A lot of people asked for a haiku contest.

I didn't want to suggest it, because, frankly, I'm a little tired of judging them. And yeah, I know that I still owe everyone the final American Haiku show... I'll get to it one day.

So, here's the deal. I'd love to host a Dan Rather/Bill Burkett/John Thurston Kerry haiku contest. But I don't want to judge.

Fortunately, MeTooThen has just graciously volunteered to judge the contest, and I accepted, because he satisified my three key criteria for judging:

1) I know who he is.

2) He is an "unimpeachable source" for judging haiku quality.

3) He does not appear to be a diagnosable maniac.

So, just post your haikus here! At some point, maybe by the end of the week, I'll close the entries and then MeTooThen will make his Solomnic judgement.

I'll be posting haikus too, but, as always, corporate officers of Ace of Spades HQ and their families are barred from actually entering the contest.

Posted by: Ace at 04:46 PM | Comments (137)
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See Lucianne.com for breaking AP report.

UPDATE! Corante's got a key graf from the AP story, plus the link (registration required).

UPDATE! No registration required for this link, courtesy of Lucianne.com.

So... Lockhart, Cleland, Barnes... is there anyone at the DNC who wasn't talking to Burkett?

Think the New York Times will have any interest in investigating these not-shadowy-at-all connections between the forged documents and Kerry?

Thanks to Senator Philabuster.

Posted by: Ace at 04:24 PM | Comments (9)
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Bipartisan "Battleground" Poll Puts John Kerry Below 40%

STUDY #9936
THE TARRANCE GROUP, INC. and LAKE SNELL PERRY
N = 250 per day of registered “likely” voters
Field Dates: September 12 –16, 2004

1. If the election for President were held today, and you had to make a choice, for which candidate would you probably vote?
(DO NOT READ NAMES, JUST RECORD)

George W. Bush 46%
John Kerry 39%
Ralph Nader 1%
NAMED OTHER 1%
UNSURE 14%

Here. You have to download an MSWord file (hopefully not forged) to read the data.

Of course, all hope is not lost. As The Unabrewer tips me, John Kerry is still ahead in New York... by five whole points.

And in Maryland -- one of the staunchest Democratic bastions there is -- he's comfortably in a 48-48 tie with Bush.

I don't want to say that John Kerry is unelectable, but he couldn't get elected warden in monkey-prison with a wheelbarrow full of bananas and a lenient policy on excrement-flingin'.

Update! And now Bush four points ahead in... Oregon?

The only problem with a real blow-out is that it doesn't hurt to be blown out. When you get trounced, you know that no particular error you made, or flaw in your strategy, could have possibly helped you. You just throw your hands up and say, "Eh. Nothing I could have done."

On the other hand, there's Al Gore.

Thanks to Terry Notus for the Oregon tip.

Posted by: Ace at 02:26 PM | Comments (14)
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10. We were all hornswaggled worse than a blind dog sniffing at the ass of a decoy duck

9. Our fact-checking was looser than a three-toothed Galveston whore during Fleet Week when the rent's due

8. We got played worse than the only fiddle at an Houston hootenanny

7. We're dumber than a sack of hammers -- retard-hammers, that is

6. The story was rushed more than a Arkansas groom with bun in the oven and a shotgun to his crotch

5. Bill Burkett duped us harder than a carny-barker shilling for a game of "Stump the Chicken"

4. We got deeper into this mess than Hell's own septic-tank cleaner

3. We bent over for Ben Barnes harder than a new-fish at the Gainsboro Maximum Security Penitentiary Cotillion & Debutante Ball

2. I'm more in the tank for John Kerry than a Chicsaw County grifter with an eight-foot siphon

...and the Number One Dan Rather "Folksy Texas Saying" for What Went Wrong...

1. What do you want me to say? We all lean harder to the left than Michael Moore during a starboard-blowing squall, while simultaneously trying to balance in order to consume his own right foot

Posted by: Ace at 12:35 PM | Comments (8)
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Baseball Crank "raises some questions" I'd like to see Dan Rather, Terry McAuliffe, and Joshua Micah Brandybuck Hezekiah Cougar Mellancamp Marshall all answer.

Ben Barnes supposedly didn't contact 60 Minutes until the Republcian National Convention. Fair enough.

But there does seem to have been a kind of stealth buzz campaign going on on left-wing blogsites before then.

Josh Marshall, August 22nd:

Now, as fate would have it, Ben Barnes is a Democrat. Was then, is now. And he supports John Kerry.

But he's never really spoken openly about how he helped Bush hop in front of everyone else or other aspects of the president's abbreviated military service, about which he is said to know a great deal.

Maybe now would be the time?

Texas politics is different from Washington politics. Dems and Republicans are often tight. And I believe Barnes' is a state lobbyist nowadays. So while supporting the Dem nominee may be an acceptable deviation, nailing the president on the Guard issue in what is now a Republican-dominated state probably wouldn't be good for business.

But maybe now's the time for him to step up to the plate ...

Can't we get Molly Ivins or some other worthy to put in a call? Maybe just ask him what he thinks of the Swift Boat business.

Josh Marshall, August 27th:

You'll want to link through to this one -- it's a video clip of Ben Barnes, the former Speaker of the House in Texas, the guy who got President Bush into the Texas Air National Guard.

I'm told the tape is from a recent Kerry rally and in it Barnes says the following...

...

Now, I don't know what Ben Barnes looks like. And I do not independently know the provenance of the tape. But I've spoken to two sources who know Barnes. And they tell me that that is Barnes on the tape.

One of those two men is Jim Moore -- co-author of Bush's Brain. Moore told me this afternoon that the clip is from June 8th of this year, at a Kerry rally in Austin. Moore assures me that the tape is legitimate.

I placed a call to Barnes' office and left a message with one of his assistants; but the request for comment has not yet been returned.

Josh Marshall, September 1st:

bit more on Ben Barnes, the guy from Texas who got President Bush into the Guard way-back-when.

Apparently, the attacks on Kerry's war record just proved too much for him. As we've noted previously, for almost a decade now Barnes has gone to great lengths to avoid causing trouble for the president on the Guard matter. And the Bush folks in Texas have made it clear to him during this election cycle that if he spills the beans about the president that they'll do everything in their power to put him out of business in the state (Barnes is now a lobbyist). And that heat has, I'm told, increased dramatically in recent days.

But apparently those threats haven't done the trick because he has already taped a lengthy interview slated to appear in the not-too-distant future on a major national news show in which he'll describe the strings he pulled to keep Bush out of Vietnam and apparently more.

(Between you and me, according to my three sources on this, Barnes told his story to Dan Rather -- remember, the Texas connection -- for 60 Minutes.)

Now, I'm not saying that Joshua Boutros-Boutros Marshall did anything wrong. He's a transparent political hack; he's supposed to pimp bullshit claims by partisans like Barnes. That's his job.

But I'm curious:

Who where Marshall's sources?

Or, more specifically: Were Marshall's sources at CBS or in the DNC?

Based on Marshall's record, I think there's a good chance he was getting this from the DNC.

And if the DNC knew that all of this was coming before even CBS did...

Well-- I hope Mr. Marshall will forgive me when I echo him and say I question the timing.

And one more question: Was Barnes' change of heart about "speaking out" on his claims as "sudden" as has been suggested, or was this all part of a long-planned DNC-CBS joint venture?

This looks less like a meticulously-researched "breaking news scoop" and more like the publicity campaign for a long-scheduled theatrical release -- Fahrenheit 9-08 -- with Josh Marshall serving up the teasers, sneak previews and general pre-release hype, a kind of hyperpartisan hack Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News.

Since the liberal media is breathlessly reporting the Republican affiliation of those who truthfully debunked the forgeries, perhaps they'll soon become interested in the Democratic affiliation of those who created, delivered, and breathlessly hyped the forgeries and the Ben Barnes "suprise revelation."

I expect they'll be right on that.

Any. Minute. Now.

He Questions the Timing of My Questioning the Timing Update: Memento Moron wants to know what the hell took me so long.

Well, I've been too busy planning what color Ducati I'm going to buy, when all that crazy blog-money I've been dreaming of finally starts rolling in.

Any. Minute. Now.

Posted by: Ace at 11:32 AM | Comments (14)
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Political crimes, a secretary in the midst of things, Dan Rather, and now "follow the money" -- the Watergate analogy keeps getting thicker. Thicker than old chicory molasses on a cold West Texas night.

The American Thinker tips that Sumner Redstone is dumping 340,000+ shares of CBS stock.

Karl tips me:

"Many may say that this is but a fraction of his wealth. While that may be the case, note that he is dumping almost all of his options. And their value is much more sensitive to price variations (depending on the strike price) than his underlying stock holdings. Hence it looks like he knows or fears the price is heading south (perhaps even under his strike price) and not coming back for quite some time. Surely this raises your eyebrows as well?"

The SEC filing is here.

By the Way: I'm not suggesting anything improper here. Redstone has all the public information he needs to make this decision.

I'm just saying that this savvy investor -- and big-time Democratic donor -- seems to realize CBS is going down.

Maybe CBS and Viacom ought to realize the potential debacle here, and fast. CBS and Viacom are billion dollar concerns; CBS News barely manages to eke out a profit. Do they really want to destroy an entire network to protect one egotistical, arrogant old coot from embarassment?

Posted by: Ace at 11:02 AM | Comments (6)
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... he just doesn't know it.

The Unpopulist uses an ethervision lens to capture a supernatural visitor on the set of The Evening News With Dan Rather.

Looks like I'll have to update the retirement watch. The Ghost of Retirement Future looks impatient.

Posted by: Ace at 10:51 AM | Comments (2)
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Here's an idea: Maybe the liberal media should report on charges that are actually true and not report forgeries as truth. Sounds crazy, I know.

The SwiftVets, whose charges have not in fact been "discredited" as the liberal media began saying from the moment they deigned to acknowledge them, will be buying more ad time now than ever before.

Posted by: Ace at 10:49 AM | Comments (2)
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Via the indispensible Allah, this photo of a CBS News truck proudly, if indiscretely, announces on which side of the political aisle CBS News' "heart" lies.

Did you miss it? Well, it's a little sticker right beneath the CBS News Path sign.

It reads:

The only bush I trust is my own.

Again, I'm ever so happy that CBS News would never resort to relying on "poltical partisans" to authenticate transparently-sham forgeries, nor to employing such self-declared political partisans to report the news.

Posted by: Ace at 10:39 AM | Comments (2)
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If RatherBiased.com's back on-line, you'll enjoy this testy little exchange. A FoxReport asks Rather if he feels "duped," to which Rather shoots back-- "You work at Fox. Do you feel duped?"

I don't know, Dan. FoxNews hasn't reported any forgeries as fact, and then continued to claim they were authentic in the face of overwhelming evidence.

As a not-so-great man once said:

"There's no need to get snippy."

Update: The Daily Recycler has the video of the exchange, too.

Posted by: Ace at 10:10 AM | Comments (4)
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