Bleater PJ’s

James Lileks who is always impressive even in the graphics Dept has a graphic today that is a priceless slap at CBS’ ‘bloggers in their PJ’s” comment.

A classic, James.

To those of you writing… Yes, I’ve been playing with the look of the Blog. And no, it’s not exactly where I want it to be yet. I’m finding little stuff in the template all the time, and trying to clean it up. It’s getting close, though.

Just call it an attempt to keep Bit’sblog visally interesting.

well, ya knew it hadda happen. Now that the false documents being used against President Bush are debunked, some reasoning comes into play… If we asume these forgeries come from the Kerry campaign, what else has Kerry lied about? Captain’s Quarters explores this in some detail.

“Kerry’s campaign has made available two of the three separate citations for the single Silver Star for his engagement of 28 February 1969, the Hyland and Lehman citations (the Zumwalt citation is not provided).

Take a look at the first citation in the scan, which is the older Hyland citation. Two odd observations jump out at me. First, the entire citation is typed in italics, which strikes me as strange, for military use. The second oddity, though, is the fact that this document is also typed in a proportional font with fairly obvious kerning. For a demonstration of how that differs from a standard typewriter product, simply look at the Lehman citation on the second page of the PDF, which uses a non-proportional font.”

Captain Ed wonders if these had been sent out to a print shop as a matter of course. If you have an understanding of these, you may want to go over there and chime in.

AP reports:

CHICAGO (AP) – Talk show host Oprah Winfrey celebrated the premiere of her 19th season Monday by surprising each of her 276 audience members with a new car.

File under: Signs someone has too much money.

Update: Looks now like the stubnt didn’t cost her a dime. t was all a Pontiac Promotion. So says the Detroit Free Press, who reports the cars are brand new to Pontiac. The G6 is a new model for them, and the cars they got, look to be some of the very first built…. Before, one presumes, the early production issues were worked out. It’d be interesting to revisit this story in a year and see how such cars fared with their new owners.

Kevin Patrick over at Blogs for Bush has updated his “Web Of Connections” graphic to include the forged documents. 

It’s been suggested thatKerry and the DNC are trying to bankrupt GWB’s campaign, by flip flopping so often, so as to cause the campaign to have to continually update their campaign documents and films that list all the flipflops. I suggest something similar may be afoot here… they’re trying to exhaust poor Kevin by revealing more and more connections.

I’ve several times in this space lamented the press’ lack of willingness to identify Islamic Terrorism as such. Michelle Malkin’s latest column expands on this point. A worthy read.

Since his speech at the RNC, the press has been working overtime to discredit him. Miller fires back in today’s WSJ:

“So, they can call me names and ridicule my angry demeanor all day long. But facts are facts. And the fact is, John Kerry has a long record of proposals to weaken our national security in a time of war. And I would never put my family’s safety in those hands.”

Read the whole thing.

James Joyner over at Outside the Beltway, notes a few stories announcing the arival of Blogs at the aminstream, given the busienss with the forged documents presented by CBS and outted by the Bloggers.

While we can be wistful that there is no equivalent to Walter Chronkite, a unifying figure who Americans from all walks of life trusted for their news, this event shows that the alternatives are mostly better at getting information out. No matter how well intentioned, concentration and centralization have some rather huge downsides.

I tend to agree, but I took a little umberage at the word ‘wistful’, in this context. I responded:

>>I’m somewhat taken aback by your last ‘graph… which seemingly was tossed of before really thinking the implications through.

Wistful?
Hell, man, I’m THANKFUL that no such ‘unifier’ exists… Because without the side checking, we’d never know what kind of unity we were dedicating ourselves to.

Many times in the past I have suggested that the example of left wing bias that is Dan Rather is not limited to him but is endemic to the breed of cockroach that infests West 57th. If Rather is biased, and the org behind him, (And I think the idea that both are so is unquestionable)… what indication do we have that Cronkite was not, when he ran the show.. particularly given Cronkite’s more recent history?

Can you imagine what kind of chance the truth would have, had Dan Rather been the smooth talker that Cronkite was? Can you, for example, see the kind of questions we now see being raised about Rather’s bias, and his truthfulness in general, and these forged Bush/Guard documents in particular, 30 years ago, when Cronkite ran the show? I know I can’t.

Granted that most of the current problems rather has involves fact checking by the Internet. But such fact checking would be harder to get started, I think, if Rather had the Cronkite Pipe and Slippers aura.

Then again, perhaps the cross checking done by the net of today, would have prevented that aura from taking on the stature that it did. Which to my mind raises some degree of question about the history of the 60’s. Think; Conkite, since his retirement, has exposed himself as a far leftist, which more or less confirmed our mostly unspoken (at that time) fear about the MSM.

One wonders, then, if the man didn’t succeed is inflicting more damage on us than he might have, when he was on the air, had he been a less capable communicator. Since the victors write the history books, (and in the context of the US, the Intelligencia is unabashedly leftist, they also are the ones who teach history) we may never really know.

In any event, it seems to me trust of the MSM in the future will be earned at a much higher price. And I don’t see any one individual able to claim that particular crown.

Given what we’ve had with such royalty in the past, I can’t say I’m displeased at all.

The New Bit’s Bit is up. It’s called ‘Stepping Back to Think’.

I had to leave the keyboard behind for a couple days and work out some kinks over this forged documents business. So, I went to Letchworth State park. I relate some interesting things about the park, and now that I’ve had some time to mull the questions over, I’ve drawn some conclusions about those forged documents in this week’s BIT.

Mount Morris, NY—(Palm Pilot)– We’re actually just outside Mt. Morris as this is written, inside Letchworth State park, just off the Mt. Morris end of the park. Letchworth Park is named for William Pryor Letchworth who bought much of the land in the Nineteenth Century, for the purposes of keeping it wild. Mt. Morris, is named for Robert Morris, who once owned huge tracts of land in this area.

This is an area of the country that is known as the ‘Grand Canyon of the East’. A look at the picture, here and you know why. It’s only about 40 miles or so out of Rochester. I’ve brought my family to take in some of the sights. The wildlife is in some abundance, here.  There’s camping both in and around this park, and we’ve done this a few times over the years.

The Genesee River is here also. This is the river that the whole Genesee Valley springs from. The river starts up in the Allegheny Mountains of Northern PA No more than about 10 miles south of the NY state border, and runs north, toward Lake Ontario… one of the few rivers north of the Equator to flow north. That’s it at the bottom of the picture, here. It’s what caused the canyon walls you see. Rafting down this stretch of river is a popular pastime, here, and a few touring companies make some fairly decent bucks taking people downriver. This is the country that Arch Merril wrote about. Merril was a favorite author of my father.  Hotair ballooning over the gorge is also popular, and on any given evening, one can see a balloon or two over the river gorge. The river as it moves through the park, also sets up several waterfalls.This is one of the bigger ones. The bridge you see above the falls in this pic are the old Lehigh Valley railroad, until recently owned by Conrail, and more recently by the Norfolk Southern railroad.  It sees about 20 trains per day. 

We’ve come here as a result of Hurricane Charlie, and the resulting rainfall. It’s got the whole area soaked pretty well, and the river is very active indeed, with many of it’s feeders at flood stage. The waterfall didn’t disappoint; it was going great guns, and nearly as loud as Niagara. I guess that’s because you can get closer to the falls.

30 years ago this was a favorite spot of mine to bring a date. Sometimes, I’d come by myself. Today, as I have several times over the years, I’ve brought my family.  As I write this, I am near the Mt. Morris Dam, which is a hydro-power project set up in 1948.  The dam has stood the test of every storm it’s ever seen, keeping water flows steady and safe… even during it’s biggest test, which was Agnes in 1972, which while only a Category one storm, flooded huge sections of western NY, both in the north, along Lake Ontario, and in the south, most notably along the banks of the Chemung River.  The Genesee, though, remained pretty much under control thanks to this dam. This most recent storm proved no large feat of control.

It’s worth a couple day’s drive to get to. If you’re vacationing next summer, plan to stop here. If you have some time over the next month of so, the colors at the Gorge are generally spectacular every year. Nothing fake about this place; it’s as real as it gets.

Matter of fact, it’s the fakes that I’ve been trying to get away from, so I can think. I’m referring, of course to the fake documents being promoted as factual by the DNC, CBS and oddly, by the Kerry Campaign.

There has already been much written about this fraud.. most of it online, and damned little of it in the mainstream media. (Fairness… it’s in the front page of the WaPo this morning) The reasons for this lack of coverage are fairly well apparent; The MSM isn’t interested in outing one of it’s own as the purvayors of election fraud.

I’ve been pretty muted about all of this except for the initial story and a stack blowing session or two. The reason is fairly simple. I couldn’t believe that anyone connected with the DNC or with the Kerry campaign, could be quite so outright stupid. More, I found it harder to assume that CBS wouldn’t catch them at it, if they really HAD been that stupid.

Now, let me say that I’ve been working with computers on a daily basis since 1973 both in programming and support. I have in that time been soley responsible for supporting over 500 desktops, and currently support something like 200 servers for a financial institution.  I have been called upon to perform a computer forensic investigation, with legal implications attached to that investigation. I use WORD daily, and have used literally hundreds of word processing programs in the past. I’m also quite knowledable about the state of the art in 1972, having used them prior to getting into computers as a full-time job. After over 30 years in computer support, I figure my qualifications are formidable enough to carry some weight.

Yet, I’ve been over all of the documents in question, and I’m forced by what I see to say flatly; The documents are so laughably bad a forgery that anyone with an understanding of the technology available in the 70’s and today would identify them as such, before they put on their glasses.

The technical thinking behind this point has been written about at great length in many places… The Captain’s Quarters, Q and O, Poliblogger, etc, are a few of a very long list indeed. Even longtime Democrats are forced to report they have some questions about the documents or say, as I do that they are outright fraud. The din on this one will only increase.

CBS is certainly losing any ounce of credibility they ever had, as are the Democrats, who CBS says, supplied them with the forged memos. Yet, CBS sticks with the documents. And most notably, they question why we don’t stick to the questions the documents ask, rather than question the authenticity of the documents… Apparently wishing the American people to ignore the concept that if the documents are fraud, so too are the questions they pose about President Bush.

This is a telling response; They hold their attacks on the President to be of greater import than the truth. Thus giving rise to the question of CBS being a willing party to this obvious attempt at deception of the American voter. To say nothing whatever of the people at the DNC who supplied these forgeries to the network. I’ll say one thing for them, the Democrats and CBS are breaking new ground here.

Coming down here to the park has allowed me to sort out something that’s been sticking in my craw for a couple days, now.

I said at the head end of this that I couldn’t believe that anyone connected with the DNC or with the Kerry campaign, could be quite so outright stupid.  To that, I hold. This wasn’t a matter of stupidity on their part, totally. What it was, was their thinking the American people were that stupid.  And since nobody is around to check the veracity of the reports…. nobody to catch them in the act, as it were, (or so they thought) their goal of getting John Kerry elected President would be simple to obtain.

Clearly, they under-estimated the power of the internet. Then again, anyone who thought such things could be slipped by anyone clearly doesn’t know computers, how could they be thought to understand the ‘net?

In any event; these are not simply stupid acts by the democrats and their partisan buddies over at CBS. These are criminal acts of election fraud against the American people. At the very least, and leaving aside the intent of the forgery for a moment…the forging of federal documents, which these memos purport to be, is a felony, in itself.

Where will this end up? Well… let’s see…

“SEOUL, Sept 12 (Reuters) – A mushroom cloud up to 4 km (about 2.5 miles) in diameter was seen after an explosion in a remote area of North Korea near the border with China, Yonhap news agency reported on Sunday, quoting sources in Beijing.”

Details are sketchy at best, but the explosion is said to have been larger than the explosion along the Chinese border last April. Apparently it was noted by a passing satalite.

“SEOUL, Sept 12 (Reuters) – A mushroom cloud up to 4 km (about 2.5 miles) in diameter was seen after an explosion in a remote area of North Korea near the border with China, Yonhap news agency reported on Sunday, quoting sources in Beijing.”

Details are sketchy at best, but the explosion is said to have been larger than the explosion along the Chinese border last April. Apparently it was noted by a passing satalite.

“SEOUL, Sept 12 (Reuters) – A mushroom cloud up to 4 km (about 2.5 miles) in diameter was seen after an explosion in a remote area of North Korea near the border with China, Yonhap news agency reported on Sunday, quoting sources in Beijing.”

Details are sketchy at best, but the explosion is said to have been larger than the explosion along the Chinese border last April. Apparently it was noted by a passing satalite.

“SEOUL, Sept 12 (Reuters) – A mushroom cloud up to 4 km (about 2.5 miles) in diameter was seen after an explosion in a remote area of North Korea near the border with China, Yonhap news agency reported on Sunday, quoting sources in Beijing.”

Details are sketchy at best, but the explosion is said to have been larger than the explosion along the Chinese border last April. Apparently it was noted by a passing satalite.

“SEOUL, Sept 12 (Reuters) – A mushroom cloud up to 4 km (about 2.5 miles) in diameter was seen after an explosion in a remote area of North Korea near the border with China, Yonhap news agency reported on Sunday, quoting sources in Beijing.”

Details are sketchy at best, but the explosion is said to have been larger than the explosion along the Chinese border last April. Apparently it was noted by a passing satalite.