, in a new model of polymorphous sexuality.” …

[S]ome observers said they feared how the document might be used. Professor Paul Lakeland, an expert on the Catholic Church at Fairfield University in Connecticut, said the paper could be used by church conservatives to condemn any form of advocacy for women. …

Addressed to bishops worldwide, the document contended that new recent approaches to women’s issues are marked by a tendency “to emphasize strongly conditions of subordination in order to give rise to antagonism: women, in order to be themselves, must make themselves the adversaries of men.”

Such an attitude, the document said, “has its most immediate and lethal effects in the structure of the family.”

The document also said that “in order to avoid the dominance of one sex or the other, their differences tend to be denied. … The obscuring of the difference or duality of the sexes has enormous consequences.”

These consequences, it said, included calling “into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father,” giving homosexual and heterosexual couples an equivalent status.

Isn’t it interesting that Radical Islam, which is to say extremely conservative Islam, threatens the world at precisely the same time Catholicism grows more rigid and irrelevant and Radical (which is to say, conservative) Evangelical Christians hijack the US. Weird times. mjh

Islam Online- News Section

VATICAN CITY, August 1 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Seeking to preserve strong family ties and conceptions, agreed upon by all three major Divine religions, the Vatican launched Saturday, July 31, a diatribe against radical feminism, which calls for same-sex marriages. …

Traditional marriage and the concept of family is also essential in Islam. Eminent Muslim scholar, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, in his book “The Lawful and Prohibited in Islam”, wrote: “Marriage in Islam is a strong binding contract based on the intention of both partners to live together permanently in order to attain, as individuals, the benefit of repose, affection, and mercy mentioned in the Qur’an, as well as to attain the social goal of the reproduction and perpetuation of the human species. …

Gay marriage is totally prohibited in Islam as well as in the three divine religions.

“Emphatically, Islam forbids homosexuality and lesbianism and regard them as a violation of the commands of God. In both the Old and the New Testaments, all Prophets of God forbid such evil activities and punish severely those who practice them,” said Mohammad M. Abu Laylah, professor of Islamic Studies and Comparative Religions at Al-Azhar University.

So, Bush and bin Laden would agree. mjh

American Civil Liberties Union : Focus

Senator John Kerry (D-MA)
4th-term Democrat from Massachusetts.
http://kerry.senate.gov

Background Information
Party: Democrat
Residence: Boston, MA
Marital Status: Married (Teresa Heinz Kerry)
Prev. Occupation: Attorney
Prev. Political Exp.: MA Lt. Governor, 1982-84; US Senate, 1984-present
Education: BA Yale University, 1966; JD Boston College, 1976
Military: USN, 1966-70
Birthdate: 12/11/1943
Birthplace: Denver, CO
Religion: Catholic
Other Information
Term: 4th
First Elected: 1984

American Civil Liberties Union : Focus

Senator John Edwards (D-NC)
1st-term Democrat from North Carolina.
http://edwards.senate.gov

Background Information
Party: Democrat
Residence: Raleigh, NC
Marital Status: Married (Elizabeth)
Prev. Occupation: Attorney
Prev. Political Exp.: US Senate, 1998-present
Education: BS North Carolina State University, 1974; JD University of North Carolina, 1977
Birthdate: 06/10/1953
Birthplace: Seneca, SC
Religion: Methodist
Other Information
Term: 1st
First Elected: 1998

ACLU and congress.org provide some data, including recent votes. mjh