Republican Conspiracies, Democratic Double Standards, and Other News

Base10 is still in the great state of Florida. Unfortunately, Dame Base10's condition has not improved much.

Base10 wishes he lived in a swing state like Florida for this election. Living in New York, especially NYC, he gets to see few if any campaign commercials. In Florida however, the battle certainly has been joined. It is incredible. TV campaign advertising seems to dominate the airwaves, especially on the local stations. It is refreshing to see that at least some states are not permanently blue and dominated by one party to the extent that debate is entirely stifled. Despite the healthy influence of Republican mayors, the government of NYC is so exclusively run by one-party Democrats that it should be considered the east coast version of the Central Committee. Apparently New Yorkers are on the cutting edge of everything except politics.

Base10 has finally found his one-stop shopping site for polls. Rasmussen Reports has polling information updated daily and includes electoral vote counts. The public site is pretty informative, and they seem to have premium services for political pros.

Readers with a little time on their hands should take a look at World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win, by Norman Podhoretz in September's Commentary. Base10 cautions that this article is very long. This may mean that Podhoretz missed out on the Republican "smears and lies" conspiracy since this obviously took a lot of work. Readers with shorter attention spans should check out this summary in the Weekly Standard. Anyway, Podhoretz traces the history of what led to 9/11 and is critical of all political parties. Good read.

Speaking of the Republican lie and smear machine, the Democrats have at least won the Google wars. A search of "lies smears Republicans" on Google News yields 98 results as of this writing, while a search of "lies smears Democrats" yields only 7. Mr. President, there is a lying and smearing gap!

In other news, a bipartisan Pentagon commission investigating the Abu Graib prisoner abuse scandal was released Tuesday and was followed by another report prepared by the Army. Certainly Gen. Janis Karpinski, who commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade at Abu Ghraib and Col. Thomas Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade will be held to task for allowing such conduct as well they should. When you are a military commander, you are responsible for what goes on on your watch. If they didn't know what was going on, they should have. Although the report places primary blame on an out-of-control night shift and found most of the incidents to fall well short of the "torture" word that the media is so fond of using (see this piece in the Opinion Journal), John Kerry called for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. Base10 doesn't think Rumsfeld's head is called for, but would not disagree if he resigned. The only thing Base10 notes is that the world and the DoD in particular would be a smaller place without him.

And finally, in the "let's use a pathetic disabled veteran in a ridciculous political stunt" department, erstwhile Senator Max Cleland trekked to the Bush ranch in Texas to deliver a letter pleading with the President to condemn the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth anti-Kerry TV ads. In what Base10 considers a brilliant political move, President Bush roundly condemned all "527" soft money attack ads and urged John Kerry to do he same.

In related news, Benjamin Ginsberg, a lawyer involved in the Bush campaign resigned because he had done legal work for the Swifites advising them on the "527" statute. Democrats were quick to condemn this and said they were "shocked...shocked" that this sort of thing could go on until reminded that Robert Bauer, a Democratic election lawyer represents the anti-Bush 527 group, America Coming Together, and Joseph Sandler, another top Democratic attorney, represents both the Democratic National Committee and MoveOn.org. Sounds like a Kerry campaign Homer moment. (See this for some figures on "527's").

P.S. Base10 urges residents of where he is staying, namely Clay County Florida, to vote for George Bush for County Commissioner.
- posted by Base10 @ 8:30 AM