How the Democrats are evading Campaign Finance Reform

Having ads bought and paid for by "private" groups. It's pretty cynical, and now there's blowback.

. . . [T]he spots from outside liberal and Democratic groups have dovetailed almost perfectly with the messages of the Kerry campaign . . .

The Dems are accusing Karl Rove of being behind the Vietnam Vets anti-Kerry ad. By that logic, there is all the evidence we need that the pro-Kerry 527 ads are orchestrated with his campaign.

The polls continue to be close, but Kerry is definitely acting like a man who's behind.

News from Middle Earth

It sounds like the minions of the Dark Lord are still at work in New Zealand.

Michelle Malkin, the new Ann Coulter

It's a marketing ploy. You make some outrageous assertion that is sure to rile anybody, but especially those who subscribe to the CW. Then you make it the title of your book, and go around defending it. This has been successful for Michael Moore and Al Franken, and it's the essence of what has made O'Reilly, Hannity and Coulter successful. It's the equivalent of poking a gorilla at the zoo so you can get video of him beating his chest, when all he really does all day is sit around looking glum.

Of course, when you've got two sides (be sure to follow the links) doing this to each other, it keeps life amusing.

Spam and worms

That's what awaited me after two weeks away from my work computer. I came back to find 3500 email messages waiting, but my email client couldn't handle them. It went into a a permanent "This folder is being processed" response. This is why we all need 3 gigaherz processors. When I tried to look at the raw files on my user folder on the LAN, it seemed that there were about 70 messages containing malicious code, assuming that Symantec identified them all, but the system seemed to have gagged on them.

What kind of miserable lives must people have to think that the way to riches is composing ads designed to get by the measures your "customers" have taken to avoid receiving them? Does anybody really believe that this builds good will? Maybe it works because there are still people out there who are still so foolish as to encourage this crap by actually reading it and visiting the sponsors. Hiring spammers ought to be the kiss of death for anyone trying to sell something, but if it were, we wouldn't still be getting it.

This is the kind of thing that no futurist could predict, because they're all too optimistic to think that porn and sex aids could become such a major factor in the world's economy. We really need a new profession that specializes in fathoming the depths of ignorance, stupidity, cupidity and perversity, or maybe that's just what our technology has programmed itself to do for us. Artificial intelligence isn't going to create a terminator future with amazing machines. It's going to drown us in spam and worms. Will the future will revert to paper and pens, because we just get sick and tired of the rotten fruits of communication technology?

John Kerry, American defender?

Hugh Hewitt has been discussing the charge by a group of former swift boat sailors that Kerry's Purple Hearts were, if not bogus, not the stuff of war heroism. These members of Kerry's band of brothers have issued a privately funded ad denouncing his claims and calling him a liar. The DNC has sicced lawyers on them, but they'd just be feeding publicity for the ad if they actually filed suit. This new book goes into more detail. Hewitt describes it as "as tough as it gets in the political world." It will undoubtedly be blacklisted by the media, which we have come to expect from an overtly partisan media. Considering their coverage of Bush's service in the National Guard and the Abu Ghraib scandal, such ignoring of serious claims bearing on a candidate's honesty is conspicuous evidence of bias in their coverage of news. The major national news media deserve to be boycotted, which is pretty much the only recourse we as news consumers have.

All pretense of objectivity has been abandoned, but there has to be an alternative to demonstrate to papers like the NYTimes, WaPo, Minn STrib, LATimes, etc. that they're being rejected. Declining circulation and the loss of potential profits isn't enough. If it were, Hollywood would be turning out a lot more G and PG movies. They need to see competitors taking their subscribers, as MSNBC and CNN have. CNN hasn't learned anything, but CNBC and MSNBC have added conservative talk shows like Joe Scarborough's and , making their overall lineups more fair overall. MSNBC's website now features columns by Instapundit

BTW, if you're not listening to Hugh Hewitt, you can hear his show continuously at this site. It's the best on the air.

What happened to the Sandy Berger story?

I've been away for a couple of weeks, but I have to wonder how quickly this story would have vanished if it had been Brent Scocroft caught taking classified documents.

So much better than "An Army of One"

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of All Who Threaten It I love these guys.