The latest on the CBS documents

What infuriated me was today's sight of "journalists" from the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal delivering lectures on press ethics to various cable news anchors.

The Moonie Times prints lie after lie with impunity. Am I the only on who can recall how they tried to keep alive the "Kerry and the intern" story well after it was discredited? The Wall Street Journal printed rank, unverified rumors about Bill Clinton -- outrageous nonsense about murders and drug-dealing. The WSJ even put out a paperback book filled with this garbage.

Just today, we learn that the Republican Party has put out flyers claiming that Democrats want to ban the Bible!

If you're on the right, you are allowed to lie and lie and LIE. But when CBS believes a source too readily -- even though the thrust of their story remains unquestioned -- their mistake is treated like the horror to end all horrors.

The partisans will now crow like Peter Pan in victory, but a dispassionate look at the documents will reveal that the matter is far more mysterious than they -- or anyone else -- presumes.

First, the usual caveats, which I've now stated about a zillion times: 1. I would have strongly advised any newsman not to use any documents unless the provenance was clear, or unless the public received painstaking warnings. 2. I have never said that the documents are authentic but I do question the most commonly-heard theory as to how they were created.

The character shapes, when enlarged, simply do not match either Times New Roman or Palatino, the two suggested Word fonts. More important is the controversial superscript. Word places it in a very different place than is seen on the questioned documents. No-one has yet produced a similar "111th" using Word. Also, the uneven horizontal "lay" of the characters is consistent with typewritten origin, not with the use of a Word Processor.

So I feel that a period proportional-space typewriter was used. Does this mean the pages are necessarily authentic? No.

This Washington Post article raises many good points about formatting issues having nothing to do with fonts. I question the WP on a couple of matters -- what they call "kerning" looks to me like a possible accidental artifact of the copying process. However, I am persuaded that the WP is correct concerning such matters as the use of service number instead of a social security number, incorrect abbreviations, and the fact that August 18, 1972 was a Saturday.

That last error is particularly striking, since it is so easy to double-check dates nowadays; Microsoft includes a spiffy calendar program in every version of Windows. I find it hard to believe that a forger would get so many difficult details correct (Bush's street address, for one thing) yet mess up on an easily-checkable point like that.

Which leaves us with one of the more interesting conundrums in the history of hoaxed documents. (For what it may be worth, I researched a small volume on that very subject, a project to which I may yet return.)

These documents were typed, I feel, on a proportional-font machine of the period. They reflect information that Killian's secretary confirms as true. Tellingly, they do not contain much material not already on the public record -- thus, even if they had gone unquestioned, the damage to Bush would not have been noticeable. Yet they contain incorrect abbreviation and other errors that argue against authenticity.

Many believe Burkett to be the forger. Perhaps -- but one wonders whether Burkett would make errors involving non-standard abbreviations.

How to put all the pieces of this puzzle together? Only one scenario comes to mind.

I am coming to the provisional conclusion that these are not sloppy forgeries, as many like to think, but very clever ones. That is to say: Forgeries meant to arouse public attention. Forgeries meant to function as a cause celebre.

And ultimately, forgeries meant to be uncovered as such.

It's Reichstag fire season

It has become a cliché: “This has Karl Rove’s fingerprints all over it!” Word has it that some in the Kerry camp are muttering that very phrase as they mull over the CBS document debacle.

(Before continuing: Yes, I stand by my assertion that those pages were not created with Microsoft Word. I’ve yet to hear a counterargument from anyone who has compared enlargements of the characters, particularly the superscripts.)

Does Rove have a history of pulling “Reichstag” operations – by which I mean staged attacks on oneself in order to discredit opponents? The answer is yes.

In 1988, Rove was the consigliere for the Republican candidate for Governor in Texas, a man named William Clements. The race was dead even on the day of the first debate – the same day when Rove “discovered” a bugging device in Clements’ office. “Only those dastardly Dems would pull such a trick!” screamed the usual rightist screamers, on cue.

Those who looked more closely into the matter noted an oddity: The listening device used up its battery every few hours. Thus, Rove must have “found” the thing just after a battery was placed into it.

The name of Karl Rove does not appear in the soon-to-be-infamous story of Phil Parlock, but the Rovian spirit perfumes this cautionary tale, which you can read in full here.

Parlock, it seems, is just an ordinary guy in South Carolina who happens to support Bush. While he was out with his family at a pro-Bush rally, a guy in a union t-shirt ripped the “Bush” sign out of the hands of Parlock’s little girl, making her cry. So ran the report in the Charleston Daily Mail.

Trouble is, Parlock told a very, very similar story of physical assault by dastardly Dems in 1996.

And in 2000.

All three stories were reported by the same paper, which did not notice that Parlock is one suspiciously unlucky guy.

The website cited above presents damning photographic evidence proving that the “union” dude who harassed Parlock’s little girl was actually the girl’s older brother.

The site goes on to mention that, two weeks ago, dastardly Dems fired a bullet into Republican Party headquarters in South Carolina. And how do we know? Because Phil Parlock told the local reporter for WCHS news in Charleston.

Ah, yes. Amateur theatrics. I used to have a weakness for that sort of thing myself. You should have heard my Antony. In ninth grade, I killed.

Theatrics aside, we now have plenty of solid evidence that Bush dodged his National Guard duty because he was doing coke. For the latest evidence, check out this story.

How to distract attention from this embarrassing history? Nothing works like a little fire – as in Reichstag fire. Between now an election day – and beyond – it will be “fire” season.

A new tactic

Right and left exist in parallel media universes. How can Kerry make his case to Republicans when they receive their news only from partisan sources? How to break through the wall?

My suggestion: Pay 'em.

Or at least, dangle the promise of big bucks.

Previously, I've suggested that Kerry make "BUSH LIES" the theme of his campaign. To some degree, he is now doing just that (though not at my humble suggestion, obviously). But the folks he needs to reach cannot or will not hear the message.

I say the Kerry forces should scratch together a web site devoted to a compilation of Bush's more outrageous lies and flip-flops. And then Kerry should offer a reward -- $10,000 seems a good number -- to the first person who can prove that any of the information on the site is incorrect.

Here's the message: "You think Bush is a man of honor? You think he does NOT lie? Well, then -- come to WWW.DUBYAISALIAR.COM. We've listed over thirty important whoppers that he has told. And if you can prove us wrong -- if you can offer proof that we've attacked him incorrectly on any of those thirty points -- we'll pay you ten grand."

The fine print would reveal that a panel of impartial judges (assuming such a thing can be cobbled together in these raucous times) would determine whether any contestant really had proven that any of the thirty accusations was incorrect.

Right-wingers would scramble to the site. They would pore over ever phoneme, looking for even the tiniest error.

And that's how you get the message out to people who normally would not see it.

The origin of Al Qaida: Greeley, Colorado

Many Americans have come under the impression that Osama Bin Laden's peculiar brand of fanaticism derives from the puritanical Wahabbi faith prevalent in Saudi Arabia. Not true. At least, not exactly.

Bin Laden's viewpoint derives from an Egyptian sect leader named Sayyid Qutb. Qutb was once a secular man of letters. Then he went to study in America in 1949 -- at a university in Greeley, Colorado, of all places.

A quiet town. A conservative town. A religious town.

But to Qutb, the place was a hotbed of sin like unto Las Vegas.

He attended a church social, and stood aghast at the typical shameless American hussy who knew that "seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs -- and she shows all this and does not hide it." Or so he wrote later, in a book titled The America I Have Seen.

The fear that such wanton displays of seductiveness might spread beyond the borders of the United States caused him to scurry back to his homeland and initiate an extremely puritanical form of Islam. The threat posed by those round breasts and full buttocks somehow led him to conclude that the West was mounting "an effort to exterminate this religion" -- that is, Islam.

The Egyptians (then run by a quasi-socialist government we did not like) executed Qutb in 1965, but his teachings became even more powerful after his death. Qutbism helped to shape the Muslim Brotherhood, an underground group which made a bloody attempt to take over Mecca in 1979. This plot may -- or may not -- have had help from Osama's brother Mahrous. The Bin Laden family was rebuilding the mosque, and the conspirators managed to gain access to the holy place using Bin Laden trucks bearing special permits.

The plan failed, and the Saudi dynasty remained in place. But the country has never been quite the same. The royal family has given leeway to even the most extreme voices within their religious right. In Saudi Arabia, Democracy is forbidden, atheism is forbidden, socialism is forbidden, communism is forbidden -- Qutbism is the only "ism" granted freedom to criticize the status quo. For the rebellious -- and nearly all young men are rebellious -- it's the only game in town.

Thus originated the philosophy that gave rise to Al Qaida.

It all started when a shy foreigner at a church social in Greeley, Colorado saw some attractive American lasses and got a hard-on.

No kidding

When John Kerry appeared on Jon Stewart's show on Comedy Central, the candidate was asked if he really was a flip-flopper. Kerry tried to give a straight answer. Some wags suggested that he should have attempted humor -- as in "No, I'm not. Yes, I am. Actually...no."

Ah...but are Democrats even allowed to attempt humor these days?

The other day, the Los Angeles Times carried a small story about John Kerry's appearance at a restaurant which has no menu, because the cook decides what patrons will eat each day. Kerry told reporters that this policy was meant for guys like him, who cannot make up their own minds.

The remark was obviously a joke, and was reported as such by other sources. But the LAT told the story straight, giving the impression that Kerry did not have his tongue in cheek when he made the remark.

I would expect that sort of thing from Limbaugh, but from the allegedly-liberal LAT...?

Two, two, TWO failures in one!

W once said:

"I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I had a choice, I'd rather go to war."

He never went to war. He has always let social inferiors do the fighting.

After following the exploits of his trashy progeny, I must admit that his record as a parent depresses me almost as much as does his record as commander in chief.

Misdirection

It's official: The Republican forces are using misdirection to boggle the easily-boggled minds of the American people on the subject of Bush's military service.

Today, Matt Drudge links to a pdf file of a document which -- he claims -- proves that Bush served 120 days in the Air Force, contrary to those lying Democratic vipers who contend that he was never in the Air Force.

The document, of course, proves no such thing. Drudge has deceived on so many levels, I am not sure where to begin...

It proves that he joined the Air National Guard, a fact no-one has ever contested. Democrats have complained about official Bush biographies which claim, falsely, that he served in the Air Force proper.

The document dates from 1967; most of the questions have been raised about later times. It does not, in and of itself, prove that Bush completed the 120 day training period, although I am sure that he did.

In the same document, Bush promises to serve SIX YEARS in the Guard. We know that he did not.

Drudge links to a document which proves the opposite of what he intends to prove. It proves that George Bush -- with an impunity that would not apply to us lesser mortals -- made a promise to the military that he did not keep!

More on the CBS documents

In the post below, I link to an illustration which compares the questioned documents with text created with Microsoft Word's Times New Roman font. The letter forms are different, and these differences cannot be attributed to image degradation. Moreover, the type "hops" up and down in the CBS documents; this is consistent with typewritten origin.

Were typewriters then capable of producing such documents? Yes. For proof, go here:

http://discuss.pcmag.com/n/main.asp?webtag=pcmag&nav=start&msg=42333

In this demonstration, we see that Microsoft Word automatically creates text very similar to the text seen in a typewritten document proven to have been created 40 years ago.

Now, I'm sure that differences would show up in an enlargement, but when reproduced at small size -- which is how the right-wing bloggers display such comparisons -- the resultant documents do look almost identical.

Were such IBM machines rare? Yes, but SOMEONE must have been purchasing them, or IBM wouldn't have made 'em.

Now -- and here is where we close the case -- go here for a close-up view of the controversial superscript:

http://discuss.pcmag.com/n/main.asp?webtag=pcmag&nav=start&msg=42333

(You'll have to scroll down -- sorry!) You'll see that MS Word produces superscripts completely different from those seen on the questioned documents. The difference cannot be attributed to image degradation. Check out the illustration and you'll see what I mean.

Let me repeat my standard caveats: I am not saying the docs are necessarily genuine; I am merely questioning the most common theory as to how they were produced. (Has anyone offered another theory?) And I would have strongly advised CBS against using any documents of unknown provenance.

Still, all evidence now points to the conclusion that these documents were produced on a rare IBM machine of the proper era. We must now ask the question: If the documents are fake, what sort of faker would use such a rare IBM machine? Very few working models still exist.

Oh, and for what it is worth: As I write, I am in the Cal State Northridge Library, where I happened upon a 1968 book titled "Beastly Folklore," by one Joseph Calrk. It was obviously produced on a typewriter (double spaced, underlining instead of italics, unjustified text) -- not an uncommon circumstance back then for books with a press run too small to justify the expense of hiring a typsetter.

BUT: The font is proportional! And it looks like a variant of Times Roman, albeit with less variety in line thickness.

So a typewriter was capable of proportional fonts in 1968.

-- Joseph Cannon CANNONFIRE http://www.cannonfire.blogspot.com

To illustrate the point...

I presume that some who read the post below did not go to the trouble of conducting the suggested experiment. So I put together a handy-dandy illustration to prove the point. You can see it by clicking here.

Before folks write predictable letters to me: Yes, I know that the CBS docs have "been through the wringer" -- they were photocopied and perhaps Faxed. I maintain that no matter what you do to an original produced using the Microsoft Word Times New Roman font, no matter how thoroughly you degrade such a piece of source material, you still won't end up with characters such as those seen on the CBS documents.

And yes, I know that I misspelled the word "especially" in the comparison at the other end of the above link. Have a heart, people...! I'm under tremendous deadline pressure today, and I just don't have the time to upload a corrected version.

Oh, and one final point: It seems likely to me that any forger careful enough to get the basic format, terminology, places, dates and names correct wouldn't have been so sloppy as to slap together a hoax using Microsoft Word. No, such a forger would have gone out and purchased an old typewriter -- at least, that's what I would have done.

Of course, the above argument presumes that a forger did not want his work exposed as such.

Maybe those documents ARE real...!

As some of you may know, I have from the first presumed that the CBS documents were fakes. I still would have strongly advised CBS not to use any documentation of unknown provenance, even if I felt that the documents were genuine.

Even so, I've been looking more carefully into the narrower question of whether the typeface of the document matches the Time New Roman font available via Microsoft Word. I'm a graphic designer by trade, and I know a few things about various fonts.

Obviously, I cannot say that the docs are authentic. And I wish the scans made available via CBS were of much higher quality. Even so, I do feel comfortable in saying that -- however these documents were produced -- they were NOT made with the Times New Roman font commonly available in Microsoft Word.

Try this experiment. First go here.

Then, use Acrobat's zoom function to make the characters quite large when you call up the May 4, 1972 CBS document. Then type in the same characters in Word. Again, zoom into the characters. Place the two windows side-by-side.

In all instances, the lower-case "h" has a COMPLETELY different shape -- the vertical stroke is much taller in Word. The lower-case "u" is very different, as is the numeral "3." Note the differences in the upper serifs of the lower-case "x."

To my eyes, the line thickness has much greater variety in a Microsoft Word document -- in fact, there is almost NO variety in the typeface of the CBS documents. Anyone who has dealt with heavily-photocopied old documents knows that the copying process tends to make thin parts of characters disappear. When the document is darkened to make the thin strokes visible, the thick strokes tend to become quite "overweight." Here, the line quality is surprisingly even. This tells me that original typeface did not have much, or any, variety of line thickness.

Note, for example, how comparitively thin the slanted line is in the numeral "4" in a Word Times New Roman document. Now look at the "4" in the CBS document. Every part of the "4" is the same thickness.

The letters really do bob up and down as opposed to laying flat horizontally, a factor which argues for typewritten origin. Look, for example, at the "a"s in "administrative" in paragraph 2 of the May 4, 1972 letter. There are ways to replicate this effect by computer, of course...but as I've noted, anyone using Photoshop to make the thing look authentically typewritten would have used a non-proportional font.

Does this mean the documents are authentic? Not necessarily. I have here simply addressed the question of whether they were produced using Microsoft Word. I feel that any objective person who has conducted the same examination I have outlined here will agree that the origin of these documents must be found somewhere else.

From the bottom

After coming up with some sexual dirt on various congressfolk, Larry Flynt was called a bottom feeder. "Yeah, I'm a bottom feeder," he answered. "And look what I found down there.

In that light, let us take another look at the upcoming Kitty Kelley book.

We've already announced our fear that this work might drag the world into the morass of the Paul Bonacci story, an unverifiable mess which can do no-one any good. Fortunately, most folks right now are looking at the coke-at-Camp-David tale, which comes to us via Sharon Bush, ex-wife of the unlovely Neil.

But did she ever truly say such a thing to Kitty?

Sharon has denied that she ever did. However, two first-hand sources -- including her own lawyer, Lou Colasuonno -- say that the conversation did indeed take place.

This sort of thing has happened to me -- and probably to most writers -- albeit on a much more modest level. Sources sometimes regret having saying what they have said, and thus try to pretend that they were misquoted. Sort of like Hagrid in the first "Harry Potter" movie: "I shouldn't have said that..."

Okay, so let us presume that the interview did take place. Why would Sharon backtrack?

Take a look at this old article (and never mind the obnoxious site warehousing it at the moment), which details Sharon's messy divorce from Neil. Ever the gentleman, Neil offered her the royal sum of $1,000 a month. She wanted more. And she threatened to write a tell-all book about our ruling family. Hence, lunch with Kitty.

How much do you want to bet that Sharon no longer has to worry about living on a grand a month?

Of course, this turn of events brings us to a knottier question: If she was holding the family up for dough at the time she spoke to Kitty, how do we know Sharon wasn't hyperbolizing? "Sweeten the deal, Neil, or I'll tell the world that W did coke at Camp David..."

Personally, I'd be careful about trying to strongarm anyone connected with a family known for its CIA ties...

Update on the "forgeries"

I've gone back and forth several times today. Are the CBS documents forgeries or not? The best technical argument in favor of their authenticity can be found at the Daily Kos; I was particularly struck by the observation that letters "jump" up and down -- slightly -- as opposed to laying straight. This characteristic is consonant with a typewritten origin, not with the use of a computer. And some characters (particularly the numeral 4) do not match.

Besides, surely someone creating a fake of this sort (presuming he did not want the fake to be recognized as such) would either

1. Fetch an old typewriter from a thrift store, or

2. Use a courier font in Word.

A really clever lad would use Photoshop to make the letters lay unevenly. (I know I would have done that! But I take pride in craft.) But anyone clever enough to take that step would also have been clever enough to use a monospace font.

Still, I'm leaning toward the "fake" theory. Something about the wording just doesn't feel right to me, and -- as I noted on usenet -- I always tend to look askance at any questioned document of unknown provenance.

Slate relays a report that the documents were passed tot he Kerry campaign by an unknown military figure. This concurs with my original theory that the pro-Bush forces have pulled off a brilliant distraction maneuver.

At this time, everyone should be discussing the incontrovertible evidence that Bush (contrary to his assertions) jumped ahead of everyone else in line to secure his National Guard position. They should also be discussing the raucous tales to come to us via Kitty Kelley.

Instead, we are talking about proportional fonts. And the net-world increasingly accepts as a given their dark suspicions that the eeeee-vil CBS News would take any risk in order to fob off an obvious forgery.

Cui bono? Who benefits?

Bush benefits.

Hoax documents on CBS: A historical note

My heart sank when "60 Minutes" reported that they had "authenticated" the documents they had received on W's inglorious war record. The need to authenticate indicates that the provenance is questionable, and questionable provenance is a pretty good indicator in and of itself that the documents are fake.

If the segment had not included discussion of those documents, then all attention would have remained on the first-hand testimony that Bush had received preferential treatment. The documents thus served the purposes of misdirection -- in other words, the hoax ultimately benefits Bush.

If we want to figure out who the hoaxer is, "Cui Bono?" remains our first, best question.

To shed further light on that question, I would like to remind readers of an odd bit of history. In 1974, as some of you will recall, Jack Anderson reported that behind-the-scenes player Gordon Novel had been approached by Charles Colson to come up with a bizarre method to erase incriminating Nixon tapes from a remote location. Many people have heard of Novel's claim, and many (probably correctly) have dismissed it.

Few recall that, later in the same interview, Novel made a more interesting suggestion to Anderson as to how Nixon might have been rescued from Watergate.

The plan was simple: Novel said that he would have hired a Nixon impersonator to make a phone call to Hunt. The pseudo-Nixon would have said something grossly incriminating. A tape of the phone call would have been released to the press. Media accomplices (both witting ones and dupes) would then have ensured that the entire Watergate controversy revolved around the authenticity of that one piece of tape.

Once the impersonation was revealed as a hoax, Nixon's enemies would have looked horrible. Every legitimate point they raised thereafter would have been de-fanged.

Novel's idea was not put into action, of course. But I would not discount the notion that some modern behind-the-scenes manipulator considers that sort of tactic "a neat idea."

Careful with that Kitty!

Orwell once said that the future is summed up by the image of a boot smashing into a human face -- forever. In American politics, that image should be a television tuned into Jerry Springer -- forever. Such is the new lowbrow reality of the vote-getter's art.

Many Democrats still don't get this. One who refuses to understand the new paradigm is Kerry's campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, who -- silly girl! -- seems to be under the impression that a campaign is a debate over issues. One who DOES get it is Kitty Kelley, author of the hot new book on the Bush family -- a book which, I am told, contains many lovely tales about cocaine use, gay sex, pedophilia, murder and more.

I cannot judge a book I have not yet read, of course. But from the advance word, I foresee a huge problem. Democrats should not cry "Viva Kitty!" just yet.

That aforementioned advance word holds that Kitty resurrects the Paul Bonacci story, which figured in the "Franklin case," a scandal arising out of Lincoln, Nebraska more than a decade ago. I cannot recount all the details of that scandal here; a little googling should pick out a few relevant web pages. The tale, now largely forgotten, was once very much beloved of conspiracy buffs on both the right and left.

Bonacci (now 31) was part of an underground phenomenon of people who claimed that, during their childhood, they were kidnapped and raped by the rich and powerful. In his case, the rich and the powerful included George Bush the elder. In 1999, Bonacci won a large judgment against one of his alleged abusers, a local Republican named Larry King (no relation to the guy on TV).

The problem: Outside that one courtroom in 1999, very few people credit Bonacci's veracity. Many observers feel that he cannot distinguish between what he has read, what he has been told, and what he recalls directly. While still young, he fell under the care of a religious zealot (with whom I once briefly spoke) who was much given to wild conspiratorial tales.

This country does NOT want to revisit the SRA debacle. Democrats, who tend to be moderate on the subject of religion, will find the subject particularly distasteful. Even if Bonacci has always told the absolute truth (and I doubt that he has), I would counsel any politically-minded person to steer clear of this whole controversy, which has attracted any number of wackos and con artists.

Among those consters were a pair of sharpies named Mark Phillips and Cathy O'Brien, who have peddled unbelievable tales of Satanic Ritual Abuse and mind control for quite a few years now -- always promising, but never delivering, hard and fast proof. Photocopies of Cathy's written testimony were swirling around the Lincoln case during its heyday, and Bonacci duly "remembered" details of his own experience that were congruent with Cathy's riffs. Among those "memories": The dreaded MONARCH project, an alleged mind control program.

Alas, Mark Phillips later privately admitted (to two individuals known to me) that he concocted the term MONARCH. In other words, Bonacci "remembered" instances in which his abusers used a term that we now know is fictional.

Despite such problems, Kelley's dirt-digging efforts may yet prove of some use to the anti-Bush forces. Even though most of the world long ago learned to ignore SRA allegations, those bizarre old allegations still circulate among the fundamentalists who form the backbone of the modern Republican party. And the Bush family has often popped up within the more outlandish of those yarns. Re-opening that can of worms may peel away some of W's sillier supporters among the Jesus Christers.

For all that, I hope that the advance word is untrue, and that Kelley's book avoids the Bonnacci imbroglio. That case is radioactive. Any connection with it will undermine the credibility of whatever better-sourced claims her book may contain.

Why Kerry lost

Modern elections are usually decided by Labor day; whoever has the momentum then, wins. This is especially true now that Florida has outlawed recounts, which means that we can no longer consider that already-corrupt state "democratic" with a small d.

So Kerry lost. How?

For week after week, Kerry ran mushy, feel-good ads which portrayed him as a fine fellow. Meanwhile, Bush never talked about himself in his ads -- he spent the time defining his opponent. The definitions were largely smears. Doesn't matter. The mud stuck.

How would I have handled things if I were Mary Beth Cahill, Kerry's chief campaigner? Simple. The Kerry slogan should have been: "BUSH LIES!" That phrase should have been plastered in day-glo letters on billboards and telephone polls everywhere.

To those who consider such a tactic overkill, let me ask one question: What's the precedent? Just when, exactly, did we have an election in which a Democrat for national office went negative early and things turned out disastrously?

Each election, every Democratic campaign manager seems to say to himself: "Boy, we can't have a repeat of that debacle when we went negative and everything went to shit." I'd like to know just when that alleged debacle occurred.

Why are the Dems so afraid to try something that seems to work like a charm every time for their Republican opponents?

Bottom line: Kerry lost because he did not go on the attack against a president with a lousy record.

For example: Take the vote on supplemental aid to the troops in Iraq. Kerry tried to explain things lamely ("I voted for it before I voted against it"). Alas, the public is -- and always will be -- far too dimwitted to understand that there were two bills which paid for the aid in two different ways.

Kerry should have responded with an ad underlining that Bush threatened to veto the same legislation..."money our boys desperately need!" And why was Bush going to veto? "Because he doesn't care about our troops. He cares more about making sure rich people don't pay their fair share."

CUT TO: Footage of Moms and Dads holding bake sales to make sure their kids in Iraq have flack jackets.

Can we not agree that an ad like the one I have just described would have been a lot more effective for Kerry than the crapola he was running?

Or take the Swift Boat smear. Here's how to combat an attack like that -- with an ad I call "EMPTY BOX":

* * *

FADE IN: EXTREME CLOSE UP of the EMPTY BOX on Bush's service apllication -- the one he should have filled in if he wanted to go to Vietnam. PULL BACK to reveal the rest of the form.

NARRATOR (Kerry himself?): "An empty box. An EMPTY BOX. When he could have volunteered to serve his country in Vietnam, George Bush left the box empty. Why? Because he's a PHYSICAL COWARD."

SLOW DISSOLVE to Bush's face looking bewildered, perhaps because he can't quite follow that goat story.

NARRATOR: "Keep that in mind when Republicans lie about John Kerry's war record. They want to distract you from the fact that Bush has no idea how to heal the economy he wrecked. No idea how to get us out of Iraq. All he has is the same old thing..."

ZOOM IN to Bush's forehead. DISSOLVE TO: An EMPTY BOX. Sound of wind rustling through the marshes.

* * *

Yeah. Something like that would have ended the smears pronto.

Kerry said "Bring it on." They brought it. He sat there and smiled.

Even the phrase "Bring it on" displays the error of playing defense. Kerry is the one who shoud have brought it on.

I wish Mary Beth Cahill were a man so I could properly "explain" my dissatisfaction to her -- on a sidewalk outside any bar she chooses.