The Story of Lt. Jr. Grade William Rood graces the Sunday Editions of many of the nation's newspapers today with the article by JOE GALLOWAY - the only reporter to be awarded the Bronze Star found HERE Military Records Support John Kerry against critics These two additions to the definitive takedown of the shiftyvets for gutter politics by the NYT staff should once and for all put the "we're only in it for the money and revenge against the Veterans Against the War" "dishonest and dishonorable" shiftyboat liars; should put this dastardly Bush backed below the belt attack on the war record of Volunteer Vietnam Veteran Kerry in it's well deserved place - the bottom of the political sewer.

But beyound that this account shows the creativity and cunning that makes John Kerry a great leader with ample courage.

There were three swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago--three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on February 28, 1969.

One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other.

I was part of the operation that led to Kerry's Silver Star.

On Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of PCF-23, one of three swift boats--including Kerry's PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz's PCF-43--that carried Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in the area.

The approach of the noisy 50-foot aluminum boats, each driven by two huge 12-cylinder diesels and loaded down with six crew members, troops and gear, was no secret.

Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no exception.

Instructions from Kerry

The difference was that Kerry, who had tactical command of that particular operation, had talked to Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way the boats usually did to an ambush.

We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats' twin .50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching the boats. We told our crews about the plan.

The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush, firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream and putting troops ashore to sweep back down on the ambush site. Often, they were long gone by the time the troops got there.

The first time we took fire--the usual rockets and automatic weapons--Kerry ordered a "turn 90" and the three boats roared in on the ambush. It worked. We routed the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops, led by an Army adviser, jumped off the boats and began a sweep, which killed another half dozen VC, wounded or captured others and found weapons, blast masks and other supplies used to stage ambushes.

Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream with his, leaving Droz's boat at the first site.

It happened again, another ambush. And again, Kerry ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded B-40 launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn't fired as two men jumped up from their spider holes.

We called Droz's boat up to assist us, and Kerry, followed by one member of his crew, jumped ashore and chased a VC behind a hooch--a thatched hut--maybe 15 yards inland from the ambush site. Some who were there that day recall the man being wounded as he ran. Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat's leading petty officer with whom I've checked my recollection of all these events, recalls that, which is no surprise. Recollections of those who go through experiences like that frequently differ.

With our troops involved in the sweep of the first ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my crew, and I also went ashore to search the area. I was checking out the inside of the hooch when I heard gunfire nearby.

Not long after that, Kerry returned, reporting that he had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation.

In "Unfit for Command," John O’Neill and Jerome Corsi wrote that the attack on the Viet Cong ambush displayed “stupidity, not courage.”

John O'Neill, describes the man Kerry chased as a "teenager" in a "loincloth." I have no idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but both Leeds and I recall that he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore.

The man Kerry chased was not the "lone" attacker at that site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who fled. There was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and at one point, from the opposite riverbank as well. It was not the work of just one attacker.

Hoffmann has become a leading critic of Kerry's and now says that what the boats did on that day demonstrated Kerry's inclination to be impulsive to a fault.

Our initial reports of the day's action caused an immediate response from our task force headquarters in Cam Ranh Bay.
Known over radio circuits by the call sign "Latch," then-Capt. and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the task force commander, fired off a message congratulating the three swift boats, saying at one point that the tactic of charging the ambushes was a "shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy" and that it "may be the most efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of ambushers."

Our decision to use that tactic under the right circumstances was not impulsive but was the result of discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of all three boat officers.

It was also well within the aggressive tradition that was embraced by the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam.

The decision sent a clear message, underscored repeatedly by Hoffmann's congratulatory messages, that aggressive patrolling was expected.

What we did on Feb. 28, 1969, was well in line with the tone set by our top commanders.

Zumwalt made that clear when he flew down to our base at An Thoi off the southern tip of Vietnam to pin the Silver Star on Kerry and assorted Bronze Stars and commendation medals on the rest of us.

It is all here - the shiftyboat liars are frauds - the actual crews and men under Kerry's command along with Kerry were validly decorated Veterans who served where Bush & Cheney would not.

That is the end of this story. The Bush Cheney negative smear tactics have failed. Kerry IS the VOLUNTEER VIETNAM VETERAN and LEADER.

This will take some reading but the evidence is inescapable.

Bush was AWOL: Bush absent without leave while others went to their deaths aWol Payroll Records Jedi Master Paul Lukasiak—the kind of guy who figures out what the holes in the punchcards mean in the AF's 60s-style payroll system—has revised his site, and the introduction is, um, rather pointed. In fact, it's napalm for Sunday morning:

On February 10. 2004, the White House released a number of documents related to George W. Bush’s military service in the Texas Air National Guard. (TXANG). The White House claimed repeatedly (twelve time in fact, see box) that these documents proved that Bush had fulfilled his duty.

On Friday, February 13, 2004, the White House released what it described as all the documents in Bush’s personnel files. Most accurately described as a “document dump” the hundreds of pages were thoroughly disorganized and filled with scores of duplicate pages.

The mainstream press was confronted with this massive amount of information to sift through, and had no expertise with which to evaluate the information contained in the documents. As a result, virtually no real reporting was done on the documents, other than to state that there was “no smoking gun” found, apparently because none of the documents announced in bold type “BUSH WAS AWOL”.

But the records released by the White House contained more than a “smoking gun”. They contained a whole arsenal of documents that, if you know the context in which they were written, establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that “Bush was AWOL.”
(via The aWol Project)[/quote]Go read the whole thing. The devil, as always, is in the details. The Bush "document dump" strategy assumes that nobody will read the documents. Of course, the wussy SCLM didn't, but now we have the blogosphere, and Paul Lukasiak did.

And the story is building up a head of steam. The Blue Lemur talked to Reagan administration DOD official Lawrence Korb, and got this response:

Lawrence J. Korb, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations and Logistics under Ronald Reagan from 1981-1985, confirmed the legal analysis of President Bush’s Guard Service in a telephone call Friday afternoon.

Given proof that Bush missed five months of Guard training sessions, he said that Bush would be considered AWOL.

“If you don’t show up, you’re absent without leave, by definition,” Korb said.

No more than ten percent of sessions could be missed without them being made up, he asserted. He added that President Bush should have been mandated to serve active duty if he missed even two months of service in a fiscal year – 24 months of active duty minus the amount of active duty already served.

“You would be put on active duty and sent wherever they needed you,” he said.

At the time Bush was serving in the Texas Air National Guard, Korb himself was serving in the Naval Reserve, the Navy’s equivalent of the National Guard, where he served from 1966 to 1985. He dismisses suggestions that the Guard was being lenient about service at the time.

“At that time they were very strict about fulfilling their obligations – and we don’t like to say it – because this was a way to avoid the draft and going to Vietnam."‘

He was unable to examine Bush’s payroll records at his home on Friday, but is expected to formally confirm that Bush had failed to complete his required duty in 1972, therefore rendering him AWOL, at his office Monday.

Korb currently serves as a Senior Analyst at the Center for Defense Information and a Senior Fellow at the progressive thinktank, the Center for American Progress.
(via The Blue Lemur)

(It shows how extreme the Bush agenda is, and how far the 6 winger billionaire families who control the VRWC (back) have pushed America to the right, that a Reaganite would serve at a liberal think thank.)

And just think! The AP suit to release all the records is still to come. Maybe that microfilm will tell us where the missing DD25[8|6] is. And we know Bush was grounded—pissing away the million bucks or so we paid to train him—for failure to take a medical exam, right after the Air Force initiated mandatory drug training; maybe the AP files will help there as well.

Bottom line, though: Fortunate son Bush was aWol. We have the evidence. All that remains is to make the story mainstream.

It really does come down to a question of character, doesn't it? Surely the nation is entitled to ask whether its "wartime President" was absent without leave while others went to their deaths?

Turning the corner or U-Turn?

Budget deficit hits record $395.8B

Treasury says July deficit was bigger than expected; final 2004 gap could set a new record.
August 11, 2004: 4:10 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. federal government ran a larger-than-expected budget deficit in July, bringing the year-to-date shortfall between receipts and spending to a record of nearly $400 billion, the Treasury Department said Wednesday.

In its monthly budget report, the Treasury said the July deficit was $69.16 billion, based on revenues of $134.42 billion and spending of $203.58 billion. That was above the $61 billion shortfall Wall Street economists had expected and wider than July 2003's $54.24 billion deficit.

With only August and September left in the 2004 federal budget year, the red ink through the first 10 months totaled $395.8 billion. That's ahead of the revised record budget gap in 2003 of $374.27 billion.

The final 2004 gap is widely expected to set a new record topping $400 billion. In its recent budget review, the Office of Management and Budget said it expects the deficit to be about $445 billion this year, while the Congressional Budget Office has projected a more conservative $422 billion.

While those estimates are lower than ones made at the beginning of the year, they have not insulated the White House from political attacks by Democrats.

Democrats have placed much of the blame for the return to annual deficits -- after surpluses seen from 1998 through 2001 -- on the Bush administration's tax cuts.

The gap has also helped prompt the administration to call, early this month, for an increase in the federal borrowing limit for the third time in four years. Without a hike, Treasury Secretary John Snow warned in a letter to Capitol Hill leaders, the government could run out of financing means in mid- to late-November. That could set the stage for a partisan struggle over raising the ceiling this fall.

Through July, the government had raised $1.535 trillion in revenues, up 4.0 percent from the same period in 2003. Spending, driven by a hefty gain in defense outlays, rose at a faster 7.2 percent clip, to $1.930 trillion through July.

A FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE REPUBLICAN - THE NEW OXYMORON

Filmmaker Moore Quotes Goss on Lack of CIA Credentials
Wed Aug 11, 2004 06:40 PM ET
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Congressman Porter Goss, President Bush's nominee for CIA director, could be his own worst enemy when it comes to making the case that he deserves to lead the U.S. intelligence agency.

"I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified," the Florida Republican told documentary-maker Michael Moore's production company during the filming of the anti-Bush movie "Fahrenheit 9/11."

A day after Bush picked Goss for the top U.S. spy job, Moore on Wednesday released an excerpt from a March 3 interview in which the 65-year-old former House of Representatives intelligence chief recounts his lack of qualifications for employment as a modern CIA staffer.

"I don't have the language skills. I, you know, my language skills were romance languages and stuff. We're looking for Arabists today. I don't have the cultural background probably," Goss is quoted in an interview transcript.

"And I certainly don't have the technical skills, uh, as my children remind me every day: 'Dad you got to get better on your computer.' Uh, so, the things that you need to have, I don't have."

Goss, who served with the CIA clandestine services in Latin America and Europe in the 1960s, was not immediately available for comment.

He appears in Moore's film, the most financially successful documentary in history, during a segment devoted to the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism measure.

Moore told Reuters that Goss, who until Tuesday was chairman of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, granted an interview to two of his producers without first checking to see who they worked for.

"You'd think the person who was the head of the intelligence committee would ask a few more questions," said Moore.

"The reality is that Porter Goss was in charge of the oversight of the CIA during a time when the CIA didn't do its job, which in part resulted in the loss of lives of 3,000 people," he said via telephone from New York.

A White House spokesman declined to comment specifically on the Goss interview but described the lawmaker as "the most qualified man for the job."

Goss is expected to appear at confirmation hearings before the Senate intelligence committee next month.

The comic genius of Jerome Corsi from SALON War-room

Jerome Corsi's insightful description of Islam is today's quote of the day, but in truth it's really impossible to choose just one Corsi-ism to highlight. The co-author of the anti-Kerry book "Unfit for Command" is a regular poster -- and, to hear him tell it, a regular comedian -- over at freerepublic.com under the handle jrcl.

Corsi has apologized if anyone is offended by his posts, and he has told the AP that he considered them "jokes." For a full load of Corsi's brand of humor you can check out the Media Matters report here and the collected works of jrcl here. But for a more abbreviated introduction to the man who is helping drive political debate in this country today, we offer a few highlights from Corsi's freerepublic posts.

Hillary Clinton: Corsi routinely refers to the junior senator from New York as "HELLary" and the "FAT HOG," as in, "Anybody ask why HELLary couldn't keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?"

Islam: In March 2003, when a car bomb in Lebanon killed an Egyptian named Abu Mohammad al-Masri, Corsi gloated: "One more Mohammed al-Mohammed el-Mohammed Mohammed iced -- great. Ice all these boy buggering, woman hating, infidel killing terrorists."

Iraq: Thinking up a pretext for war even the Bush administration didn't try, Corsi suggested in January 2002 that the United States capture Osama bin Laden and move him to Iraq so that "we have an excuse to bring them the Holey Month of BOMB-adon. Iraq with Saddam sounds as good a place to park him as anywhere. Let's Roll!"

Sept. 11: When the infamous Aug. 6, 2001 PDB was released in April -- the one headlined "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." -- Corsi declared the story "DOA" and said that "the RATS" -- Corsi's shorthand for Democrats -- on the 9/11 commission should consider themselves "disgraced" for pursuing it.

The United Nations: Corsi calls the UN a "Communist, anti-American terror-ridden propaganda pulpit." But then, Corsi calls lots of things "communist." Hardball's Chris Matthews is "Communist Chris." Jimmy Carter is a "Total Communist." John Lennon is a "dead Communist guy." Katie Couric is "Little Katie Communist," and NBC is short for "Nothing But Communism."

John Kerry: He's a communist, too. When Corsi isn't calling the Democratic presidential nominee "Jean Francoise Kerrie" or "John Fonda Kerry," he refers to him as "John Commie Kerry." In April, Corsi predicted that Kerry's first act as president would be to "end" the war against terrorism. "Surrender America has been his constant theme. Raised in France, he has always thought as a hater of America. He is a disgrace."

In what appears to be his most recent post, Corsi finally appears to have gotten something right. On Saturday, he wrote: "The politically incorrect humor I posted on this site is evidently not funny to everyone."

George W. Bush sucker-punches a rugby opponent at Yale

As long as we're re-examining the 1960s, looking for signs of character, trying to decide if a man who volunteered for combat and was decorated five times was more or less courageous than a guy who didn't even show up for his own medical exam... here's George W. Bush during his college days, hitting a fellow sportsman in the face.

The above photo, credited to the Yale yearbook (the caption is in the original), appeared in yesterday's Los Angeles Times.

Incidentally, while rugby is a contact sport, every player knows that tackling above the shoulders is a foul. So is leaving your feet during a tackle. Either of these is serious enough that the other team is immediately awarded a penalty kick, often directly resulting in points for the other team.

So even without throwing a punch, Bush is already well outside fair play.

Grasping an opponent by the back of the head and punching him in the face is beyond the pale and will typically result in a player being immediately sent off.

I'm sure by next week Karl Rove will have a collection of rugby players claiming that John Kerry was even worse...

This from Jim Sleeper at the Los Angeles Times a friend e-mailed me a copy of the photo and story above.

He's Got the Bad-Boy Vote Sewed Up

I am looking at a photo of the George W. Bush that you've probably never seen before. It's a sports-action close-up of him at Yale, over a caption written prophetically by a fellow undergraduate more than 30 years ago: "George Bush delivers illegal, but gratifying right hook to opposing ball carrier."

Never mind that this is a rugby game, alien to most Americans, and that the caption writer's assessment wasn't political. I think it explains one reason why Bush hasn't slid in the polls since John Kerry reported for duty: He owes more than a little something to the "bad boy" vote that no pollster captures as well as this photo and caption do.

What I have in mind here isn't the bad guy in a detective story or the stand-up guy in "The Sopranos," or even some rock-band poseur. He may actually be a good guy most of the time, like millions of this country's mischievous frat boys who like getting away with things but who aren't that bad as long as they don't get into anything too far over their heads.

As president of his chapter of the DKE fraternity, Bush sounded a classic bad-boy note when he said he "didn't learn a damned thing" at Yale. "The reason was that he didn't try," Jacob Weisberg reported this spring in Yale Alumni Magazine. "One year, the star of the football team spotted him in the back row during [course-] shopping period. 'Hey, George Bush is in this class!' Calvin Hill, '69, shouted to his teammates. 'This is the one for us!' "

I was in that room that day. Bush gave them a grinning thumbs up and, I have to admit, everyone laughed. He had a certain charm about getting away with things, like DKE's custom of "branding" new members' on the butt, a less-than-noble tradition he managed to protect when it came under fire.

Being that kind of bad boy may be OK if you're cutting a history class or smirking behind your hand at some radical grad student leading your discussion section — but not when you're staging a commander in chief's flight-deck landing or a Thanksgiving Day pop-up in Baghdad.

Bad boys don't get that far very often, of course, and Bush would tell you that he's changed a lot since college. But I don't think the difference matters much to the bad boys he's left behind, including some classmates I know who are raising money for him, not to mention the up-and-comers I taught at Yale last year. Whether they cheered Bush's flight-deck landing or are reliving the joys of intramural rugby, they think he has shown them how to mess up yet still swagger off the field with an impish grin.

I am not being partisan here. This really is an apolitical, "guy" thing, like the thunderous welcome Bill Clinton got from a huge crowd of college boys, with their baseball caps on backward, at the University of Illinois' Urbana-Champaign campus on Jan. 28, 1998, only days after rumors of his Monica Lewinsky affair surfaced. Just the day before, 120 million Americans had been riveted, watching him pull off a triumphal, almost defiant, State of the Union address.

"Yeah, Bi-i-i-i-lll!" the college boys roared lustily, and not because Al Gore had just warmed them up with news of Clinton's tuition loans, Hope scholarships and his plans to add slots for more AmeriCorps volunteers. Bad Boy Bill entered the hall to a booming rendition of the rock band Kansas' "Carry On My Wayward Son." He was greeted like a rock star, with no boos or catcalls.

Whoever wrote that caption under George's rugby photo would understand. What he shouldn't understand is how anyone could act as if Iraq were just rugby or a dalliance. A history lesson ignored might be more like it.

Swiftboat Crew Members & The Generals Agree
A Volunteer Veteran beats A "No Show" Guardsman on Our Security



From John Edwards speech:
I want to talk about our next president. For those who want to know what kind of leader he'll be, I want to take you back about 30 years. When John Kerry graduated college, he volunteered for military service, volunteered to go to Vietnam, volunteered to captain a swiftboat, one of the most dangerous duties in Vietnam that you could have. As a result, he was wounded, honored for his valor.

If you have any question about what he's made of, just spend three minutes with the men who served with him then and who stand with him now. They saw up close what he's made of.

They saw him reach into the river and pull one of his men to safety and save his life. They saw him in the heat of battle make a decision in a split second to turn his boat around, drive it through an enemy position, and chase down the enemy to save his crew. Decisive, strong: Is this not what we need in a commander in chief?

EDWARDS: You know, we hear a lot of talk about values. Where I come from, you don't judge somebody's values based upon how they use that word in a political ad. You judge their values based upon what they've spent their life doing.

So when a man volunteers to serve his country, the man volunteers and puts his life on the line for others, that's a man who represents real American values.

This is a man who is prepared to keep the American people safe, to make America stronger at home and more respected in the world.

The World According to Michael

Taking aim at George W., a populist agitator makes noise, news and a new kind of political entertainment
By RICHARD CORLISS

DISCUSS AND COMMENT ON VOLUNTEERS FOR AMERICA

Posted Sunday, July 4, 2004
"Was it all just a dream?" Michael Moore poses that question at the start of Fahrenheit 9/11, his docu-tragicomedy about the Bush Administration's actions before and after Sept. 11, 2001. Moore's tone isn't wistful; it's angry. He's steamed about the Florida vote wrangle of 2000, the Supreme Court decision to declare George W. Bush President of the United States, the policies of Bush's advisers and especially what he sees as the deflection of a quick, vigorous search-and-destroy mission against Osama bin Laden into an open-ended war on terrorism—"You can't declare war on a noun," Moore said last week—that spawned a dubious and costly invasion of Iraq.

Now, after a week in which his film became the highest grossing documentary of all time— and more than that, a nationwide rally point for Bush opponents, a red flag for Bush supporters, a cinematic teach-in for the undecided and a potential factor in the '04 presidential race—Moore may well be asking, "Is this all a dream?" For starters, is this the same film that not long ago was an orphan? In May a controversy-averse Walt Disney Co. ordered its subsidiary Miramax Films to dump the movie. But just weeks later Fahrenheit 9/11 copped the Palme d'Or (first place) at the Cannes Film Festival and eventually found other distributors, an indie coalition of the willing. By that time, the picture's incendiary charges and Moore's reputation as a folksy firebrand of the left had already begun to ignite accusations that he had twisted facts to suit his politics. Faster than you can say, "That's the kind of publicity no amount of money can buy," Fahrenheit 9/11 had become a secular Passion of the Christ and the most hotly debated political film since Oliver Stone's JFK 13 years ago.

But whereas JFK merely spun conspiracy theories about a dead President, Fahrenheit 9/11 goes after a sitting one with the explicit goals of unmasking his supposed crimes and removing him from office. Back when political bosses picked candidates and the rules of the game were arbitrated by newspaper editors and three network anchormen, for a mere movie even to attempt such a thing would have seemed folly. Today people get their news and, just as important, their attitudes from more rambunctious sources— the polarized polemicists on talk radio and cable news channels, comedians and webmasters. That's poli-tainment, and as practiced by Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing hosts on radio and by Matt Drudge on the Internet, it hounded Bill Clinton's presidency while spicing and coarsening the standards of political discourse.

In Moore the left wing has now found its own Falstaff of the political revels, a figure who can punch as hard and fast—and as recklessly?—as anybody the right has to offer. And Fahrenheit 9/11 may be the watershed event that demonstrates whether the empire of poli-tainment can have decisive influence on a presidential campaign. If it does, we may come to look back on its hugely successful first week the way we now think of the televised presidential debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, as a moment when we grasped for the first time the potential of a mass medium—in this case, movies—to affect American politics in new ways. If that's the case, expect the next generation of campaign strategists to precede every major election not only with the traditional TV ad buys but also with a scheme for the rollout of some thermonuclear book, movie, CD or even video game, all designed to tilt the political balance just in time.

Fahrenheit 9/11 may also be branded as the film that made an overblown case against the Bush team. Certainly defenders of the Iraq war are already casting it that way. Limbaugh calls it "a pack of lies." In the online publication Slate, Christopher Hitchens wrote that it was "a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness." Even liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, an opponent of the war, told his readers that he "recoiled from Moore's methodology." To mount fast responses to critics like those, Moore has organized a "war room" overseen by former Clinton White House aides Chris Lehane and Mark Fabiani. He also hired the former chief of fact checking at the New Yorker magazine to comb the film for inaccuracies. "There's lots of disagreement with my analysis of these facts or my opinion based on the facts. But," he insists, "there is not a single factual error in the movie. I'm thinking of offering a $10,000 reward for anyone that can find a single fact that's wrong."

Whatever the film's merits as a reliable account of recent history, for months to come pollsters and political consultants will be analyzing and focus grouping the viewer/voter response to Fahrenheit 9/11, struggling to measure its real impact on their thinking (and voting). But the R-rated film has taken the first important step toward being a political weapon of consequence by becoming an indisputable box-office phenomenon. In its first weekend, it torpedoed all predictions and earned $23.9 million, instantly passing Moore's Bowling for Columbine as the all-time top-grossing documentary (excluding IMAX spectacles). Fahrenheit 9/11 last weekend passed $50 million. Miramax's Harvey Weinstein predicts a $100 million gross in the film's first three weeks.

Though it has aroused viewers in sharply different directions—in one Internet moviegoer poll, 64% gave it an A rating, 30% an F—the film has also found audiences across the range of America, in big towns and small, blue states and red. It attracted mostly men its first Friday night, mostly women on Saturday. Exit surveys show that as the week wore on, it even became a date picture. ("That's a good idea," Moore says, "especially if it's a first date, because you'll have plenty to talk about. And also you can vet the date. You'll know right away if you should have a second date.") And thought it wasn't a date, last week, the day before a big race in Sonoma, Calif., racer Dale Earnhardt Jr. even took his crew to see the movie.

From his debut movie, Roger & Me, which detailed his attempt to confront General Motors boss Roger Smith about the social effects of closing a GM plant in Moore's hometown of Flint, Mich., the filmmaker has been America's pre-eminent populist pest. He has taken on Nike's Phil Knight over factory conditions and the N.R.A. and America's gun love. Fahrenheit 9/11 considerably ups his nuisance value: he is after a President's foreign and domestic policy, and Moore is not cowed. "I come from a factory town," he says, "and you don't go to a gunfight with a slingshot." Moore shoots only with a camera, but it's loaded.

"I'm not just preaching to the choir. And it's not just the choir giving the ovation. I've got letters from a bunch of Marines who went to see it at a theater near Twentynine Palms, Calif. A church group in Tulsa went to see it and was incredibly moved. There was a Republican woman in Florida unable to get out of her seat, crying."

You would have expected Moore's movie to play well in the liberal big cities, and it is doing so. But the film is also touching the heart of the heartland. In Bartlett, Tenn., a Memphis suburb, the rooms at Stage Road Cinema showing Fahrenheit 9/11 have been packed with viewers who clap, boo, laugh and cry nearly on cue. Even the dissenters are impressed. When the lights came up after a showing last week, one gent rose from his seat and said grudgingly, "It's bull____, but I gotta admit it was done well."

In the press, Fahrenheit 9/11 has made news with its assertions of White House duplicity. But in theaters, the movie can hit home, especially for those who have loved ones in Iraq. Greg Rohwer-Selken, 33, of Ames, Iowa, and his wife Karol are former Army reservists who both volunteered for Afghanistan (but weren't sent). Now Karol is serving in the National Guard in Iraq. After seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 in Des Moines, Rohwer-Selken wipes away tears as he says, "It really made me question why she has to be over there." (The Army and Air Force Exchange Service, which books films to be shown on military bases around the world, has contacted Fahrenheit's distributor to book the film.) The first week's release no doubt attracted a higher proportion of its natural constituency, the liberal base. To become a blockbuster and a shaping force in the presidential campaign, Fahrenheit 9/11 will have to entice the curious, the hostile, the indifferent—just as a politician's toughest job is to reach the large number of nonvoters. Moore keeps saying that America is "a 50/50/50 country. There are those who vote, who seem to be evenly split, but then there's the 50% who don't vote, and no one pays attention to them." Moore does. He's doing what he does best—pestering—to get them into theaters. And then to the polls.

"I didn't have any of this so-called success until I was 35 years old with Roger & Me. Up until that point, I never made more than $15,000 a year. When you spend the first 17 years—in other words, half—of your adult life earning $15,000 or less, it really doesn't matter what kind of success you have after that. It's so ingrained in you."

His own life story would make a pretty cool movie. The son and nephew of GM factory workers, Moore was educated by nuns and Jesuits, and at 14 he briefly attended a seminary and had thoughts of becoming a priest. Eagle scout; expert hunter; good student. After disagreeing with a policy at his high school, he ran for the Davison County school board—and won, making him, at 18, one of the youngest elected officials in the nation.

Moore later dropped out of the University of Michigan at Flint and set up a crisis-intervention center. At 22 he joined, then edited, an alternative paper, The Flint Voice, while the industrial economy flailed and local jobs went overseas. "During the Reagan years we sat there in Flint and watched the Democratic Party cave in," he says, "watched the liberals be weak-kneed and wimpy and never stand up and fight for us. Liberals have failed us, the working people of this country."

His stern ideals and prickly temper shortened some of his work stints: as editor of the left magazine Mother Jones (a job that lasted less than a year) and author of Moore's Weekly, a newsletter that critiqued the media and was partly financed by Ralph Nader. Maybe only a tough man could make such confrontational comedies. He has won the allegiance of one tough man, Weinstein, who says, "Michael walks to his own beat. He has to when he wakes up every day and has a new death threat. I love the guy, and I'm not saying that 'Hollywood style.' I'm saying that for real."

Moore's debut film, 1989's Roger & Me, made for $250,000, was bought by Warner Bros. for $3 million. It earned nearly $7 million at the box office and introduced audiences to an improbable movie star: a shaggy, cagey doofus with a killer instinct for political and comic agitation.

Other filmmakers might have followed Roger & Me's success to Hollywood. Moore did direct one fiction comedy, Canadian Bacon, starring John Candy, but he realized that his true status was as the outsider banging down the doors of the insiders. He hatched a political show, TV Nation, which somehow managed to run at one time or another on NBC, Fox and Comedy Central. His 1997 film The Big One took a smart swipe at Big Business.

In Bowling for Columbine, he amplified his vision into an essay on the U.S. murder rate and attached it to a tragedy: the murder of 12 children and one teacher at a high school in Littleton, Colo. When he was given the Oscar for best documentary, Moore declared, in front of an uneasy audience and a billion TV viewers, "We live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious President. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons ... Shame on you, Mr. Bush. Shame on you."

The speech won him icy stares and undeniable celebrity as a fearless am-Busher. It helped propel his books Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's My Country? to the top of the best-seller lists. And it provided the emotional foundation for his latest, most audacious film. (At Cannes, Quentin Tarantino called Fahrenheit 9/11 "the first movie ever made to justify an acceptance speech.") By now Michael Moore, lone wolf, has morphed into Michael Moore Inc. And also Michael Moore, target. He is the subject of a book-length blast from the right, Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man, and a forthcoming documentary, Michael Moore Hates America. In political if not economic power, he is as big as the guys he used to track down.

"I went to The Passion of the Christ on the second night, and there were two people speaking in tongues; other people had their rosary beads out. In this country 50% of the people go to church on a regular basis. And they went to that movie. My film has a much broader cross section of moviegoers—people from the general public."

Fahrenheit 9/11 is The Passion of the Christ of the left. Both films established a base in a devoted minority: the evangelical right and the political left. Both films were attacked in the major media and profited from it: the faithful were galvanized, the films got an underdog status, and uncommitted moviegoers paid attention. As church groups recruited members to attend Mel Gibson's film its first weekend, so too the liberal lobby MoveOn.org signed up 110,000 members who pledged early attendance at the Moore movie.

Hit movies typically breed clones. And in this election year, with stakes and tempers high, a potent nonfiction genre is emerging: the agit-doc, dealing with high-octane political issues, often in a confrontational tone. Trailing Moore's box-office clout, agit-docs are surging into the mainstream. One of them, The Hunting of the President, co-directed by Clinton pal Harry Thomason, was originally to go to 30 theaters; now its distributor has revved that number to 125 and has put the film's trailer on many screens showing Fahrenheit 9/11.

"We've underestimated the audience's desire to see [political] material," says Robert Greenwald, director of Uncovered: The War on Iraq, a sober and devastating critique of Bush's foreign policy. "I don't think it's about hating the President. It's that politics has been brought home to the deepest part of ourselves. People now feel Politics Is Me."

"I don't like this film being reduced to Bush vs. Kerry. The issues in it are larger than that ... When Clinton was President, I went after him. And if Kerry's President, on Day Two I'll be on him."

Fahrenheit 9/11 wants to reach a drowsy electorate—most of whom don't bother to vote—to rouse them with a jazzy reveille of facts and innuendos and get them involved. "There's millions of you on the sidelines," Moore notes, "and I'm like the coach saying, 'Come on, bench, get in the game!'" And play for which side? That's easy to guess. Moore's mantra is that he made the film to prevent Bush's re-election—or, as many Democrats would say, election, given that they believe the first time he was appointed by the Supreme Court.

To combat Fahrenheit 9/11, White House communications director Dan Bartlett quipped at a press briefing, "If I wanted to see a good fiction movie, I might go see Shrek or something, but I doubt I'll be seeing Fahrenheit 9/11." Otherwise, the Bush team's policy is public silence. "We thought about what they would want us to do," says a top adviser, "and then we did the opposite."

Moore does not spare the Democrats entirely in his film. Most Democratic Senators, including Kerry, not only voted for the Iraq war but until recently refused to criticize the President's decision to invade. Among the clips in Fahrenheit 9/11 is one of minority leader Tom Daschle last year urging other Senators to follow his lead and vote for Bush's Iraq war. Two weeks ago, at the Washington premiere, Moore sat a few rows behind Daschle. Afterward, says Moore, "he gave me a hug and said he felt bad and that we were all gonna fight from now on. I thanked him for being a good sport."

The Democrats may not know yet how closely they want to embrace a film that sometimes lunges at Bush without regard for niceties of context and counterargument. Democratic moderates may find Moore's style too extreme, pugnacious, rabble-rousing—even if his intention is to rouse the rabble to vote the Democrats back into office. So as Kerry strategists move their man to the center, they hope to benefit from the Fahrenheit 9/11 phenomenon and to keep from being tainted by it.

Meanwhile, Republicans are hoping that Kerry does what they most want: allow a photo-op with Madman Moore, or at least offer his film a rave review. As a high Bush campaign official says, "I can't wait to see what John Kerry says about the movie." Keep waiting. "John Kerry has not seen the movie," says spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter. "He has been busy," she says. Notes a senior Democratic strategist: "John Kerry has stayed away from Michael Moore, and that's very smart."

But it's possible that Fahrenheit 9/11 may be having an impact on Kerry's war chest. Last week, the day before the movie's surprise victory at the box office was announced, Internet donations to the Kerry campaign climbed to a two-day fund-raising record of $5 million, with no special push from the candidate. Moviegoers may be plunking down their $9 at the multiplexes, then going home and e-mailing more money to the Man Who Isn't Bush. Says former Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan of the film: "It is an exaggerated message from an imperfect messenger, but it might be the phenomenon that finally poisons the political atmosphere for Bush."

Can a movie do what a million get-out-the-vote initiatives have failed to do? Will an evening's smashing entertainment turn couch potatoes into political activists? Could Michael Moore's dream be George Bush's nightmare?

BUSH PROJECTS STRENGTH WHILE THE WTC BURNS
Quote:

Bush told the federal 9/11 Commission, which released its report last week, that he remained in the classroom because he felt it was "important to project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening "

So he was "projecting strength and calm" to a handful of 6 year olds while the rest of the nation was watching NYC burn?

NOBODY ELSE IN THE COUNTRY WAS WATCHING BUSH IN THAT CLASSROOM - WE WERE ALL WATCHING THE WTC BURN. Sitting there listening to 6 year olds was helping him "better understand what was happening"?

How could anyone vote for a person who says something as STUPID as "I felt it was important to project strength and calm until I could better understand what was happening" when he could not gain any understanding of what was happening doing what he was doing?

Bush made the decision to "project strength to 20 6 year olds" while the rest of the world watched our country being attacked - He "projected strength" by reading a children's book.

HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT A GUY WHO WOULD SAY:
Quote:

"I felt it was important to project strength and calm until I could better understand what was happening"

while he was doing nothing to find out or "better understand" what was happening.

Remember this quote is YEARS after the event not in the heat of the moment that day. How can you support anyone who would say that about the most horrific minutes in US HISTORY?

"If you think Dick Cheney is cursing today, wait until you hear what he says on Nov. 2." - John Kerry.


A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious, Aristotle,

Our "Fearless Leader" Tries to Prove He's No Chicken
Bush was so paranoid about his 2.5 hour Campaign Sneak Attack
he was "fully prepared to turn around".
Bush Ready to Pull Plug on 2.5 hour Photo Op if Word Leaked Out

Nov 28, 2003 ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE - Three hours from landing on a high-risk visit to Baghdad,*** President Bush was most anxious about keeping it a secret. "I was fully prepared to turn this baby around, come home," Bush said later aboard Air Force One. The world did not learn that Bush had spent 2 1/2 hours in the Baghdad Airport Military Compound until his jumbo jet was again in the air, flying back to the United States

As the president was sneaking into a mess hall in a heavily guarded airport military compound, newscasters back home were reporting that he was enjoying Thanksgiving dinner with his family at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. That was what reporters had been told by White House officials.

Bush said he thought Americans would be understanding about the deception and the sneaking around because it was important for soldiers at risk to know that the commander in chief was willing to use them as a campaign photo opportunity after he had been ridiculed for his Mission Accomplished faux pas.

***This "HIGH-RISK visit to Baghdad" was really a 2.5 hour sneak into the heavily guarded Airport Military Compound under cover of darkness. If it was 'high risk' then what are the daily flights that bring Soldiers and supplies into Baghdad in broad daylight? Why didn't George just don another flight suit and make a quick trip on a military jet this time? Not one US Military Jet has been shot down in IRAQ since 'Mission Accomplished' and the only airplane that suffered a shoulder fired missile attack was landed safely. There was nothing "HIGH RISK" about this campaign photo op. Chickenhawk George and company would not do anything that could be considered "HIGH RISK" to themselves but they don't mind "HIGH RISK" for young soldiers.

Congress Is Spending 'like a Drunken Sailor'

Congress Is Spending 'like a Drunken Sailor'
Once again Republicans show they cannot curb spending or handle money.

Nov 30, 2003 Fox News Sunday - Congress is throwing away astonishing amounts, "spending money like a drunken sailor," and President Bush shares the blame because he is not using his veto power, Republican Sen. John McCain said Sunday. McCain, an avid critic of spending for lawmakers' pet projects in their districts and states, said the president's reluctance to veto legislation makes it harder for congressional negotiators to kill such spending.

Opposition from McCain, R-Ariz., and others kept the Senate from passing a $390 billion bill last week that would have paid for operations of 10 of 14 government departments and scores of lesser agencies. The legislation comes up again after the senators return from Thanksgiving recess, but it is unclear whether it will be this month or in January. Senate aides said McCain is expected to delay passage as long as possible.

"The numbers are astonishing," McCain said on "Fox News Sunday." "Congress is now spending money like a drunken sailor," said McCain, a former Navy officer, "and I've never known a sailor, drunk or sober, with the imagination that this Congress has."

He said growth of spending had been capped at 4 percent, but it was at least 8 percent higher. He said he will continue urging Bush to veto profligate spending bills. The president has not veto a single bill since he took office.

Asked if the president bears some responsibility for what is going on, McCain said: "Yes, because I think that the president cannot say, as he has many times, that 'I'm going to tell Congress to enforce some spending discipline' and then not veto bills."

An example, he said, is a massive energy bill, which also has been put aside until Congress reconvenes. "The administration originally supported an energy bill that would cost about $8 billion. This one is up to $24 billion, and the administration is still saying it's one of its highest priorities," McCain said. "I don't know how you rationalize that."

"Any economist will tell you cannot have this level of debt of increasing deficits without eventually it affecting interest rates and inflation," he said. "Those are the greatest enemies of middle-income Americans and retired Americans."

We need to elect legislators that will curb spending instead of these spendthrif Republicans.