More Boing! Boing! Anti-Bush Knee Jerk Reflexology

Yet another example of Boing! Boing! letting its anti-Bush knee jerk reaction get the better of it. Bush is scheduled on Wednesday to give what his campaign calls a major speech. The Bush campaign is making much of the fact that Bush was going to talk about medical liability but is now going to talk about terrorism and the economy.

Boing! Boing!’s Mark Frauenfelder goes nuts with this extremely bizarre post,

Will Kerry get equal time to respond to President Bush’s last-minute speech

In an effort to halt his deteriorating ratings, President Bush has announced that’ll he’ll be giving a major speech on Wednesday. “The president is said to be eager to rebut Kerry’s attacks on [the] issues.” I’m imagine he is, since Kerry won’t be able to respond. Will Kerry be given equal time on the networks?

What the hell does that mean? Kerry won’t be able to respond? What, is Bush going to have Dick Cheney sit on Kerry to prevent him from responding? Of course Kerry will be able to respond, and you’ll likely see dueling soundbites on the 6:30 p.m. news on Wednesday or Thursday.

Fraunfelder seems under the false impression that broadcast networks will carry Bush’s speech live just because he calls it a “major speech.” Give me a f—ing break — the broadcast media never runs campaign speeches live.

Kids, this is your brain. And, this is your brain on reflexive Bush bashing.

Update

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one watching television instead of blogging. A lot has been made of the fact that two cable news channels — CNN and MSNBC — chose to run Bush’s speech live (I’m sure all 12 people watching MSNBC in the middle of the day were thrilled by that decision).

Big deal — cable news channels regularly run live feeds of campaign speeches by Kerry or Bush, and if you bill the appearance as a “major speech” that is not just a standard recapitulation of the stump speech, one or more of the cable news channels will probably run the whole damn thing live as long as it’s a slow news day. On September 20, for example, CNN ran a major Kerry speech on foreign policy live beginning at 10 a.m. Similarly, a number of the cable channels ran Kerry’s midnight speech on the last day of the Republican National Convention.

What would have been inappropriate, would have been if CBS, ABC or NBC had interrupted their daytime broadcasts to air Bush’s campaign speech live, since they don’t usually run campaign speeches from either candidate live. And, of course, they didn’t because they can’t build an audience based on the half dozen cats whose owners accidentally leave the television on and tuned to MSNBC during the day.

And, of course, the Kerry campaign did have a chance to respond to Bush’s speech. The broadcast networks featured reports with excerpts from Bush’s speech and from a speech that John Edwards gave the same day. In fact, the coverage on most of the networks was overwhelmingly negative (as it should be) toward Bush due to testimony about the CIA report finding that Saddam Hussein’s WMD program had ended several years after the end of the first Persian Gulf War.

Back to a Dead Heat?

A new Newsweek poll has George W. Bush and John Kerry essentially tied after Bush’s poor debate performance.

I bet the Bush folks really regret agreeing to three debates now.

But, of course, the important polls are those in the a handful of states that are actually going to be competitive. It’ll be interesting to see how polls in Florida and Ohio look at the end of the week.

Kerry vs. Bush Debate

Hugh Hewitt writes of tonight’s debate,

Overall: Bush gets a big win, by hiting all his messages over and over again. He wins on substance. Biggest mistake by Kerry: “The Global Test.” Sorry, the American voters aren’t interested in passing any global tests. Bush stresses steadfastness and resolve. Kerry firmed up the hard-left vote, but you can’t win on this.

Was Hewitt watching the same debate I was? Kerry came across as very strong — he’s obviously very comfortable in a debate format. Bush, on the other hand, continues to prove that he is a horrible, horrible public speaker.

Remember the Democratic strategy before Kerry’s implosion in August — highlight the things that Bush has done wrong (in their view) and present Kerry as presidential and, therefore, a credible alternative. Kerry accomplished all of that and more tonight, in my opinion (and I can’t stand the guy even after the debate).

Bush is still very beatable, and if Kerry performs as well in the next two debates Bush is going to be in serious trouble.

Did Fox Run the Faked Kerry/Fonda Photo As Real?

The New Republic has an article about the Dan Rather dustup in which Telis Demos claims the following,

If this last offense sounds familiar, it’s because the right-wing media does it all the time. In February 2004, for instance, Fox News broadcasters Brit Hume, Sean Hannity, and John Gibson all showed a photo of John Kerry standing next to Jane Fonda on a podium at an anti-Vietnam War rally in the 1970s. It turns out the photo was fake. Did hordes of media critics demand retractions from Hume, Hannity, and Gibson? Of course not. As a result, it seems likely that plenty of voters continue to believe the picture was real.

Did this really happen, though? I searched through all of the transcripts of Fox News programs on Lexis and I couldn’t find any time when this faked picture was shown as if it were real. The photo was definitely shown on Fox News by Brit Hume, but not in the context that Demos claims. On February 15, 2004, Chris Wallace discussed the photo on Fox News Sunday,

WALLACE: Juan mentions that there was dirt being loaded on John Kerry. It was also being loaded on him about his opposition to the war in Vietnam after he came back as a war hero.

And I want to show you some fascinating pictures. Let’s put up the first one, if we can. There is a picture of Jane Fonda, a famous anti-war activist, in the foreground. And way back in the back, fuzzy, no sign that they were anywhere close together — and I must say, two years before Jane Fonda actually went to Hanoi and became Hanoi Jane — at a rally.

WALLACE: And this was put out as some indication that they were in lock step.

And then, when that sort of fell flat, another picture was seen on the Internet showing, well, they’re not now far apart, they’re actually right together on the podium, John Kerry and Jane Fonda. There is only one problem with that picture, it was a fake. Jane Fonda was digitally added. The photo agency that owns the picture says this is the original, John Kerry by himself.

Ceci, I guess the question is, with the length of this campaign — it looks now we could be talking about eight months between Kerry and George W. Bush — and all the things, either rumors or bogus pictures that could be circulated on the Internet, are we headed for something we’ve never seen before?

I found one example where Hannity mentioned a photo on his show (not with Brit Hume, though) where it was unclear which photo Hannity was referring too, though I suspect it was the photo of Kerry sitting several rows back at an event where Fonda spoke. But the only time the fake photo is mentioned on Brit Hume’s show that I could find is to dismiss it as a fake.

Demos isn’t very helpful since he just says “February 2004.” Does anyone else know if Fox ran the photo as real (if they did, it would be interesting to track how long it took them to acknowledge the fact that it was fake).

Source:

Forge Ahead. Telis Demos, New Republic, September 15, 2004.

What Was Kerry Thinking With Response?

Virginia Postrel had the same sort of questions I did about John Kerry’s midnight rally last night,

But it wasn’t addressed to me, and it seems to have done quite well, at least among the punditocracy. John Kerry made Bush look even better with his petulant and rambling midnight address. What was he thinking? Doesn’t Kerry have advisers to tell him not to give poorly prepared speeches that project desperation?

Kerry looked horrible — like if he stopped talking he would doze off (and who can blame him — it was midnight after all). Moreover, he seemed to be talking on fast forward as if he wanted to get everything out and get back to his hotel room (and, again, who can blame him).

He came across as a B-list Howard Dean.

Kerry’s biggest problem is that he doesn’t seem to have the ability to acknowledge his shortcomings and turn them around to his advantage. Reagan and Clinton were masters at that, and Bush II is also to a lesser extent. But Kerry comes across more like Bush II or Dole in his inability to respond to attacks exploiting his weaknesses.

The fact that Kerry’s campaign didn’t have any sort of coherent prepared response to the Swift Boat Veterans accusations or the flip-flop characterization means those accusations have sowed far more doubt about Kerry than they need have done.

Memo to Kerry: Shut Up about Vietnam Already

What is John Kerry thinking? The Republicans spend the week laying out one charge after another — some fair, others not. To hear the Republicans, Kerry is a flip-flopping Senator who is at heart a leftist peacenik in the Dukakis mould. So what is Kerry’s response? That’s right, he served in Vietnam, and his opponents didn’t,

I’m not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and by those who have misled the nation into Iraq

. . .

The vice president even called me unfit for office last night. I guess I’ll leave it up to the voters whether five deferments makes someone more qualified to defend this nation than two tours of duty.

It’s just bizarre to see the extent to which Kerry’s answer to everything is “I served in Vietnam”. Howard Dean almost won the nomination by exposing the holes in Kerry’s Vietnam strategy, but Kerry and/or his campaign seems to have learned nothing from that primary experience.

Bizarre.

Source:

Kerry Criticizes Cheney for Avoiding Vietnam War. Patricia Wilson, Reuters, September 3, 2004.