Kerry ahead in TV ads

The USA Today is reporting that a media study group shows that Kerry and independent 527 PAC groups have spent more on TV ads than the Bush campaign.

• The Kerry campaign's ads were shown 72,908 times, 3.1% more than the Bush-Cheney campaign's 70,688 showings.

• Political groups' ads were shown 56,627 times. All but 513 were ads by liberal, anti-Bush groups such as MoveOn PAC and The Media Fund. The others were by conservative groups.

Taken together, about 129,000 Kerry or anti-Bush ads were aired, 82% more than the Bush-Cheney total.

Kerry proud of not supporting troops

Sen. John Kerry said that he was proud that he and Sen. John Edwards voted against needed funding in the middle of the war in Iraq for our troops, according to the Boston Globe.

''I'm proud to say that John joined me in voting against that $87 billion when we knew the policy had to be changed. We had to get it right," Kerry said.

Kerry continued to call the Bush administration liars, and worse.

The Bush administration responded by calling Kerry’s actions reckless. Spokesman Steve Schmidt denounced Kerry as ''reckless" for voting to authorize the war in Iraq in 2002 and then expressing pride over opposing the funds last year.

Kerry said himself that a vote against the measure would be reckless in an interview before the vote.

Doyle McManus (LA Times): "If that amendment does not pass, will you then vote against the $87 billion?" Kerry: "I don't think any United States senator is going to abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq to – to whatever follows as a result of simply cutting and running. That's irresponsible." (CBS, "Face the Nation," 9/14/03)

Stem Cell setback

President Reagan’s son Ron’s decision to give a speech at the Democrat convention will undoubtedly setback the passage of Sen, Orin Hatch’s legislation to increase stem cell research.

Hatch responded to Reagan’s announcement saying, "I hope he reconsiders," Hatch said in an interview on MSNBC. "If they make a political thing out of this, we are going to set stem-cell research back a long way."

The Kerry campaign offered the following comments:

"John Kerry and John Edwards are honored that Ron Reagan will be speaking at our convention," David Wade, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, said in a statement. "He's added his courageous voice to the millions of Americans pleading with their government to tear down the wall of politics and ideology that stands in the way of finding the cures of tomorrow."

Reagan took aim at the Christian Right in a response as to his reasons for going to the Democrat convention.

''Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man," Reagan said. "But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians - wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage."

NAACP Democrats

NAACP President Kweisi Mfume is implying that conservative Blacks have no right to call themselves Blacks:

"When the ultraconservative right-wing attacker has run out of attack strategy," Mr. Mfume said, "he goes and gets someone that looks like you and me to continue the attacks."

"And like the ventriloquist's dummies, they sit there in the puppet master's voice, but we can see whose lips are moving, and we can hear his money talk."

Mfume further said, "They can't deal with the leaders we choose for ourselves, so they manufacture, promote and hire new ones."

President Bush has chosen to not attend the national NAACP convention and Kerry is trying to press an advantage among Black voters.

The controversy over a division in Black philosophy amongst Republican and Democrats spilled over in the Senate Judiciary Committee when it was learned that Sen. Edward Kennedy urged Democrats to especially block minority nominees. Kennedy’s reason for blocking the nominees was because it would provide a conflicting voice to the traditional welfare state approach by Democrats.

Bush-Kerry-Edwards guilty

The LA Times in an editorial states that Kerry was right in suggesting President Bush was guilty of "criminally negligent homicide" in Iraq. However, the editorial suggests that Sen. John Kerry and Sen. John Edwards are equally guilty for having voted to go to war. Here is the LA Times editorial:

Kerry-Edwards Stonewall

If not murder, John F. Kerry and John Edwards have accused President Bush of something close to criminally negligent homicide in Iraq. "They were wrong and soldiers died because they were wrong," Kerry said of the Bush administration over the weekend.

This is strong language, but not unjustified. Last week's Senate Intelligence Committee report adds to the pile of studies and reportage that has undermined the key reasons Bush gave for going to war: Saddam Hussein's imperial designs, links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, weapons of mass destruction and so on.

The trouble is, both Sens. Kerry and Edwards voted yes on the resolution authorizing the war in Iraq. And now they refuse to say whether they would have supported the resolution if they had known what they know today. Both say they can't be bothered with "hypothetical questions."

But whether it is a hypothetical question depends on how you phrase it. Do they regret these votes? Were their votes a mistake? These are not hypothetical questions. And they are questions the Democratic candidates for president and vice president cannot duck if they wish to attack Bush on Iraq in such morally charged language.

After all, the issue raised by the Senate Intelligence Committee report is not whether the Bush administration bungled the prosecution of the war, or whether there should have been greater international cooperation, or whether the challenges of occupying and rebuilding the country were grossly underestimated. When Kerry says "they were wrong," he is referring to the administration's basic case for going to war. Kerry supported that decision. So did Edwards. Were they wrong? If they won't answer that question, they have no moral standing to criticize Bush.

Reluctance to answer the question is understandable. If they say they stand by their pro-war votes, this makes nonsense of their criticisms of Bush. If they say they were misled or duped by the administration, they look dopey and weak. Many of their Democratic Senate colleagues were skeptical of the administration's evidence even at the time. If Kerry and Edwards tell the probable truth — that they were deeply dubious about the war but afraid to vote no in the post-9/11 atmosphere and be tarred as lily-livered liberals — they would win raves from editorial writers for their frankness and courage. And they could stop dreaming of oval offices.

Kerry and Edwards are in a bind. But it is a bind of their own making. The great pity will be if this bind leads the Democratic candidates to back off from their harsh, and largely justified, criticism of Bush. The Democrats could lose a valuable issue, and possibly even the election, because the Democratic candidates were too clever for their own good.

In the past, Kerry has dodged the question of his pro-war vote by saying that he intended to give Bush negotiating leverage and to encourage multilateral action, not to endorse a unilateral American invasion of Iraq. Unfortunately, what he may have intended is not what he voted for. Furthermore, a vote in favor of the war resolution was unavoidably a statement that the various complaints against Hussein did justify going to war against him, if all else failed, whatever caveats and escape hatches were in any individual senator's head.

Kerry and Edwards would like to fudge the issue by conflating it with questions about how the war was prosecuted. Or they say that what matters is where we go from here. It is true that "what now?" is the important policy question. But that doesn't make it the only question. How we got here affects how we get out. And even if it had no practical relevance to our future Iraq policy, hearing how Kerry and Edwards explain their votes to authorize a war they now regard as disastrous would be helpful in assessing their character and judgment.

Their continued refusal to explain would be even more helpful, unfortunately.

Poll Watching

The Associated Press poll shows that President Bush continues to make Americans feel more optimistic about the future than Sen. John Kerry – by 50 percent to 44 percent. Bush is also perceived as more decisive – 67 percent and 45 percent.