GOP Muck Makers Seize On Kerry's Comments, Again

WHY IS HE EVEN OUT THERE TO BUNGLE THIS ELECTION; WITHOUT BEING ON BALLOT

Did Sen. John Kerry insult the president's intelligence or did he belittle the education of U.S soldiers in Iraq? The question should be why is Kerry in the headlines when he's not even on the ballot next week?

The truth is Kerry did not demean the soldier but tossed a poorly formed joke at the President's perceived lack of education. Once the context of the quote is revealed all the hubbub is a non-story. Unfortunately, Republican voters and cable news networks don't pay attention to the whole truth and the GOP knows this.

The turning of the truth regarding Kerry's comments Monday in Southern California is just another reminder that the GOP is unbelievably adept at scouring the cutting room floor for controversy when none is there. All the credit goes to the Republican muck machine for again Swift Boating the swift boat captain. There is little Kerry can do now, although his press conference this afternoon was unwavering and stern and very much a lesson learned from 2004 when he let the false rumors of his duty in Vietnam slowly fester.

What this latest controversy does is hit a deep nerve within rural Republicans who believe the entire Democratic party is quietly making fun of their collective intelligence. In places like Missouri, Virginia and much of the South, the voters imagine the Democrats snickering that they're backward and uneducated. They're too dumb to know that the Republicans are conning them with their slick, smarty pants vocabulary. There's even an entire book about the bamboozling under the Republicans noses called, "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

The notion rings true with this liberal Democrat. I generally believe that anybody that joins the military has very few other options. They're the kids that didn't do well in class or you sensed had a great future and desire to shoot things or kill people. This, of course, is false in our high-tech military, but if the stigma resides in Democrats, how explosive could the fabrication of Kerry's comments by the administration be for Republicans steaming mad to retain control of Congress.

I wrote back in early 2004 that John Kerry's campaign style was too offensive and not enough defensive. Like Bush's foray into Iraq, Kerry tends to overextend himself, leaving himself wide open for broadsides like the one he inadvertently left open for some overly creative GOP operative.

At the end of the day, the real loser will be Kerry's possible run for president in 2008. The party cannot continue to have such a liability on the campaign trail when gaining the White House is first and foremost.

Rove Loads Up On Pine Tar

Is Karl Rove dillusional, putting up a brave front or is he up to something rotten, again? Today's Washington Post has an article about the stakes Rove faces to his legacy on November 7th and the relatively happy demeanor the mad scientist of the Republican party is exhibiting.

"I believe Karl Rove," [Chief of Staff, Joshua] Bolten said in an interview in his West Wing office Friday. "Karl Rove, somewhere inside that massive brain of his, has figured out the political landscape more clearly than the entire collection of conventional-wisdom pundits and pollsters in the entire city of Washington."

Bolten believes Rove. Does he? Exactly what does Rove know that the rest of us don't?

The entire scene conjures up a nightmare of swirling chads and flaming voting machines. Is this a bluff on Rove's part because it sounds familiar to what Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry told the New York Times in reference to the Smudgegate controversy involving the Tigers Kenny Rogers. Perry told Jack Curry that getting his opponent to believe he was cheating was half the battle. Perry had opposing hitters scrambling to find elusive smoking gun rather than concentrating on hitting his fastball.

In both 2000 and 2004, the Democrats were more interested in uncovering Rove's dirty tricks than they were in running effective campaigns against his client, President Bush.

Rove may or may not have something sinister up his sleeve come next Tuesday, but that's the point and it's where he derives most of his exulted status in the GOP. If the Democrats narrowly lose a chance at gaining the Senate will it be Rove's doing? Will the voting machines in Tennessee breakdown and if they do will this be where Rove takes his smug confidence from? Or maybe the filthy ads in the senate race really turned out conservatives against Rep. Harold Ford.

The point is on election day, check Karl Rove's hands for any "clumps of dirt".

GOP: Ford Will Take Your White Women!

With two weeks to go until the November midterm elections, it's no surprise the Republicans are racheting up the rhetoric. What happened in the Tennessee race for Senate this weekend defies common decency, but fits the not-so-subtle imprint of Karl Rove.

The GOP is bringing in the big gun to Tennessee!

In some circles the GOP has conceded losing the House of Representative and has placed it's resources to keeping the Senate. Most politicos have sharpened the point to two races: Tennessee's race between Harold Ford, Jr. and Bob Corker and the Virginia battle between George "Macaca" Allen and Jim Webb. If the Democrats maintain the leads they possess in six other races, a win in either Virginia or Tennessee would tip the Senate to the D's.

Despite Allen's problem with the N-word and the now infamous "M-word", Allen has begun to slowly solidify a small advantage over Webb, which leaves the Volunteer State up for grabs.

The use of blatant racism in the Ford ad is de riguer for the Rovian White House. If Ford were white, under the Rove guide to deceitful campaigning, he would be pegged as gay in some sort of bizarre logic. To Rove, Ford's skin color and pre-existing rumors of partying play into a more fantastic realm of race-baiting and a historical aversion to interracial couples in the South.

In this scenario, Corker plays the unwitting benefactor of these advertisments. By calling for them to be pulled from the Tennessee airwaves he covers his own campaign, while shifting the blame to mysterious higher-ups in control of the spots. When RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman appeared with Tim Russert today on MSNBC to claim the party powerless over the ads, he effectively made cancelling them the elusive company of nobody and everybody.

It won't be known until election which campaign will be among the collateral damage caused by the attention to this ad. The South is tough to predict. A Virginia governor can sound blatantly racist over the last 30 years of his life and still be poised to win a Senate race. Past the ridiculousness and poor acting of this ad in Tennessee, could even an inkling of what the ad says make people think twice about voting for Harold Ford, Jr.?

Rove is betting it does.

FOX: If Dems Win, Iraqis Win; Iraqis Aren't Winning Already?

It isn't the perception that the war in Iraq is quickly slipping into a military abyss. It isn't even a question of whether the United States should be in Iraq or even if the planning was bungled. The Democrats are on the cusp of taking over Congress because the Republicans scare tactics regarding the terrorists and other assorted evildoers has officially run its course.

The Fox clip above is an example of a party grasping at really the only significant point for voting for them the last six years. How absurd is it to trot out the inane syllogism that a vote for Democrats is a vote for the insurgents, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Satan or the boogie man for the umpteenth time.

It's generally accepted, even among Republicans, that the din of scaring Americans into voting Republicans reaches its apex around election time. The tactic was effective enough to win two presidential campaigns and increase power in the legislative branch, but its well-worn and quickly becoming hokey. Something the writers of Saturday Night Live would deem played out.

Does Fox's John Gibson really believe what he's saying? It didn't sound like it. In fact, it could have been uttered hundreds of times on Fox News from the dawn of 9/11 to today, except with different video.

This midterm election may be too far lost for the Republicans, but next time come up with something scarier. The anthrax scare was effective. Or, maybe your saving that one for 2008.

Bush Kicks 'The Nuts' In The Nuts

FORMER STAFFER DETAILS GOP BETRAYAL OF CHRISTIAN VALUES

The former special assistant to the president's Office of faith-based initiatives said White House higher up called various Christian leaders "the Nuts".

Finally, there's something the Republicans in Washington got right.

David Kuo's insider account of the administration's outreach to Christian believers is illuminating for different reasons than you might think.

Sadly, this shows the Bush administration is not, in fact, on some sort of psychotic faith-based crusade against the non-Christian world. Their decisions aren't based solely on the Bible, but on getting people to vote Republican through the donation basket.

There act is, indeed, what most liberals believed, an act, albeit a very costly one. Democrats, though, can take little solace in that fact after languishing in the minority for the past four years.

This is exactly the reason why our forefather's instituted the doctrine of separation of church and state. Not only is religious reasoning faulty in successfully governing a republic, it also is easily manipulated. The smokescreen of God over national affairs is a dubious salve that smothers all free thinking--a notion antithesis to what this country was founded.

But, what goes unnoticed is the notion that God's goodwill was manipulated against those who believe in Him the most. Churchgoers throughout the country have devoted their prayers and their votes to the false notion that their God sanctioned the evil and wrongdoing that has pervaded the Bush presidency since its inauguration in 2001.

I called that collaborating with the Devil.