A Slimming Proposal for Michael Moore

Given Michael Moore's woory about his weight problem I have the following modest wager for him:

Should Bush win an election and no draft ensues, contrary to your predictions I'm not asking you to promise to move to France or anything of the sort (altough the French, they truly love you n'est pas?)

Since you seem concerned about your weight problem, I propose that if no draft is instituted when Bush is relected you should have to do the following:

1. Go to Weight Watchers and publicly post the diary about your experiences and how you're shedding those unhealthy extra pounds.

2. Wear a sign while walking around New York City saying : I'm a fat liar but I'm trying to lose weight.

If Bush wins and there's a draft I'll let you post a screeed here all about how "Bush lied" etc and I'll even say you're right and buy the entire Michael Moore Collection of movies and - the horror - watch them.

How about it Mr. "I feel like I'm overweight"?

Michael Moore spreads the false draft meme

Moore spread the false "Bush wants a draft" meme at University of Michigan - Dearborn when talking to students there in support of Kerry:
FEAR FACTOR: Filmmaker urges Kerry vote ... or else (Detroit Free Press).

If free underwear and Ramen noodles aren't enough to entice college students to vote on Nov. 2, filmmaker Michael Moore is trying to scare them into voting for John Kerry by suggesting that President George W. Bush will reinstate the military draft if re-elected.

"They have run out of troops. And that means only one thing. If George Bush is elected in November, there is going to be a draft. ... And if you're 18 to 26 years old, you are going to face the draft," he said. "This is what he's got in mind."

The Bush administration, the Pentagon and other federal officials deny any such plan exists. But Moore and some leading Democrats are fueling the rumor, which is being stoked on Internet chat rooms and on the campaign trail. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, stumping for Kerry, recently suggested Bush would reinstate the draft.

The only true statement reportedly said by Moore in the entire article:

I just feel like I'm overweight," quipped Moore.

Yes, he's heavy in weight, but a true lightweight in terms of facts and dealing with reality.

CBS Can't stop Spewing more anti-Bush falsehoods

First it was memo-Gate (or more precisely Ra^thergate Part 1.

Now we get part 2: As reported on Little Green Footballs, and elsewhere in the Bloggosphere, Ra^ther and CBS did fall for yet another hoax and did a show on the possibility that the draft might be resurrected:

On last night’s CBS Evening News they ran a story about the military draft being reinstated—based on long-debunked Internet hoax emails and the testimony of an unlabeled Bush-hating advocacy group member.

Never mind that the only one's pushing a draft are the Democrats and that both the military and the Bush administration have said there won't be a draft and it is not needed.

CBS is bent on hammering Bush, facts be damned.

Now you can have Cambodia virtually "Seared" in your memory!

As reported in Click on Detroit's story Gamers Can Go Up Virtual River In 'Nam With Kerry, Kuma Reality games has released a mission re-enacting the events in which Kerry received his silver star (at least the mission according to at least one of the Navy citations).

Unreported is the question as to whether the game lets you spend Christmas in Cambodia; suffer self-inflicted wounds; or transport secret agents and win a CIA hat.

New $50 Bill to Start Circulating Today

New $50 

The bill is as depicted and is described by CNN as having a "subtle background colors of blue and red, and images of a waving American flag and a small metallic silver-blue star." For the emntire article see The CNN article: New $50 bill debut set

The new bill contains new anti-counterfeiting devices (appropos of my last post on counterfeit coin dies). Old $50 bills will remain in circulation.

It should be interesting to examine public acceptance of this new colorization of the American banknote. The $20 seems to have gone over without remark as being "just peachy", but the $50 has much more color.

The era of the all-green American Greenback may prove to be over.

Coin of the Week: An Interesting Ancient Counterfeit Coin Die

,  

This coin die was used by ancient counterfeiters to manufacture counterfeit coins in the 4th Century AD. The dies are made of clay. The portrait is that of the emperor gratian and the size of the dies is consistent with that of the bronze coinage of the period. In fact, the reverse type seen on the dies is a close copy of a bronze coin reverse listed in Sear's Roman Coins book.

Source: My personal collection. I now have this coin die set up for saleon Ebay.

CBS maintians its pretense

As of 12:00 today, CBS News' website still defends the memos.

Their current attempt to stonewall is entitledQuestions About Bush Memos Linger.

What, they thought this would go away? The reason questions are "lingering" is that the documents are out-and-out forgeries and CBS can't do an ostrich and hope this dissappears.


The closest they seem able to come to admitting the forgeries is that
CBS News continued to defend the legitimacy of its recent story about President Bush's Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard, even as two experts it hired to examine records CBS used told ABC they could not vouch for their veracity.

You know you're hosed when you try to defend your actions in the third person.

DNC loses it on the end of the "Assault Weapons" ban

If we take the DNC's posting at face value, then WMD have indeed been found in Iraq.

In Where the WMD are found on the DNC's Kicking Ass site (a quite unfortunate name if you think about it), the DNC claims that

he Republican administration, in cahoots with the GOP-controlled Senate and House, has conspired to bring weapons of mass destruction to your neighborhood. The ten-year federal ban on semiautomatic assault weapons expires Monday, with virtually no chance of renewal because Republican Senate and House leaders refuse to hold a vote on the issue.

If a semi-automatic firearm is a weapon of mass destruction according to the DNC, than the massive stockpiles of fully automatic weapons, artillery, tanks etc in Iraq must also count as WMDs, no?

The DNC may now cease claiming that there were no WMD's in Iraq.

Why CBS isn't backing down

We need a vibrant, truthful and independent free press in this country, and instead we get CBS.

One possible reason why CBS isn't backing down when the documents have so clearly been shown to be forged is given by Little Green Footballs in the post
DNC Video: Fortunate Son

This ad just released by the DNC refers to the memos and Dan Ra^ther's report. Clearly there has been some coordination on this issue between the DNC and CBS, perhaps this is part and parcel of the Democrat's dirty tricks campaign they have threatened.

A press joined at the hip, and coordinating the release of forged documents timed with the campaign ads of a political party is simply not an independent, credible, nor free press.

CBS should have used this product

CBS should have used this "Microsoft" product for their awol memos and then perhaps they would have gotten away with it.

Did Kerry beach CBS in his attack on Bush?

We know that Kerry likes to beach his boat in the face of the enemy, or even when there is no enemy. Beaching a watercraft eliminates its tactical advantages: speed, manuverability, and the ability to bring all its guns to bear on the target.

Did the forged documents come from the Kerry campaign? If so it looks like Kerry just beached Dan Ra^ther and CBS, and eliminated any tactical advantages CBS and its pro-Kerry bias might have brought him in these final days of the non-media blackout period of the campaign cycle. CBS' credibility is shot by its presenting of these forged documents, and Dan Rather's standing by their credibility has effectively torpedoed him and likewise made his credibility and any further influence he may have on viewers in the know dead in the water.

This Kerry counterattack, if that is where the documents came from, has resulted in the Swift Vets criticism of his war record and later activities being pushed to the background so it has been sucessful if that was its intent. It has also provided the Dems with wonderful moral equivalency talking points that are still being expounded even as the documents supporting them have unravelled: Bush was awol, the documents say so, therefore Kerry's claims about being in Cambodia, his medals and anti-war activity on his return don't matter, they're equally bad in this post-modern world.

But if the documents came from the Kerry campaign, then in order to get this result, Kerry effectively sacrificed CBS to do it.

Raimondo goes off into Paleo-Con Conspiracy Land

Seems like tinfoil is in short supply in some parts of the US these days.

Justin Raimondo, of Antiwar.com goes off the deep end, alleging the Israelis knew about 9/1 and were even tailing the perpetrators and didn't warn the US. in his article Ghosts of 9/11

The Israelis, a silent omnipresent bodyguard, encircled Mohammed Atta and his cohorts, watching, and waiting – for 9/11, the catalytic event that would trigger a war binding the U.S. and Israel closer than ever before, a war that would not end even with the American occupation of Iraq – and would redound mostly to the advantage of the Israelis.

He draws on the usual collection of nutty sources, weaves together "facts" from unreleated events, wraps them up in innuendo and says ahah!...the Likudniks (jooooos) did it.

His rant would have sounded better in the original Arabic, or the original German for that matter.

CBS Docu-gate

So the Question is: What did CBS know, and when did they know it?

Given the yeoman work of the Blogosphere, specifically Powerline and Little Green Footballs, among others on this issue, it looks like CBS either was 1. duped, 2. willfully and blindly reckless in publishing the documents or 3. complicit in their publication.

CBS needs to tell us which one of the above is the case.

CBS however, still has the allegations story, along with the fraudulent documents up on their site: New Questions On Bush Guard Duty

Their site states:

60 Minutes has obtained documents that suggest President Bush received favorable treatment in the National Guard. And the man who says he got Mr. Bush into the Guard speaks out for the first time. Read the documents.

How long it will take CBS to retract this story or drop it down a memory-hole is anyone's guess.