October 1, 2006 Posts
01:59 A Major Discrepancy 03:20 Pittsburh Post-Gazette Weighs In 11:55 Ignoring Facts, Manipulating Opinions 18:33 The Media Finally Gets It
A Major Discrepancy
It appears as though there's a major discrepancy in how many people attended today's 'Back Jack' rally. Here's how the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review saw it:
An estimated 2,000 people assembled in the city's downtown to support Murtha, a Johnstown Democrat, who will be the focus of an opposition rally today at the Cambria County War Memorial Arena by the group BootMurtha.org, which orchestrated a similar campaign against Democrats U.S. Sen. John Kerry, of Massachusetts and former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, of Georgia.Here's how the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat saw it:
Local supporters gathered Saturday by the hundreds with picket signs and ponchos, cheering on a congressman they believe has been unjustly attacked. And when U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, and his wife, Joyce, walked onto the stage at Central Park, the crowd closed in around the pair, supporters reaching out to shake Murtha's hand.Here's how WJAC-TV called it:
A couple of hundred veterans come out to "Back Jack" Saturday.WJAC has posted the video of the event here.
The "Back Jack Murtha Rally" was held in Johnstown's Central Park aimed to give Congressman Murtha support with his stance on the war. Gov. Rendell, former Presidential Candidate Wesley Clark, and Former Senator Max Cleland were among those supporting Congressman Murtha.
Please tell me how 2,000 people "close in around the pair." Based on KJAC's video, I'm hard pressed to see 2,000 people.
I've done some digging into the size of Central Park in Johnstown, PA. follow this link to view the map of the block where Central Park is located. Based on the map's table, the block that Central Park is located on is approximately 500 ft. X 250 ft., give or take 50 ft. I also found out that there's at least one cafe on the block so that shrinks the square footage available.
Based on the video, the size of Central Park, and the reporting, I'd say that those that say there was a large crowd in excess of 2,000 people are telling a whopper of Murtha-esque proportions.
Posted Sunday, October 1, 2006 1:59 AM
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Pittsburh Post-Gazette Weighs In
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has weighed in on the 'Back Jack' rally with this article.
Ms. Irey's name wasn't spoken once over the course of the 90-minute rally, which police officials say drew a crowd of 2,000, but the incendiary issues have put this race, and Ms. Irey's face and candidacy, into a national spotlight. The Washington County commissioner says she believes the military voting bloc is more divided than Mr. Murtha realizes. She hopes to capitalize on the split in Cambria County and the rest of the 12th District, which historically had been impenetrable to Republicans, but in recent presidential elections has been voting more conservatively.At least we know that the crowd estimate of 2,000 came from "police officials." That still doesn't mean that they aren't FOJ's (Friends of Jack) but it's reasonable to believe that this wasn't just the rally's organizers' figure.
The 'split' amongst military voters didn't become pronounced until Murtha rendered the guilty verdict on the Haditha Marines without so much as getting briefed on the subject. That split is real and it's growing. Don't expect it to stop growing until it's a day after Election Day.
Mr. Rendell, who flew in from Harrisburg yesterday afternoon, said Mr. Murtha has done more for American fighting men and women than "any American alive today...How dare these outsiders come here to Pennsylvania and impugn the patriotism of one of the greatest sons in this commonwealth's history."Mr. Rendell is a sleazy politician. The reason I know is because only a sleazy politician could say that criticizing someone that throws the Constitution out the window by convicting the Haditha Marines without due process, without evidence, without due process and without the military investigation even having been completed is "one of the greatest sons in this commonwealth's history." I'd seriously doubt that that's Americans' picture of patriotism.
Murtha said:
"I don't appreciate these people sitting on their fat backsides in the White House, sending our young people to war, when they don't understand the circumstances."Mr. Murtha, I don't appreciate corrupt politicians discarding the Constitution, the greatest document of freedom in the history of mankind, for political expediency. I don't appreciate corrupt politicians ignoring the Constitution's foundational guarantees of due process and a jury of a man's peers, not to mention ignoring the rules of evidence.
It's long past time for the people of PA-12 to put us out of our misery by retiring John Murtha this November.
Posted Sunday, October 1, 2006 3:23 AM
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Ignoring Facts, Manipulating Opinions
Jack Kelly's column does a great job of exposing the Democrats', with the willing help of their Agenda Media assistants, willingness to only tell half the story on the NIE.
The "Iraq jihad" is listed as fueling the jihadist movement, but only as one of four "underlying factors," and not the most important. "We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere," the NIE said.Later, the truth gets "sanded off" even more:
The Times and the Post reported only the first half of that sentence.
"The Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight."As I said here:
It's telling that the Democratic Party has hitched its wagon so closely to such a nothing report. I'm guessing that they're still thinking that their media allies will carry the ball after they've made the initial allegations. For that strategy to work, they have to rely on you not thinking for yourself, instead taking the word of the NY Times, Washington Post and CBS.Simply put, that's a strategy doomed for failure.
The Times and the Post reported only the first sentence in that bullet point. The reason for the omissions is clear. The omitted clause and sentence say jihadist success in Iraq (the likely consequence of a premature U.S. pullout) would increase terrorism elsewhere. Conversely, a perceived jihadist failure in Iraq would discourage jihadists everywhere. These "judgments" in the NIE undermine Democratic calls for withdrawal from Iraq.Put another way, the omissions were a deliberate attempt to undercut President Bush in wartime. This wasn't the NY Times and Washington Post editorializing about a perceived policy failure. It was the deliberate editing of a information with the goal of manipulating public opinion towards the war. This is proof of the ongoing tyranny within the Agenda Media.
The worst part is that this tyranny is done for one purpose: the bringing down a president that they simply disagree with. This isn't the reporting of a set of secrets that the public needs to know about. It's the manipulation of information for purely political purposes.
That's an abuse of power and that's the definition of tyranny.
Posted Sunday, October 1, 2006 11:55 AM
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The Media Finally Gets It
All year long, we've heard about Nancy Pelosi becoming Speaker. Recently, we've started hearing that Democrats weren't in as strong a position as they'd like. Finally, the fMSM is starting to catch onto the fact that things aren't nearly as hopeless for the GOP as Democrats would like. Here's what James Carney and Mike Allen have figured out:
Thanks to aggressive redistricting in the 1990s and early 2000s, fewer than three dozen House seats are seriously in contention this election cycle, compared with more than 100 in 1994, the year Republicans swept to power with a 54-seat pickup in the House. Then there's what political pros call the ground game. For most of the 20th century, turning out voters on Election Day was the Democrats' strength. They had labor unions to supply workers for campaigns, make sure their voters had time off from their jobs to go to the polls and provide rides to get them there.Demographics and GOTV machinery still matter alot. It's part of the equation that reporters have long ignored but GOP "uberstrategist" Karl Rove paid painstakingly close watch over. It's also the area of greatest improvement for the GOP.
Way back when, John Murtha said that he had no doubt but that Democrats would win 50 seats if the elections were held right then. I've said numerous times that Murtha would be well-advised to stick to politics and leave political strategery to the pros. Part of my prediction that Democrats wouldn't win those 50 seats is because of the reasons that Jim Carney and Mike Allen cite about vulnerable seats.
Those experiments helped Republicans develop a handful of precepts that constitute the party's playbook for this fall:Simply put, Rove ushered in a new era of GOTV efficiency. That's part of why I've said that he's the best political strategist in recent history. President Bush, Rove and Mehlman have worked together to put together a multi-faceted approach to winning elections.
1. Learn from the past Fifteen GOP data experts spent months after the '04 election comparing turnout records from the swing states with the Bush-Cheney campaign's databases to figure out the optimal amount of mail, phone calls and door knocks that would persuade a probable GOP voter to go to the polls.
2. Draw in new voters The Bush-Cheney campaign used state records to locate potential Republicans with Florida State University license plates, then had fellow Seminoles call them to sound out their views. Whereas parties used to go after certain precincts or zip codes, Republicans now know even which individual households they want through microtargeting, the use of computerized consumer data, from magazine subscriptions to charitable contributions, to help locate voters who are likely to vote Republican if they turn out. Other telltale signs of potential latent Republicanism are snowmobile ownership and enrollment in private schools.
3. Low tech can be better Caller ID, TiVo, cable channels and satellite radio all make it harder to reach voters than it was just a few years ago, increasing the importance of person-to-person appeals, the hallmark of old-fashioned, grassroots campaigns that used to connote an amateur or a low budget. "You clearly have to have TV ads," says White House political-affairs director Sara Taylor, "but for a little less TV, you can buy a whole lot of pizzas and phone lines and salaries for young men and women right out of college" to make phone calls, knock on doors and recruit and manage volunteers.
4. Details, details The shopping list includes everything from chairs to cell phones for hundreds of workers for Republican Party victory committees, whose staffs are charged with creating state turnout machines. The GOP says their volunteer forces in '04 proved to be more effective than the paid workers contracted by Democrats, unions and Democrat-oriented fund-raising groups. Even Election Day comes sooner for Republicans, who have begun putting a huge effort into locking down absentee voters and vote-by-mail ballots in states that use them.
5. Spend more Republican officials estimate that at the end of August, their committees and campaigns had $235 million to spend in the two-month home stretch, a $58 million advantage over Democrats. The RNC plans to lay out more than $60 million on turnout efforts and advertising vs. the more than $14 million set aside by DNC chairman Howard Dean. Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, who has been critical of Dean's approach, complained at a DNC fund-raising luncheon in Washington last week that the GOP "is pouring tens of millions of dollars into races, and we're not matching that." House Republican officials contend that many of their Democratic challengers are so little known that they could be buried in an ad blitz. "You hit them, and they fold like a house of cards," a strategist said.
President Bush is the Fundraiser-in-chief, with Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Laura Bush, the Cheneys, Speaker Hastert and other leaders assisting in a big way. President Bush also works the 'policy front', keeping the GOP message appealing and important. Karl Rove is 'The Architect', the man who drew up the blueprint that the GOP's GOTV operations work from. Ken Mehlman is the nuts-and-bolts guy that's been attending GOP outreach meetings titled "Conversations with the Community", which likely will pay big dividends in the Maryland senate race between Michael Steele and Ben Cardin.
Posted Sunday, October 1, 2006 6:33 PM
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