Warm 'n Fuzzy Conserva-Puppies

Due to increased demand for articulate, conservative opinion blogs on the internet, several conservatives have decided to start a new blog page titled: Warm 'n Fuzzy Conserva-Puppies.

Be sure to visit. And for those of you who have decided to accept my invitation to help administer and post to this blog site, I'll be communicating with you via email.

The mainstream media, John Kerry and Vietnam

Jonathan Last writes about how the mainstream media were dragged kicking and screaming to cover the Swift Vets' story.

During the August 19 edition of PBS's NewsHour, Tom Oliphant unspooled. "The standard of clear and convincing evidence--and it's easy when you leave out the exculpatory stuff--is what keeps this story in the tabloids," the Boston Globe columnist sputtered, "because it does not meet basic standards." "This story" (shades of "that woman") is the story of the Swift boat veterans who have raised a number of troubling allegations against John Kerry. Sitting across from John O'Neill, coauthor of Unfit for Command and John Kerry's successor as commander of PCF-94 in Vietnam, Oliphant did a fair imitation of Al Gore--sighing, harumphing, and exhaling loudly--whenever O'Neill spoke.
"'Almost conclusive' doesn't cut it in the parts of journalism where I live," Oliphant lectured O'Neill, who graduated first in a class of 554 from the University of Texas Law School and clerked for U.S. Supreme Court justice William Rehnquist. "You haven't come within a country mile of meeting first-grade journalistic standards for accuracy." Watching the media's reaction to the Swift boat controversy, it's clear that many journalists agree with Oliphant.

And Mark Steyn writes that John Kerry, not the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are responsible for America's Vietnam wounds.

So Kerry is now the first self-confessed war criminal in the history of the Republic to be nominated for president. Normally this would be considered an electoral plus only in the more cynical banana republics. But the Democrats seemed to think they could run an anti-war anti-hero as a war hero and nobody would mind. As we now know, a lot of people -- a lot of veterans -- do mind, very much. They understand that, whether or not he ever mowed down civilians with his 50-caliber machinegun, Kerry is responsible for a lot of wounds closer to home.

Documents on Kerry's web site are suspect

Hat tip to Anti-Media for this story.

The Chicago Sun-Times Reports

......an official Defense Department document summarizing Kerry's military career posted on johnkerry.com, includes a "Silver Star with combat V." But according to a U.S. Navy spokesman, "Kerry's record is incorrect. The Navy has never issued a 'combat V' to anyone for a Silver Star." Naval regulations do not allow for the use of a "combat V" for the Silver Star, the third-highest decoration the Navy awards. None of the other services has ever granted a Silver Star "combat V," either.

All of this has convinced Mark Steyn that Kerry's decision to run on his Vietnam war record was a huge mistake.

The risk in running on biography is that voters won’t find your life story as compelling as you do. They might be churlish enough to be more interested in, say, health care or terrorism than what you were doing in 1968. That risk becomes a certainty when your appealing soft-focus narrative comes under attack and your campaign degenerates into a defence of your biography. The minute you start running ads demanding that voters ‘tell George W Bush to stop telling lies about what a weally weally big war hero I am’, you sound ridiculous. Especially when your opponent is a guy who’s never complained about anything – not the ‘Bush is Hitler’ stuff, not the ‘Bush knew about 9/11 in advance’ stuff, not even the comparatively mild Michael Moore slur that he’s a moron so paralysed without his minders that he continued reading My Pet Goat to Florida grade-schoolers for a full seven minutes on September 11. Kerry himself made sneering cracks about the pet goat business, and Bush didn’t whine about it.

John Kerry's 1971 testimony

Here is John Kerry's 1971 testimony where he accused American servicemen of widespread atrocities in Vietnam.

David Frum explains why the ads developed by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have been so effective in damaging Kerry's chances.

Big Media's Mistakes

Tony Blankley writes about the erosion of Big Media's credibility.

QandO figures out Rassmann incident

QandO has analyzed an official Navy document that explains why Kerry's version of the Jim Rassmann incident (not a heroic rescue) doesn't hold up.

No hope for Kerry

Adam Sparks discusses why the jig is up for John Kerry.

Anti-Media delves into the Rassmann incident

The Anti-Media blogsite has an excellent summary of the constantly changing stories of the March 13, 1969 "Rassmann incident" given by the Kerry campaign and Kerry ally, Jim Rassmann. And here are statements released by Van Odell, Jack Chenoweth and Larry Thurlow concerning the March 13, 1969 incident.