Kerry's lead in reliably Democratic Illinois has gone from 13 to 4. From a solid lead, which would be expected, to a toss up.

A CNN/Gallup Poll now shows that it is now all knotted up at 45% in Al Franken's home state, Minnesota. Minnesota has been trending Republican lately, but it has always been a very reliable Democratic state.

John Kerry cannot win without Minnesota.

It's getting kind of sick. The battlegrounds are becoming Bush's base, and Kerry's base is becoming battlegrounds.

Posted by: Ace at 04:41 PM | Comments (9)
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"We established to our satisfaction that the memos were accurate or we would not have put them on television. There was a great deal of coroborating [sic] evidence from people in a position to know. Having said that, given all the questions about them, we believe we should redouble our efforts to answer those questions, so that's what we are doing." -- CBS News President Andrew Heyward (via Drudge)

Um.

I see.

You're just getting around to "redoubling your efforts" to confirm the story.

Well, that fills me with tremendous confidence about your competence and integrity.

Maybe you should have done the most cursory of fact-checking before you aired your story.

Oh, wait: You didn't want to "overcheck" the story and prove it was false before you ran it. So you deliberately ignored document-authenticators' warnings that the documents were false and failed to examine the backgrounds of your "unimpeachable sources."

You think you can just ride this out and wait for us to lose interest?

Boys, we are just getting fucking started.

BOYCOTT CBS AND ALL VIACOM STATIONS

BOYCOTT ANY AND ALL ADVERTISERS ON THOSE STATIONS, WHETHER LOCAL OR NATIONAL

Some information here.

Posted by: Ace at 02:25 PM | Comments (47)
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We're not going to win New York, but it would be nice to at least see pollsters move it into the "Battleground" column.

I don't want to say that Democrats are beginning to lose faith in John Kerry, but I understand that Terry McAuliffe just called Frank Lautenberg to see if his "schedule is open for the next 2 months/4 years."

Posted by: Ace at 02:01 PM | Comments (7)
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It's the least we can do for him. We've had so much fun at his expense.

Posted by: Ace at 01:54 PM | Comments (3)
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Bloggers doing their own original research, now bloggers drawing their own meticulously-detailed editorial cartoons-- do we even need a MSM anymore?

Posted by: Ace at 01:47 PM | Comments (1)
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For those of you following the shadowy careers of Marty Heldt and Bill Burkett, make sure you check out the article linked in Addendum 3 to this Daly Thoughts post.

Scan down to a later sub-section of the article called "Records Draw Interest."

Both Heldt and Burkett are interviewed in the article.

As Heldt is described as an "amateur internet researcher" specializing in the AWOL claims, it seems probable that he's had opportunity to correspond with Burkett in the past. Burkett, after all, is the midwife of the whole non-scandal.

Posted by: Ace at 01:46 PM | Comments (8)
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Yeahp. I don't put a lot of stock in Mr. Bill Burkett, but I do think he's on to something here:

Alluding to the questions raised by Senators Bob Kerrey and Daniel Inouye at a press conference last Thursday, Burkett said, “In answer to Senator Kerrey's comments, finding the answer to this issue is very simple. The Bush campaign staff can simply provide the pay records and detailed retirement points records for Lieutenant Bush. Until that is done, everything else is purely speculation as to when and where George W. Bush was during his obligation period. A unit technician’s personal notes about duty performance is not official. Handwritten and scribbled notations are also not official. The pay records, however, simply specify without a doubt and officially, when Lt. Bush performed ordered duty and that the US Air Force paid him for it.”

Dan Rather has to address this point, I think.

His principal source for this whole story declared that pay records established service -- "without a doubt," he said in 2000.

And now his story has once again shifted.

Let me repeat that:

Dan Rather's principal source for his AWOL story has previously declared that pay records establish, "without a doubt," whether a man served or not.

Bush has provided his pay records.

Funny, isn't it, that what once established service "without a doubt" is now considered rather flimsy evidence, easily rebutted by the "recollections" of committed partisans as well as "the higher truth" contained in forged documents?

Posted by: Ace at 12:32 PM | Comments (10)
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Plan B in full effect; see the top of Lucianne.com.

I'm actually surprised they're admitting the documents were forged. I expected them to just attempt to de-emphasize the documents and say that that issue is "unresolvable."

Did the legal department have anything to do with this, I wonder?

Did any other reporters? Did some executive somewhere finally decide that he couldn't just, you know, lie to the public?

Posted by: Ace at 12:24 PM | Comments (6)
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Bill from INDC recently ripped into the Boston Globe for distorting the opinion of Bill's own document-authentication expert, Dr. Bouffard, into the flat-out false headline Authenticity Backed on Bush Documents.

He had a nice chat with the Globe folks today, too, he tells me.

I guess he was pretty convincing:

"Because of an editing error, the headline on a Page One story Saturday on whether documents released by CBS News about President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service are genuine ("Authenticity backed on Bush documents") did not accurately reflect the content of the story. The story quoted one analyst saying that the documents could have been produced on typewriters available in the early 1970s, but the analyst did not vouch for the authenticity of the documents. A second analyst quoted in the story said he doubts the documents are authentic."

Yes, an "editing error," I'm sure. Oddly enough, the Boston Globe ombudsman and reporter argued with Bill on the phone about this "editing error." Strange, isn't it, that an "editing error" -- a glitch, a typo -- would require such arguing about, no?

At any rate -- once again, a blogger has proven far more reliable than a liberal MSM source.

Bill himself reviews the situation here.

Thanks to Stumbo-- great catch, my man.

Posted by: Ace at 11:54 AM | Comments (6)
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Bill Hobbs wonders.

Just another one of the crazy coincidences, I'm sure.

Does anyone think the New York Times will begin investigating the growing evidence of "shadowy links" between MoveOn.org, the DNC, and CBS?

Thanks to RS.

Posted by: Ace at 11:52 AM | Comments (3)
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